Eric shrugged. ‘Not sure. I have to leave within the
next twelve months or my visa runs out, but that shouldn’t
be a problem; it’s not like I have any pressing engagements
keeping me here.’
‘Have you spoken to Jen yet?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should?’ He didn’t want to interfere, and
it wasn’t entirely without self-interest that he made the
suggestion.
‘She knows where I am.’ Eric looked straight ahead
and it was only the tension in his jaw that suggested the
thought of leaving her behind might be a wrench.
Beverly ran down the steps from the top of the ware-
house and marched across the floor.
‘You okay?’ he asked. Her expression suggested that
something was up, and his low level of self-confidence
meant the first thing he thought was that she had changed
her mind about coming over that night, maybe changed
237
Amanda Prowse
her mind about him altogether. His second thought was
that if this was the case, then he had got up an hour early needlessly, wasted good sleeping time cleaning and had
bought a big bag or crisps for nothing.
‘I…’ She searched his face and glanced towards Eric,
her top lip peppered with nervous sweat.
‘What’s up?’ He mirrored her anxiety.
Beverly shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing, I’ve just
heard…’
‘Just heard what?’ he pushed, his heart booming.
‘Nothing. Nothing. Forget it.’ She gave a false smile
and shook her head. ‘I can’t say anything.’ She tucked in
her lips as if this might prevent her from breaking what-
ever confidence she held.
‘Can’t say anything about what?’ He gave a gentle,
nervous laugh.
‘I have to go, Nick.’ She let her eyes linger on his face
before racing across the floor, heading in the direction of
Mr Siddley’s office.
‘What on earth was that all about?’ Eric looked at him
as if he might have the answers.
‘I wish I knew!’ He laughed it off, trying to hide the
swell of anxiety in his gut.
* * *
Four hours.
That was how long he had to wait to find out what
the hell was going on.
He took his seat at their preferred bench with the lads.
Roy, as ever, had a generously heaped plate of canteen food
in front of him on the table; some kind of grey meat with
mixed vegetables that looked as if they had been boiling
238
The Light in the Hallway
since last July. Nick unpacked his rather unglamorous
cheese sandwich, and conscious of wanting fresh breath
later, had forgone the pickle and onion. By the expression
on Roy’s face Nick was rather glad of his boring lunch.
‘Looks nice, Roy.’ Eric nudged his friend.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks, actually.’ He took a mouth-
ful and his expression suggested this to be a lie. They all
laughed.
‘Not that I care.’ Eric folded his arms across his chest.
‘Today I don’t care about much.’ He smiled at Nick, who
felt the stir of melancholy that his friend was keen to go,
whereas he could only view his impending departure
with a sense of loss, just like his sister, apparently.
There was an unexpected kerfuffle at the swing door;
heads turned in that direction. In walked the boss with a
mini entourage. All eyes fell on him, no one sure if they
should stop eating and pay attention or carry on with
their lunch. Not only was this a most unusual occurrence,
but also the clock kept ticking and it was a known fact
that the hour they had for lunch passed quicker than any
other hour in the day.
‘Can I have your attention, please, ladies and gentle-
men!’ Julian Siddley shouted out, pulling a chair from
under a nearby table, the scrape of the legs across the
concrete floor scratchy and unpleasant. He stood on it in
front of the noticeboard. It was an extraordinary display
from a man who usually ate his lunch in his big office
or sloped off to the Golf Club, where a ’meeting’ would
prevent him returning for the rest of the afternoon. Not
that Nick judged him for that; he was the boss, after all.
Nick looked up and saw that Mr Aubrey Siddley and
Julian’s wife, Caitlyn, were also there, standing either
side of the chair with downcast expressions and hands
239
Amanda Prowse
clasped in front of them. Aubrey had aged, of course.
Nick remembered the first time he had met him on that
day so long ago, the first and last time he was to travel in
such a fancy car. His mouth lifted at the memory.
‘How fast can it go?’
‘Faster than I’m allowed to.’
Caitlyn, he noticed, moved her feet a little awkwardly,
as if she couldn’t find a comfortable position, and with
lips thin and set shook her glossy hair from her face as
though it were long and not short. Nervous.
‘Oh no,’ Nick muttered under his breath; he figured
that this show of family unity could only mean one thing:
Joseph Siddley must have died … He felt a wave of nos-
talgia for the elderly man who had been the chairman
during his dad’s tenure, and who had even come to his
dad’s funeral. Nick decided there and then that as well
as making a point of shaking Julian’s hand after this, he
would write to the family, to tell them in a more formal
way how genuinely sorry he was for their loss and just
how much he and his dad had thought of old Mr Siddley.
As he was trying to mentally calculate how old Joseph
must have been, Julian began talking and for the first time
Nick could remember, the canteen fell silent.
He had never truly thought about the phrase ‘so quiet
you could hear a pin drop’, but in the next minutes he
understood it completely. The atmosphere was eerie,
haunting, reminding him of the cavernous, echoey dairy
shed of their youth, as if the place were derelict and not
crammed full with men and women, old and young, all
midway through eating their lunch on what had started
out like any other day.
‘This is a very sad day for me, for all of us,’ Julian
began. ‘Siddley’s has, as you know, been here on this site,
240
The Light in the Hallway
proudly employing the good people of Burstonbridge
since 1946.’ He paused and let his eyes sweep the room.
‘I know that some of you, like me, are the second or third
generation to work here.’
Nick thought about walking through the factory gates
with his dad at an age younger than Oliver, and cursed
the emotion that threatened, a reminder that he might
be getting better, healing a little bit every single day, but that his grief was still only sitting under the surface, ready to hijack his thoughts at any given moment.
Julian took a deep breath and gripped his hands behind
his back, the butt
ons on his double-cuffed shirt strain-
ing a little across his ample stomach. His high forehead
was shiny.
‘There is no easy way to say what I need to say and
so I will simply cut to the chase.’ He coughed.
Oh no … oh no, no, no! Please God, no! Nick, like many who stared at the man, sensed what was coming next and
he held his breath, hoping, praying he might be wrong
because if what he suspected was true, they would not
be mourning the death of Joseph Siddley, but would be
in fact be feeling a nail in the coffin of them all.
‘Siddley’s of Burstonbridge … is closing down.’
There was a collective, horrified gasp, again followed
by stunned silence broken only by the soft stutter of the
few that whimpered. No doubt they, like he, were pictur-
ing what a life without a regular wage might mean. He
closed his eyes briefly. The atmosphere was horrible. It
dragged his guts to his boots and left him feeling icy cold.
Julian and Aubrey stared at the floor, their expressions
hard to read.
‘Now, I can only imagine what an announcement like
this means to you.’ Julian paused and raised his palms as
241
Amanda Prowse
if trying to hold back the swell of protest he might have
expected, but folks were too numb for that. ‘I will not be
going into too much detail today, but we will of course
be talking to all of you individually over the next few
days to answer any and all questions you might have.’
‘Fuck!’ Roy laid his spoon on the table and put his
head in his hands. ‘I’m fifty-eight. I haven’t finished pay-
ing for Christmas yet – what am I going to do?’
‘My daughter’s getting married next year.’ Nick heard
the woman on the table next to him speak, before she
too began to cry.
All Nick could picture was the day he and Oliver had
walked around Ikea with him counting the pennies and
fretting over the cost of the mis-bought single duvet, and
that was while he had money coming in. How were they
going to manage? He had only in recent years shaken off
the burden of Kerry’s debt, only recently managed to sleep
through the night without waking in a cold sweat as he
tried to make the numbers add up … and now this. It felt
in that moment like he couldn’t catch a break.
‘When? When’s it closing down?’ one of the younger
handlers shouted from the back, his voice a rasp of distress
tinged with anger. The lad shoved his hands deep inside
his thick jacket, his face thunderous. Nick knew it wasn’t
his place, but he wanted to try to calm him, lay his hand
on the man’s shoulder and tell him that this was nothing
the Siddleys would have chosen lightly. He wasn’t Julian’s
biggest fan, that was true, but he was aware that the fam-
ily fortunes were as bound to this business as their own.
Although he had to admit there had been no warning, no
indication, and this made the news even harder to bear.
He heard Kerry’s voice loud and clear for the first time
in a long time and he was glad of it.
242
The Light in the Hallway
Life throws curveballs and you’ve got to either catch them and throw them back or dodge them. That’s it…
‘Three to six months.’ Julian held the man’s eye line,
his voice steady.
Three to six months…
No time at all…
Three wage packets…
You are kidding me…
The whispers rippled around the room and bounced
up to the metal rafters where the dust of celebrations and
happier times still lingered: the day they won the Queen’s
Award for Enterprise for international trade, and they had
sipped fizzy wine after hours and clapped loudly at their
own achievement, Kath had waltzed with old Mr Siddley.
Also the party held in this very room to celebrate sixty
years of business when nearly everyone had contributed
to the veritable spread laid out on the tables, and they
had watched Julian cut into a three-tiered cake and fired
party poppers over each other’s heads.
Kerry had bought a new dress, black with a glittery band
of beads around the neck. She looked lovely, we slow danced in the kitchen when we got home then had toast and honey
before bed…
‘Will there be redundancy?’ One of Kath’s ‘girls’
shouted from behind the counter.
‘There will be remuneration packages available that I
will discuss with everyone in their one-to-one sessions,’
Julian answered calmly, rehearsed.
At least that’s something … Nick latched on to this one positive, keep the wolf from the door…
‘I thought the business was doing well! We haven’t
lost orders and we were so busy over Christmas!’ one of
the men shouted in disbelief from the side of the room.
243
Amanda Prowse
He watched Julian Siddley falter and again tried to
read his face. It was then that he saw Beverly sat on a table to the right of him. She was staring straight at their boss
and her face was nothing short of thunderous.
* * *
For a day that had started with so much promise, it
turned into something very different. The atmosphere
was charged. Some, he noted, worked twice as hard,
whether trying to stave off the inevitable or as a distraction from it, he wasn’t sure. Others loitered by the perimeter
this beautiful slice of God’s own country that they had
made their home. They took to their phones, some shout-
ing their anger for all to hear, a protest. Others whispered
the news to loved ones, who no doubt would be thinking
of just what the closure might mean for them, mentally
erasing next year’s Christmas gifts, potential holidays and
seeing the red underlined demands on bills they might
not be able to meet.
Eric joined him in the canteen mid-afternoon and
handed him a cup of tea.
‘So what d’you think?’ He sipped his own hot brew.
Unsurprisingly, it was the only topic on everyone’s
lips. Nick exhaled, a new and lingering ache in his chest
delivered by this latest blow.
‘I don’t know what to think. I keep trying to imagine
waking up on a weekday and not coming here.’ He let his
eyes sweep the room where Julian’s words still echoed. ‘But
I can’t. It’s all I’ve ever known, you too. And our dads.’
Eric nodded. ‘True that.’
244
The Light in the Hallway
Nick tried to envisage life without a regular wage
and felt a cold sweat prickle his skin. ‘It doesn’t seem real.
I’ve only been financially straight for the last few months,
because of…’ He let this hang.
‘I know.’ Eric nodded, one of the only people who did
know about the financial liability that Nick had borne,
battling to keep debt collectors at bay and all through
no fault of his own. The memory of
the bruiser on the
doorstep with a legal notice in his hand and sunglasses
on his head still made him shiver.
‘Not that I’m flush, I just about manage if I’m care-
ful, but this…’ He shook his head and looked up at the
people who walked around with a stunned stumble to
their gait and expressions of either disbelief or fury. He
wondered if, like him, they were already trying to think
of ways to cut back.
No heating on, ever.
Tins of beans for tea.
Fill up with cheap porridge in the mornings.
Get rid of the car, it’s not worth much, but it’ll mean less outgoings.
‘Jobs are hard enough to come by in Burston, and
there’s about to be a couple of hundred of us, all walking
into the same places with the same CVs.’ He rubbed his
chin before reaching for his tea. ‘At least you don’t have to worry – as you said, you’ll be on Bondi Beach and
reaching for a chilled beer.’
Eric put his tea on the table. ‘It’s messed up my plans,
to be honest. I mean, I’ll still go, but I was hoping to save for the next couple of months to have spending money,
just to tide me over until I can apply for a work visa, find
a sponsor or whatever. If they go bust will I even get
245
Amanda Prowse
redundancy? I mean they are talking about remuneration
but if the coffers are empty…’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered truthfully. This was all
new ground. ‘You have some money saved, though?’
‘Yes, but that’s for rent and stuff. I need more,’ Eric
huffed.
‘Don’t we all.’ He gave a wry laugh.
‘I’m just waiting to see what Julian offers. So what’s
happened, do you reckon? I mean, business doesn’t seem
to have slowed. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I don’t know, mate. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the
Siddleys hid any dip in orders from us, probably hoping
they could find a way out without this.’ He considered
how rough this must be for them, seeing their business
slip from their fingers. ‘As much as I dislike him, I feel a
bit sorry for Julian. I do. It can’t be good, can it? I mean, his dad and grandad made the business rocket and he’s
been in the big chair for less than three years and run it
into the ground.’
‘Yes, God forbid he might have to sell his Range
Rover.’ Eric rolled his eyes.
‘As I say, I feel sorry for him, and you can’t begrudge
the man a nice car. If we had his money we’d do the