Gregory could hardly wait for the hour it took to develop the photographs to be over. He filled it by going back to the shop and arranging his Christmas lines. Putting boxed sets of tablecloths and napkins across a counter in a fan-like arrangement and sticking notices saying ‘Gift Idea’ on more or less everything. In the napery section he found the cardboard box that contained the Lowood’s Linens Christmas decorations. He took out last year’s nativity advent calendar, which was stilt in good condition, and opened the cardboard flap marked with the number one. A star, improbably yellow and surrounded by many dazzling beams of light, was pictured inside. Gregory drawing-pinned the calendar above the cash till, next to a yellowing list of numbers of counterfeit £20 notes, supplied to him by the police. Between customers Lynda and he together with Betty, whom he’d inherited from his father and who helped him out at busy times, decorated the little shop, criss-crossing the ceiling with paper garlands and surrounding the shop window with twinkling fairy lights. When they had finished Gregory stood outside on the pavement and looked inside. “It could be Santa’s grotto,” he said to Betty.
“Except there’s not a bleddy queue to get in,” she said.
Gregory wished he could ask Betty to retire permanently. Her cackling laugh and loose dentures lowered the tone. He only kept her on out of respect for his father.
He put his overcoat, hat and gloves on and walked through the market to the store to collect the photographs he’d taken earlier in the day.
Ken was in the same store looking for pregnancy testing kits. He had never seen one. He only knew of their existence from reading the problem pages of the Daily Mirror. He prowled around the shelves of women’s things, baffled by the sheer number of goods on display. Then, by a process of elimination, by understanding that the creams and gunk that they put on their faces and hair were separated from their medical stuff, he tracked down what he wanted. It was called ‘Predictor’. He took his reading glasses from the top pocket of his jacket and put them on and read the back of the ‘Predictor’ packet. It promised completely accurate results. He would have to persuade Tamara to give him some of her wee somehow, but he would think how to do that on the journey home. As he made his way to the cash desk he saw the Estee Lauder soap, talc and bath-cube gift set he bought for Cath every Christmas. He bent and sniffed at the display and Cath’s smell overwhelmed him for a moment, but he straightened his back and joined the queue and waited to pay.
Gregory was upstairs killing time by looking at the educational toys. He had already presented his ticket at the photography department counter, and had been told by a Chinese girl assistant to return in five minutes. He moved along the shelves until he came to a section labelled, ‘pocket-money toys’. He picked up a kaleidoscope and held it to his eye, and was enchanted by the lustrous colours and multiplicity of patterns it contained. Gregory was impressed that it took only a slight turn of the metal tube for the luminous interior to regenerate itself into an entirely different multi-faceted world.
He took a wire basket from the stack next to the escalator and put the kaleidoscope inside. Why shouldn’t he buy toys for himself, he thought. He didn’t remember having many as a boy, and the few he did have, the train set and the lead soldiers, he was always having to tidy away. He bought himself two glove puppets, a monkey with a face that made him laugh, and a dog with a lolling left tongue. He bought a Scuba Diver Action Man, a Barbie Doll in a wedding dress and Ken her boyfriend in top hat and tails. Once started, he couldn’t stop. He bought a battery-driven robot, a baby doll that wet herself, and a Hornby model train. Two metres of track, a railway station and, inside a bubble pack, a station-master, a guard and two porters. The woman at the toy department checkout asked him how many children he had. “Three,” he said. “Two boys and a girl.” Then, burdened by two carrier bags and the bulk and length of the train set, he collected the envelope of photographs from the Chinese girl.
He sat down in the pedestrian precinct, on a wooden bench outside the shop, settled his parcels and bags around him and opened the envelope. He sorted through them quickly, until he came to the three he’d taken first. His wife was in each photograph, as were the tall man and the dog. They were in the doorway of the shop, but, bafflingly, in each photograph there was another person. A beautiful dark-haired adolescent girl, wearing the uniform of one of the city’s premier girls’ schools. Gregory knew there had been nobody else in the doorway when he took the three photographs of his wife and the tall man. There had obviously been a mistake made during the processing. Somehow an image of a schoolgirl with a dazzling smile had been superimposed on to his own photographs.
He struggled back into the shop and told the Chinese girl in the photography department that they had ruined his photographs, thanks to ‘their sloppy developing procedures’. The departmental manager, a Mr Crow, came from behind a door marked ‘Staff’. He introduced himself and asked how he could help Gregory. Gregory informed Mr Crow that unless he received a new disposable camera and a gift voucher as compensation for his ruined photographs, he would be taking him to the Small Claims Court, once Christmas was over.
Mr Crow looked down at the photographs which were causing all the trouble. He couldn’t work out what the silly sod was going on about. The photographs were a family group: the lovely girl in the uniform had her mother’s hair and eyes, and her father’s mouth and slim build. The three of them were beautifully framed in the shop doorway. The quality of the film was very good. No way was he going to give the nutter in the stupid hat anything at all. Eventually, after Gregory grew louder and more insistent in his complaints, Mr Crow rang security and Gregory was escorted from the premises by a silent security guard.