But Gary is still thinking. Gary is still looking at the photo.
‘He had ID,’ I say. I pull out my phone and retrieve a scanned copy of his passport. I show it to Gary first. ‘See. Twenty. Now go,’ I say.
Rough Mam wants the men to stay. Rough Mam wants a witness. But they’re gone in a puff of expensive aftershave, the smell so potent it makes my head spin. Rough Mam wants to see the ID.
‘That’s my older boy. That’s Dean, you stupid bitch, that’s my older boy’s passport. Daniel is sixteen. I’ll call the fucking police if you don’t take that down.’
I’d scouted him on the bus and suspected he may have been in sixth form. He’d been wearing a suit. He must go to one of those colleges with an officewear dress code, but you couldn’t expect me to know that just from looking at him. I’ve seen blokes in their thirties who look twelve. That’s why I ask for ID. That’s why I keep records.
Plus, no court could possibly convict me. The similarity between the brothers is so remarkable that only a mother could really split hairs over that passport photo. I can’t imagine a jury taking against me either: people always conflate beauty with goodness. I’m more Mae West than Rose. I can just cry a bit, talk like I’m daft, tease my hair up like a televangelist: the higher the hair, the closer to God, you know?
‘Well Daniel lied to me and brought false ID. And I took these on a school day, so maybe keep a closer eye on him?’ I boot the backend of my website in front of her （which takes ages on mobile） and delete the single photo of him from my main portfolio. ‘Gone.’
‘I want to see a manager.’
‘Hello.’ I gesture to myself.
‘I want to see your manager, then.’
‘It’s just me in.’
‘Right,’ she says. ‘Well then.’ She just stands there and glares at me. I come out from behind the bar, with the intention of opening the door for her, then she hits me. Like, hard.
She runs out of the bar, and I make a half-hearted attempt to chase her but I’m in a stiletto pump. As quick as I am in boots or platforms, I haven’t got a chance of catching her in these.
I spit after her. I’m fairly impressed with the distance, but it doesn’t hit her. She disappears around the corner.
I clomp back into the bar, out of breath, feeling sick as a dog. My face aches.
‘Are you okay?’ asks Ryan. ‘What the fuck was that?’ Maybe it’s the sight of him that tips me over the edge. He’s one of these short men that compensates by being extremely muscular. He’s got this big thick neck, and this teeny tiny pea head; thinning hair, bleached teeth, weak chin. Grotesque. If I open my mouth, I’ll vomit. I run to the disabled bathroom, and I smack my head on the toilet seat as I fall to my knees. The sandwich I have already regurgitated once today works its way back up my gullet, escaping in full this time. It lands in the water with a splat, like a slice of bread hitting soup from a height. Carbs are rarity for me, and, upon reflection, I should not be surprised that my body has rejected this floury Tesco baguette like a mismatched organ.
‘I just caught it on the CCTV,’ Ryan says, entering the bathroom and closing the door behind him. ‘You said you weren’t hungover,’ he says, betrayed, like he didn’t sell me coke about twelve hours ago.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Just got a fright. Did you see her hit me?’ I ask. I retch. He did see. He wants to know why. ‘What do you mean why? You saw her, she was just a mad alkie. I was talking to one of the suits, I wasn’t serving her, she lost her shit.’ I spit. I stick my mouth under the tap, and rinse. My body quakes, my skin flushes, and sweat oozes from every pore. I feel my hastily applied foundation begin to slide off my face, my cheeks streaked with mascara. There is vomit dripping from my nostrils, and I’m fairly sure that’s bile leaking from my eyes. ‘Give me some gum.’
He tosses me a little packet of bubble-mint – barely better than vomit.
‘You know, if someone who’s actually disabled comes in—’
‘Fuck off,’ I say. ‘Fuck off, Ryan. I’m not going to the customer toilets. I was literally just assaulted.’
Ryan wants us to piss with the customers, like animals. Ryan always thinks someone with a limp or a chair or IBS is about to barge into the bar, with the entirety of Scope’s advocacy board behind them.
‘I’m not ringing the police,’ he says. ‘FYI.’
‘Fine, whatever,’ I say. ‘You’re sending me home though, aren’t you?’
‘No. We’re short today,’ says Ryan. ‘I’m not sending you home for a hangover. How hard could she have gotten you? She looked skinny as fuck.’
‘Are you joking?’ I say. ‘She was wearing rings. And I’m not fucking hungover. Text someone. The new girl, with the pink hair. Carrie.’
‘Cassie,’ he says. ‘And no, it’s her day off.’
‘She won’t fuck you for this, you know,’ I say. ‘And you might want to knock that craic on the head. She looks pretty woke.’ I make air quotes, and sneer. ‘Time’s up, Ryan.’
I nod towards the ‘Shout Up!’ poster we have on the door of the toilet; the one that labels us a sexual-harassment-free zone. Ryan looks outraged. Ryan thinks it doesn’t count as harassment if you’re good looking, and Ryan thinks he’s good looking. Before he can argue, before he can remind me he went on the Shout Up! training day and everything, Ergi appears behind him. I didn’t know he was in today. He’s never in. We’re one of three trendy city centre bars he owns, and I think he often forgets about us.
‘What’s going on?’ he says, throwing an accusatory look at Ryan.
‘Nowt!’ says Ryan. I burst into tears. It’s easy for me to cry when I’m tired, when I’m poorly, when my eyes are already streaming.
‘Some mad woman hit me, look.’ I point to the red mark on my cheek. ‘And I got such an awful fright I was sick. And Ryan won’t let me go home.’
‘Why won’t you let her go home, man?’ he asks. His accent is strange: a mishmash of Albanian and broad Geordie-isms. ‘Call your new lass – pink hair. Carrie?’
‘It’s her day off, and Irina is out of sick leave.’
‘She just got fucking hit, man,’ says Ergi. ‘Are you okay? Why’d she hit you?’
‘I didn’t serve her quick enough. A man was grabbing me. It’s all on CCTV. It was awful.’
‘I’ll get you a taxi. I’ll sort it out, don’t worry,’ he says. He asks for my postcode, and orders an Uber for me. He says he’s going to check the CCTV and write an incident report, and that Ryan is to get me a glass of water and some tissues.
Ryan glares at me. When Ergi leaves, I stop crying.
‘It’s fucked up how you can turn that on and off,’ Ryan says, handing me the water, the napkins.
‘It’s fucked up that you sell coke,’ I say. ‘That’s all wrapped up in child slavery and shit.’
‘Is it now?’
‘Google it.’
He walks me out, seething, assuring me he knows I’m hungover. He tells me he’s going to tell Ergi. I tell him I’ll dob him in for dealing; people in glass houses and all that.