'They'll never believe we're just sitting here, reading a magazine together,' Rachel said. She was sucking on a mint. Emily had a packet of them in her bag. Rachel would never again poke fun at Emily's portable candy store. It was saving their lives – or at least, it felt like it was. They had decided to have one mint each every two hours which would take them until morning.
'It's good to prove people wrong sometimes,' Emily said.
'Oh yeah,' Rachel said, 'There's a lot of people who don't believe I can hold down a job.'
'Why shouldn't you hold down a job?' Emily asked.
'Well five years ago I never had a job in my life.'
'Get away,' Emily said incredulously.
'I can't,' Rachel said. Wasn't this their problem?
'I meant, you're joking. No job until you were what, twenty three, twenty four. That is a joke right?' Rachel felt embarrassed and she wondered if Emily was looking down on her for not having had a job. She felt defensive.
'No. My father is very wealthy and he didn't want me too and I was having more fun not working.' Emily had in fact been shocked that Rachel had starting work so late in life but she hid her surprise. Her initial reaction had been slightly contemptuous but then she thought it was not as though Rachel was like that any more.
'There was a girl at school who was like that,' Emily said mildly. 'I don't think she ever has had a job. She just got married.'
'I nearly got married,' Rachel said. Emily looked at her sharply. 'To a guy called Barry. I couldn't go through with it though. I escaped, through a window.'
'Like me?'
'Well actually you were like me because I did it first. I hid out at Monica's. Anyway after that I had to stand on my own two feet, so I waitressed for a couple of years at Central Perk and then I got a job here.'
'Waitressing is not as easy as it looks,' Emily said. 'I tried that for a while but men kept pinching my bum.' Rachel had had other problems. 'Then you had to work for Gunther. Do you know what he said at that party?'
'No what?'
'He said that you were his girlfriend.' Rachel made a face.
'Oh dear,' she said.
'Of course I didn't believe him. Anyway you had that Joshua fellow. Whatever happened to him?'
'Oh,' Rachel said, embarrassed, 'That didn't work out. He'd just got divorced so he wasn't ready for a relationship.'
'That's a pity,' Emily said, 'But maybe you'd be better off with someone who doesn't have that kind of baggage, or at least doesn't have that kind of baggage so recent in their lives.' Emily sighed. 'But I can't believe you still have to prove to people that you can hold down a job.'
'I know. It's so annoying,' Rachel said, glad to get away from her relationship problems.
'That's awful. Not Monica and Phoebe and the others?' Emily asked.
'No.'
'Well that's good.'
'They're my friends.'
'Sometimes your friends don't always believe in you,' Emily said.
'What about yours?'
'Some of them don't believe I did the right thing coming here.'
'Why not?'
'Well after the wedding and everything. They thought my marriage was doomed and I should just give up. They said it was obvious that Ross didn't love me.'
'How would they know. You were quite right not to listen to them.' There was a silence for a while. 'I just wish I knew how to solve the problem I've got.'
'What's that?' Emily asked.
'I think someone's stealing at work but I don't know how. Like there's one or two dresses missing, which is a problem in itself, but the takings are down a lot more than a couple of dresses.'
'Stealing from the till?'
'The receipts match up, more or less, that's the weird thing. It's as though we've sold more dresses than we've got – except we haven't, we've been giving refunds.'
'Cash refunds?' Emily asked.
'Now that you mention it, yeah.'
'This reminds me of something that happened when I was working in a boutique – '
'You've sold dresses too?' Rachel asked.
'Yes. I've been an au pair, been a personal assistant and worked in a travel agency too. I was a receptionist for a week.'
'A week.'
'Believe it or not, it's a long story. I'll tell you later this evening. But I was telling you about something similar to your problem. We had this thief who'd buy a dress, and then she'd steal one. She'd use the receipt to bring the stolen dress back. She was just some girl who wanted the clothes but didn't want to pay for them.'
'This is more than the occasional dress,' Rachel said. 'And it's pretty hard to steal the clothes, they're all tagged.'
'All of them?'
'Of course.'
'In stores?'
'Well, no...'
'So someone, an insider takes a few dresses before they get tagged.'
'No but then inventory would be down and it would be noticed.'
'Just wait for it, all the thief needs to do is then get receipts.'
'But this is quite big, at least I think it is, I'm not sure they're doing it for a free wardrobe. It's several of the same dress.'
'Well all you'd need is the receipt.'
'And how would they get that?'
'Lots of ways, don't put it into the bag when a genuine customer buys a dress, take it out of the bag when you're opening the bag again to put in a free gift – a lot of customers don't even take the receipt.' Rachel stared.
'You're up on this aren't you?'
'Where I worked we had to learn about all these things, to stop this kind of thing happening. I don't know if that's what's going on in this case.' Rachel suddenly remembered one of the assistants having trouble with a customer.
"I want that receipt young lady, what if there's something wrong with the dress?"
She could hardly believe it of Nicky, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised she had the opportunity. She often moved inventory from store to floor. She could easily removed dresses and then log them in as present so that no-one would realise they were missing.
She found Emily watching her.
'It was just a suggestion.'
'I'll do some investigation. Thanks.'
'Well at least something good came out of this,' Emily said.
'Well maybe more than one thing.'
'True.'
'Not that I can't wait to get out of here,' Rachel said.
'Me neither.' They couldn't help smiling at each other. Rachel said,
'You were going to tell me why you only lasted a week as a receptionist.'
'Oh yes,' Emily began, and started telling the story.