Spilt Milk, Black Coffee by Helen Cross

Author:Helen Cross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hewer Text UK Ltd
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2010-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Ashfaq

‘Jackie?’ I say to Amir, curling my lip like I’ve never heard of her. ‘Who the hell’s Jackie?’

Halima says that if we mention this woman too much it will encourage Amir, but he is already encouraged, and now the little prick just ignores my question and pansies around putting on his tight leather jacket, tying the white laces of his expensive polished shoes, and combing his girly rock-star hair. No surprises. I’ve seen all this coming. ‘I’ll be back late. Don’t wait up,’ he says now. Like I am his spluttery old father and he is some international fucking playboy.

I stand up. ‘Just turn to Allah, no one can shoulder this shit alone,’ I say.

‘I’m going to meet my friends,’ he says like a little girl, so for a moment I smile at him.

‘Don’t go,’ I say. ‘To that tart.’

He frowns and, as he does so, for a second he reminds me of our pa. That picture in my wallet of Pa beside the net of red and blue footballs he hung up outside the front of AP News. Blokes round here remember those footballs, it’s part of their childhood memories, just like they have recollections of our pa wearing that bran-brown cotton overall, same every day. A blue biro in the top left-hand pocket – which he’d use to write down every sale, always on a small, lined pad of paper – the amount paid carefully detailed next to the item, even when it might be only one Kit-Kat and a roll of bog paper. There was nothing you couldn’t get at AP News. Pa took great pride in stacking the shop right up along every wall, tight to the ceiling. That old wooden stepladder to get up to the top shelves. That long-handled pole, with the brass hook for poking high boxes down. Remember how he’d whack you with that pole if you were going bad, or spoke to him rude. That original mahogany counter, glass-topped, polished each morning with a soft yellow cloth. In there, in a wooden drawer, the finest chocolate bars and the boxed sweets. Tinkly silver foil, glossy paper wrappers, proper firm cardboard boxes. Pa slides out the chocolates drawer carefully, like a top jeweller, lifting it up on to the counter so the customer could consider the selection close-up.

All gone that. Nowadays our local kids are so big and fat, both theirs and ours, lads and lasses, they stuff their hands in the chocolate mega dumpers and are buying five bars at a time. Eat most stuff while they are still waiting to pay. Drop the litter before they are even out the door and now Amir is standing before me nattering to Wahida about where they are meeting and who’s coming along and how they might go for a meal, or might just stay in the bars because it all depends if Jackie has a babysitter arranged or not, because this is one of the weekends Jackie has access to her daughter.

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