Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles by Sabine Durrant Page A

spy on me, and that was a bit embarrassing. She’d had her beehive newly done. ‘I hope you’re behaving yourself, young lady,’ she said, and I wanted to duck under the counter. (She’s Jack’s mum, so she’s not actually my grandmother, but she treats me as if she is.) Later there was a whole surge of underage boys hulking over the mint-flavoured condoms, which I found rather challenging. Otherwise it was mainly shampoo and toothpaste and old dears and their prescriptions. During one lull John asked me to give the door a little wipe down and the AID NOT BOMBS poster fell off. We had a proper conversation then. I told him our school was planning a march and he said good for us. He said he thinks it’s great that young people are aware of the world outside and engage with it. Think globally, act locally. He said the government should listen to its people, that if the kids are shaking off their apathy to campaign against this war – it might be in a far-off place, but it impacts morally on all of us – it should tell them something important about the strength of feeling in the country as a whole.
    I nodded a lot and resolved then and there to shake off my own apathy. And to find out more about the war. (Note to self: WATCH NEWS.)
    He isn’t as scary as you think. He listens to you when you talk and gives a succession of thoughtful little nods when you’ve finished. His eyes are so dark they are almost black. Maybe he has Italian blood: I should ask him. I wonder if he ever got our/Mother’s valentine card. I sneaked a look under the till, but it wasn’t there. He must have taken it home.
    He paid me in cash and I gave it straight to Mother when I came in. She was very sweet and wouldn’t take it. I wouldn’t keep it, so we had a little spat. In the end, she put it in the empty biscuit jar on the shelf in the kitchen. Sort of no-man’s-land. She said she hopes I won’t end up a simple shop girl like her. I gave her a hug and told her she’s much more than a simple shop girl. She’s a lingerie artiste.
    10.30 p.m.
    I broke off the above because actual, not imminent, war seemed to be breaking out somewhere below me in our house. Screaming, shouting, thumping: all hell, etc. I rushed downstairs to find Marie having a major strop in the front room. She was clinging on to Mother’s waist, her face contorted, screaming, ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.’ She was wearing a glittery tiara and a pink nylon party dress. A princess, only a demonic one.
    Jack was sitting on the sofa and Bert was standing in the doorway looking panicked. Cyril was in the middle of them all, watching TV as if nothing was happening.
    Mother was trying to extricate Marie’s fingers while cooing, ‘ Chérie, chérie… Bert just needs his lesson. I will not be late. Papa is here.’
    ‘I’m here,’ said Jack. ‘Come on, sweetie, come to Daddy.’
    Bert said, ‘Right, well. Better be off, hadn’t we?’
    Marie started screaming again. ‘I want to come. I want to come. It’s NOT FAIR. You’re always leaving me. Every night, you’re leaving me.’
    Mother sat down on the floor. I could tell Marie had won then. So could Marie. She started whimpering. ‘Can’t we come, Mama? Can’t we all come?’
    Mother looked at Bert. Bert tried to look away. But failed. He looked nervous.
    ‘We’re just going for a Chinese,’ Mother said. ‘You don’t like Chinese.’
    Marie scrambled to her feet. ‘I do. I do. I love it.’
    So we all went. I don’t know quite how it happened. But it did. Mother, Uncle Bert, Jack, Cyril, Marie and moi . We all went to Uncle Bert’s favourite Chinese restaurant to thank Mother for the week of French lessons. We went in Jack’s van because it could fit us, so now we all smell of fish. Poor Jack. I noticed he ended up paying too.
    It was perfectly pleasant. It wasn’t Uncle Bert’s fault that our food took so long in coming that Marie – who’d been overtired all along; am I the only person