LITMIR.BIZ

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her. Since when did a child ever volunteer information? It was down to the parent to chisel it out of them. Charlotte had let Oli take the lead in so many things, she’d virtually forgotten it was completely possible to act of her own free will.

      Either way, she supposed Oli did have a point regarding the timing of his announcement that he was destroying her life. Breaking his news whilst the children were away gave her time to ‘draw up a party line’. (His suggestion.) There was still the August holiday in Italy with the Pickerings to consider. They’d pre-paid a breathtaking sum for the villa. He wouldn’t want her to miss out on their last holiday as a family, he’d said.

      His thoughtfulness knew no bounds.

      Her rings glinted under the LED lighting they’d installed over the sink. Oli had thought the one tiny window would be sufficient, though this particular corner of the kitchen was always a bit of a cave, even on a bright summer’s day like today. When his mother had deigned to wash a teacup a few years back and deemed the area a black hole, workmen had appeared the next day.

      Perhaps there were enough magpies in the world.

      She slid the final breakfast plate into one of the top slots of the drying rack, flinching as the china grated against the slim steel rungs.

      The plates – *ahem!* – dinnerware that had been ‘recommended’ by his mother were grey. Pebble-stone, if anyone was asking. Her mother-in-law had been her guiding light as they (she) had put together the wedding list all those years ago. Advice she had craved like air. Only now was she beginning to realize just how suffocating it had actually been. There was barely a single item in the house that her mother-in-law hadn’t had a hand in.

      Lately – since her birthday, in fact – each time Charlotte made a cottage pie, as she had last night (just a small one in the racing green stoneware dish she knew Oli preferred to the cobalt), she thought of her own mother’s battered enamel pie dishes. The tins had been the only things in the house that had matched. More than likely she’d been given them by her own parents. A wedding gift? A freebie, more like, for signing up with a building society.

      A sudden, painful longing for the pans tore at her. Not replicas of the pans. Not Jamie’s version of the pans. Nigella’s or Gordon’s. But those exact, battered, paint-chipped, never-entirely-clean enamel pans that her mother had brought to the table weighted with toad-in-the-hole or poor man’s steak pie (a strangely moreish concoction of mince, onions and gravy granules). A rhubarb crumble when she’d had a good day.

      She dried her hands on a duck-motifed hand towel and hung it, crisply refolded, on one of the rungs of the range, then pushed it a bit to the right so that it was centred.

      More than likely the pans were clogging up a landfill site now. Her aunt had come in and swept the place clean after her mother had died. Binned the lot before Charlotte had had a chance to go up to Sheffield and select an item or two that Oli wouldn’t object to.

      All of which left her as the sole remaining proof her parents had done something with their lives.

      She put away last night’s wine glasses. Delicate crystal stemware matched to the wine. A Chablis that Oli had been given by a grateful client. He’d picked it out for them last night because he hadn’t been convinced it was ‘up to’ sharing with guests, even though it had had excellent reviews. Back at the sink she stared at last night’s dinner plates, this morning’s breakfast plates, the egg and coffee cups. All roosting on top of the drying rack. It looked like an Instagram photo.

      In one swift move she swept the entire lot onto the hard, unforgiving floor.

      So, this was what Old Mother Hubbard felt like.

      Freya shook the contactless payment device as if it were one of her children’s piggy banks. This, in lieu of closing the shop, going home and murdering her husband. Seriously? Monty couldn’t find one measly pound to put in the shopping trolley so he wanted her to go to the shops? She was at work. That thing that kept them out of debtors’ prison?

      She tapped out a text. Sofa cushions. Trouser pockets. Bottom of the laundry basket. Felix’s bed. The spotty mug with the pens in it. When she finished she slammed the phone down so hard her solitary customer yelped.

      ‘Sorry.’ She made a lame flexing gesture. ‘Didn’t know my own strength. Anything I can help you find? Unicorns are just over there.’ She pointed at her most popular line, as if the woman couldn’t actually make her own way around the shop. It was hardly vast.

      When she’d signed the lease some fifteen years ago, it had felt huge. Like a dreamy, brick-lined Aladdin’s cave. Her very own blank canvas, glowing with limitless possibility.

      ‘Are there any of the raccoon T-shirts left?’

      Freya’s mouth stretched back into an apologetic wince. ‘Sorry. We’re off camping tomorrow and I didn’t get another run in.’

      The young woman hauled her dreadlocks over her shoulder, interested. ‘What festival are you going to?’

      Freya laughed. As if. Buying tickets for her entire family to go to a festival was not an option. ‘Just camping.’

      The woman’s half-hearted smile faded before it’d had a chance to catch purchase.

      Freya soldiered on. ‘Sorry about the shirts. You know how it is. End of term. Sports days. Flute concerts.’ She’d actually missed both. Monty had taken videos. ‘Anyway, we love camping, with or without the face painting.’ She was losing the girl fast. ‘Any interest in the unicorn range?’

      The woman glanced at the door as if targeting an emergency exit. ‘Not really.’

      She took her chance to flee when a gaggle of Japanese tourists bundled in. They looked as if they were from one of those futuristic films that Felix adored, all candy-floss-coloured hair in quirky ponytails and jet-black, razor-sharp bobs. Giggly and raving about something one minute, dismissively silent the next.

      They looked at the walls more than the T-shirts, which was a shame.

      The previous lessee, a joss-stick vendor who’d decided she’d rather live in Bali where ‘the energy just spoke to her’, had painted the interior gold. When Freya had finally got some time and money together a few years later, they’d all bundled in on a Monday and got to work. The exacting plan Freya had drawn up – immaculate white walls with painted anthropomorphized animals ‘wearing’ the T-shirts – had almost instantly degenerated into one of those wacky painting scenes reserved for rom-coms. Dabbing one another on the nose. The ear. The hair. Until, inevitably, it had ended up as a paint fight. She’d been furious at first then, as ever, Monty had made it fun and she’d decided to keep the paint-splattered interior. When Monty had taken the children to the zoo the following day, she had tactically accented an area or two to heighten the Pollack-esque effect.

      She didn’t need to know Japanese to absorb the fact that the shop needed rejuvenating. Fresh paint. A new presentation style. Gallery lighting rather than the filament bulbs they’d all been obsessed with back in the day. Lighting she should have installed in the first place because she had always hoped, one day, to ease out the money-spinning T-shirts and start showing her own more high-end designs. Designs she simply didn’t have the resources to make any more. Funny T-shirts that no one seemed to want – or that weren’t funny?

      The Japanese squad headed towards the door. ‘The #Impeach hoodies are half price!’ Freya called out.

      They left without a second glance.

      She should’ve moved to the shop opposite the Amy Winehouse statue when she’d had the chance. The rent was astronomical, but the footfall would’ve had her back in the black in no time.

      She stared at her empty shop, then dropped her head into her hands and moaned as another ‘where is …?’ text popped through from Monty.

      One week. It was all she was asking for. One week without being responsible for anything other than enjoying her family. Lazing about by the seaside. Eating burnt sausages. Foraging for seafood suppers. Board games

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