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The cold indifference that often greets our most painful, personal upheavals is laid bare during a routine trip to the bank

A woman in a neckerchief beckons for me to stand up. She escorts me to the desk, where another woman, also in a neckerchief, is mashing the keys on her keyboard. “Sharon will take care of you,” the first woman says. Sharon sits amid an assortment of papers, a shrivelled pot plant, a photo of two unsmiling children and a stress ball. She does not look at me.

I sit down. “Just a sec,” says Sharon. She’s got stiff shoulders, a face like thunder and a badge that says, ‘happy to help’. She goes at her keyboard with a kind of manic, unblinking precision that puts me on edge. The veins in her temples are running hot. I suspect that loosening her neckerchief a little, and thus easing the flow of oxygen, would do her the world of good.

While she’s busy I scan around the room. It occurs to me that it’s been some years since I’ve set foot in a bank and that the only major change to have taken place in that time is that everything that was once fixed in place now swivels – the computer monitors, encased in their little receptacles designed to match the faux marble of the countertops; the bar stools that customers sit on to foster an atmosphere of ease and conviviality…even the concierge who brought me to Sharon pivots balletically on her heels as she floats from one customer to the next.

My eyes land on the woman next to me. She’s young and very pretty but tired looking, expiring under a thick winter coat and four bags of what looks like Christmas shopping for all her relatives living and dead. The man serving her is diminutive and cocky, with sweat stains under his armpits and a tie that reaches down to his crotch. He twiddles his pen between his fingers while the woman fills out a stack of forms and runs her hand up the back of her head.

“Right,” says Sharon, hitting the enter key so hard she almost punches a hole in the desk. Then she looks at me and in a tone of disappointment that I’ve stuck around for her to become available she says, “how can I help?”

“I need to change my address,” I say.

She looks at me. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You know you can do that online, right?”

“I tried that.”

“You tried?”

“Yes, I tried. I think there’s a problem with the website; it kept coming up with an error. I was in the area anyway so thought I’d just pop in.”

She looks me up and down. Then she rips open a drawer, pulls out a fresh notepad and slaps it down on the desk. “Write down your new address,” she says.

I write it down and slide the pad over to her. She punches it into her computer.

“Invalid,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“The postcode.” She swivels the monitor around so I can see. “Invalid.”

“Oh.”

She shrugs and taps her fingers on the desk. I pull out my phone and look up my new address online. She’s right; I’ve been typing in the postcode wrong, mixing up two of the digits.

“Sorry. You know how it is,” I say, feeling like I’m just wasting everyone’s time.

She nods but doesn’t smile. She strikes me as the sort of person who memorises post codes at first glance.

“Done,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“Anything else?”

I think for a second. Then I say, “while I’m here I might as well update my phone number, too.”

“Someone’s reinventing themselves.”

“You could say that.”

She tears off the piece of paper I wrote my address on and throws it in the bin. Then she slides the pad over so I can write my number. I slide it back and she gives the keyboard another battering.

“There we go,” she says. “Any more life updates we should know about?”

“Not for the moment.”

I stand up to leave, feeling ready to part ways with Sharon. But she motions for me to wait.

“You got insurance for that new home of yours?”

“Insurance?”

“Yeah, insurance. Home and contents. You know, in case your house burns down or someone breaks in and steals all your stuff.”

In truth I haven’t given it a moment’s thought but I just want to get out of here and have a drink. “I think I’m fully covered,” I say.

“Not what it says here,” she says. She swivels the monitor around again. On the screen I see my account details: name, phone number, new address. Next to the address there’s a box that says ‘Home and Contents’ and the word ‘NO’ in big red letters.

“Oh,” I say.

“I can add it for you now,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “No, actually…I mean…how much is it?”

“It’s £13.99 a month, and that covers you for up to £10 million worth of…” She pulls out a leaflet and slides it over. She uses her pen to point at the words, the way my class one teacher used to do when she was teaching me how to read – a strange memory I didn’t know I still had.

While she’s talking I look over at her colleague, the guy with the armpit stains. He’s dealing with a middle-aged couple now, a wife and husband. They’re taking turns to speak, and when they speak they clasp their hands and lean forwards, as if awaiting some terrifying fate and begging their master for clemency. The cashier, seeming to take a kind of grim satisfaction in this balance of power, sits back in his chair with his elbows on the armrests, nodding magnanimously and using his finger to pick whatever he had for lunch out of his teeth.

I realise Sharon is just looking at me. I don’t know how long ago she stopped talking.

“How about it, then?” she asks.

“How about what?” I say.

“The insurance.”

“Oh…let me think about it.”

“Think about it?”

“I like to sleep on these things.”

She looks at me like I’m insane – like she expects my house to burn down while I’m thinking about it. Or that she might burn it down just to prove her point. I see she’s not wearing a ring. Figures.

As I’m standing up to leave she says, “I just hope your house hasn’t burnt down the next time I see you.”

“Well, if it has I won’t need to come back.”

“Except to change your address again.”

“Oh right, yeah.”

When I step outside the air is freezing cold and it’s started snowing. I pull my coat around my neck. There’s only one other car besides mine in the car park and in it I recognise the couple from the desk next to me who’d been pleading with the cashier. They’re arguing about something. The man is massaging his forehead with one hand and chopping at the steering wheel with the other. The woman is sobbing.

I get in my car and sit with the heater on while the windscreen clears. In the bank, Sharon saunters over to the automatic doors and locks them. She pulls off her neckerchief and undoes the top button of her shirt. The guy with the armpit stains appears behind her. He says something to her and they both throw their heads back and laugh. There’s a lightness about them, the fragility of which they don’t seem to realise.

The truth is that everything I own is stuff I collected in a life that’s now over – just a bunch of relics, once of practical or monetary worth but now infused with the memory of how things used to be. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of burning it all to ash myself.

I start the car and pull out. Shop fronts go dark and metal shutters stained with graffiti slam shut against the concrete. But at least the pub will be open and the thought is a warming one. I drive slowly, guided by a chain of flickering lights strung up lazily between the lamp posts. The snow falls heavier now.

I’m happy to say that this story was featured on Top in Fiction’s weekly list! You can check it out here.