‘Um, sorry, I think you’ve got, um, got more than, er, ten, yeah, ten items there,’ he nervously stammered out.
I raised my eyebrows and he flinched. His name was Spencer, I remember that. I hadn’t had a good day so far – I’d had to take Mum to the hospital that morning for some reason, can’t remember what it was that day – and I think Spencer could tell in my eyebrows that things for him had suddenly taken a downward turn. ‘And?’ I said, not moving.
A smile appeared on his face the way you sometimes catch a fleeting flash of sun reflected on someone’s glasses across the street. Then it disappeared. ‘Well, um, this is the ten items queue …’
His voice tailed off as I started shaking my head. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said confidently. Actually I said it a lot more confidently than I really felt. I was fairly sure the sign said ‘Baskets Only’, but at this point I suddenly experienced a lurch of fear dropping in my belly. The queue behind me was starting to shift its weight from foot to foot and heft baskets of shopping around needlessly. I sensed that it wouldn’t be long before they were dropping their baguettes in favour of pitchforks and lanterns and driving me out of town. Mentally I picked up a cudgel, squared my shoulders and turned round slowly and threateningly to face the restless villagers. In actual fact I was hunching a bit while checking behind me nervously. ‘I think you’ll find,’ I cringed, ‘that this is the “Basket Only” queue.’
Spencer gave the fleeting glimpse of teeth again, only this time with less conviction. ‘Noooo …’ he started, but then there was a rustling sound and a low, menacing voice behind me said,
‘Some time today.’
The queue shuffled its feet in agreement and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My animal instincts were sensing approaching danger, and I felt trapped, like cornered prey. I glanced around me nervously, assessing my exit possibilities, but there wasn’t much choice. Walk slowly and with dignity, head high, towards the exit; or leg it? Oh but I really didn’t want to do that. Maybe I had another option. Maybe I could stand my ground, have the courage of my convictions, like Mum had always told me. ‘Have the courage of your convictions, Daisy Duck,’ she said. ‘Stand up for what you believe in, be strong, no matter what anyone else thinks.’ I know, it’s incredible isn’t it? Still calling me Daisy Duck well into my adulthood.
‘I will, Mum,’ I thought to myself fervently now, pressing my lips together. ‘I’ll do it for you.’
‘Pardon?’ said Spencer.
‘Huh? Oh, no, nothing. Um …’
I was stalling and he knew it. One of us was going to have to concede, and we were both starting to believe that it was going to be me.
‘You’ll have to … move your things,’ he said very quietly, avoiding eye contact at all costs. ‘You need to use the trolley tills.’
I lowered my head towards him. He visibly flinched. ‘Spencer,’ I said, using my mum’s voice that was in my head, ‘you don’t honestly think it’s going to take less time for me to pack all these things back into this basket, than it would for you to run them quickly through the till, do you?’
‘Um,’ Spencer began helplessly, doing an ‘I-don’t-make-the-rules’ face, ‘actually …’
‘I’ll take half the items,’ the girl behind me – Abby, it turned out – piped up suddenly at this point. Spencer and I exchanged a glance, then turned in unison to look at her. She was dark haired – it was almost blue-black – and wearing a denim mini skirt, stripey footless tights and flip-flops. As we stared at her, she scooped roughly half of my things back down the conveyor towards her, then stuck the ‘Next customer please’ sign in the middle. ‘Pay me back later,’ she said to me, and winked. Actually winked, perfectly, without accidentally closing both eyes or screwing up her mouth or grimacing in some other gauche way. I thought that was so incredibly cool.
‘Christ, it was like a stand-off between the country’s two biggest jessies,’ she said in the car park a few minutes later. ‘Not so much which one of you was going to hold out the longest, more like a race to see who was going to cry first. I couldn’t stand to watch it continue for another second.’
And we’ve been friends ever since.
OK, so maybe it’s not a very good story. No actual violence and mayhem. No bloodshed. Not even a raised voice. But the potential was there. Simmering.
Daisy Mack
On my knees like Cinderella. Literally and figuratively.
Georgia Ling OMG that’s a big clean lol! xoxo
Nat ‘Wiggy’ Nicholson come and do mine after xx
‘Right,’ Abs says now, and levers herself back onto her feet. She puts her hands on her hips and raises her eyebrows. I know exactly what that means. It’s a gesture I’ve seen Abby do countless times in the last four years, usually when she’s trying to get me to do something I’m not one hundred percent keen on. Or focused on. One or the other. Basically it means ‘Come on, Daisy, sort yourself out, now is the time to face the thing you’ve got to do and there’s no point trying to argue with me because I won’t stand for any nonsense.’ Whenever I see her hands go to her hips, I get a resigned feeling, like Pavlov’s dog getting hungry when the bell rings. Or was it ringing the bell when it was hungry? No, that wasn’t it. That was probably rats, wasn’t it? Going round exciting mazes and over ramps to get a treat. I got lost in a maze once. Naomi told me to keep on turning left every time I came to a junction but it didn’t work. I went round and round in circles for over half an hour before Mum shouted to me over the fences to stop being such an idiot and walk towards her.
‘Daze,’ Abs says, using the particular tone of voice that goes with the gesture.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ I push myself up and stand, ready to move on to the next dirty mark or pile of crap, but when I look round I see that there aren’t any more dirty marks, or piles of crap to be dealt with. While I’ve been listlessly rubbing away at the chocolate Hobnob/lasagne mark, Abs has done all the rest of the cleaning. Which means …
‘Time to go,’ she says softly.
So. This is it. We take our cloths and the bowl of warm water solemnly back to the kitchen and dump everything in the sink. The kitchen looks amazing – all the sides are clear and wiped and the floor is spotless. I can’t remember the last time I saw it looking this good. Some time in the early part of last year, I expect. I’m walking around it slowly, running my hand along the sides, touching the knobs on the hob, stroking the dent on the fridge door where Mum threw a tin of custard powder at Graham one Christmas. This is the spot where I was standing when she told everyone about the cancer coming back. Over there on the windowsill was the plant I bought her for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago. I think it’s died now. Actually I have no idea where it is. One minute it was there, dropping brown leaves and generally shrivelling up; next minute it was gone. When was that? Must be at least a week ago. I can’t believe I let that plant die. I watched it, every day, curling up, needing my attention, crying out for help to relieve its suffering, and yet I did nothing. I didn’t even try. Maybe there was something I could have done. Maybe I could have saved it, if I’d only been a bit more … a bit more … careful.
Inexplicably, I’m starting to cry, standing there in Mum’s kitchen, staring at the empty spot where a dying plant used