Chapter 8: Chapter 8

The shop was silent, still bedecked in the remembrance of Christmas, the tinsel and seasonal promotions still valid expressions of the shop’s identity even though, in that weird window between Christmas and New Year, there was absolutely no interest in engaging with the past festivities of a few days ago; in that space between the 26th and 31st December, Christmas was dead, buried, best forgotten, everyone desperate to put away all the things they had professed to cherish about the season for fear that remembering such things would make them look at their everyday lives and realise how empty they were.

The news had rattled on endlessly about how Boxing Day sales had been poorer than in years, and men and women within the screen, clutching their microphones tight, had proclaimed this to be a symptom of the poor weather, of the increasing significance of Black Friday sales; none of them took into account the fact that no one had any money anymore.