[Recap: At the end of
Click And Collect: Self Storage
, Hayley volunteered to be sealed up to experience the thrill of self storage. Clea and Max last appeared in
Click And Collect: Service Call
]
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We stood in the bedroom section of the store, opposite the large wall display. Max walked up to the wooden panelling and rapped it with his knuckles. His wife looked on.
"Seems pretty sturdy. What do you think Clea?"
She approached the panel also, running a hand over the wood. I watched them stand there, silently contemplating the fold-down bed. Max was a big man, broad and muscular, with dark, curly hair and a neat beard. Clea was dwarfed in her husband's presence, standing no taller than his shoulder even in her low heels. She was waif-thin, her stomach and chest flat, but toned, like a ballerina. Her blonde hair was cut into a short bob.
"The frame will hold the weight," I told them, "Do you want to see it opened out?"
Max nodded, and I pulled on the handle set into the top of the panel, swinging the entire section down to the horizontal and revealing a queen-sized mattress and pillows.
"Looks comfy," Clea observed.
"Yes," I replied. "Of course, you can use it as a bed, too, if you have guests over. It sleeps two."
I watched Max, as his eyes roamed over the installation, studying it.
"How does it work then?" he asked eventually.
I knelt down by the side of the bed and tugged on a zip running down the length of the mattress.
"The mattress is quite revolutionary. It's not a single piece."
I peeled the cover back to show them.
"It's a set of interlocking cubes. The idea is that each part of the mattress can have different firmness levels, all you have to do is pick which cube to place where in the mattress. I'm told it's an ideal solution for if your partner is a little heavier or lighter and needs different levels of support."
Clea laughed softly. "We should get that for our main bed. Finally, stops me rolling into you in the middle of the night."
Max frowned playfully, "I like you rolling into me though."
"Hah, yeah, but sometimes I'm afraid I might get crushed."
I took the banter as a good sign. Clea and her husband were clearly on the same page with the proposition. It had surprised me a little, given that Clea had been the one to suggest it, and had confessed to being a little concerned as to how Max would respond.
"So what do you think?" I prompted, "Do you want to go ahead?"
Clea turned to me. "I think so. I think Max might have some questions though."
She stroked her husband's arm tenderly, "It's all pretty new."
Max straightened up and I was suddenly aware of how broad he was. I imagined that Clea would find herself dominated by his bulk in the bedroom. I suspected that was why we were here.
"What are the modifications?" he rumbled.
I gave him a reassuring nod and began to point out features of the bed.
"We will need to make the wooden back panel detachable, to expose the back of the mattress. Oh, and the mattress itself will need to change. We can keep many of the padding cubes, but the covering will need to be swapped to latex for the seal. Any colour preference?"
I zipped the mattress back up and flipped the bed back to the vertical position while I waited for an answer. Max was still processing the entire thing, I could tell. It must have been quite a shock when his wife had sat him down and broached the subject of her predilections.
Max shrugged, "That's Clea's department. Baby, what do you think? What would look nice?"
Clea stood in front of the wood panelling for a while, her eyes playing over the surface, imagining.
"White," she said at last. "I'd like it to be white. I think it would look wonderful."
I nodded agreement and Max clapped his large hands together, mustering bravado.
"Okay, where do we sign?" he said.
"Follow me," I replied.
I took them to the back of the store, into the office. The wooden floor tiles creaked slightly under Max's weight. Clea took a chair, sitting with me at the desk while I began to fill out the order form, noting their customisations and fixing a delivery date. I watched Clea, pen in hand, scrutinising each line of the details. Her dainty nose scrunched slightly as she read through the customisations, but eventually she signed at the bottom with a flourish and handed the pen back to me.
"So, you'll be installing as well."
"All part of the service."
"Will it just be you? Or will you be bringing your assistant too?"