This short story was first showcased at the Miami International Literary Festival (as part of a larger anthology) back in the summer of 2008. It was inspired by a snippet of conversation overheard on an overcrowded London Tube. Beyond that it is almost impossible to explain how it evolved. All I know is that it deploys a minimalist style and provides the reader with a revealing insight into the lives of two diamond geezers before building to the (now traditional) tragic ending.

“So, your wife’s got over that business with the petty cash yet?”

“They never deserved her Les, she’s well rid of those scheming Arabs. You want to see the payout they offered her, rarely have I felt more bleeding insulted. And all because her boss had a problem with strong women.”

“The police dropped the charges then?”

“It’s only a matter of time. And don’t worry, she’s already got a Tribunal claim up and running.”

“Another? I bet she could represent herself by now. At least she couldn’t do much worse than the last mob who screwed up her claim against the Post Office.”

“Nah, you’re thinking of when she was working up the school. Anyway, her lawyer reckons we’ve got a better chance this time. Thinks we might win enough for a new caravan.”

“Good for her. After what that school put her through…”

“Damn near broke her heart that did. Educated people are always the cruelest. It’s all a question of being bitter on account of thinking all the time. The kids all loved her though. Well, most of them.”

“I remember you telling me. It’s amazing how the papers got it so wrong and how unfair those teachers were, ganging up on her for no reason. I was telling the missus just the other night how much I admire Belinda for how she tried to stand up to them.”

“That means a lot Les, I don’t mind telling you…Christ man, don’t tell me those suits are going to get on here, it’s disgusting enough tonight.”

“It always gets a bit rough at Holborn in my experience.”

“How many stops to Mile End?”

“Too many…”

“I’ll be honest Les, if that tosser with the specs elbows me again I’ll have him before we get to Chancery Lane.”

“I’d keep your voice down Keith…”

“He can’t hear, his head’s rammed so far up his mate’s arse he’ll be deaf for a month. God the smell Les, it’s too much. My balls are sweating like a black in a cotton field. It’s trickling down my thighs.”

“I know mate, but you’ve got to ignore it and tell me how your old girl’s job hunting has gone. What with you being laid off things must be tough.”

“Oh, Belinda’s dropped on her feet like usual. She’s just started as head of external marketing strategy for some electronics firm out near the trading estate.”

“That’s a step up the ladder…”

“Let me tell you Les, it’s all about contacts. Luckily her cousin Connor helped us out. You’ll know him, he runs the health and safety courses at Vodophone. By the time he’d finished tarting up her CV she could’ve run for Parliament. It was a work of a genius, all long words and mind boggling jargon. Seriously cutting edge with punctuation all over the shop. That’s four years at Brunel for you.”

“Good for her. I mean, where’s the harm. People lie on their CVs all the time from what I’ve read.”

“Don’t get me wrong, there were some awkward moments like when they asked her to bring in her qualifications. I managed to doctor our Vanessa’s GCSE certificate no problem, but coming by A level certificates, a Degree, an MA and an Advanced Certificate in Professional Sales Management Practice was a bit dodgy. Luckily my Belinda’s clever though. Told the personnel woman, who already has it in for her by the way, that she’s recently moved house and so can’t find a damn thing. Give it a week or two and they’ll forget all about it like Connor advised us.”

“I like Connor. He used to know our Sarah Jayne.”

“Well, we owe him big time. The only problem is that they’ve got my Belinda working her arse off already. It’s a pressure game see, running external marketing strategies for these multi-billion dollar companies.”

“I don’t know how she does it, I really don’t. She’s a tough one your Belinda. I wouldn’t know one end of my qualititive data analysis from my macromarket brand-storming, but that’s why I’m just a mechanic I suppose.”

“Yeah, but Les you aren’t listening to me. They’ve really got her under pressure; it’s that classic ‘taking advantage of the new girl who is a bit too eager to please’ thing.”

“Don’t they reckon it’s best to get stuck in?”

“Mate, what is it with these dogs?”

“Rise above it Keith. Everybody knows people behave like animals on the tube. Always been the same.”

“You’d think that greasy Austrian type would give up his seat for that fat lass wouldn’t you. Look! She’s practically about to die down here with the heat and the smell. Anyway, I’ve got to tell you Les, I did not appreciate your comment about my wife getting stuck in. I hope you’re not saying she’s a slacker.”

“No, it’s just that people like your Belinda thrive on pressure, don’t they? That’s what she’s always telling my Nadine.”

“Your Nadine wouldn’t understand Les, let’s face facts. This is a serious career opportunity and in some ways it hasn’t got off to the best start.”

“Nadine understands more than you think Keith…”

“They had hardly finished the induction when they dumped this massive pile of paperwork on her. The old cow she replaced had let things go apparantly. They call it document management in these massive companies. Then they said she had to run a big meeting that afternoon and that the document management had to be finished first and then they made her meet everybody in the office so she was under that much pressure that she didn’t even have time to nip out for a fag. She ended up hiding most of the filing in the photocopier room, which they call the communication suite because the internet stuff and some fax machines are in there. And then she was dragged away to run this big meeting with all the heads of departments and other top brass.”

“So what does running a meeting actually mean Keith?”

“Well, you see all that document management she’d hidden? She had been meant to photocopy it all and put it in files, or packs, for the meeting. Apparantly they were some important graphs or something, so that was a problem right there. When she phoned me I said, ‘that’s beneath you our Belinda, they wouldn’t even have had you doing that at the school.’”

“No, that probably wouldn’t have been in the job description for serving chips and pizzas…”

“So she was forced to go off and pull the papers out of the back of the photocopier and copy them a hundred times. She’d be the first to admit that she missed out all the pages from the middle, but like I said to her when she phoned me again to let rip a bit more, I said nobody ever gets to the middle of these things, so there’d be no harm in it.”

“Was that wise Keith?”

“Don’t give me one of your lectures Les. You can’t understand what we’ve been going through now your Nadine don’t got to work. You’ve got it easy pal.”

“Actually, Nadine’s still on compassionate leave. It’s not been six weeks since the accident.”

“Holy mother, do we really have to go over all that again? Yes, it was all very sad, I’m not arguing with you about that, but don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

“I’m not sure Keith, we still miss out daughter. Every day I think about Sarah Jayne and the fire; how I might have changed things, but…”

“Oh, that reminds me, you’ll never believe what happened next. They wheeled in a load of customers, that they refer to as clients. Only a gang of orientals. Well you’d expect it I suppose, being an electronics outfit. They’re not like us, they think in numbers. So anyway, the pressure was really on. Next thing that happened was that our Belinda found herself in charge of sorting out coffee and tea for the whole lot of them. Now this isn’t like boiling a kettle and bunging some Nescafe in a dirty mug like down your sweatshop. Oh no, it’s all big steaming jugs with buttons that you press to get the posh ground coffee out. Connor warned her about this, but it’s not easy preparing for something like that. So there’s everyone waving their cups at me missus, chatting amongst themselves and laughing at her because it was her first day and because she was already doing everybody’s job for them and, anyway, it wasn’t her fault, that was what they said, but with her sweating hands she messed up the tricky lid system and next thing she knew a very small oriental man and three other even smaller oriental men were wiping boiling coffee out of their eyes.”

“How on earth did she manage to do that exactly?”

“Like I said, you need a degree in science to work them lids according to my Belinda.”

“At least it could only get better from there.”

“You’re right. Except that my Belinda hardly had a minute to sort herself out before the big boss comes in and tells her to start what I think they call a power point presentation. Power point! Even Connor hadn’t seen that one coming. Now my Belinda is computer literate, she’s always on the net buying jewellery boxes from Argos or ordering dinner services with pictures of Elvis or exotic dogs on them from QVC, but this was a diferent league altogether.”

“There’s a limit to how far a lie can stretch Keith.”

“Belinda reckons they made her stand for ages at the front of the room near a laptop, whilst somebody they’d introduced as a keynote speaker stared at her. Along with about a hundred Rinky Dinks. What was she meant to do? Everybody just sat in silence until the big boss statrted insulting her by saying things like, ‘can somebody give her a hand, it’s her first day’ and ‘Bob, can you help her to sit down and take over please, our guests have flights to catch this evening’, that sort of thing. Now my Belinda is a patient old girl, but you can imagine how she reacted to that.”

“Violently?”

“She’d have been well within her rights to, but she’s a proud woman. A perfectionist in many ways. So she sucked it up because she really wanted to make a good impression and then tried to escape discretely. Unfortunately, the woman from IT, who obviously feels threatened by me missus, told her to hand out the packs that they’d made her make.”

“At least that must have been within Belinda’s skill-set.”

“Les, she did that task perfectly, everyone said so. Even her boss looked happy with her contribution to the meeting. The only problem was that this speaker, who was still stood at the front, asked everyone to turn to page seventeen…”

“But at least Belinda had done her bit and could get her breath after working so hard at running the meeting.”

“Hardly! That was one of the pages she didn’t copy on account of all the pressure. Luckily Belinda was always quick witted. She faked a coughing fit and cried a bit and said she had to get a glass of water from outside somewhere.”

“Well, sometimes running away from a problem can help in the short term. There’s usually somebody else who’ll sort the problem out so the likes of your Belinda don’t have to.”

“It’s the English way Les, there’s no doubt about it. So anyway, Belinda got out and called me on the mobile to let off a lot of steam. At one point I got my coat to go over there and see if that boss of hers would still be playing the big man with me in his face. Which is when me missus really let rip and I realised the full extent of how badly they’d been treating her. I told her to keep it down, or nip to the ladies for some privacy so that I could counsel her properly. To be fair, she calmed down quite a bit once she was safely in a cubicle with a fag on the go. The only problem was that she set off all the fire alarms in the entire building. And the sprinklers. All on account of her having a sneaky little fag. On my life I was almost deafened down the phone. Then I heard loads of other people screaming like they thought there was a real fire or something. So I decided that it was probably better to leave the old girl to it.”

“Hmmmmm.”

“What’s with the face Les, don’t you start giving me grief.”

“It brings back some terrible memories Keith, surely even you aren’t that insensitive.”

“What the…”

“My Sarah Jayne died in a fire, started by somebody who, now I think of it, sounds like she had a lot in common with your wife.”

“You want to watch your mouth Les.”

Pale with emotion, Les closed his eyes and said, “I am tired.”

And he leaned his head against the rail.