It is twenty to seven and I am in the big supermarket, in the aisle with the eggs, holding a basket with a pizza in it and nothing else.
A woman with a trolley stops beside me. “Excuse me,” she says. “Where have you moved the gravy?”
I look down. I am still wearing it.
What it looks like
Council lanyards are a particular green. It is close to the green of this supermarket, which I had not noticed until now. I am also in a dark cardigan and flat shoes, and I have the face of somebody who is at work.
I could say that I do not work here. That is true, and it would take a moment, and she would be embarrassed.
“Aisle nine,” I say. “By the stuffing.”
I have no idea whether that is right. She thanks me and goes.
Why I had not taken it off
Because I never do, until I am through my own front door. It is not a rule. Nobody taught it to me.
It started as forgetting. Then one evening I took it off in the car, outside a house I had just come out of, and it felt too soon. As though I had stopped being the person who had been in that kitchen before I had written down what happened in it.
So now it stays on until the notes are done. Tonight they are not done. They are in my bag, under the pizza, in handwriting I will not be able to read tomorrow unless I type them up tonight.
The second customer
He is about nineteen and he is wearing the real uniform. He has seen the whole thing.
“It’s aisle twelve,” he says. “Gravy.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re all right. Happens with the hospital lot as well.” He looks at the badge, which has turned round to show the side with the out-of-hours number on it. “Is it hard? What you do?”
I think about it properly, because he asked properly.
“Some of it,” I say. “A lot of it is typing.”
“Same,” he says, and holds up the thing he scans the shelves with.
At the till
The woman with the trolley is in the next queue. She has found the gravy, and she holds it up so that I can see.
I take the lanyard off and put it in my coat pocket, which is what I should have done in the car park.
Then I go home and type up the notes. It takes an hour and ten minutes. I had put the pizza in before I started.
This is a scene, and it is made up, like the book. Nobody in it is a real person.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: The fire drill