‘Can I interest you in our discount offer?’ the young saleswoman asks. ‘Ten percent off a bottle of Prosecco when you buy a bouquet of flowers. Give your mum a treat for Mother’s Day…’
‘I’m afraid you’re too late,’ the customer says. ‘She died ten years ago.’
The saleswoman gives him a sympathetic look. ‘Oh I’m so sorry. Perhaps you could remember her instead. Maybe drink the Prosecco yourself – while thinking about her?’
‘Actually I think about her a great deal already,’ the man replies. ‘More probably than you’d imagine. You see my mother had a problem with bunions.’
‘Bunions?’
‘I have a bunion too, on my right big toe, just like the one she had. She ended up having surgery, though that didn’t really help her much. Now it’s my big toe starting to lean across, rubbing the one next to it the same way hers did. There’s a small sore forming. I could show you, if you have time.’
‘…’
‘It wouldn’t take a moment.’
Simon Collings
photograph Victor De Schwanberg