The Biscuit Lady
Every week, Hazel did the food shopping on a Wednesday evening and every week, the food shopping was rather unremarkable. This week, the regular shopping schedule was thrown out of sync. Like buses, social events were often either rare, or all came together. That week the trip got moved to Thursday.
The trip started out like any other. Hazel drove round to her usual section of the car park and swung her car into a space. She grabbed a trolley and started working her way through her shopping list. Hazel disliked doing the food shopping. There were usually too many people around but that time, the supermarket was not as busy as she had anticipated.
She went through the fruit and vegetable aisles, picked out a few bits and pieces before collecting the dairy and meat items. Although she generally made a list that grew as the week wore on, the thought that something which has not made it to the list may be needed always niggled in the back of Hazel’s mind throughout the shopping trip.
As Hazel pushed her trolley down the biscuit, tea and coffee aisle, wondering how much decaf coffee was left in the jar at home, she did not at first notice the lady standing by the biscuits. Hazel generally did not pay a huge amount of attention to the other shoppers and, to begin with, this moment was no different. As Hazel approached the spot that the lady occupied, she continued looking at the vast variety of coffees opposite the biscuits, her eyes searching for a deal label that would help her justify buying it when there was a good chance it was not needed at this stage.
When the lady dropped a packet of biscuits, Hazel swooped down to pick them up for her, when she found that the packet had burst open and its contents, HobNobs, spilling out onto the floor. Hazel stopped as she wasn’t sure how to proceed and how the supermarket would handle an open packet of biscuits like this. As she stood back up again, Hazel caught a glimpse of the lady’s shoes. She was wearing a pair of very old Converse trainers that Hazel assumed had originally been white. They were a rather dull shade of grey, were soaking wet, had several holes in them.
Finally, standing up straight again, Hazel looked directly at the lady, who immediately lowered her face and eyes to the ground and clutched a different packet of biscuits closer to her chest.
The lady looked like she had not washed for weeks; her hair, a light brown, the blonde dye fading, was an unappealing mixture of both grease and matte. It was unbrushed and messy. Her clothes were worn out, dirty and had tears and holes in them. Her coat looked old, deflated and ragged. Hazel imagined that it was no longer effective at even minimal protection from the elements; there was probably little point in wearing it.
“Oh sorry,” Hazel said, unable to hide her surprise. “I can go and get someone to clean this up.”
The lady grabbed Hazel’s arm and started shaking her head. Hazel noticed then that the packet of biscuits in the lady’s hand was also open and she had been stuffing biscuits two at a time into her mouth. Hazel looked into her face which indicated she had not slept for days. Her face was weathered, filth embedded deep into the lines and ridges as though it had truly made itself at home here. The dark circles under her eyes looked as though they were slowly filling with hard times and even more fatigue. She looked over the age of 60, but Hazel guessed from her clothes that she was probably 20 years younger than that.
After she swallowed a dry mouthful, she said, “no, no.. I’ll pick them up,” before she crouched down and collected all the biscuits from the floor. She then quickly stuffed another two biscuits into her mouth and started chewing them.
After a short pause, Hazel still didn’t know what to do and just as she had silently decided that she needed to speak to a member of staff, the biscuit lady suddenly swallowed the biscuits, stopped moving and locked eyes with Hazel. She looked desperate, almost hysterical.
“I wasn’t always like this you know. I used to come in here and shop. I used to spend £80 per week on food and drink. I used to be just like you. I used to wear expensive clothes and go to work to worry about things that don’t matter. I used to pop in for a treat; wine and chocolate and biscuits,” she stopped for a breath. The biscuit lady continued to vent, and got visibly more desperate and irate. Staff and shoppers had started to appear at either end of the aisle before the store manager came over to rescue Hazel and help the lady.
As Hazel lay awake in her warm bed that night, unable to sleep, she pulled up the luxurious duvet higher and thought about the biscuit lady. The biscuit lady had lost her job a month earlier and had subsequently lost everything else. Her mother, the only other family member she had, had died days after she had lost her job. Her mother’s house, which they had shared was in negative equity and it transpired that her mother had been behind on payments. The house swallowed up all the money the biscuit lady had before it was repossessed. She had been left homeless, alone and wandering the streets shocked after the loss of her job, her mother’s death and all that followed.
Hazel thought about how lucky she was and how although her life always seemed so solid, the reality could become very different. Suddenly she felt grateful for the job she had and the people around her, both of which she sometimes took for granted. She felt, oddly, grateful for the monthly bills because it meant she had money with which to pay them. She felt grateful for feeling reasonably tired, because it meant she had a warm and comfortable bed in which to rest. Most of all, she had a newfound respect for the weekly shopping trip, because it meant she had the luxury of choosing any food she fancied on any given week.
