by Rosie Harris
‘True, but people do need advice from time to time,’ Cindy pointed out. ‘You’ve still not been in there, have you?’
‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head.
‘Come on, let’s go and have a walk round the place now, then you can tell me if you think it’s a good idea for me to work there or not.’
Rebecca hesitated for a brief second, wondering what her mother would say when she found out. She was bound to hear, because someone would tell her. Then she remembered that this time next week she would be miles away from Shelston and how much she had always wanted to go in there. She nodded. ‘OK let’s do that.’
‘We’d better take Moses home first,’ Cindy told her as she picked him up in her arms. ‘I’m not sure they would let him in,’ she added with a giggle.
Seven
Shelston supermarket was in the centre of the High Street. At one time many years ago it had been a hut used by the Women’s Institute and the Brownies and Cubs for their weekly meetings. It had been a dark, gloomy place and in time came to be considered unsafe, so they’d moved into another building at the other end of the High Street.
After that, the building had more or less fallen into disrepair and had become such an eyesore that the parish council had jumped at the opportunity of selling it very cheaply to Mr Greenslade, who had run a grocery store there until he died.
From the outside it now looked quite modern, with a large plate-glass window decorated with colourful images of fruit and vegetables and a wine glass filled with golden liquid. This design completely obliterated what was inside the building, so Rebecca had no idea what she was going to see inside.
When they did go in, the interior took her breath away. She could hardly believe her eyes. Shelves ran the full length of the building and they were all packed with goods.
As they went in, Cindy picked up a wire basket from a stack just inside the door. ‘We may as well look as though we are customers,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there is something I will buy either for Mum or for myself.’
The two girls wandered round the store, stopping every now and again to look at some special offer or other. Cindy bought some make-up and a new comb and they stood looking at all the other items available, discussing them with interest.
Rebecca was amazed not only by the size of the store and its long aisles of shelves but by the wide variety of items that were stocked. There seemed to be everything from washing powder to cream cakes, from drinks to socks, bags of firewood to crockery.
They were so engrossed that they didn’t notice the tall dark-haired man in his early thirties dressed in a smart dark suit and crisp white shirt approach until he spoke to them.
‘Well, ladies, have you found everything you need? If there’s something you can’t find or we don’t stock, let us know and I will do my best to get it for you.’ He held out a hand. ‘I’m the manager, Bruno Lopez.’
‘You seem to stock absolutely everything,’ Cindy told him with a winning smile. ‘There’s no need to go outside the village for anything except things like clothes and shoes.’
He nodded and smiled. ‘I’m glad you approve.’ He studied the two girls with interest: Rebecca with her honey-coloured hair contrasting with Cindy’s dark hair and flashing dark eyes. They were both wearing jeans and short sleeved T-shirts.
‘You two young ladies live in the village?’ Bruno asked as he ran an experienced eye over the purchases in the wire basket.
‘Oh, yes,’ Cindy told him. ‘We do at the moment. We’ve just finished school for good. Rebecca is going on to university next week.’
‘Really? And what are you planning to do?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Cindy said quickly, ‘I was wondering if you had any openings for an assistant here. I’m very keen on fashion and I know a lot about make-up and—’
‘We do not have product advisors, I’m afraid,’ Bruno Lopez interrupted. ‘The whole idea of a supermarket is that customers select items themselves.’
‘Surely there are times when they need help and advice, especially when it comes to hair and beauty products?’ Cindy said, affecting surprise.
Bruno ignored her comment. ‘I do have an opening for an assistant on the checkout. Perhaps something like that would appeal to you?’
Cindy hesitated for barely a second before saying with a smile, ‘Possibly. I would like to try it out. When can I start?’
He laughed good-naturedly. ‘You are very eager. Have you done that sort of work before? Do you have you any references to show me?’
‘No.’ Cindy shook her head. ‘I only left high school a few weeks ago. This would be my first job, but I’m a quick learner.’
Bruno studied Cindy for a long moment before asking, ‘How old are you?’
‘I was eighteen in May,’ Cindy stated, her cheeks flushing.
Bruno nodded thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps if I give you a week’s trial from next Monday. What do you say?’
‘Great!’ Cindy nodded enthusiastically.
‘We open at eight. Be here ten minutes before that. Come to the side door, I’ll be expecting you.’
The two girls said nothing about his offer until after Cindy had paid for her purchases and they were outside and on their way back to the farm. Then they both began discussing what had just happened.
‘What on earth is your mum going to say when you tell her?’ Rebecca asked.
‘I’m not going to tell her. He might say I’m no good.’
‘What if she comes into the supermarket and sees you working there?’
Cindy shrugged and flicked back her hair. ‘That’s a chance I’ll have to take.’
‘What are you going to say you are doing on Monday?’
‘I shall tell her I’m going out for the day with you,’ Cindy said firmly.
‘You can’t say that. I will have gone to university by then.’
‘She won’t remember which day you’re going,’ Cindy said confidently.
‘What if Jake or someone else sees you in the village and you’re not with me?’ Rebecca persisted.’
‘I’ll have to take that chance. If I get the job then it won’t matter, they’ll all be too surprised to remember where I said I was going. If I don’t get it, then I won’t have to say anything unless someone sees me working at the till – and then I’ll just have to make some excuse or other about how I happened to be there. Don’t worry, I can handle it.’
‘Do you really want to work there?’ Rebecca mused. ‘Sitting at a till all day ringing up what people have bought sounds pretty tedious.’
‘It’ll mean I’m earning money and because I will be living at home and have no fares to pay I’ll be able to save almost every penny of my wages. In next to no time I’ll have enough saved up to move out, and it will also give me time to find the sort of work I want to do.’
‘You mean in the fashion trade?’
‘Either that or modelling or acting, or something of that sort.’
‘You’ll have to train for that sort of work.’
‘I know. But I’ll get a chance to study magazines and stuff if I’m working at the supermarket. And who knows, Bruno may know of an opening or the best way of going about it?’
‘Cindy! You can’t ask him something like that. He’s going to be your boss. If he tells you how to get another job, then you’re going to leave after he’s trained you and he won’t want that to happen.’
‘Trained me? There’s no training to be done. Anyone can pass goods over a sensor and ring up the till and take the money. The tills in there even tell the assistant how much change to give. I can do it with my eyes shut.’
As they said goodbye to Rebecca that evening, knowing she was due to leave for university in the morning, both Jake and Cindy said they were sorry she was going away and that they would miss her.
‘I’ll be home in December,’ she reminded them, ‘and we’ll all have plenty to talk about and I’ll be able to tell you all about my new life.’
‘Aren
’t we going to write to each other?’ Cindy asked in surprise.
‘We’ll probably be so busy sorting ourselves out we won’t have time,’ Rebecca laughed.
‘I thought you would be anxious to have a regular report on Moses to make sure I was looking after him,’ Cindy told her after Jake had taken his leave as he was meeting up with friends.
‘Well, it would be nice, but will you have the time?’ Rebecca asked, raising her eyebrows questioningly.
‘I’ll make time, or else I’ll get Jake to email you. He’ll be happy to do so,’ she assured Rebecca. ‘One of us will drop you a line each week, and we hope you’ll find the time to email us as well.’
Rebecca did find time to email Cindy and Jake. As well as enquiring after Moses, she had so much to tell them about her new life that sometimes she had to make herself stop in case they didn’t have time to read it all.
Cardiff was a busy, bustling place, especially the university, which had a universal reputation for excellence. There were students there from all over the world, people of every colour and race. It was quite the largest city she had ever been in.
She also found that Cardiff was architecturally stunning and she spent a lot of time describing the wonderful civic buildings, including the City Hall and the museum, all built in gleaming Portland stone, grouped together near Cathays Park, almost opposite the university building.
‘A short way down the road,’ she wrote in one email to Cindy, ‘is Cardiff Castle. The keep of the old Norman castle stands on a mound and in front of it are buildings that have been added down the ages since the thirteenth century. Many of the ones in the newer part were built in the eighteenth century, and the lavish décor of the numerous chambers bears evidence of the gradual development of the great castle.
‘You must come and see Cardiff for yourself,’ she urged. ‘You really would love it, especially the maze of arcades that run from St Mary Street to Queen Street. They’re full of small shops stocking everything imaginable.
‘There are also some big department stores with fashion departments, where the clothes are wonderful. From time to time they have fashion shows, with live models parading on a catwalk displaying the clothes. It’s the sort of job you dream about, Cindy, and I know you would love to see these shows.
‘I love it here and feel really settled. I’m longing to showing you my room. It has a bed, a chair, a desk, a wardrobe, and some extra storage space. I even have my own bathroom – well, a shower with a washbasin and lavatory and plenty of shelves for toiletries. A lot better than Jake has when he goes camping!’ she added as an afterthought.
‘I share a kitchen with three other students, but it has worked out fine because one of the boys loves cooking and he’s very good at it. We let him cook whenever he wants to and the rest of us set the table and clear away and wash up afterwards.
‘So far I’ve not made any special friends, but I have been out with a couple of the girls. We went into town to look around the shops and we had coffee in a lovely little café in one of the arcades.
‘It’s all so very different from Shelston or anywhere we’ve ever visited. You must come and see it all for yourself. I’m really looking forward to you doing so, because I do miss you and keep wondering how you are getting on at the supermarket. Love, Rebecca.’
Eight
The group of women huddled together chattering volubly on the pavement outside the post office stopped talking as Rebecca approached and stared at her almost guiltily.
Embarrassed, she wondered if they had been talking about her and if so what they’d been saying. They were probably saying that it was high time she got a job now she’d turned eighteen, or else commenting on the way she dressed or how she wore her hair.
As she made to pass them, the oldest woman in the group – a thin, stooped, round-shouldered old woman with iron-grey hair pulled back from her wizened face in a tight bun – spoke to her.
‘Things round here have changed since you’ve been away at university, Rebecca Peterson. You should be careful about going round with a slut like Cindy Mason since you’re a decent girl. It’s as if you’re encouraging her in her bad ways.’
Rebecca froze. She stared in bewilderment at the old woman, whom she now recognized as Lizzie Smith.
‘Don’t put on that innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth look with me,’ the old woman sneered. ‘You and that pig of yours going for walks with her all cosied up together.’
‘Yes, old Lizzie’s right,’ one of the other women agreed, moving her heavy shopping bag from one arm to the other. ‘I’d have thought you could have got that Cindy Mason to mend her ways if anyone could.’
‘Cindy? What are you talking about? What’s Cindy Mason done to upset you?’ Rebecca asked nonplussed.
‘You mean you haven’t heard!’ the woman with the heavy shopping exclaimed incredulously.
‘With you being away from home for months at a time, I suppose it is possible that you haven’t heard,’ another woman commented.
‘Surely your mother has said something to you about the way Cindy Mason has been carrying on?’
‘Hasn’t Cindy told you herself? You two have always been as thick as thieves, whispering and giggling together from the first day you both started at school here.’
‘I’d say that you still are. I’ve seen the pair of you out walking that great pig of yours in the evenings whenever you are back here,’ another woman intervened.
The babble of comments buzzed around Rebecca’s head like a swarm of bees. She tried to listen to what they were saying, but they were all talking over each other so she couldn’t make sense of any of it.
‘Perhaps one of us ought to tell you what’s going on,’ one of the women declared. ‘In my opinion it is only right that you should know.’
‘Yes, I agree with that,’ said a plump middle-aged woman Rebecca recognized as Mary Roberts, who at one time had been their cleaner at Woodside. ‘After all, ’tis only right you should know the sort of company you’re going around with these days.’
‘Yes, I think that might be a good idea, as I certainly don’t know what you’re all going on about,’ Rebecca told them sharply.
‘Go on, Lizzie, you tell her,’ several of the women said in unison. ‘You know more about it than most of us.’
The old woman clamped her lips together tightly as if to indicate that she was reluctant to disclose the gossip. As she took a deep breath and then began to speak, Rebecca noticed there was a note of relish in the old woman’s voice.
‘Cindy Mason is no better than she should be,’ Lizzie Smith stated firmly. ‘She’s carrying on with a married man, a respectable local man at that, and doing it behind his wife’s back.’
‘I don’t agree with you, his wife must have an inkling of what’s going on,’ a voice interrupted. ‘I know I’d want to know where my old man was off to if he dressed up and went out every night and didn’t tell me where he was going.’
‘Well, if she does know that he’s cheating on her, then she seems to be turning a blind eye to the state of affairs,’ added another.
‘Whether she does or doesn’t know, it’s all going to end in tears, you mark my words. That sort of carrying on always does.’
‘Yes, and it won’t only be tears for Cindy Mason herself either. There’s her family to think about as well as his,’ Lizzie said ominously.
There were murmurs of agreement from the other women at Lizzie’s words.
‘So who is this man?’ Rebecca asked, looking around the group.
No one spoke, but Rebecca noticed how they exchanged looks with each other, some of them raising their eyebrows. But none of them seemed to be prepared to speak out.
‘Come on, Lizzie, you know so much I’m sure you know who he is,’ Rebecca persisted impatiently.
‘Oh, I do and so do most of us standing here. But ’tis not for us to say, is it? That Cindy knows, the bloke knows, and it’s my betting so does his wife.’
�
��It’s a crying shame to entice a strong upstanding middle-aged man like that off the straight and narrow,’ Mary Roberts commented.
‘If he’s as good a character as you claim he is, then he is as much in the wrong as Cindy,’ Rebecca declared, flying to the defence of her friend.
She tried to think who the man might be, but from the limited description given by Lizzie and her cronies he could be any one of a dozen living in Shelston. It could be anyone, from the parson or schoolteacher to the postman or the retired major living in the big house on the hill outside the village. Obviously, whoever he was, they were afraid to mention his name.
‘Perhaps you could have a word with that Cindy Mason and tell her how wrong it is to break up a family like she’s doing,’ one of the women appealed to Rebecca.
Rebecca shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do that, not on the little you’ve told me, could I? I’m not even sure there’s any truth in your gossip, anyway,’ she said defensively.
‘Oh, there is and in my opinion you are the one person who could stop it. She takes notice of you because you’ve been friends all the days of your life,’ Mary Roberts said firmly.
‘Mm, but I wouldn’t remain her friend for long if I accused her of something like that,’ Rebecca said grimly.
Long after she’d left the group of women and walked on, Rebecca was still thinking about what had been said. The matter troubled her. Could there be a glimmer of truth in what they were saying about Cindy? she wondered.
Cindy had certainly altered since the last time she’d been at home. She now dressed quite smartly and her make-up was different and more sophisticated. The really noticeable difference, however, was that she seemed to have no time for their usual interests or chatter.
When they’d met up over Christmas, most of the time she seemed to be talking about her job and what went on at the supermarket and how much she was looking forward to being promoted. She had all sorts of ideas for improvements, both in the way things were organized and the way the goods were displayed.
