What Goes Around

chapter TWENTY EIGHT

I’m too embarrassed to go to Ricky to get my roots done and so two weeks later, I find myself in my local supermarket, buying a home bleaching kit and hair dye.

I’ll be working here tomorrow.

I’ve got this very wobbly arrangement with Simone about dropping off and picking up the children. Charlotte is not pleased that I’m starting work and she questions me as I try to sort out my hair.

‘So what do I do when I get home?’ She’s standing at the bathroom door as I part my hair and smear peroxide over my roots.

‘What you always do,’ I say to her. ‘Go on Facebook. Or you can stay at Simone’s till I get home – I’ll be back by five.’

‘I don’t want to go to go there after school.’

‘Charlotte.’ I am doing my best to be patient, I know it’s a change, I know she’s used to having me home but I’m doing this so that bigger changes don’t have to happen. ‘It’s two days a week that I won’t be here after school.’

‘And some weekends,’ Charlotte says.

‘Charlotte…’ I look at her in the mirror and her eyes are so accusatory as they meet mine. ‘Lots of mums work,’ I point out. ‘Felicity’s mum works.’ Charlotte just stares at me for a full a minute, she doesn’t say it but I know she’s thinking it.

Felicity’s mum and her other friends mums have careers or hobbies or just live at the gym or shops.

They don’t work at the supermarket.

My shift starts at eleven and will finish at four forty five.

I’m told what to do, in a painfully slow voice, by this really annoying woman, whose name is Yolanda. She keeps calling me “love.”

‘You have to be thorough, love, and you have to be quick.’

I have a special trolley and it has a board that holds the computer printout of the order.

‘If we haven’t got what they’ve ordered,’ Yolanda says really slowly, ‘then you look down here and see if they’ve ticked that they’ll take alternatives.’

‘I see.’

I just want to get started.

‘You must remember to add their free promotions and, depending on how much they spend, they get a bonus…’

‘I was told that on my training day.’

Worse than standing in the supermarket, with my blue top and black trousers on that say I’m staff, are the people who glance over because it’s clear that I’m new.

I just want to blend in.

I just want to look as if I’m here doing my shopping.

I’ve put on a black cardigan to cover my top and name badge and I just want to get going.

‘You’ll get ever so hot in your cardigan, love.’

I don’t care.

‘I’m always cold,’ I tell her.

‘Well, pin your name badge on it,’ Yolanda tells me and I grit my teeth, because here it bloody comes, ‘love.’

I set off with my trolley and I get the fruit and vegetables and then off to the milk, then I head to the meat section. It’s actually very similar to my list and I check the name at the top and no, it’s not mine.

Of course it’s not because I cancelled online shopping a couple of weeks ago. There were just these mountains of food arriving and I had to throw loads out.

It’s a fantastic list.

I do not have to double back once.

It takes me to every aisle in glorious sequence and I choose alternatives carefully (she’s ticked the box) and then I go to the special check out for personal shoppers. I add her bonus gifts and promotions and Yolanda double takes when she sees me preparing to start on the next.

‘I know I said quickly love, but I said thorough too.’

‘I have been thorough.’

‘Let’s just go through the order.’

She does, she goes through it all and I think she might be a bit pissed off, because it’s perfect.

Almost.

She comments on my crusty rolls.

‘She asked for half a dozen, there are only five.’

‘There were only five there.’

‘You should have added a soft one.’

She checks my next load too.

And the next.

Finally I get the nod.

The music is driving me crazy, it’s constantly on in the background and there are kids screaming and carrying on, but I just keep going through the lists.

Again and again and again.

I’m back at the shampoos for a 500ml bottle of Head and Shoulders.

I glance over the shelves, they’re the halfway up ones in the health and beauty section and she wants face cleanser too. I am assuming it’s a she that I’m shopping for but I don’t check the name till the end. I play little games with myself like that all the time. The hours are passing but then, just as I’m starting to blend in, just as I’m getting the hang of things, up pops my neighbour, peering into my life, but from across a supermarket shelf this time.

‘Lucy!’ I half expect to see her holding gardening shears. ‘You work here?’

‘That’s right.’

I give her a smile, one that says – didn’t you know?

‘How long for?’

I shrug; I’m not going to tell her that it’s my first day. ‘I was going crazy at home all day.’

‘You should come over some time.’

I give her a smile.

‘How are things?’ She asks and I feel her eyes drift over my body but not the way men’s do. I stand there as she mentally weighs me, as she estimates that I’ve gone up to a size fourteen, but I haven’t.

I’m a twelve.

These stupid uniforms come up tiny.

‘How are you coping since..?’ She doesn’t mention the woman who arrived with him, whom no doubt she saw; she doesn’t mention anything but I know that she knows.

‘Getting there.’

‘How’s Charlotte?’ She asks. ‘I can drop her at school or pick her up if you ever need it – I’m there getting mine anyway.’

‘She’s fine.’ I give her a smile. ‘But thank you.’ My smile stays in place. ‘I’d better get on.’

I can feel her watching me as I move off. I bet she’ll be at the school early, just so she can be the first with the news.

I know it.

I know it, because sometimes I used to stand there in a huddle, my eyes widening, as I listened to the rumours about someone’s life going belly up.

I can see them now at 3.15pm, all there in their huddles.

I can hear the words.

“Lucy Jameson is having financial problems.”