News and a PB piece

(News just in: have just been told of another hit with my writing for this year... this time a competition win and quite a nice one, I think. Certainly there are some nice writers' names amongst the lists from previous years. A win is good news... even when you know it's just the view of one judge or in this case one panel of judges. And here's another Port Brokeferry piece from Saturday in PB.)

BACK FROM A LONG TIME AWAY

Izzy’s mother rose early. She would take her turn in the shop today, she told Izzy. And the mail, she would sort the mail for Blair. No, really, she’d like to, she said. And she meant it.

It was like she was back from a long time away, that’s what Izzy thought. And her being back made everything right in their world: the mother was the mother again and Izzy was the daughter. Always the same after Izzy’s mother had one of her turns. Izzy made a note to herself to talk to the doctor about it when she next saw him.

Downstairs, the day outside was already brighter than the fluorescent-lit day inside and already poking impatient fingers between the gaps in the shutters. Izzy watched her mother at work, sorting through the letters and the small parcels. She was wearing her glasses, but still she held the letters and postcards close to her face so she could read the names and the addresses. The larger parcels she set to one side. Izzy watched because she expected something. She’d paid first class postage, and it hadn’t come yesterday, so she felt it had to be there today.

Izzy’s mother asked about a woman called Rose staying in one of the cottages at the front. Old Annie’s cottage, she called it though Annie had been dead for longer than Izzy had been alive. There was a letter for this Rose and she wanted to check that there was such a woman. Izzy told her there was and her mother slotted the letter into the right place.

Then Izzy’s mother stopped what she was doing.

Izzy stopped too. Pretended not to see the start in her mother’s face. Pretended not to hear her mother’s held breath.

‘It must be,’ Izzy thought, and there and then, for the first time, a small doubt sprouted, and in the short space that it took for Izzy to go from ‘It must be’ to ‘It is’ her doubt mushroomed to something bigger and then it was as quickly gone.

There was a small parcel with her mother’s name on it and a franked German stamp in the corner. The name and the address had been printed on a white label and stuck to the plain brown paper wrapping. That made it different from the parcels her mother once received from Johannes, but still she did as she had done before, years back: Izzy’s mother slipped the small parcel into the pocket of her dress, did it quickly and looked up to see if she was observed.

Izzy walked away. ‘I’ll open the shop,’ she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she went.

There was a company in Germany that Izzy had found and she’d written to them and it was not so expensive really and she’d thought it would be something bright in their day. Now it was arrived there was a new doubt and she was not sure if she had done it for her mother or if she had done it for herself.

Once Blair had set out with the mail and Izzy was busy serving customers, Izzy's mother crept into the back kitchen and she took a pair of scissors to the parcel she had received. Her hands shook. Inside she found a small white cardboard box lined with corrugated card, and inside that a bottle with a gold screw top, and a blue and gold label that she recognised, and 4711 on the label.