Nic’s shoes had always worn unevenly. Pigeon-toed was what the ballet teacher, who was actually just an ordinary mum who had lived in France for a year when she was younger, had called her. Such a pretty face, but those feet! the fake-French ballet teacher would cry, patting six-year-old Nic’s smooth cheeks and gazing not at the terrible feet but away from them at the school hall rafters. What would she say now? Nic wonders, watching each foot press its inside into the asphalt as it stepped.
Such a sagging face! At last a match for your sloppy feet! Sagging face, sloppy feet, arse outgrowing its pants, right hip which has, in the three years since she’s turned forty, woken her most nights with its urgent ache. Not all bad, though, or else Jase from the stockroom, who goes to the gym every morning before work and wears tight shorts and tighter singlets to show how well that regime is working for him, wouldn’t whistle appreciatively and call her gorgeous when she passed him, and Reg the store’s night manager wouldn’t stand far closer than polite in the break room and ask her for the thousandth time if she wouldn’t consider joining the night shift so he’d have something good to look at during the long quiet hours between six and closing.
Night shift is better money, but aside from having to dodge Reg, there’s the matter of transport. Nic isn’t a panicky person; not like her sister Michelle, who sees rapists and meth heads where there are only passing motorists and harmless neighbourhood kids. Still, even the calmest and most reasonable woman doesn’t take twenty-minute walks alone after midnight. Or accept the no-doubt-insistent offer of a lift from the creepy manager finishing work at the same time. Besides, if she got home after midnight she wouldn’t get to sleep before one but would have to rise at six anyway to make sure the cats didn’t howl the neighbourhood awake in hunger.
Besides, if she didn’t walk home in the bright, clear light of afternoon she would miss so much…
Leave a Reply