Barbara coughed. ‘Excuse me, Miss?’
        The woman turned then hopped, heavily, down from the ladder, staring at Donald, and tweaking the hem of her skirt downwards. I wanted to say, ‘he’s not like that,’ loud, and in a tone like Barbara’s – but Barbara spoke first.
        ‘My daughter,’ she said, with such clear dignity I could tell she had rehearsed it, and imagined her standing, barefoot on the linoleum in her bedroom – straightening the rose-bud covers on her single bed and muttering it like a prayer, ‘wants to return an item she removed from this counter without paying.’
        I watched the shop assistant’s face change. I tried to imagine what we looked like to her. The three of us – Barbara in her shabby, aggressively clean and starched hound’s-tooth coat and cracked leather gloves, and Donald, rocking slightly and smiling as if he was about to be given a present, and me – jeans at high-water mark, school shoes and the Christmas-Present-School Coat, shoulders speckled with fine grains of snow that to an unsympathetic eye, could have looked like dandruff. And all of us lined up in order of size, staring back at her and her abandoned packet of tissue paper hearts.
        Barbara retrieved the white and blue and silver perfume box from her bag. She snapped the clasp back closed (the noise it made was as satisfied as she was) and placed the perfume carefully on the counter.
        'Here it is,’ she said, and gestured towards it. She didn’t look at me - her neck was rigid with fright. ‘She’d like to make up for her actions in some way. What do you suggest?’
        The shop assistant glanced at me. I looked at the red hearts and said nothing.
        ‘Don’t you, Lola?’ Barbara prompted. As if she was getting ready for a fight, she pulled off her gloves and laid them over the closed mouth of her handbag.
        ‘Are you sure?’ the shop assistant said. She gestured behind her without looking – like a weathergirl – ‘These are display boxes. We aren’t missing anything?’
        ‘It’s Valentine’s Day soon!’ Donald announced, and put his hand on the counter, ‘Have you got a boyfriend, young lady?’ The assistant moved her eyes from Barbara to Donald, who had opened his wallet and was proffering her an expired credit card, and then back to Barbara again. The credit card was green and white and orange – clearly an antique and the sort of object that would turn up as a curiosity in a jumble sale, and get snapped up by someone collecting props for a retro television programme.
        ‘Whatever’s number one,’ Donald says, ‘whatever you’d want your man to buy you. That’s what I’ll have, for my Barbie. And something light, and flowery, for my little girl. Cost no object,’ he raised his arm, dropped it around Barbara’s shoulders, clutched her, shook her a little, ‘she’s young at heart, isn’t she?’ he actually winked, ‘isn’t she just!’ and waved the card at the assistant. She didn’t take it. Barbara said nothing and the assistant looked at us as if we were all stark raving mad.
        ‘My mother thinks,’ I began, trying for that tone of injured dignity Barbara had managed so well.
        ‘Maybe,’ Barbara interrupted me, ‘we can come to an arrangement. Will you take the perfume back into stock? Can you do that for us, at least?’
        The assistant glanced at the box and shook her head.
        ‘There are health and safety…’
        ‘I see. Of course. I should have – Donald,’ she turned. ‘Put your wallet away.’
        There was a moment where nobody spoke. The tinkling music in the shop seemed louder, but I could still hear Donald’s polyester trousers rustling as he tucked his wallet away.
        ‘Maybe,’ Barbara said, and I knew in that instant that she wouldn’t be defeated, ‘Lola could work here for a few Saturdays. To earn the money back.’

3

  

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