Standalone

Someone Has to Be Awake

1. The Interview

I got the job because I answered one question right, and I answered it right by accident.

I should say straight off: I'm not clever. My brother Robbie got the brains in our family, and then he got gone, and I got what was left, which was mostly stubbornness and good ankles. I'd been stacking shelves on nights at the big Tesco for three years (tins, mostly; I had opinions about tins) and then the store went to robots for restock, and twenty of us got a talk about "transition support" from a man who kept checking his phone, and that was that.

The job center woman was called Denise and she liked me, I think, the way you like a dog that keeps bringing back the wrong stick.

"Night security," she said. "You've got night experience. You don't scare easy. It's at the Wing."

"The what?"

"The Erratum Wing. The big archive place, out past the ring road. The correction people." She looked at me over her glasses. "You must know it. It's famous. It was on all the documentaries."

"I don't really watch documentaries."

"What do you watch?"

"Darts."

Denise wrote something on my file, and I'd give a lot to know what it was.

The interview was on a Tuesday morning, which is a cruel time to interview night people: it's our three a.m. I sat in a corridor that smelled like a library and a church had a baby, across from two other candidates: a big bloke with security badges from three different firms, and a woman who kept doing breathing exercises. Through the wall I could hear them being interviewed. The bloke talked for ages about "response protocols." The breathing woman talked about her five-year plan. Then it was me, and the interviewer was about a hundred years old, with one working eye and a cardigan over his uniform, and a name badge that said GLYN, NIGHTS, and under it, printed smaller: ASK ME ANYTHING, I'LL KNOW WHO DOES.

He didn't ask about response protocols. He poured me a tea I hadn't asked for, looked at me a long time with the working eye, and said:

"Last job. Tesco nights. Tell me something you looked after."

"Looked after?"

"Anything. Go on."

And I thought about it, because it was a weird question and weird questions deserve a proper go, and I said: "Trolleys, I suppose. And: all right, this is stupid. There was an old man who came in every night about two. Fisherman's coat, little list, never bought more than four things. And then he stopped being able to find stuff, because they kept moving the aisles (they do it on purpose, it's to make you walk past the biscuits) and he'd get, not confused exactly. Ashamed. Like the shop was calling him stupid." I was talking too much. I kept going anyway, which is the other thing I got instead of brains. "So I started leaving his four things at the end of aisle nine. Every night. Bread, milk, the fish paste, the custard tins. Just: together, on the shelf end, where the old aisle nine used to be. Nobody told me to. Nobody knew, even him. He thought the shop just kept them there. He'd come in, get his things, look sort of tall about it, and go home." I shrugged. "Three years, near enough. Then I got made redundant and I've been lying awake thinking nobody's putting his things on aisle nine, which is mad, because it's fish paste."

Glyn didn't say anything for a bit. Then he got up, opened the door, and called down the corridor: "Cancel the two o'clock, Amara. I've found her."

That's the accident. I thought he'd asked me a normal question. I found out later it's the only question they ever ask, and almost everybody answers it wrong. They talk about locks. They talk about themselves. The big bloke with the badges apparently said "assets."

"What did I say?" I asked Glyn, my first night, when he was showing me where the kettle was, which was the first thing he showed me, before the alarms, before the fire doors, the kettle, like that was the most important equipment in the building.

"You said fish paste," said Glyn, "and you said nobody knew, even him, and your leg's been jiggling this whole tour because somewhere out there aisle nine's gone empty and it's eating you." He handed me a mug with QUESTIONS YOU CAN TRUST printed on it, faded almost to nothing. "That's the whole job, girl. That's this entire building. We'll make a keeper of you."

"A keeper of what?"

Glyn smiled, and turned off the corridor lights, and the dark came down over forty thousand gray boxes stretching away under the vaults like a sleeping city.

"Everything they tried to throw away," he said. "Someone has to be awake. Rule one. It's the only rule; the rest is footnotes. Drink your tea. I'll show you the rounds."