Bubbles

On market days, Waitrose is full of old biddies and their sullen-looking husbands in tweed shooting jackets and corduroy trousers – I think it must be the law because they all wear exactly the same thing– up from their village or whatever for the day. The one at the front of the queue I’m in, is taking about five weeks to find her card. When she finally does, she has to put the number into the machine several times before she gets it right, then it takes her another week to put the card back in her purse.

Because it’s Waitrose, everyone’s very polite – no one sighs, or tuts, and we all wait patiently until she’s finished; I am almost dying of boredom though. There’s one more person in front of me, then it’s my turn. Trying not to yawn, I stare at the black conveyor belt, seeing if I can work out how much longer it’ll be before I can finish and go. She doesn’t have much: a box of marshmallow biscuits, a small bag of macaroons, a bottle of shower gel and three packets of laxatives.

I look at the woman whose shopping this is. She’s tall – six feet perhaps – and I don’t think she’s very old, maybe early thirties, but she has a deep line between her eyes – much deeper than she ought to have at that age, and it makes her look permanently anxious. I let my eyes travel down her body – I’m so bored - and she’s doing that thing that anorexics do –where they put on two pairs of thick tights, then baggy trousers, and they think people won’t be able to notice how thin they are that way. It never works of course.

Suddenly the conveyor belt starts up again, and just at the very last minute, she reaches out, picks up the marshmallow biscuits, and places them to one side, above the glossy magazines – where you can leave things if you’ve changed your mind about buying them.

The cashier greets her; asks if she needs a bag, and I watch the woman’s face as she answers; she half-smiles, showing grey teeth. Her face has a yellow tinge with a slight sheen to it – as if it’s stretched a little too tightly over what’s underneath.

I wonder what she’ll do when she gets home – whether she has some kind of ritual - they often do, and I picture her, sitting on the sofa, arranging the macaroons and the laxatives, waiting a minute before beginning, like people say grace before a meal. She’s quite old to still live at home. She doesn’t look like she has children – or anyone else for that matter. She must have a family somewhere though. I wonder if they know how bad it’s got? Perhaps she makes excuses not to see them. It doesn’t look to me as if she has much time left.

On the way back I slightly dread what I’ll find when I get there. Marnie takes sleeping pills through the night – not all at once, like you’re meant to, but one after the other, at intervals, every few hours, and they’re quite strong ones, so things happen to her, like falling out of bed, and walking into glass doors. She’s like that for most of the morning, and then at midday she has her first glass of wine.

I’m not sure if this is what’s making her so vague, or if she’d be like that anyway – even if she lived on muesli and orange juice. And she’s okay about some things – it seems to be mostly just everything that’s happened in the world in the past twenty years that she can’t get the hang of.

She worries about that. Sometimes she’ll stop mid-sentence and say “I’m not stupid am I? I’m not losing my marbles? I’m not going mad?” And I always say “No Marnie, you’re not stupid at all”. I hope she runs out of sleeping pills soon though. I don’t think they’re helping.

I’m trying really hard, and there isn’t much time now. She needs to be more independent – use computers, stuff like that. She’ll need to know these things, even on the island. I explain over and over and over again. She doesn’t need to pay AOL thirty pounds a month for broadband at her cottage if it’s going to be empty for six months. She owes so much money it’s a drop in the ocean, but you might as well start somewhere. Also she must be the only person left in the world still paying AOL for anything. She looks puzzled; “… But what if I want to use the internet on the island? If I’m not paying for it anymore, how will I check my emails, and my facebook?” She loves facebook now – she got the hang of that pretty quickly. She’s really enjoying stalking all her ex-lovers on there. I have another go at trying to make her understand that she’ll be using someone else’s connection there – it’ll be okay. I hope I sound reassuring – not patronising. There’s a silence. Then she says. “But I’m at your house and I’m still paying AOL to access the internet – so how can that be?” It’s like trying to explain things to a very young child, except she never gets it.

She’ll have to though. She has to. She leaves next week. So long as she doesn’t lose her e-ticket on the way to the airport. I’m going to leave it a few weeks, then go out and see how she’s doing. She keeps threatening to set me up with someone when I get there – she never stops talking about all her friends, most of whom sound as mad as she is. One of them is called Bubbles. Seriously.