Daylight Robbery

Laura sat down on what felt like a hard, perhaps wet surface. She had grown tired from constantly walking to and from the coffee shop to the suppliers, with the two around a mile or so apart, at a guess. The city air smelt distinctly of tobacco, and a little of booze. She spread her hands out on what may well be the middle of a road, laying her head back against the surface, her hair cushioning her against what she was now sure was an A-Road. She passed ten minutes there, before pulling herself up and walking back in the direction of her business, where it was clearly a busy day, due to the number of voices she could hear even as she felt for the door to the shop.

The almost overpowering smell of fresh coffee wafted toward her as she felt for the till. Swinging herself round the back, she called out for James, who ran the shop on a day to day basis.

‘It’s busy today.’ James sighed obviously.

‘That can only be a good thing for us.’ Laura pointed out. Public places such as these were all louder now than before. Everyone was engaged in real conversation, and they were laughing. Undoubtedly smiles would accompany those laughs, as people no longer were glued to their phones, but instead were glued to the people who were most important to them. You couldn’t be friends with someone who you didn’t genuinely get along with anymore. Status friends became a thing of the past. Pouring herself a coffee in a takeaway cup, Laura told James that she would be going along to her group meeting in a few minutes. He considered complaining for a moment, but stopped himself, respecting the fact that he worked for someone who had achieved more than he could possibly imagine.

‘When will you be back?’ James asked.

‘They usually only last around an hour. I should be back by lunchtime.’ Laura opened the shop door and strode out onto the street, turning left toward the town hall, where she went every Wednesday for the last two years. One thing she particularly preferred about her life now was that no one could notice her in the street. Nobody had ever known what her voice sounded like, so she really could start an entirely new life after it happened. Nobody could stop her, nobody could recognize her. She went from one of the most visible and recognisable people in modern culture to an utterly unimportant member of the general public – and she loved it.

The stench of alcohol smacked Laura in the face as she entered the main conference room. From this, she knew that Francis and Aaron must have arrived already. Everyone there apart from her was an alcoholic, but those two were the only ones capable of producing a smell such as this.

‘Hi Guys.’ She announced her arrival to the group.

‘Come on in Laura, you’re the last one to arrive this week!’ That was Abbie. She hadn’t lost as much as everyone else in the room had, just half of what she once owned. Laura sat down on one of the more comfortable armchairs in the room, which Abbie would usually try and position in a circle as best she could. She spilt a little of her coffee on her hand, though it was lukewarm by this point. She threw it behind her and onto the floor. No reason to care about that anymore, she chuckled to herself.

‘Jeremy, would you like to start?’ Abbie said in her clearly accented tone. She once had such a distinctive face.

There was a pause, and perhaps a hesitation from Jeremy. ‘Errr…I guess.’ Jeremy was the oldest person in the group, and had perhaps earned the least of the people there. His former profession was the least immoral, though the one which has been hit the hardest. Jeremy used to be an optician. ‘This week has been one of the harder ones if I’m brutally honest.’ He broke the silence with a comment which made you instantly guilty about how much stronger you’d become. ‘My wife left me.’ An awkward atmosphere instantly washed over the room as everyone decided what their response would be.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Said Steven, who had been a film director in his older days. He was the most famous of all of us there, and he didn’t always attend the meetings because he still had something of a busy and occasionally high profile career. That isn’t to say that he didn’t lose a lot. He did.

Jeremy sounded as though he was holding back his emotions. ‘Let it all out.’ Abbie encouraged, as the informal leader of the group. We all encouraged him to speak and pour his heart out, but he couldn’t. Abbie decided it was best we move on to something a little more positive and inspirational. Francis was chosen to speak next. The sound of his chair sliding back as he stood up was clear, as he addressed the group in the most formal manner possible.

‘My training is going well.’ He said proudly. ‘It hasn’t been easy, and I do miss the work I used to do, purely because it was so fulfilling and rewarding. People snapped at me, and I know it was controversial, but I was making people happy, giving them what they wanted. Yes, God made us all, but I say there’s always room for a nose job here or there.’ Everyone laughed. Well, Jeremy didn’t. ‘Retraining isn’t my choice, and I would much rather be doing something else, but you’ve got to get on with what you have. Look at Laura, she used to be on the cover of every magazine you can think of, in every advert, every catwalk – you name it. She lost all of that, and now here she is, running her own business.’ His tone was charming and Laura thought for a moment that he might be flirting. She was, of course, happily married to an old school mate of hers. She had once teased him for his misshapen nose and long, wavy hair, but she eventually found his character to be so irresistible that she couldn’t imagine not spending the rest of her life with him. ‘And I for one am enjoying my social life an enormous amount more. I feel as though the friends I have now are genuine, more than ever before.’ Francis finished, and slid his chair back underneath his person.

Laura rarely spoke for long at these meetings. She often felt that she was there to support the others more than to get support for herself. Perhaps this was because she was in such a good place in her life, despite what had happened. Aaron had been a model, just like her, and now he was attempting to write poetry, and struggling to get noticed. Of course, nobody read anymore. Audiobooks were enormously popular, however, something which killed Steven’s industry as film and television became irrelevances. Abbie had been married to a premiership footballer, though he divorced her after what went on. She had had the biggest epiphany of all of them there. She realised how the friends she had were shallow, vindictive and cruel, and that she was only friends with them for how they looked. She never failed to have a positive attitude at all of these meetings, and considered Laura to be one of her best friends. There were five of them in the group now, though there had been more. Actors, Models, Plastic Surgeons, and spouses of celebrities. It was a who’s who of pretty faces.

The support group meeting had finished after around half an hour of Steven arrogantly detailing all of the wonderful things he still had going on in his career. From there, Laura had decided to take the bus back to her work, where she had scheduled interviews. She was hiring for the manager of the new branch which she had just opened across town. It would be her fourth coffee shop in just that city, but she had dreams of broadening them out across the country. There were three candidates which she had shortlisted from their application forms. The first was late.

‘Oh I’m ever so sorry I’m late.’ She said in a rushed tone. She smelt overpoweringly of perfume, and her loud, screeching tone seemed to be an effort to disguise how superficial what she was saying truly was. Laura asked her the routine questions.

‘What do you think you could bring to this job?’ She asked politely but sternly, sipping coffee as she did so.

‘I’ve got loads of skills, I mean literally tonnes!’ The candidate replied. Laura waited for her to list them. There was a long pause as she attempted to recall what exactly those skills were. ‘I’m properly good with people.’ She spouted after almost a minute’s awkward silence.

‘Thank you. I’ll be in touch.’ Laura ended the interview after several other questions and disappointing responses. She knew exactly what this girl probably looked like. This was a girl who thought she could ride through life using her looks and her superficial conversation. That didn’t work anymore – you had to have real substance in this world.

The next candidate was even more appalling, a 21-year old man who argued that his ability to flirt with his customers would be an excellent addition to Laura’s empire. She hastened to point out that some of her customers were pensioners, at which he made a crude comment which caused her to end the interview.

Laura took a break between the final two interviews, and sat behind her desk, mulling over what exactly she was looking for. Before she might have wanted a young, attractive set of workers who could bring in customers merely through what they looked like. Now she wanted staff, and particularly managers, who she could rely on to genuinely enhance her business. People with real substance. That was it – that’s what she needed. Someone like her. Someone who had real friends, and could hold real conversation, not just look pretty and laugh superficially. Perhaps even someone who, like her, had been hit hard by what had happened, and had needed to actually change their own lives in order to survive in this new world.

The third and final candidate was on time, and the sound of the door latch swinging open alerted Laura to his arrival. He was an older gentleman, who had little experience of this specific market. Laura didn’t know what he had originally worked as, but she knew that it was in the public eye. A strong smell of aftershave wafted into the room as he did, as though he were compensating for something.

His voice was unnaturally low. ‘Good afternoon. I’m Chris.’ Laura thought for a moment. She decided to change her pattern of questioning and the questions she was asking for this particular candidate. She dived straight in with a personal question, but one that she felt would reveal the most about the man sitting in front of her.

‘How did it affect you?’ She asked, bravely. People didn’t talk about it. They avoided the actual event but would happily discuss how it affected them or how they were before it.

There was a long and uncomfortable pause as Chris decided what to say. ‘It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It allowed me to finally be who I wanted to be and to actually look for a job that interested and excited me.’ He now sounded proud, but with a hint of emotion to his tone. ‘You know who I am Laura. I was Christine.’

Christine had been Laura’s co-star in hundreds of shoots. There had always been something about her which stopped her from being happy. Many a time Laura would find her weeping and drying the tears from her eyes before she went in front of the camera. Laura opened her mouth to speak, but he continued.

‘I can finally be happy, because no one can see.’