In the Lidl on the Kettering Road, night-time, brightly lit, I see them. The boy, tall and gawky, his limbs too long for his Nike-swaddled body. The girl, a head and a half shorter than him, in matching grey; her dark shiny hair pulled back into a low pony, exposing the fresh, youthful moon of her face. I would not have noticed them, would not have looked twice; but there is a softness in the way their bodies turn towards each other as they drift along the rows of plane-fresh produce, an ease and an innocence, that tugs my chin in their direction. Look; love.
I pause in my perusal of the cabbages, follow their slow amble into the world foods aisle. The shop is empty but for us, tiny ants running around in the base of a glass. It is wide and expansive, high-ceilinged, echoey. It is built for the Saturday shoppers, the ones who toil out their forty hours just to spend their weekends pushing trolleys around these spacious aisles. Children squawking at ankles, begging to be purchased sweets, fizzy drinks, or those magazines that come with throwaway trinkets tucked beneath their plastic covers. Elderly couples who have transcended the need for verbal communication, passing each other bags of potatoes without a word, the same variety they have been purchasing for thirty years or more.
Without them, the aisles are a lonely desert.
These young people that I am trailing (not trailing: coincidentally crossing paths with) are not Saturday shoppers. They have no family to buy for, I am sure; we have that in common, at least. Why, then, are they here? It is a delicious, everyday mystery, the kind of thing I live for. Look for the clues. Their hands are empty. They carry no basket. They push no trolley. Have they simply come, then, to walk the aisles, as if we were in nineteenth century Paris, as if this were an arcade, somewhere to see and be seen?
Look how the girl is looking, now, at something on the top shelf. Noodles, is it? Rice? She is trying to reach something. Look how she lifts herself onto her tippy toes. The fat soles of her New Balance cannot take her the distance she needs to go. But no matter: he can. Her boy; her knight in shining armour. He reaches out, plucks the treasure from the cove: it is ramen. A football-sized multipack. From the bright red packaging, I can tell it is the spicy kind that H used to eat. My heart tugs. The girl cradles the packet to her chest like it is such a precious baby; she smiles. The two of them exchange words I cannot hear, lips fluttering in the distance like leaves on the wind. He reaches out and rubs her arm.
Suddenly, a crackle; an invisible inhale of breath. An announcement is being made over the Tannoy. Dear customers, we will be closing in ten minutes. Please make your final purchases and proceed to the tills. Thank youuuu. The words are followed by a ding-dong chime that sounds more creepy than cheerful. The preface to a horror movie.
The interruption startles me. My basket weighs heavy in my hand, but when I look down, it is still empty. Fill me, it reproaches, why do you make me wait? They will take you from my hands soon, and then what will you do. The basket is right. I must go back to the cabbages, to the fresh bread aisle, to the milk, to all of the things that I need to populate my kitchen. The cupboard is bare, and so is my soul. Stop that, H hisses in my ear, this is why you alienate people. But wait – where have they gone? My young lovers? The aisle is empty now. They have drifted on. I hasten along, following their fading heat. I hesitate by the ramen, then decide to take a pack of the same red one that the girl wanted. The top shelf is high, but my arms are long. Unlike her, I do not need a man to reach things for me, to provide my sustenance or my joy. But oh, how I want, how I want.
I turn a corner. There they are, drifting now in the direction of the alcohol. No, wait, they are turning off, down towards the teas. How good they are, these young people. How unlike us, with our luminous, giant pitchers of Apple Sourz and Sex on the Beach. No, these young people want to keep their bodies pure and true; there is already too much danger for them in this world, it waits at every corner: the manosphere, brain rot, the AI monster come to gobble up their futures. Their bodies they can keep for themselves, at least. I am proud of them. I want to be near them. I want to be them. Is it alright that I am following them, now, into the tea and coffee aisle? Yes, why not. I am not really following them. I want some tea, too; that is all. It is still a free country, isn’t it? We haven’t yet sold all of ourselves to the tech bros on their distant, sunny shores? But hush, I do not mean to get political, not now.
Hot chocolate, Ovaltine, Peruvian coffee. They are close to me now. For the first time, I can hear their voices, the rhythm of their conversation. A soft laughter bubbles between their mouths. What are you like, the boy is saying, and she just laughs, softly, coyly, and he puts his hand on her arm again. Squeezes.
They are newly dating, I decide. Enough dates in for them to know each other, enough that he can say, what are you like, because he knows what she is like. Or, at least, he thinks he does. He knows the in-love parts, he knows the soft and mild, the happy and the carefree. But whatever he believes he knows of the deep, of the true, he does not know it, it is wrong. It is a false floor, there is so much still to be corrupted, the fair and unlined forehead crumpling in pain and remaining marked forever, the light that will go out of both of their eyes as they sit in traffic one day and realise that the person on the other side of the gearstick is a stranger, that they have nothing left to say, nothing left not to say. Then there will be the resentment, the bewilderment, the what went wrongs, was it me, was it him? The division of belongings and the terrible saying of goodbyes. The air that will seep from the room as the other leaves it, the kisses with others who are not supposed to be kissed, the tears that get lost in the wind –
Are you buying that, a voice says. I look up, dazed. The imprint of those young people is emblazoned on my eyelids, like when you have looked too long into the sun. Blinking, I see that I am being addressed by a Lidl worker in a zip-up felt jacket. The young couple have vanished once again. The Lidl worker is frowning at me suspiciously, as though I am suspicious. We’re about to close the tills.
I did it again, I say to H. Got lost in my ruminations. H does not reply. H only ever speaks first. H will not be summoned.
Yes, I say to the Lidl worker. Yes, of course, coming now. I take a box of jasmine tea from the shelf, confident, as though I planned to be here all along. I pay; I leave the shop. This much I can do.
Out in the car park, I sit in my frigid car, waiting for the heater to chunter into life. I wonder again where my young lovers have gone. I was harsh on them, a moment ago, in my mind. H always told me that I was a depressive. You always rush to the worst conclusion, he would say, not understanding that low expectations are the ultimate insurance policy, not realising that an excess of happiness is always the omen that predicts a fall.
I am about to drive off when I see them walking hand in hand across the tarmac. In his other hand, he swings a carrier bag back and forth in a long, graceful arc. How beautiful they are. How unafraid. How lovely that they have come out tonight to the Lidl, what an adventure this must be for them. They are walking right in front of my car; they are only a few metres away. It is like watching a romantic drama; I can almost hear the symphony. My eyes are full of tears. Suddenly, he tugs on her hand, stopping her in her tracks; he twirls her around. For a moment they are ballerinas on a spotlit stage, bathed in the milky half-light of the energy-saving streetlamps. I cannot hear them, but she is laughing again, lightly, almost shyly; she touches three fingers self-consciously to her mouth. He takes her hand, moves it from her lips. Very slowly, he bends down, kisses her.
How many boyfriends have I kissed in car parks? There was L, in his little Peugeot, the back seats down and his face hot over mine; we didn’t have a room to go to. There was N, buying ingredients for a risotto, his eyes blooming wide when he learned that I had never heard of arborio rice. Then, later, H. Oh, H. Us two. We also swanned through empty supermarket aisles as though they were made not for the Saturday shoppers, but for lovers. We also whispered secret things that no one else could hear. That time when he pushed me – gently – against the bread. The soft crackle of the plastic packaging, the faintest scent of yeast. Delicious. The times later when we argued and shopped in silence or, worse, when we hadn’t argued, yet still shopped in silence. The ropes we allowed to slip through our fingers until they were worn right down to fraying threads. By the time we realised what we’d done, all we could do was sit back and wait until they snapped.
I want to go back. I want to be this girl, to be this boy. I did it wrong the first time; I chose wrong. Take me back to the beginning, to the first hands upon my skin, to the first one who ever called me darling. Take me back, I swear I will do it properly this time. I am no longer young, my face no longer is unmarked by pain and loss, loss after loss. How many times can a heart swell and bloom, only to be punctured once again. I want again to be young; to have someone say to me, who hurt you? And to reply: no one, no one at all.
The girl is still spinning. Suddenly, she stops, and then she is looking at me through the windscreen. Her finger lifts in my direction; her face falls. She says something and the boy looks at her, and then at me. My breath catches in my mouth. I am caught; I am a voyeur. No, I want to say, no, you misunderstand. I only want to congratulate you; I only want to be you.
But it is too late. They are spooked; I have spooked them. They are hurrying away, now, backwards glances over their shoulders, to a place where they don’t have to think about being older or alone, or to wonder why a woman might be alone in the car park of the Lidl just before closing time on a Thursday night. Crazy old lady, they’ll say, because to them anyone over twenty-five is old. I remember how it is. Yes, I’ll be one of the stories they tell each other. Remember that crazy old lady from the shop that night, the one who followed us? She probably had an axe in the darkened boot of her car. She probably would have murdered us. Yes, baby, but she didn’t, because you were there to protect us. It will become lore, this night, woven into the fabric of their relationship, helping to pull it tight and strong. It’s nice, really, what I have done for them. I have provided an enemy against which they may unite. You’re welcome.
I put the car in first, and drive slowly off, not looking to see if they are still hidden in some dark corner of the car park. The night is cold; the streets are empty. When I get home, I will make jasmine tea and run a bath to warm up, and then and then and then.
