On Fridays, Marion went out to buy the week’s groceries. Unable to drive, she took a wheeled shopping trolley on the two-mile journey to the SmartMart on the edge of Northport Business Park. It would have been much easier for John to take her in Mother’s silver Mercedes, of course, but he was always too busy.
“Don’t forget the list, Mar,” said John as she was putting her coat on at the door.
“Stop going on at me. I’ve got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I have it right here.”
Marion opened the zip-up pocket of the handbag where she kept her purse, but there was no list. John let out a long sigh.
“I bet I left it in the kitchen.”
She went and fetched the shopping list, and John watched while she put it safely in her bag.
“There are important things on that list, Marion. Now don’t lose it again.”
“I know, I know, important things, I promise I won’t lose it.”
“You’ll forget your bloody head, woman.”
Marion set off on the long walk to the supermarket along roads choked with traffic as people drove to Northport for the May Bank holiday. All the way down Grange Road, up and down curbs and across bumpy pavements, she dragged the trolley so by the time she reached the car park of the SmartMart her arm and shoulder ached as if she had been pulling a plow behind her.
The SmartMart was packed with tourists stocking up on cheap food to eat in their holiday flats and caravans over the weekend. The crowds and bright lights made her dizzy and confused, and it took several minutes of wandering around before Marion found the aisle for jam, only to be dazzled by all the different varieties. One with pictures of lovely purple berries on the label looked appealing, but another kind was fifty pence cheaper. As she was trying to make up her mind, a short, muscular man with a bald head knocked her with his trolley and didn’t bother to apologize. Then as she was picking out bread, a woman in denim shorts and flip-flops pushed her out of the way and grabbed five white medium-sliced loaves, throwing them into a shopping trolley already piled high with cheap pork sausages.
She stopped at the cold meat counter to get sliced ham for John’s sandwiches. A girl with short brown pigtails poking from under a cardboard hat and a plump figure that bulged beneath her uniform was cleaning a bacon slicer. Marion stood waiting for several minutes, but the girl did not seem to notice her. She wondered if she ought to say something but didn’t want to seem rude. The girl must have seen her but needed to finish what she was doing before serving anyone.
Then a tall woman wearing a long white linen dress and pushing a child in a buggy as if he were a small prince leading a parade went up to the counter. The baby was wearing a little sunsuit that perfectly matched the color of his mother’s dress. The plump girl immediately stopped messing with the slicer and inquired what the woman would like.
“Excuse me, I was here before that lady. I have been waiting to be served for several minutes,” Marion insisted.
The plump girl looked at Marion with shocked, round eyes as if she were an ill-mannered ghost that had just materialized next to the deli counter. Then the tall woman shook a cascade of butter-tinted hair and said:
“Just serve her, please, we can wait.” The woman spoke in a lovely, polished voice just like a radio announcer.
“Are you sure, madam?” the girl asked anxiously.
The tall woman swept a gracious hand tipped with coral-painted fingernails towards Marion.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, well, what do you want, then?” the girl snapped at Marion. Then the baby’s cheeks went red, and he began to make a horrible squealing sound. The woman picked up her child and squished his blotchy face into the crook of her pale, elegant neck.
“That’s all right, now, scrumpkin, we don’t like rude people, do we?” she said, patting his fat shoulders.
A furnace of rage lit inside Marion. It was so unfair: they were the rude, ill-mannered ones, not her, she had done nothing wrong.
“I—I—d-don’t want it anymore, you can keep your nasty old ham,” stuttered Marion. “I—I’m never going to buy anything from this horrible shop again.”
And then something odd happened. Mother would have said Marion “just flipped.” Of course, she should have just gone on with her shopping, timidly avoiding the woman and her baby as she went up and down the SmartMart aisles, but as she was about to walk away she noticed sitting on top of the counter a tray of sausages labeled: “Organic Pork with Herbs and Jamaican Chilli Dip.” Sample trays like this were often left out in SmartMart with things like cheese or wedges of meat pies. Marion was sometimes tempted to try them, but then felt guilty if she didn’t buy any.
Marion wasn’t sure exactly why she swung out her arm knocking the tray off the counter and towards the woman in the white dress. She watched the little sausages on sticks and dish of red sauce fly into the air and strike the woman and her baby, almost as if someone else had done it. Really, the tray couldn’t have hit them very hard, certainly not hard enough to scar that horrid baby’s cheek as the woman claimed afterwards. And only a small amount of Jamaican Chilli Dip landed on the pristine dress, leaving a stain the shape of a strawberry on the shoulder.
Sitting in the store manager’s office, Marion really felt quite terrible about the whole thing but perhaps not as terrible as she should have done. In fact, although she spent most of her life worrying that something bad was going to happen to her, now that something bad had happened, she was surprisingly calm. While she waited in the small office so stuffed full of filing cabinets and boxes that it was hardly big enough to contain a single desk, she heard the woman screaming complaints in the hallway outside.
“I—I want you to call the police right away, that madwoman assaulted my baby and I—she’s dangerous, probably mentally ill—people like that should be sectioned or something—you know my husband will be just furious when he hears about what happened to Charlie. He works in local government—he has a very senior position and many of our closest friends are lawyers.”