She watched as her mother dropped to her knees, pulled a phone from her pocket, dialled a number and put the phone to her ear.
Then the lonely twin watched as Michelle tried to give her mummy a hug, only to be pushed away and shouted at.
Amanda swiped away some hair that hung down in her face, and made her way up the garden path and back into the house.
2
The body of Samantha was finally dragged from the water the day after she fell through the ice. A verdict of accidental death was recorded by the coroner and the funeral took place six days later.
Not once had Claire spoken to Michelle, since the accident. The mother was upset, but also angry, and for a few days, including the day of the funeral, she had been drinking heavily into the night, and then sleeping on the sofa for a good part of the days that followed.
The girls hadn’t been to school and the man of the house, Gordon, had taken as many nights off from his busy restaurant as he could afford.
Gordon Spencer was a nice guy at heart, but he didn’t really know how to show affection, or how to comfort his wife or his remaining two daughters. He was hurting of course, but instead of breaking down and giving up and getting angry like Claire, he just had to keep moving.
He kept himself busy by preparing food for the girls, sorting out some of the mess that had accumulated in their home over the years and even started clearing out the attic for some reason, probably so he didn’t have to see the three faces of misery on the females in the house.
The girls spent most of their time upstairs, away from the negative energy of their mother. Amanda had taken to sharing a bed with Michelle, not wanting to stay in the room that she previously shared with her twin. She hadn’t been sleeping well at all. She knew she had been sleeping a little bit at least, for she remembered waking up every morning in the arms of her older and now only sister.
She’d stay awake long into the night, that much she was sure of, and she’d picture that last look of fear on Samantha’s face. She wondered why she hadn’t cried, not once during the last week. Everybody else had shed tears, like her aunt and cousin, even the teachers and classmates from her school.
Her mum had cried everyday between glasses of wine and naps in the living room. Her dad had cried quite a bit too; though usually up in the loft where she guessed he thought nobody could hear him.
Michelle had cried more than most. She had lost her little sister whilst being in charge of the girls and her mother didn’t let her forget it. On a couple of occasions, Claire could be caught staring at her first born child with eyes like daggers, and Gordon had had to stick up for her and try to get Claire to act reasonably. Gordon knew that the death of Samantha was no more than a tragic accident, and defended his daughter like a man who had already lost one.
The start of the next week, Gordon had to return to work at the restaurant, and coincidently, the girls asked their father about returning to school. He said if they wanted to have more time to rest and get use to things then they could, but in his heart, he knew that the last thing they wanted to do was stay home and be near their mother, who grew increasingly agitated and difficult to be around as the days passed.
The girls became closer than ever before.
After school, the sisters would go to the restaurant and do whatever they could to help their father, be it cleaning the pots and pans or chopping vegetables. Of course, Amanda was too young to be of any real use, but there was no way she would go home on her own with her mother there.
The girls would be sent home by Gordon before it got dark, and if they were lucky, Claire would already be passed out by the time they got home. If not, they would be as quiet and courteous as possible in the hope of not aggravating her into abusing them verbally. One evening she threw an empty glass in the direction of Michelle. She missed, but there was no doubt that any bond between the two females had been broken forever.
Sometimes Claire would hug Amanda, and it made her feel guilty and awkward as the surviving twin knew what nobody else in the household knew, that she was the reason Sam had walked onto the ice that night.
Amanda knew that she caused the death of her twin sister, that she was the cause of her mother’s anguish, that she had played a huge part in the breakdown of the relationship between her two closest female relatives, and that the growing stress between her parents was also down to her.
Weeks later, Amanda began sleeping back in her old room.
She had drawn an invisible line down the middle of the bedroom and tidied up Samantha’s side of things as best she could. She arranged all of her sister’s clothes and folded them or hung them up neatly. She gathered Samantha’s toys together and placed them on two shelves that she had cleared and polished.
The last item that Amanda put in place on the higher of Sam’s shelves, the one at eye level, was the teddy bear that was recovered along with her corpse from the lake. Amanda only ventured into Sam’s side of the room at night to kiss goodnight the teddy bear, which she had recently started to call Samantha.
Sleep was still hard to come by for the youngster. She would often lay awake and listen to her family move around the house. Her sister would pretty much only move between her bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. Her mother stayed by the sofa, sometimes venturing to the bathroom and only ever into the kitchen for another bottle of wine, or whatever she fancied drinking on that particular occasion.
Every so often, Amanda could hear mother and daughter moving closer, arriving in the same place and then moving off in opposite directions. She could feel the tension in the air whenever they passed each other silently.
Gordon, usually home from the restaurant very late, would spend some time with his wife before making his way up to bed on his own. Sometimes they would argue downstairs, loud enough for both sisters to hear, sometimes they would make love, and sometimes they seemed to sit in silence.
Michelle would always check on Amanda before she herself went to bed, something that a lifetime ago, Claire would do with all the girls at night.
It was hard to imagine that a month or so before, the family was full of happiness and love, jokes and laughter. When Samantha lost her life in that lake, she took the life of her family with her.
Every so often, laying in the darkness all alone at night, unable to sleep with random morbid thoughts popping in and out of her head, Amanda would remember that she hadn’t cried over the death of her sister, and out of guilt, would dig her nails into her thighs in an effort to punish herself, hoping to force out the tears that she felt were the least she owed the world.
But she never cried, like she was dry inside, as if she was empty of real emotion.
‘Finding Her Feet’ by Jams N. Roses is available now on Amazon.
A satirical story, ‘Extremely England’ by Jams N. Roses is a naughty novella full of farcical fun.
1
Typically, only two of the ten checkout tills were actually open.
Working away, using the term loosely, on till number two was an elderly Asian lady, Aighar. She slowly moved food products from one side of the scanner to the other, taking a long, hard look at each
item as she did so, as if searching for ideas for tonight’s tea or taking a disapproving interest in the low number of calories that the unmarried, female customer would be consuming over the next week or so.
Aighar knew the customer was unmarried, as she only bought salads and tofu and other bizarre foods that wouldn’t satisfy a man or interest children, which also indicated to the observant old lady that the woman who stood before her, trying her best to remain patient, was a lesbian. What other possible explanation for being single with no kids when over the age of twenty five?
Everyone who shopped at Waitlong’s hated shopping at Waitlong’s.
For some unknown reason, every evening, Aighar was one of the staff selected to work at the checkouts, even though it was obvious to everyone she should be home resting, being looked after by one of her many child
ren and putting the world to rights whilst shouting obscenities at the television.
But worse than Aighar, was Steve.
Steve was up on checkout number ten, as far from Aighar as possible, as they couldn’t get on due to their conflicting views on a recent law being passed. It was the one that fuelled homophobic adults into complaining continuously over something that didn’t have any consequence to them at all, at the time and cost of all those around them.
He was on the checkout that had a sign hung above that declared a maximum of ten items only were permitted by each customer, and unfortunately for his current customer, Joe, Steve stuck to this rule like hot chewing gum to the backside of your favourite trousers.
Joe tapped his fingers impatiently on the side of the checkout, checking his watch and mentally urging the unhappy worker who scanned his goods to get a wiggle on.
But there was a problem.
Steve had a packet of burger buns in his hand and saw that they, the customer’s tenth item, weren’t the last items before the next customer’s on the conveyor belt. There was another packet of burger buns, which meant Joe had clearly ignored the rule of ten items or less.
Their eyes met, and on the surface, Joe wasn’t exactly sure what the holdup was, until Steve raised a finger and pointed to the sign above them.
‘That makes eleven,’ said Steve.
‘Sorry, mate?’ replied Joe, playing dumb.
Steve pointed again, stretching his arm out and nearly touching the sign with the tip of a chewed fingernail in order to save from any further confusion.
Joe looked up at the sign, sighed, and returned his tired gaze back to the ‘jobs worth’ that’d caught him out.
‘Just scan ’em.’
‘It’s against the rules.’
‘You’re kidding? Look…’ said Joe, glancing back at the growing queue behind him, all eager for the dispute to be resolved swiftly, ‘there are two packets of buns, it’s the same bloody thing, so it’s still only ten items.’
Steve sat up straight on his chair. He’s not one to be intimidated, especially by someone who clearly disrespected the important rules throughout the land’s supermarkets that helped to make weekly food shopping such an enjoyable experience.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Steve, ‘you broke the rules!’
He reached for the bananas, burgers and other items he had already scanned for Joe, and pushed them into a basket on the floor behind his checkout; he had been prepared, people were always trying to smuggle through an extra unit or two.
‘Now you aren’t having anything,’ he said.
Joe eyed his shopping disappear behind the countertop, and turned to see the all-of-a-suddenly more interested eyes of the crowd of consumers behind him. Was he being bullied by a shop worker? Being belittled by a shelf-stacking, food-scanner, abusing his till powers out of anger and sadness from the underachievement of his own life?
‘Oh, up yours, Steve,’ said Joe, reading from his new enemy’s name tag.
Joe wasn’t one to be bullied, and picked up the solitary packet of burger buns, the eleventh product, and swung them hard at the side of Steve’s head.
Burger buns flew everywhere as Steve fell to the floor, unconscious behind the till. The crowd gasped, a couple of people clapped, one laughed but the others held their breath, they had seen who stood in the queue.
‘Stop, police!’
The waiting customers stepped to the side as England’s finest copper, Bobby Saint, ran towards Joe, his giant afro bobbing side to side, taking off his raincoat and revealing his police uniform as he did ran.
Joe recognized the celebrated policeman instantly and grabbed a couple of loose buns to throw at Bobby as he retreated towards the exit, but he didn’t get far before being caught up.
Food went flying as Bobby and Joe wrestled next to the counter, then on the counter, and then over the other side of the checkout. Joe wasn’t about to be arrested that easily, and tried allsorts to get away, then other brands of confectionaries.
Joe’s eyes lit up with panic as Bobby held him steady with one hand, and gripped a can of pepper spray in the other.
‘You asked for it,’ said Bobby, before pushing down the top of the small canister to release the disorientating spray, only to find he had hadn’t aimed the little hole at his aggressor. The spray hit Bobby on the forehead and began dribbling down around his eyes.
‘Aaaggh!’
Joe seized the opportunity to escape, but slipped on the bananas that were on the floor (yeah, I know) and fell against the side of an abandoned shopping trolley. Bobby ran at him and hit him hard in the ribs with his shoulder.
Both not at their best, Joe winded and Bobby half blind, the struggle really did look quite pathetic, and the security worker who watched the episode unfold through the security camera made a mental note that a copy would have to be made and put onto You Tube at the earliest convenience.
Bobby pressed hard with his shoulder and kept Joe trapped between him and the trolley whilst he fumbled around with his handcuffs. He managed to get one side of the cuffs attached to the shopping trolley, then made a swift jerking motion into the body of his suspect before locking an arm into the other side of the handcuffs.
Sadly for Bobby, he had got the wrong arm, and was now attached to the shopping trolley.
Once again, Joe saw a chance to make a break for it, but Bobby reacted quickly to the escape attempt and swung the trolley around, taking out Joe’s legs, who landed heavily inside it, upside down and unable to move.
Bobby, relieved the drama was over, gave a friendly nod to the watching public, and limping slightly, pushed Joe towards the exit, reading him his rights as he did so.
Sharon, one of two shelf stackers who had come back from their break and seen the incident, began to clap as Bobby passed her and her colleague as he left the building.
The short, dumpy woman looked up to her tall and skinny workmate, Vic, mouth opened wide and completely impressed by the justice she had just seen the one and only Bobby Saint bring to the crazy burger bun shopper.
‘One day, Vic, I wanna be just like him.’
‘There goes a real hero, Sharon,’ replied Vic, ‘maybe a little beyond our potential?’
Sharon looked to the floor, disheartened. Was this forty eight year old, obese mother-of-three ever going to get her lucky break?
‘Unless…’ continued Vic, eyeing a poster on the wall of the store.
Sharon looked up at the recruitment poster.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT OFFICERS WANTED
‘Community support officers wanted,’ said Sharon, reading out aloud, as she couldn’t do it quietly.
She looked up at Vic, and Vic looked down at her and returned the gaze. Were their days of boring, unsatisfying labour coming to an end?
2
The City Hall media room was full of reporters, cameras and flashes, television cameras, microphones and long and short cables.
Mayor of London Terence Thatcher, a fairly old but sprightly man, was at the front of the room facing back at the journalists, stood behind a microphone mounted on a desk, forcing a smile and doing his best to hide his dislike towards the hacks, the multi-faced snakes of gutter journalism that they were.
Sitting next to the mayor was Bobby, in full police uniform with stars and stripes and medals hanging off his chest and shoulder like a police-flavoured Christmas tree. He didn’t feel comfortable wearing all the decoration, he was just an officer of the law in his own eyes, but the mayor urged him to present himself like this whenever in front of the cameras.
The mayor had big plans for Bobby.
Mayor Thatcher waved his hands at the crowd before him, requesting silence, as the hacks were giggling at the revised plans for public toilets in the capital city. Recently, all public loos were made into unisex facilities, so as not to offend or make transsexuals feel awkward when needing to do their business when out and about in public. It was all a little awkward at first, what with wome
n not wanting to share with dirty men, and men not being able to pee whenever a woman stood too close.
The final straw was when women in men’s bodies didn’t want to be using a bog near real women, who were potentially gay and disliked women who felt like men as of course there was competition amongst them as to who didn’t need men the most.
The solution had been settled upon, where there would be two types of toilet buildings for the public. One would be for those who carried a penis and one or two or however many testicles in their underwear, the other, a vagina. This would likely cause uproar at some point and would have to be readdressed once again, but for now, the mayor had lost enough sleep on the issue.
‘Quiet, please,’ he said, ‘one more question.’
A few of the journalists jumped up, desperate for the attention of the mayor, but he was drawn to a pretty lady who stood at the back of the room.
‘Yes, young lady?’ he said.
Maggie, thirty five years old and an awful journalist, referred to her notepad before clearing her throat then looking accusingly in the direction of the mayor.
‘Sir, you and officer Saint,’ she said, gesturing to Bobby, ‘have announced a great improvement in levels of prosecutions this year. Have you any evidence of this?’
The crowd of reporters loved it when Maggie got a chance to speak; she was so dumb it was incredible. How on earth did she get the job she had? Clearly she had someone in a position of power looking out for her.
Bobby shook his head, and the mayor looked disappointed at the young reporter’s effort at journalism. The crowd stifled their laughter and the mayor answered Maggie.
‘Well, yes, the evidence would be the number of criminals behind bars,’ said the mayor, as straight-faced as he could be.
‘Convenient,’ said Maggie. ‘And also, rumour has it that officer Saint will be getting promoted to top job in the police force. Some would say that you are giving him the role because he is your friend.’
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