BRANCH 7

Silverline Filling Station opened at six every morning. Sanya Dongkoha had never once seen it open late. She got there at twenty to six, like always. She walked the last part from the bus stop with her collar pulled up. It was cold. December has come early to East London this year. The sky over the A13 was still dark, and the lorries were already going past Barking, throwing grey water up onto the pavement. Sanya kept her head down. She had learned that the first few minutes of the day set the mood for the rest of it, so she liked to walk in with her prayers already said. The station wasn't big. There were six pumps under a wide silver roof that used to be bright and was now a dull grey colour. The green and gold sign for Moretti Oil & Gas was lit up at the top, and under it, in smaller letters, was the word Silverline. The shop was at the side. Its windows were full of chocolate bars, cigarettes, cheap wine, and a row of plastic toys that never seemed to sell. On the glass of the front door someone had painted a big white number 7. It was the only thing about the place anybody had ever bothered to make look nice. Sanya stopped at the doorpumps and a green-and-gold sign like forecourt with a white glow The shop smelled of coffee that had been sitting on the hotp too long, andnoddingeach other cleanquietly saying,d on the floor. Behind the counter there was a laminated sheet, yellow at the edges from the sun. It said Standards of Conduct, Branch 7 across the top, and it was signed at the bottom in thick black ink by Mr Damian Blackwood. The first half was the usual stuff. Arrive on time. Wear your uniform. Keep the forecourt clean. Be polite to customers. The rest of it was not usual. Rule Nine: A cup of tea taken outside the staff room is time stolen from this station. Rule Twelve: If you are late, you are not sorry enough. Rule Fifteen: Nobody here is indispensable. Remember that when you start to think you are. Sanya had read that sheet so many times she could say it with her eyes shut. She didn't look into the fact that he went through to the staff room, hung her coat on the hook, and took out her flask and her small black Bible. The Bible had belonged to her mother. The pine had split years ago, so Sanya had wrapped it in a strip of blue cloth to hold it together. She sat with both hands around a cup of tea she hadn't poured yet. Then she bowed her head. Lord, she prayed, give me patience today. Give others patience too. And give Mr Blackwood a softer heart, because I don't think he knows how to soften it himself. When she peeled the eye, Marcus Cole was standing in the doorway, watching her. "Morning, China," he said. Marcus was forty, broad in the shoulders, with short hair and a calm face that didn't show much. He had been at Branch 7 longer than almost anyone except Sanya. When things went wrong, the others looked to him, and he never shouted. Sanya had noticed that Marcus was the calmest man she had ever met. She had also noticed that his calm was not always a good thing. "Morning, Marcus." "Cold one." "It'll be colder tomorrow." He gave a small smile, like he'd said something clever, and went to fill the kettle. Sanya watched him for a moment. He stood with his weight evenly on both feet, like a man waiting for a bus he knew would be late. People had started calling her China after Derek Kane made a joke about the green tea she drank from her flask all day. The name stuck, the way bad jokes do. Sanya didn't mind it too much. Most people used it kindly. The ones who didn't were mostly the ones she prayed for hardest. By half six the shop was busy with the normal noises of a working morning. The till drawer clicked open and shut. Radio One played quietly from the speaker over the fridges. Becca Lane was leaning on the cigarette cabinet, talking loudly about a man she had met online, and Danny Foster was laughing at everything she said and pretending not to listen to anything else. Helena Brooks was restocking the crisps, moving slowly and carefully. She was thirty-four, quiet, and always anxious to please. She had once told Sanya she only took the job because her mum was ill and the wages came every month. She'd said it like she was owning up to crime. Helena was always looking at the office door. Grace Donovan came in at twenty to seven. She smelled of cold air and a cigarette she had clearly just finished outside. Grace was thirty-one. She was always the first to move whe something needed doing, and the first to vanish when someone else had to do it. She gave Sanya a tired nod and went straight for the coffee. Peter Ashford was already out on the forecourt with a broom, sweeping the same bit of concrete over and over. He was thirty-seven, thin, and watchful. He hardly spoke unless someone spoke to him first. Sanya had seen him watch Damian Blackwood across the shop floor the way you might look at a dog you weren't sure about. At quarter to seven the door to the back office opened and Damian Blackwood came out. The shop changed the moment he walked in. Conversations stopped. Becca pushed herself off the cigarette cabinet and found something to do by the ice cream freezer. Danny became ver interested in the lottery machine. Even Marcus, who never seemed to hurry for anyone, stood up a little straighter. Damian was forty-five. He was tall and thi, with grey coming in at his temples, and his face looked hard, lik it had been carved out of something and then left out in the rain. He wore a white shirt ironed so sharp it could have cut paper, and a dark tie tied exactly in the middle of his collar. A pair of reading glasses hung on a cord around his neck. In his left hand he had a clipboard. In his right hand he had a pen, and he tapped the pen on the clipboard three times, the way a teacher taps a ruler on a desk before a test. He stopped in the middle of the shop and looked around. His eyes moved from face to face. He didn't quite look at anyone for long. It was like he was counting them. "Good morning, " he said. The reply came back a mumble. "Morning, Mr Blackwood." He nodded once, as if that was enough and he wasn't going to say any more. Then he looked up at the clock. "Mr Grant." Oliver Grant had just come in from the forecourt. His cheeks were red from the cold, and he still had his car keys in his hand, jingling. He was thirty-six and he drove for a living. He did the fuel runs between Branch 7 and the other Moretti stations. He knew the roads of London and the Home Counties better than anyone at the station. He was quiet and quick about his work, and he always checked the timetables on his phone while he waited for the kettle. "Mr Blackwood." "You were due in at six." "There was a diversion on the A13, Mr Blackwood. A lorry lost its load outside Barking. They sent everything round the back roads and I—" "You were due in at six." Oliver stopped. He looked at the floor, then at the clipboard , then back at Damian. "Yes, MrBlackwooB. Sorry, Mr Blackwood." "You'll be docked an hour's pay." Sanya saw Oliver's shoulders go tight. He opened his mouth like he was going to argue. Then his eyes went to the back office, where the doo stood open, and he shut his mouth again. "Yes, Mr Blackwood." "Good. Now get the delivery sheet from the office and heck the tanker against it. I want the numbers right this time." Oliver went. Damian made a small mark on the clipboard. The pen scratched on the paper, and in the quiet shop the sound seemed much louder than it should have been. The morning went on like that. At quarter past seven a customer in a green anorak came to the counter with a complaint.I'm midair a pump had charged him for twenty l****s when he had only taken fifteen. Derek Kane was on the till. He was forty-five and loud, with a red face and a belly that pushed against his uniform shirt. He had a way of talking that made every customer feel like they were a nuisance. "The pump's fine," Derek said, without looking up. "You've made a mistake, mate." The customer got louder. Drek got louder too. Damian appeared at the end of the counter as if someone had called him. Sanya thought maybe someone had. Maybe he could hear things from the office that nobody else could. "Mr Kane." Derek turned round, and his face went from red to something darker. "Yeah?" "Is the pump at fault?" "No, sir. I was only saying—" "You were only saying the customer is a liar." Derek opened his mouth, then shut it. The customer has gone quiet. He was looking from one man to the other, and he had the nervous face of someone who had walked into the wrong room. "Refund the difference," Damian said. "Then you'll come to the office with me, Mr Kane, and we'll talk about your attitude." Derek's jaw moved. For a moment Sanya was sure he was going to say something he could never take back. Danny Foster, behind him at the lottery machine, had gone completely still. "Yes, Mr Blackwood," Derek said at last. He gave the money back with his lips pressed tight and his eyes on the counter. Damian watched him do it, then turned and walked back toward the office. Derek followed him without a word. When the office door shut behind them, Danny let out a breath and said, very quietly, "One day he's going to get what's coming to him." Becca laughed, sharp and nervous. "Shut up, Danny." "I'm only saying." "Well, don't say it so loud." Sanya didn't say anything. She was thinking about Derek's hands. They had curled into fists on the counter after the customer walked off. Then the fists opened again, slowly, one finger at a time, like a man letting go of something he would rather keep holding. At half eight, Vivienne Shaw came in from the back and went straight to the office. She was thirty-eight, with dark hair pulled back tight, and she had a voice that could carry across the whole forecourt when she was angry. She was angry now. Sanya had heard her earlier on the phone, arguing with someone about a school. Vivienne had a daughter, nine years old. The head teacher wanted a parent at a meeting at two o'clock that afternoon, about the girl's reading. Vivienne had asked for the time off on Monday. Damian said no on Tuesday. She asked again on Wednesday and got another no. Now it was Thursday and she was going in a third time, because nobody else at the station seemed willing to speak to Damian for her. Through the glass of the office door, Sanya could see Damian at his desk with his glasses on, reading a pile of papers. He didn't look up when Vivienne knocked. "Come in." Vivienne went in. The door didn't quite close. Sanya didn't mean to listen, but the shop was quiet, and a thin office door doesn't keep much in. "Mr Blackwood, my daughter's school has asked me to come in this afternoon. It's a meeting about her reading. I'm asking for two hours. I'll make it up on Saturday." "No." "It's a school meeting. It's not a holiday." "The forecourt doesn't stop because your daughter's school wants a meeting." He turned a page. "You knew the rota when you signed your contract. Two hours on a Thursday afternoon, the week before Christmas, is not a reasonable request." "I've asked you three times, Mr Blackwood—" "And I've said no three times." He looked up at last. "Is there something else, Ms Shaw?" Vivienne stood very straight. Her face had gone pale under her make-up. For a moment she looked like she might break something. Then she said, in a voice so controlled it was scary, "You know what, Mr Blackwood? I hope somebody in this world makes you wait the way you make us wait." She turned, walked out, and slammed the door so hard the glass rattled in its frame. The shop went quiet again. Marcus Cole, at the end of the counter, didn't look up from the stock sheet. But Sanya saw a small tightening at the corner of his mouth. She saw his eyes go up to the office door and back down again, quick as a bird. Vivienne came past the counter and stopped beside Izzy Monroe. She said something low and furious. Izzy was thirty, soft-spoken, the one who remembered customers' names and asked after their kids. She put a hand on Vivienne's arm. Vivienne shook it off. "I'm fine," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I'm absolutely fine." Izzy looked at Sanya over Vivienne's shoulder. Her eyes were wet. She shook her head very slightly, the way you do when someone asks you a question you can't answer. At nine o'clock the door opened, and a little boy came in with a fifty-pence coin squeezed in his fist. He was about six, with a school jumper pulled over his coat and his hair sticking up at the back. He stood in front of the sweet shelf and stared at it with total seriousness, like he was making the biggest decision of his life. Sanya came out from behind the counter and crouched down to his height. "What are you getting?" He pointed at the jelly snakes. "Those. But they're too much." "They're fifty pence for a small bag." "I've only got this." He held out the coin. Sanya smiled. She took a small bag from the shelf and put two jelly snakes in it. Then she took three peppermints from the jar on the counter where the staff kept the mints and dropped those in too. "There," she said. "Now it's a proper bag." The boy grinned at her. He had a gap where a front tooth should have been. "Thank you." "You're welcome. Mind the road on the way home." She stood up, and when she turned round, Damian Blackwood was standing at the end of the counter. Nobody had heard him come out of the office. His clipboard was under his arm, and his face was the same as always: flat, watchful, impossible to read. "Ms Dongkoha." "Yes, Mr Blackwood." "What did you just give that child?" "Sweets, Mr Blackwood. Two jelly snakes and three mints. He only had fifty pence." "Those were stock." "Yes, Mr Blackwood. They were." "Stock is not charity. This station doesn't give away what it sells." He tapped the clipboard with his pen. "The cost of those sweets comes out of your wages on Friday." Sanya looked at him for a long moment. Behind his eyes there was a tiredness that didn't match the rest of his face. It was like a weight that pulled at the corners of his mouth. He was watching her like he expected her to argue, and almost wanted her to. "Yes, Mr Blackwood," she said quietly. "I understand." He nodded, as if she had confirmed something he had already decided, and walked back toward the office. On the way he passed the staff notice board. Someone had pinned up a Christmas card from a local charity. It showed a snowy village and a little church with a lit window. Damian stopped and looked at it. Then he reached up and straightened it, slowly and carefully, so it hung exactly level. He didn't look at it again. He went into the office and closed the door. Sanya stood at the counter for a long time after that. The boy had gone, swinging his bag of sweets. The radio was playing a Christmas song she had heard a hundred times already that month. Behind her, the staff had started talking again, low and bitter, the way people talk when they have agreed on something without saying it out loud. By the afternoon Sanya had learned to watch the station the way a teacher watches a classroom just before a fight. She noticed who stood close to who. She noticed who stopped talking when someone came near. She noticed Simon Pierce, who did the paperwork for the branch. He sat alone in the back office after Damian went out to the depot. He drank his tea and stared at the wall with a look that was almost satisfied. She noticed Fiona Blake, who was sharp and cool and usually the first to spot a problem. Fiona was watching Victor Hayes lift a crate of motor oil with one arm, while Damian leaned in the doorway and talked to him about the state of the storeroom. Victor was a big man, heavy in the shoulders, with a nose that had been broken once and healed crooked. He nodded at everything Damian said and never looked up. She noticed something else too, although it took her longer to see it. Every time Damian came out of the office, one hand went to his left side, just under the ribs. It stayed there a moment before he remembered himself and let it drop. He didn't seem to know anyone was watching. When he bent to pick up a dropped pen, he moved slowly, like an old man. When he stood up again, his face went white for a second before the hardness came back. Sanya thought about the bruise she had once seen on Helena's wrist. Helena had pulled her sleeve down fast and said it came from the crate lifter. She thought about Russell Dent, the operating manager. He had worked at Branch 7 for four years. That autumn he had started to look like a man who had been hit so many times he had stopped expecting anything else. Russell tried. He tried to explain the rota to the staff. He tried to soften Damian's orders and tell people the company wasn't as hard as it seemed. But Damian overruled him in front of everyone, every single week. And every time, Russell's shoulders dropped a bit lower. Sanya had asked Russell once how he could stand it. "I've got a mortgage," he'd said, and smiled as if it were a joke. "And a wife who thinks I'm the best manager in London." That was in October. Sanya hadn't asked him again. At half five it was fully dark. The forecourt was lit up by the white glow of the pumps and the green and gold sign. Most of the staff had gone home in twos and threes. Marcus had left at five, with a nod to Sanya and a quiet "See you tomorrow, China." His footsteps had faded off toward the bus stop across the road. Sanya stayed behind to finish the cash count. It was her job to close the till on Thursdays, and she had never once come up short. The shop was quiet now, except for the fridges humming and the radio playing softly on the shelf. She counted the coins in stacks of ten, wrote the totals on the sheet, and checked everything twice. When she was done, she realised she had left her Bible on the shelf in the staff room. She went back through the shop and down the narrow corridor toward the staff room. The corridor ran past the back office. The door was half open, and a thin strip of yellow light lay across the carpet. She didn't mean to stop. But the voice from inside the office was so low and so tight that her feet slowed down on their own. "I've told you before, Damian. I'm not asking for much." It was Damian's voice, but Sanya had never heard it sound like that. It wasn't cold or hard or sharp. It was pleading. "I know, Don Vitale. I know. I have the figures. They'll be on your desk by Friday. I promise." A long silence. Sanya stood frozen in the corridor. She heard a chair scrape, and then another voice came through, low and smooth and unhurried. It must have been on speaker. At first she couldn't make out the words. Then the voice got a little louder, and she caught some of them. "—can't keep a simple promise. Your men say the figures were late again. Your branch says the same. Is it the branch, Damian, or is it you?" Damian's answer came out in a rush. "It's the staff. They're lazy, they—" "Don't lie to me. I can hear you breathing through your teeth." Something in Sanya's chest went very cold. Then there was a short, sharp breath, and the chair scraped again. Sanya leaned forward without meaning to, just far enough to see through the gap in the door. Damian was standing beside his desk. One hand was pressed flat against his left side, and he was bent slightly forward. His face was twisted in a grimace he was trying hard to hide. The phone sat on the desk with its cord stretched across the blotter. The light in the office was dim and yellow. On the far wall, beside the window, a framed photograph hung slightly crooked. It showed a woman with fair hair and a warm smile, a girl of about eight with a gap in her front teeth, and a little boy, maybe three, sitting high on his father's shoulders in front of a snowy hedge. Someone had written Ashcombe, Christmas 2003 across the bottom of the glass in neat blue ink. "I'm sorry, Don Vitale," Damian said, very quietly. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." "No," the voice agreed. "It won't. Because next time, Damian, I won't be so patient. And you know what happens to men who test my patience." "Yes, Don Vitale." "Good. Friday." The line went dead. Damian stood still for a long moment with his hand still on his ribs and his head bent over the desk. Then he let out a breath. It was so raw and ragged that Sanya had to press her fingers to her mouth to stop herself making a sound. She stepped back from the door. She did it slowly so the floor wouldn't creak under her shoes. Then she turned and walked down the corridor to the staff room. Her legs felt light and strange, like they belonged to someone else. Her hands were shaking. She picked up her Bible from the shelf, held it against her chest, and stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard. Lord, she prayed, and the word came out as a whisper. What have I just heard? There was no answer. There was only the buzz of the strip light overhead and the distant noise of traffic on the A13. She went out through the back door and stood on the concrete step. The cold hit her face. The forecourt was empty except for one car at pump four. Its driver was a dark shape behind the windscreen, waiting for something Sanya couldn't see. The pump lights buzzed. Above them the sign for Moretti Oil & Gas glowed green and gold into the night. Sanya thought about the man in the office, with his hand on his ribs and his face turned to the wall. She thought about how he had straightened that Christmas card on the staff board, so carefully, as if it mattered that it hang level. She thought about how flatly he had said Ms Dongkoha that morning. She thought about how he had looked at her when she said she understood. It was almost as if he had wanted her to see something in his eyes, and then felt ashamed that she had. She thought about Derek's fists, and Vivienne's shaking hands, and the look that had passed between Marcus and the office door. She thought about the boy with the fifty-pence coin, how small his hand had been, and how he had grinned at her with that gap in his teeth. Then she thought about the name she had heard through the door. Don Vitale. Her skin prickled. She had seen that name before, on the company memos that came to the branch every month. It was printed in heavy black letters under the crest of Moretti Oil & Gas: V. Moretti, Chairman. She had never once wondered who the man behind the name was. She had never needed to. Now she did. She stood on the step for a long time, with the cold soaking through her thin jacket, and she didn't know what to do. She could tell Marcus. She could tell Izzy, or Russell, or the police. But what would she say? That she had listened at a door? That she had heard a man she didn't know talk to Damian Blackwood like a dog? That she had seen his hand on his ribs and believed, for the first time, that he was hurting in a way that had nothing to do with the forecourt or the rota or the rules pinned up behind the counter? They wouldn't believe her. And if they did, they would look at Damian's face and see only the cruelty. They would look at their own bruises and see only the man who gave them. Nobody would see the man with the phone in his hand and the fear in his voice. Nobody would see someone who was beaten, and then beaten again, and then turned around and beat the people under him, because there was no one above him he could strike back at. Vengeance is mine, the old words said quietly in her head. I will repay, saith the Lord. She had believed that once, with her whole heart, and she still believed it now. But standing in the cold with her Bible pressed to her chest, she began to understand that the people who hated Damian Blackwood the most were not the only ones who would pay for his cruelty. The back door opened behind her. She turned, startled, and her heart jumped. Damian stood in the doorway. His tie was loose now and the top button of his shirt was undone. In the glare from the pumps his face looked older than it had that morning. He was holding the clipboard against his side. He looked at her for a moment without saying anything. "Ms Dongkoha. You're still here." "I came back for my Bible, Mr Blackwood." "Did you finish the cash count?" "Yes. It's correct. I've left the sheet on your desk." He nodded slowly. For a second something crossed his face. It might have been gratitude, or tiredness, or the start of an apology he could never say out loud. Then it was gone, and the hardness came back, cool and flat. "Go home," he said. "And lock the back door behind you." "Yes, Mr Blackwood." He turned to go inside. Then he stopped with one hand on the frame of the door. Without looking round, he said, so quietly she almost missed it, "Christmas is coming, Ms Dongkoha. Some of us have families to get to. Remember that." The door shut. Sanya stayed on the step a long time after he had gone. The car at pump four pulled away with a soft crunch of tyres on the forecourt. The pump lights kept buzzing. Somewhere on the A13 a lorry sounded its horn, long and low, and then the night went quiet again. She went back inside and locked the back door, the way she had been told. She walked out through the shop without looking at the staff board or the laminated rules. At the front door she stopped and looked back at the white number 7 painted on the glass, lit up from the forecourt. She didn't tell anyone that night. She didn't tell anyone the next day, or the day after. She kept the words locked inside her, the same way she had locked the back door. She carried them home on the bus through the dark streets of East London, past the bright shop windows and the Christmas lights and the people hurrying home with their bags. Don Vitale. Friday. Next time, I won't be so patient. Some things, Sanya had learned over the years, are not meant to be spoken out loud. They are meant to be carried quietly, in the hope that someone, one day, will be able to put them down.