"Hello Nina, how was your day? Did you make it back from the airport okay yesterday?"
The older woman wore a pair of thick spectacles on the edge of her nose that she perpetually pushed up with a smooth finger. She spoke slowly and a bit hesitantly, maintaining obvious bolting distance from Nina. Nina may have been the same age as the speckled woman, or older, or younger perhaps but with a lot more going on in the hard knocks department. She had no teeth and she wore bright orange and black striped socks below a ballerina skirt that stopped at the upper edge of her thighs. It showed off exceptionally thin, white legs and a little bit of what was above them as well. It was just a smidge, but enough to make customers coming in and out of the Morrison’s grocery store in St. Leonard’s, Sussex look down, look around, look straight ahead with flushed faces, anywhere but AT HER as they walked by.
The lady with the spectacles waited patiently for Nina to reply as she stepped up a little in the queue in the store’s pharmacy nook. Her friends who were waiting with her--- be-speckled as well and both dressed in skirts to just below the knees, fuzzy, pastel sweaters and sensible nurse-like shoes-- took a couple of steps back as the transaction went on. They seemed to be seeking refuge in being in proximity to the bald-headed pharmacist behind the counter who looked on with obvious confusion.
What came out of Nina's mouth then was a diatribe of cockney-tinged anger and accusation. It was a machine gun round of dribble that sounded as if someone was trying to swallow bird seed.
"Bloody bloak, ya see em? Ovaw thaw… that chav just outside ya...I’m gonna get em eck? See em thaw? They gonna get it!"
The other woman sighed and smiled wearily, as if she had heard this all too often before. She watched as Nina turned on her heel and wheeled out of the pharmacy nook. She marched into the large open area between the nook and the entrance of the store.
Then out of the corner of the doorway, as the green sliding door flew open, a rather plump yet childish head appeared. Squinty eyes watched Nina and a snarky smile curled up on a boyish mouth. The head was attached to an equally bulbous body stuffed in a private school cardigan.
“I love you,” the boy called out. With that, his bobble head disappeared into the night.
Another wave of finger-pointing, angry babble poured from Nina’s gummy lips as she stood in the middle of the tile-floored entryway. She had the spotlight. Fluorescent bulbs flickered around her. A chorus of giggle laughter was her applause, coming, assumedly, from other bobble heads in cardigan sweaters hidden in the safe darkness just beyond the sliding doors.
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