The Home Corner Read Online Free PDF Page B

ear, ‘and we’re all really close. Even the lecturers. When we first got together last year we all really hit it off, so we decided we’d make dinner for each other.’
    ‘I see,’ I said, even though I didn’t, at all. I didn’t understand how liking people meant you had to cook dinner for them.
    ‘One of us cooks for the others,’ Stella said, ‘every Sunday. Once every six weeks. That’s the way it works. It’s this kind of rota. It’s brilliant.’
    ‘Even the lecturers?’ I asked. It sounded complicated, having buddies; having friends in rotas. ‘Do the lecturers cook dinner, too?’
     ‘. . . and it’s my turn tonight,’ Stella said, ignoring this. And then she stopped talking.
    ‘Well,’ I ploughed on, ‘that makes sense, working in a team like that. And being friends. That sounds very . . .’ – I couldn’t think of the right word – ‘. . . organised.’
    ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ Stella confirmed. ‘I mean, five Sundays in a row, you don’t have to make dinner. Plus: your social life’s sorted.’
    She smiled at me, and I wondered how else to respond. Why would you want to eat dinner with people you’d spent all day dissecting animals with? I considered saying. And why did we ever think we were friends, Stella?
    ‘So did you get your hair dyed recently?’ Stella asked.
    ‘Yep. Yesterday. I did it myself. From a packet.’ 
    ‘Really?’ 
    ‘Hmm’
    For some reason, I was suddenly very aware of the supermarket we were standing in. It seemed to have become rangier and whiter and more inane than usual. It was filled with a low kind of buzzing noise – a noise of boringly sensible human activity – and illuminated with a white, unreal glow. And the unreality of it all somehow suited the conversation Stella and I were having. It was as if we’d just encountered each other on some strange, nameless planet we’d both arrived at, and were no longer sure how to communicate with each other. On all the shelves and in all the display cabinets there were rows and rows of immaculate, attractive packages. Pristine, cellophane-wrapped packs of basmati rice and ramen noodles and polenta. Of Earl Grey tea and Lindt chocolate. And they were like Stella, those packages, I felt. They were well presented. They were going into people’s baskets and trolleys and making themselves useful. Whereas I was like the stubbornly unwrapped lumps of celeriac. I was the sticks of pink rhubarb poking garishly out from the fruit crates.
    Above our heads, at the level of the sprinklers and the secret-eye cameras, a woman’s weary voice began, mantra-like, to drawl an instruction.
    ‘Colleague announcement: would Donald Crawford please go to the staff office,’ she sighed. ‘Would Donald Crawford please go to the staff office . . .’
    ‘Aren’t they funny, those announcements?’ I said. ‘I always wonder about those, do you? I always wonder if Donald Crawford’s maybe done something wrong.’
    Stella regarded me.
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘I never wonder that, actually, Luisa. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about people like Donald Crawford.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said.
    And now my mother, still in a kind of trance by the yogurts, looked up, noticed me standing there with my former friend, looked momentarily flustered, and smiled.
    ‘I’m going to say hello to your mum,’ Stella proclaimed. ‘Hi, Mrs McKenzie,’ she called out.
    ‘ Hello, Stella !’ my mother called back, sounding delighted – maybe she is delighted , I thought – and she pushed a small tub of Ski yogurt back onto the shelf and wheeled her trolley over to us.
    ‘How are you ,Stella?’ she asked, arriving slightly rosy-cheeked, as if at the end of some bracing walk.
    ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Stella said, politely.
    ‘Long time no see.’
    ‘Yes.’ And she paused for a moment. We all did. Paused for thought.
    ‘So I was just telling Luisa’, Stella said, ‘about this system I have with my body buddies.’
    ‘Oh yes?’ My