My Clocking In System

Chapter 7: Uniqlo

Ding!

A soft electronic chime announced him as he stepped into the Uniqlo two streets back from the high street. It was the one good shop he actually understood.

Anywhere posher than this usually made him break out in a cold sweat.

He knew how those high-end boutiques operated: the silent, judging stares of the staff, the arrogant absence of price tags on the rails, and that suffocating weight of being watched the second you stepped through the door, as if you couldn’t even afford to breathe the oxygen inside.

Uniqlo, though, was different. Uniqlo was honest.

Uniqlo was bright, the prices were clearly marked, and the clothes were plain, well-made, and didn’t shout. It wasn’t cheap, forty quid for a jumper was forty quid, but it was honest. And honest he could do.

He had stood at this exact window in the rain more times than he cared to admit, pricing a grey overcoat he knew he was never going to buy.

The shop opened out in front of him: long tables of jumpers folded into neat, colourful stacks, a wall of plain shirts on hangers graded light to dark, and changing rooms at the back behind a row of tall mirrors.

Everything was bright and perfectly ordered under flat white ceiling lights.

Danny picked up a plastic basket because that’s what you did, and stood dead in the center of the aisle.

The old fraud-feeling began to rise in his chest, the paranoia that said someone was about to approach him and ask him to leave.

He knew exactly what he looked like under these unforgivingly clean lights: a wet, grey man with a split delivery jacket still beaded with last night’s damp, a pulled-up hood, and worn-through shoes.

"You look completely lost."

The voice was warm and dry all at once, carrying the exact kind of sharp cadence that came right before a remark landed.

Danny turned, and the floor felt like it went out from under him.

She was three tables down, halfway through folding a stack of knitwear. Her dark blonde hair was thrown up in a messy knot with a pencil shoved carelessly through it.

She had a scattering of freckles across her nose she hadn’t bothered to cover, and a plastic name badge that read JODIE.

The signature half-smile was already starting at one corner of her mouth, the exact one he had spent a massive chunk of his seventeenth year being too much of a coward to do anything about.

Jodie Carter.

His entire body went to ice, then instantly to fire. Of all the shops. Of all the mornings. He had spent ten years making sure this exact reunion couldn’t happen, and here she was, three feet away with a basket of jumpers resting against her hip.

The smile froze on her face as her brain processed his features. He watched the recognition hit her in real time, followed immediately by an expression that wasn’t warm at all.

"Danny Flynn," she said. Her voice was flat. Careful. "Well."

"Jodie." His vocal cords felt tight. "Hi."

For a second, neither of them said a word. The cheerful, corporate playlist filled the awkward silence while a mum with a buggy moved off toward the tills. The moment stretched until it was almost unbearable.

"Ten years," Jodie said finally. She set the jumpers down on the table, slowly, never breaking eye contact.

"Ten years, Danny. You changed your number. You know that? I rang it about a month after you dropped off the face of the earth and it belonged to some bloke named Dave who did tiling in Croydon."

Ha.

It was a short, hard laugh with absolutely no humor in it. He recognized it instantly because it was the exact same laugh he used when things were terrible.

"I went round to your mum’s house," she continued, her voice dropping.

"She said you’d moved and didn’t say where. I thought you were dead for a while. Then I thought you were just gone. Which it turns out is a thing a person can just choose to be."

Every single word landed precisely where she intended to leave a bruise. Danny stood there and took it. He had taken abuse from dispatch managers like Halloran, but he actually deserved this one, which made it ten times worse.

"I know," he said softly, keeping his voice down so a nearby student wouldn’t overhear. "I know. I’m sorry."

"You’re sorry." She folded her arms across her chest. "Why’d you do it?"

And there it was. The ultimate question. He could lie, give her the easy, polished line he was constructing for the rest of the world, but looking at her, he found he couldn’t do it. Not to her.

"Everything fell apart," he said, his eyes dropping to the floor.

"All at once. My dad, then the flat, then I dropped out of college... then there was just nothing left. And I was ashamed, Jodie. You were going to sixth form, you were going to be something great, and I was watching my entire life turn to ash. I couldn’t stand for you, of all people, to see me like that. So I just... cut it all off."

Something in her posture softened at the raw honesty of the admission. She sighed, rolling up her sleeves.

"Right," she said. He watched her make a conscious choice to let him off the hook, if only for today. She tapped the table.

"I’m not doing this because you deserve it. I’m doing it because styling people is the only decent part of this job and they never let me do it properly. Put the basket down. And stand up straight... you’re doing that apologising-for-existing thing. I remember that, too."

What followed was the strangest, most therapeutic hour Danny had spent in an entire decade.

Jodie didn’t just point at items. She looked at him with her head tilted, analyzing the frame hidden beneath his worn-down, baggy layers, and started building an outfit from scratch.

"No," she said firmly, snatching a hand away before he could touch a basic hoodie.

"Not that. That’s what blokes buy when they’re scared of fashion. We’re not doing scared."

She marched over to the rail by the window and lifted a charcoal-grey wool overcoat off the hanger, the exact one he had lusted after through the glass.

It was a long, heavy piece that fell well past the knee. She held it flat against his chest, her lips parting slightly.

"Oh, that’s annoying. That’s really annoying. It’s perfect on you, and I desperately wanted to hate it."

She practically ordered him to put it on.

Shhhf.

The coat dropped clean off his shoulders into a sharp, mid-calf silhouette, squaring him out and instantly transforming the narrow, rain-soaked courier into a long, formidable line of dark wool.

She stepped back, her brow furrowing.

"Collar." She reached up, her fingers brushing close to his neck as she folded the fabric down flat. "There."

It went on like that for an hour. She held a navy jumper under his chin and pulled a face. "No. Washes you out, makes you look like a substitute geography teacher."

She swapped it for a fine-knit, charcoal crew neck, laying it against his torso before nodding slowly.

"Yeah. That. See how it sits across your shoulders? You’ve actually got a proper frame on you, Danny. You’ve just been hiding it under that sad bin-bag jacket for ten years."

Next came a crisp white shirt with an open collar, followed by trousers. She held two pairs to his waist, keeping a pair of dark tapered chinos and rejecting a baggier, pleated pair on sight.

"No, the cut’s completely wrong. You’ll look like you’re going to magistrates’ court."