The Hard Word

By John Clanchy

Vera. Miriam, Laura - one family, three generations - with Miriam at the centre, balancing the needs of her mother and daughter with those of her marriage and career.Vera is slipping into the darkness of Alzheimer's disease, while Laura is embroiled in teenage conflicts of identity and sexuality.In her professional life, Miriam is able to help others unlock the past through the simple power of words. So, what prevents her from doing it for those closest to her? And for herself...?The answer to this painful dilemma emerges not so much from within Miriam herself, but from the hard, raw experience of the migrant and refugee women she teaches. Their stories resonate with her own, and she finds herself sustained in her own crisis by their strength and laughter.In this sensitive exploration of memory, love and family, John Clanchy's writing reaches new levels of insight, while retaining its distinctive humour."Clanchy explores the big questions like love, death, betrayal and loss with a rare toughness and an even rarer insight...He is a highly accomplished writer."Mark Henshaw, ""Canberra Times""

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Release date: May 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9780702258848

Book preview

(1974-1998)

Miriam

‘Look what I’ve found,’ Philip says. When all I’d sent him to the laundry for was frozen peas.

‘See?’ he says again when I don’t turn.

‘Philip,’ I say, ‘I’m trying to get this roast in the oven. If it doesn’t go in this minute, it’ll be nine o’clock before we eat.’

Though this isn’t the reason I don’t turn. The reason I don’t turn is that I know whatever Philip has found that isn’t frozen peas will be just another of his childish, schoolboy jokes.

That I normally love.

But not now. Not today. Not right at this minute.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I can wait.’

And he does, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the laundry. I do not look at him, but he fills the corner of my gaze each time I move between the bench and the shelves, between the shelves and the stove. I lay the sprigs of rosemary across the pale dusted skin of the lamb, sprinkle the last of the oil, and then lift the tray into the oven.

‘There,’ I say, but still I don’t turn or raise my eyes. At the sink I peel the last resistant orange glue of flour and paprika from my fingers and look out into the yard. In the reflections of the glass, I try to guess what it is that Philip is holding. Without giving him the satisfaction of actually looking. Something white and solid projects from his chest. It bounces languidly up and down in his hand.

‘It’s melting,’ he warns.

I dry my hands, breathing. Before I look. I am not going to be surprised, I tell myself, whatever it is.

‘God, Philip –’ It’s Laura, my daughter, who’s surprised. Who’s come bursting into the kitchen and given me the chance to look. The stupid grin on Philip’s face is already falling away at one corner. ‘God,’ Laura says again, ‘what’s that?’

‘That,’ he says, ‘is what I hoped Miriam would tell me.’ Except that now, his tone says, half the fun’s gone out of it.

‘Weird,’ Laura says, crossing to him. ‘It looks like –’

Yes, it does, I’m thinking. It looks like a plaster model of a moonscape, white, sparkling with frost, and with two white conical hills rising from the narrow band of the plain. But it’s not a plaster model, of course. It’s a bra which Philip has found, snap-frozen, in the deep freeze.

‘Well, it’s not mine,’ Laura says, taking it from him. She lays the cast across her T-shirt, fitting the cones over her smaller breasts. She has to press her shoulders back to do this, squinting concentratedly down at herself as she does. ‘Oh, that’s cold,’ she laughs, and takes off the stiff breastplate. Two small conical hills, sparkling with ice, are left moulded in her T-shirt. ‘It must be a 38,’ she says, ‘a 36 at least, so it can’t be Mum’s.’ Bitch, I say to myself, as she turns it over looking for a label. ‘Where on earth did you find it?’

Philip, I notice, is no longer looking at the bra.

‘He found it in the deep freeze, of course,’ I say. And I hear the frost in my own voice.

‘The deep freeze?’

‘Why don’t you go and put some proper clothes on,’ I say. ‘If you’re so cold.’

‘I’m not cold,’ Laura says, and it’s her mouth now that is starting to turn down. ‘I never said I was cold,’ she says. In a moment, I know, she’ll be storming off to her room. But, just now, there’s something she finds more interesting. ‘What’s it doing there,’ she says, ‘in the deep freeze?’

And, of course, she knows as soon as she’s said it. And bites her lip.

‘Exactly,’ says Philip, remembering the point at last. But he’s starting to look foolish now, as Laura hands him back the bra. It’s beginning to sag with the heat of their handling.

‘Did you get out the peas?’ I ask him.

‘What?’

‘In all this fooling about, did you manage to get out the peas?’

‘Now come on, Miriam,’ he says. ‘Be fair. I wasn’t the one who put the thing in there.’

‘Nobody said you did.’

Laura says nothing. She begins to look as though she wished she had gone to her room.

‘I simply found it.’

‘All I asked you to do was get some peas from the freezer.’

‘Well, I started to,’ says Philip, who, right at this moment, is entirely unlovable. ‘And I found this.’

‘For Christ’s sake –’

‘For Christ’s sake, what? What am I supposed to do? Leave the thing there?’

Laura is frowning, fiddling now with the shuck of herb scraps and garlic skins left on the bench. I see her withdrawing.

All right, all right,’ I say then. ‘I admit it shouldn’t have been there. But it’s a simple enough mistake. It’s our own fault for keeping the freezer in the laundry.’

‘It’s our fault now?’

‘Philip … will you just put it in the laundry basket where it should be, and get out the peas? And Philip – please, darling, it’s been a long day – will you get me a drink? Sweetheart?’ I say, looking at him properly for the first time since he came in.

‘Okay,’ he grumbles. But lightening all the same, at the prospect of a drink for himself as well. ‘A gin?’ he says, still not softening entirely.

‘A gin at this moment just might save my life.’

‘Okay.’ He looks back over his shoulder at me as he stops by the laundry door. ‘I’ll get the washing machine started up, and mix you one.’

We look at each other.

‘You’ve got to admit, Mum,’ Laura says then. Quietly, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘It is pretty funny.’

‘I guess,’ I say and make the effort to smile as she and Philip burst into laughter. ‘I guess it is.’

Laura

Names, God. Just try explaining to people.

Philip is Trent, and Mum is Harcourt. She was Harcourt when she was young, before she married Dad, and now she’s Harcourt again even though she’s married to Philip now, who’s Trent. So, Katie, my little sister, is Trent-Harcourt. Mum would have wanted Harcourt-Trent because she’s the mother and the mother’s name should come first, but Harcourt-Trent gets mashed and garbled cos everyone runs the two t’s together and it comes out Hackit-rent or something, and then you spend the whole day explaining and spelling it to people, whereas with Trent-Harcourt you’ve at least got to stop for a gulp of air in the middle. So it’s Trent-Harcourt. But of course I’m still Vas-silopoulos, Laura Vassilopoulos, after my Dad. When Mum left Dad, she asked me if I wanted to change my name to Harcourt too – but I said no. I was only seven then, and I was frightened Dad might not be able to find me if Mum and me came back to Australia and my name was something different. Mum was upset, I know. She wanted to change everything then. But if that’s what I wanted, she said, then that was that. Besides, I could hardly be Harcourt-Vassilopoulos, she said. It wouldn’t fit on most of the forms for one thing. And school would be hopeless. Imagine telling other kids your name was Harcourt-Vassilopou-los. But Grandma Vera’s Harcourt. Mrs Vera Harcourt. Though she’s not Mrs any more, but she still calls herself that.

When she remembers.

People think you’re crazy when they ask your name and you go Laura Vassilopoulos, and after they’ve swallowed that, they say, Is this your sister, and you go, yeah, that’s Katie. Katie Vassilopou-los, they go, that’s nice, just to be polite and show they’ve been listening to you and are sophisticated and that, and can speak Greek when they can’t really speak a word of it, and that’s when you go, No, Katie Harcourt-Trent actually, and they go Hu-uh? People are such fakes.

Like Philip. Philip is such a fake. He’s always looking at other women, really perving when he pretends he’s just so interested in what they’re saying or if their kids are doing well at school, or whatever. Philip couldn’t care less if they’re doing well at school, he doesn’t even know their names, so long as he can look down their mother’s dress while he’s doing it or when they’re not looking. He thinks people don’t notice, or maybe they don’t. Like the time in the kitchen I put on Grandma Vera’s bra that she’d put in the deep freeze instead of the laundry basket. I did that deliberately just to stir him, just to show him what a hypocrite he was. But Mum can’t see it, she thinks he’s normal. I don’t know how she stands him. If someone did that to me –

Philip can be all right sometimes, though. Sometimes he stands up for me when Mum’s been doing her Heil Hitler act about my room or homework or piano practice or blah. And he can be funny when he takes people off. He went to this posh school and he had all these weird teachers that he can do – their accents and everything. Like the French teacher who was really an Austrian butler and wasn’t French at all, but he would line all the boys up in the corridor outside the classroom, and they’d have to come up to him, one at a time, and bow and say, Bonjour, Monsieur Rifka , and he’d say, ‘Bonjour, mon enfant, and bow back, and then they’d go into the classroom and run to the back and get out the window and race around and get on the end of the line again. Some days, Philip says, it took twenty minutes to get them all in the room at once and half the lesson was over by then. Philip can be very funny when he does that, the boys bowing and Mr Rifka bowing back. But somehow he makes you sad for Mr Rifka as well as laughing at him. And one day apparently the headmaster came past when there was a lot of noise and fooling about, and Philip was in the front row and he heard the headmaster whispering to Mr Rifka, ‘For God sake, man, get a grip on things, can’t you. The inspectors will be here in a week. Aren’t you worried about the inspectors?’, and Mr Rifka goes – Philip is really good at this, Mr Rifka is so calm, he’s not frightened of the headmaster at all – he goes, ‘Inspectors? No,’ he says, as slow as anything, as if he’s been asked the date or his name or something, ‘for I haf been interrogated by the Nazis.’

Toni – she’s my best friend – she thinks Philip is gorgeous, especially when he’s telling a story. She thinks he’s such a spunk. What, Philip? I say. Yeech, no thanks –

I only remember a few words of Greek, like efhareesto for thank you, or avgho for egg, or yiayia for grandma, though I could remember more if I really tried. Like yeea sas for hello or poss eesteh for how are you, and andeeo for goodbye. For my eighth and ninth birthdays, my father sent me cards and a present, but then he stopped. My mother said she heard he got married again and opened a garage in the village and she hopes he’s happy now. And I think she means it, but you can never tell with parents. Sometimes I tell her I mean to go back there and see him and live there for a while, but I don’t know if I do really. Or if I just say it to stir her. To see the look on her face when I say it.

Miriam

‘What does it look like!’ I say, as contemptuously as I can. ‘What does it look like!’

‘What does it look … What does it look like?’ they say, straggling after me in a ragged, sheep-like chorus.

‘What does it look like!’ I say again. And this time I feel my lip actually curl, and they laugh – in shock, hands flying to their mouths. They are not sure this is how we should be behaving.

Us women.

There are fifteen of us in the class, fourteen of them – the four in the front row from Asia and the Middle East, Farida from Afghanistan, Hafize from Turkey, Njala and Samia from Lebanon, all strong women, scarved, vocal, mother-hipped, and beside them, darkest of all, Eleni from Greece, then Maria, their counterweight, from Chile, who sits immediately behind them, her powerful voice and forearms sometimes propelling the entire boat of the class forward, then Renuka, the Sri Lankan, and Shamila, from India, her sari not red today as it normally is but a dense golden wattle, and perched all around them – never in the same order but fluttering from one seat to the next even in the course of a class – six brightly painted miniature birds, six tiny creatures, from Vietnam, from Laos, two miniscule Cambodian girls, shy to the point of extinction, and – most surprising of all in a class of migrants and refugees like this – Yuriko, weightless, from Japan, the skin and flesh of her arms so transparently white that bone and green vein are laid out glowing for all to see as if she was radioactive. And then, of course, there is me, their teacher, their guru, sensei, maestra, profesora, mudarrisa. Trying to solicit a single common note from this unruly, polyphonous choir.

‘What …’ they ask, singly, overlapping, their unpractised voices flying. ‘What does it look like … ?’

‘It’s not really a question,’ I tell them. ‘It’s not asking for information, or even a response. If you pass a man in the street on a hot day and he is fixing his car, and you ask him what he is doing, and he says, ‘‘What does it look like!’’, he is not asking you to describe a man fixing his car.’

They look at me, then laugh.

‘Do you understand?’

We are practising the idioms they’ll meet on the streets – not just reading them or analysing their structure, but using them, acting them out, trying to get inside the feeling, the intention of the words. It’s the session where we have most fun. Like now, with Maria, the market woman from Chile, up on her feet. Legs spread, arms akimbo on thick hips, black eyes flashing. She whirls on Yuriko, diminutive, white-face, eyes black too, and filling now with apprehension.

‘What,’ Maria spits at her, ‘does it look like!’

There is a momentary hush, and then a burst of laughter and clapping.

‘This Maria,’ they say.

Yuriko reddens, then smiles, the blood swimming beneath her white skin. A hand goes up again to cover her mouth.

‘Bravo, Maria,’ I say. ‘Now, Yuriko, try saying it back to her. Let’s pretend Maria has just asked you whether you’re upset by her comment. What could you say back to her? Go on, try it.’

‘What …’ Yuriko whispers into the already whispering silence. ‘What does it rook rike?’

This time there is a sigh, as soft as Yuriko’s own voice. Then: ‘Ll-ook,’ they say along with her. ‘Ll-ook. What does it lll-ook lll-ike …’

‘Lll-ook,’ Yuriko repeats, and they nod and smile together.

Towards the end of the class, when we are all exhausted and headachy with these drills, we listen to a story together. Not from a book, but their stories – and mine. They have asked me for mine. This is something I will have to think about. Each week one or perhaps two of them, depending on time, read out the story they have written.

In the beginning, all the stories were short, perfunctory – usually something about a member of their family, their lives at home – but, as we have got to trust one another, they have grown more elaborate, more intimate. The English of these stories is nearly perfect. Between classes, the students work alongside an individual tutor, a TESOL trainee from the local university, who collaborates on their story, helps turn it into grammatical, idiomatic English. The stories become models for their own practice – for reading, for pronunciation, for writing. They fall in love with the English of their stories. They read them over and over until they know them by heart. Some even copy them into specially bound books, keep them under cellophane like photos in a family album.

Today there is time for only one story.

Maria’s.

‘For fifteen months …’ she begins, and looking up for one long moment, fixes us in our seats with her long, black gaze. ‘I was disappeared …’

‘Disappeared?’ someone whispers, but Maria ignores it.

‘This was 1973, and the junta had just taken control. They had murdered Allende by then, they had bombed La Moneda. All those months my family did not know what is happening to me …’

‘What had happened to me,’ I say.

‘Pardon,’ she says. ‘They did not know what had happened to me … Whether I was dead or just disappeared. They did not know I was involved, they did not even know about Raul. When the soldados arrested me on the street one night after curfew, all I could think was I must not betray Raul. But I was frightened. How could I keep it hidden from them? When I had heard what they did to people. By that time I already knew I was pregnant.

‘I was driven in a truck to the National Stadium, taken to the cells under the ground there. The corridors were dark and full of bodies, some of them were still moving. I was dragged along the corridor by my hair, all the time being hit in the back and on the legs with a rifle butt. I tried to step over the bodies, but I could not see. I stood on one man, I wanted to say sorry. I must have made some sound, he turned his face up at me. His lips had been torn off. I was thrown into a cell. It was large, there were men in the shadows, three, four. A cloth-bag was put over my head. Each time I reached up to take it off, I was beaten on the arms and hands. Still none of the men had spoken until one of them told me to take my clothes off. ‘‘All,’’ he said. ‘‘Hurry,’’ he shouted, ‘‘or we’ll do it for you.’’ In a few minutes I was naked. Before these men. Then they began to shout, all together, questions, curses. They began to beat me, on the head, shoulders, breasts. I kept my arm locked here, over my belly, it was all I could think of doing. I must protect the child, I kept saying over and over in my mind. I must protect the child.

‘After the shouting and the beating and when I still said nothing, I was strapped down to a table and electrical wires were put on my breasts, into my vagina. I did not believe such pain could exist. I must have screamed. They stopped and asked me again. And again I said no – it was the only word I could speak, remember. This went on and on. A day, a night. Another day. And then, when I had fainted again, they left. And I could hear the screaming from the cell next door, and for a moment I thought it was still myself. Still me screaming. When I realized it wasn’t, I was glad. I had no feeling for the other person. All I knew was that if they were screaming, I was not. When they came back, they took the wires off me, and then they abused me, one after the other. I could feel their hatred, their fear, with every thrust. How they hated us. The sweat and stink of their hatred I will never forget. At one point the bag slipped upwards, and I saw one of their faces. It was someone I knew, a young man, a soldier from one of the barrios near the market where my father had his stall. I had even spoken to him sometimes, said good morning. Now his face, above me, was filled with such hatred, such fear. He spat in my face, ripped the cloth-bag down over it again. Even now, today, I mark his name, that young man, I mark his face. He finished with me, and I knew I was bleeding. He must have noticed as well. ‘‘Pig whore,’’ he hissed in my ear. ‘‘Pig whore. You know what we do now?’’ he asked. ‘‘You know what we do with this?’’ Something scraped over the bag on my face, and I knew it was a knife. "We open you up so you menstruate every day of your life.’’ I knew then I would live at least, but I knew the child would already be dead.’

Ohh –

‘But it was not. I was left in the cell, still naked, for two days with only water. I think they must have forgotten me, for when they came next time, it was a different voice I heard, and they sent for a doctor. I was given clothes, a smock. ‘‘Doctor,’’ I whispered when he came, ‘‘what of the child?’’ Somehow I knew Raul was dead. That is why they had left me alone. ‘‘Perhaps,’’ the doctor said.

‘I was sent to a woman’s prison north of the city. This was Santiago I am writing about now. I was in a dormitory with fourteen other women, and they saved me. They were beaten bad as I was –’

‘As badly,’ I remember to say. From a dry mouth.

‘Pardon. As badly as I was. But after two months, when I began to show, they forgot their own pain. They nursed me, gave me extra food. They saved my life, the child’s. ‘‘Do not hate,’’ they said, ‘‘you must not hate. The child is yours, not theirs.’’ They did not know about Raul. I did not tell them. It was the safest thing. ‘‘The child is yours,’’ they kept telling me over and over, ‘‘yours, not theirs. Not the Fascists’. It is your child, not theirs.’’

‘When the baby was born, we called her Esperanza, for hope. And the cell, even in winter when it was so cold the water froze in the bowls, became a happy place. Even one or two of the guards – the hardest women – found they could not keep up their hatred, their fear of us. They would smuggle hot water through the corridors to us and each morning as the light came up, before the cells were inspected, we would rise with it and all together bathe the child, dry her, wrap her in the few rags we had, pass her between us. Hold her up above our heads so the light from the window reached her face. Esperanza.

‘Eso es todo, that is all,’ Maria said. ‘That is my story.’

‘Is there … is there anyone who … would like to ask Maria a question?’

‘Why?’ said Shamila.

‘Why?’ Maria repeated after her. ‘Why what?’

‘Why are you here? Where is Esperanza? Where are your grandchildren?’

‘Esperanza went to a convent school,’ Maria said. ‘It is the best I could send her. When she is nineteen …’

‘Was nineteen, Maria.’

‘When she was nineteen, she tells me …’

‘Told me.’

‘She told me she has met a man. Who is this man? I ask her. She is vague. I find out. He is the nephew of one of the generals.’

‘Ohh –’

‘I leave Chile the day before her wedding. I live here in Australia now.’

‘Ahh.’

‘This Maria,’ they said. And sat, for a moment, breathing, before one of them remembered and they began to clap.

Grandma Vera

Prick Philip. The Greek. Well, he is a prick. The Duke of Something Something. Horse prick. Those head things. My God, busbies. Now, how did I ever remember that?

‘Busbies,’ I say to Miriam, who is unpacking the tin things on the kitchen thing. ‘Busbies,’ I say again. ‘Busbies.’

‘Hmm? Busbies?’ says Miriam. She’s not looking at me. She’s reading the label on one of the things. ‘No, not busbies, Mother.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ I tell her anyway.

‘Busbies are … well, they’re kind of hats, head coverings … you know, like the Queen’s guards wear. What do they call them, the Grenadiers, or something. Or the Horse Guards.’

‘Prick Philip,’ I say.

‘Mother, please.’

Well, he is a prick, I think to myself.

‘Little people,’ Miriam says, ‘have big ears.’ She means Katie. Katie is six. We were reading, Katie and me, when Miriam came back from the shops, carbolishing everything. ‘And Philip’s not Greek,’ Miriam says. ‘You know that.’

‘Katie is six,’ I tell her.

‘Yes, Mother, Katie is six. That’s quite true,’ she says, and sighs.

‘Six.’

‘Don’t keep saying that, Mother.’ She’s banging the lids on the boardcup now as she puts the lid things away.

‘So … ?’ she starts to say, and stops. She’s angry, she’s red with me. ‘What have you two been up to while I’ve been shopping?’

‘We were reading,’ Katie says.

Katie’s six. Six.

‘Reading? That’s good,’ Miriam says. ‘What were you reading?’

‘Well,’ Katie says, ‘first we were reading my new picture book …’

‘The horse one?’

‘Yes.’

Six.

‘But now Grandma Vera is just started …’

‘Has just started,’ Miriam says.

‘Has just started reading me about Alice and the Queen of Hearts.’

‘Really?’ says Miriam. She comes to the the the … place in the wall and looks at us. ‘And what was it about?’

‘Well,’ Katie says, ‘the Queen, you know the Queen? Well, she made some tarts, and … here, Grandma Vera,’ Katie says, as she puts the the the … thing with words in my lap. ‘Read it out for Mum. Read out the poem. Here,’ she points, and I start to read.

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,

All on a summer day.

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts

And took them quite away!

‘That’s wonderful,’ says Miriam, standing at the place in the wall. Just for one moment I think she has tears in her eyes. She is shaking her head. ‘That’s just wonderful.’

‘What’s a knave, Grandma?’ Katie says.

‘Knave?’ I say.

‘In the poem.’

‘Well, he is a prick,’ I say to Miriam. ‘Always was.’

‘A prick?’ says Katie. ‘Prrr-ick.’

Miriam is taking out the lid things again. Banging them on the cupdork. She has her back to us.

‘Prr-ickk!’ says Katie.

Miriam

I never know how much Mother really understands, and how much is pure malice. Some of it’s malice, I’m sure. This absurd charade she goes on with about Philip being Greek, about his wanting to send her away, lock her up in a home. Unless she really does think Philip is Stavros. But how could she? They couldn’t be more different. Stavros is huge, muscled, a body builder – or he was then – tanned, dark, slow, and Philip is small – my size – slim, fair, bookish, verbally quick. They’re nothing like one another.

No, it’s malice, that part of it. It has to be. She wants to see just how far she can push me.

She wants, Dr Lazenby says, constant reassurance. She wants to hear that you love her. No matter what. So, why can’t I tell her that – that I love her? Why can’t I say something as simple as that? Katie and Laura can say it, even Philip. Well, almost. Philip says, ‘But, Mother, we love having you here,’ when she accuses him of wanting to send her away. To put her in a home. But it’s me she’s waiting to hear it from. God knows, I used to be able to say it. Once.

Can I go shopping with you?

Do you love Mother?

Yes.

Say it.

I love you, Mother.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Can we see Santa? Can we talk to Santa?

Do you love Mother? …

I can’t take her shopping anymore, I can’t risk it. Or not shopping where I can’t be watching her every moment. It’s not just that she wanders. It’s not just the eggs for pegs, the buttons for bacon, the peanuts for pasta that go flying willy-nilly into the trolley and mean that every aisle in the supermarket has to be visited twice. It’s not even her habit, when her mind clears – as it does, unpredictably – of showing how hard she is trying, and how triumphant she feels when the clouds part and she can get a grip on something she recognizes, some simple, domestic reality. I know she’s desperate with panic at such moments, but so am I. Like when she stands in front of the freezer shelves in the supermarket and shouts:

‘Milk!’

I can hardly pretend I’m not with her.

‘Milk, Miriam.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I say. Projecting my voice, calmly, across three aisles.

‘Mi-lk.’

‘Yes, Mother, it’s milk. We don’t need any more milk at the moment, Mother.’

‘Milk!’

‘Can you move on now, please, Mother? You’re blocking the way.’

‘Milkkk.’

‘People are trying to get to the –’

‘Milk.’

None of this bothers me, really. None of these small public humiliations. People understand. They smile at me, shrug, skirt around us. It’s more the effect on Katie that’s the problem. Not that Katie’s innocent. If anything, she encourages Mother …

‘Is that all?’ the boy on the checkout says. He’s bored, he’s watching a girl on the fruit-stall as he bip passes bip the last of the items in front of the coding machine.

‘Hmmm?’ I say back, trying to think cash or card. It’s Friday, the end of the week, and it’s been a long afternoon of classes. I can hear Katie and Mother giggling together somewhere behind me. ‘I’ll pay by card,’ I say to the boy.

‘Is that all?’ he says again in a different voice, and I look quickly at