Delivery by Chrissie Gittins

The doorbell rang. Kathy grabbed her bag for life and a recycled carrier and opened the front door. Every week she ordered forty or fifty pounds worth of groceries and had them delivered. It was usually a different delivery person each week and again this one was new to her. He stood there holding out a plastic container of blueberries looking baffled. The green crates full of tins and fruits and vegetables and fish and milk and eggs and cheese were not stacked up on the doorstep as they usually were.

‘I ordered a whole load of stuff,’ Kathy said.

He showed her the order form. One pack of blueberries – £3, with a £4 delivery charge.

‘I can check again on the van if there’s anything else.’

‘Would you?’

She watched him disappear down the path and remembered that this had happened once before. The guy had stood there holding a bunch of seven bananas. She went back inside, grabbed her tablet and checked the order in her emails as she stood in the doorway. The delivery guy came back up the path holding only the pack of blueberries.

‘I can take them back to the depot if you like.’

‘And cancel the order?’

‘Yes.’

‘I must have pressed the wrong button.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. How nice of him to apologize thought Kathy when it was clearly her fault. She had made her order out for thirty-four items for the following week. She’d used the blueberries to secure the booking for that day but had failed to add any further items.

‘Have a good rest of your day.’ He turned again to walk down the path.

‘And you.’

* 

‘You didn’t,’ said Kathy’s daughter Mia over the phone.

‘I did,’ said Kathy.

‘What are you like?’

‘I’m like someone who used to have a brain and now has a stainless steel colander.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘I found my slippers in the fridge the other day.’

‘Slippers are supposed to warm your feet not cool them down!’

‘I know. That would be logical.’

‘Have you got something against logic recently?

‘Not really. Ah well, at least I’m still standing.’

‘You’ll let me know if I can get you anything won’t you, Mum?’

‘Of course.’

‘You always say that but you never ask for anything.’

‘I have everything I need.’

‘Ok. Speak to you again soon.’

‘Yeah, soon.’

 *

Kathy did not want to become a cause for concern. She’d lived alone for the last twenty years since Frank died. Sometimes happily and sometimes with a searing loneliness which followed in the wake of the closeness of her marriage. There’d been a handful of suitors. Some had lasted a few months; one even lasted a year. But sooner or later it became obvious that it wasn’t going to work out. An edge to a voice which grated, an over familiarity too early on, an over dependence on hard drink. Michael, a nice enough man from Leeds, had wanted to move in with her and bring with him his golden Labrador, his ten Lalique vases and his eight-piece collection of Le Creuset cookware ranging from a skillet to a full-sized oval casserole. Kathy hadn’t moved the objects in her home since 2001.

She began to press post-it notes onto cupboard doors – ‘GLASSES’, ‘EVERDAY CROCKERY’, ‘ESSENTIAL CLEANING PRODUCTS’. This was helpful until she mislaid her glasses. Then she’d peel off the pink and purple notes, peer at them and replace them on the wrong cupboards. A couple of times, out of frustration, she’d eaten her meals off a baking tray or saucepan lid.

Her house was an end of terrace so she had only one set of immediate neighbours – Carl and Oona. They were watchful of Kathy, in an unobtrusive way. Kathy was grateful that Carl always forgot to switch off the light in their kitchen. It meant that whenever Kathy went into her kitchen at night she could see the glow from their window across the passage and know that they were there.

One Spring morning, when crocus studded her unruly lawn and primroses made posies in her flower beds, it was warm enough for Kathy to need cold water to add to the hot in her daily bath. She had non-matching antique bottle taps on her cast iron bath. The cold tap had seized up over the winter. She stood by the bath and tried to dislodge it with her hand but it wouldn’t budge. So she placed her left hand over her right, pressed down hard and forced her hands round. One of the prongs pierced the hammock of skin between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t feel anything and only saw the gaping bleeding gash when she lay back in the water. It was Oona who drove her to Accident and Emergency and waited for her till she was stitched and mended.

Kathy saw Frank in the house most days. He’d be watering the plants or stacking the dishwasher. She knew not to stand too close and would hover in a doorway till he went up the garden or lifted the garage door. He sometimes played with his daughter, or was it his granddaughter? They both looked so similar. Mia, at seven, would do cartwheels across the grass and Frank would aim to catch her ankles but miss intentionally. His granddaughter at seven would imagine there was a swimming pool; she dived in and dry swam the crawl. Frank pretended to get splashed. Both mother and daughter at that age had the same chin-length auburn bob and the same azure blue eyes.

 *

The next day the doorbell rang again. Kathy found her keys and unlocked the front door. A delivery man stood there smiling. He’d placed a large cardboard box on the doorstep and was photographing it. He asked if the name on the box was hers and when she said yes he handed it to her.

‘Thank you,’ said Kathy automatically. She watched as he drove away in an unmarked white van.

She took the box into the living room and wedged it onto the sofa. She had no idea what was in it and the box didn’t give any clues. What had she ordered? Had she ordered anything at all? She paced beside the sofa hoping a flake of recollection would float into her mind. But it didn’t.

It was an hour before she allowed herself to open the box. In that hour she cleaned the kitchen floor, made her front windows sparkle and hoovered upstairs and down. Then, armed with a cup of tea and a pair of scissors she approached the box. Inside was a cream plastic bag and inside that, wrapped in swathes of white tissue paper, was a sheepskin aviator jacket. The leather was chocolate brown and the sheepskin lapels were indented with V shapes making them look like open-mouthed sea creatures. The invoice announced the price as £775.

Kathy gasped. She’d never spent that amount of money on a garment. Had she really ordered it? When she scoured her emails she found that she had. What had she been thinking of? She stroked the leather and sheepskin and pushed her arms into the sleeves drawing the leather around her. It was like being given a hug. She looked in her full-length mirror in the hallway. Was it something she could wear? Perhaps. But the cost? What about her food and heating bills? She took off the jacket, wrapped it back in the tissue paper and laid it back on the sofa. The returns procedure looked complicated.

The doorbell rang. Mia stood on the doorstep smiling widely.

‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ said Kathy.

‘I told you this morning! I said I’d pop round on my way back from the school run.’

‘So you did.’

Mia looked into her mother’s face. She couldn’t tell if she was remembering or covering up not remembering.

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Mia saw the jacket peeping from the tissue paper on the sofa.

‘What’s this?’

‘It arrived this morning.’

‘So you did order it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You were in two minds.’

‘You know about it?’

‘Yes. You told me. You’d been watching that drama on TV. The one where the main character pretends to be someone else. You really liked a jacket she wore.’

‘How did I know where to order it from?’

‘You looked in the credits for the costume designer and tweeted him. He told you where to buy it. I was very impressed.’

‘That he replied?’

‘And with your initiative. Don’t you remember?’

Kathy looked at her daughter with a lost look in her eyes.

‘Are you going to keep it?’

‘It’s too expensive.’

‘Is it easy enough to return?’

‘Can you help me with that?’

* 

At the Memory Clinic Mia held her mother’s hand until she was asked to draw a clock. Add the hands for two o’clock, nine forty-five, quarter past twelve. Could she repeat these words – milk, ten pence piece, aquarium? Could she remember them ten minutes later? Could she count backwards from the number nineteen? How much exercise did she take? Did she know that if rodents take aerobic exercise it leads to new nerve cells growing?

When all the tests were done they left and flopped onto a bench in front of the hospital.

‘I’m powfagged,’ said Kathy.

‘I’m not surprised. They really put you through your paces.’

‘I jumped through the hoops. Not sure if I jumped high enough though.’

‘Well, let’s wait and see.’

 *

The doorbell rang. Kathy had never seen such a huge bouquet of flowers. There were pink chrysanthemums, yellow roses, white ranunculas, mimosa, pussy willow and raspberry astrantia.

‘Oh how lovely,’ said Kathy. ‘Is there a card?’

‘They’re from someone called Frank,’ said the delivery woman.

Kathy reached out for them but they melted away. She could hear her phone ringing so she quickly closed the door.

‘Mia?’

‘Yes.’

‘I got the most wonderful bouquet from Frank. Is it our anniversary? Or Valentine’s Day maybe? I don’t think it’s my birthday.’

‘None of those, Mum. But I’m sure he’s thinking of you.’

‘Are you coming round today?’

‘Yes, I’ll be there in about an hour. Remember we’re going to start packing your things today?

‘Oh.’

‘You don’t have to do anything. Just pick out anything precious you want to keep.’

‘It’s so long since I saw you.’

‘Yesterday. You saw me yesterday.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

………………..

Chrissie Gittins' first short story collection is ‘Family Connections’ (Salt). Her second, 'Between Here and Knitwear' (Unthank Books), was shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards and selected by Helen Dunmore as one of her top two 2015 collections. Her stories have appeared on BBCR4 and in The Guardian, The London Magazine, Wales Arts Review, The Lampeter Review, Litro and Unthology 6.

Twitter: @ChrissieGittins