Aisle Four

You've been on the tills six weeks and the one thing you've never done is the tannoy. It sits behind the customer service desk, a grey handset on a curly cord, and Sandra does it, always Sandra, in that voice that makes "cleanup in aisle four" sound like a shipping forecast. Tonight Sandra's on her break and there's a spill in aisle four, actual aisle four, a whole jar of pasta sauce, and the manager says "can you call it" and walks off before you can ask what that means. So you pick up the handset. It's heavier than it looks. There's a button on the side and you press it and hear the click through the ceiling speakers, that little pop that means the whole shop is listening, and you open your mouth and absolutely nothing comes out. You let go of the button. You try again. Click. "Can, er." Let go. This is when it starts to go wrong, because you have a habit, which you've had since school, of singing under your breath when you're nervous. Not loudly. Not even consciously. Just a little hum of whatever's stuck in your head, and what's stuck in your head tonight is the song they've been playing on a loop in the shop for eight hours, the one about the summer and the beach, and you press the button to have a third go and, without any input from your brain, you sing the chorus. All of it. Into the tannoy. To a Tesco Express on a Tuesday night. You know because you hear it come back through the ceiling, a half-second delay, your own voice, thin and echoey, doing the "oh-oh-oh" bit over the frozen section. Eleven seconds. That's how long it takes for Dev on the next till to lunge across and take the handset out of your hand. Eleven seconds is longer than you'd think. It's long enough to get through the chorus and start the second verse. It's long enough for the woman at the self-checkout to stop scanning and look up. It's long enough for a man in the crisps aisle to lift his phone.

Silence. The song on the shop speakers, the real one, carries on regardless, which is somehow worse. Then, from aisle four, where the pasta sauce is, where a small boy has been standing with his mother waiting for someone to deal with it, a single, clear voice: "Again!" And someone near the bread starts clapping. Just one person. Then the self-checkout woman. Then, and you'll never forgive him for this, Dev. You clean up the sauce yourself. You do it with your head down and your ears the colour of the sauce, and the small boy watches the whole time, and when you're done he says "you were good," and his mother says "leave the man alone, Alfie," and pulls him off toward the tills. Sandra comes back from her break. She's heard. Of course she's heard. She picks up the handset, presses the button, and says, in the shipping forecast voice, "Cleanup in aisle four is now complete. Thank you for your patience. And for the singing." And puts it down. And doesn't look at you. The video's got four thousand views. The man in the crisps aisle tagged the shop. Head office has been in touch. They want to know if you'd do it for the Christmas advert. You've said no. You've said no three times. Dev says four thousand views is four thousand views. The song's still stuck in your head. You've stopped humming it. Mostly.