Nothing to See by Pip Adam

Author:Pip Adam [Adam, Pip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

20

Duncan sent an email inviting everyone to a party for Guy Fawkes. They were both invited. Peggy and Greta only had one work email, but he made it clear they were both invited. ‘Both come,’ he wrote. The party would be at the call centre. There was a barbecue they set up in the car park sometimes and Duncan shouted some beers and people would bring more. Greta and Peggy would bring salads and bread, and sometimes vegetarian sausages but that was always tricky. ‘If you don’t want to eat meat,’ Niall would say, ‘why eat vegetarian sausages?’ So they didn’t bring sausages often. Just salads and bread.

Greta arrived about five-thirty with a couple of plastic bags full of bowls that clinked together. She walked over to Peggy who was standing beside the trestle table they’d set up in the shade next to the barbecue. They put the salads on the table and undid the Gladwrap. Greta took her backpack off and took out the bread they’d made, which was wrapped in a tea towel. Peggy had mixed and kneaded it lightly the night before, leaving Greta to turn it out, prove it and bake it. Peggy dug into the backpack Greta had brought and pulled out a chopping board and a knife. Duncan had some sliced white bread to wrap the sausages in and Peggy and Greta looked at each other as they realised maybe the bread was too much. Greta said to Duncan, ‘Sorry, maybe the bread is a bit much.’

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You can never have too much bread,’ and everyone nodded and made agreeing noises.

Peggy grabbed a Pump bottle out of the bottom of the backpack and drank long from it.

‘There’s Coke,’ Niall said, pointing towards the drinks table with the hand holding his beer.

‘All good, thanks.’ Peggy pushed the pop-up top of the bottle down with the palm of her hand. ‘How was today?’ she asked no one in particular.

Niall shrugged.

‘It was okay.’ Billy took a drink from the bottle of beer he was holding.

‘The system’s playing up,’ Greta said, grabbing a glass from the table as she talked. ‘I think it’s slower than it should be.’ She wasn’t really talking to Peggy and she put her hand out for the Pump bottle and Peggy pulled the top up and passed the bottle to her without looking. Neither of them looked. The others looked, though. Not noticeably but Duncan noticed it. It sent the tiniest ripple through the group. Greta and Peggy didn’t pick it up or they picked it up and thought it wasn’t about them. They were okay together, like this, with the people from work. Everyone could assimilate it, like when someone gets a new haircut, or they push their hair behind their ear, and you remember they have a helix piercing.

‘When’s the new system coming?’ Greta poured water from the bottle into her glass and handed the bottle back to Peggy again without looking or acknowledging the movement.

‘No shop talk,’ Duncan shouted, looking at the barbecue, turning over sausages.

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