Wrk n Prgress

She seems to remember that she wasn’t allowed to have candy floss before Josh was born: that wasn’t fair. Walking along the promenade in the sun, with the pavement all dusty and bright and hot and full of bits of mica that shone, smooth, she’d see all the other kids with their parents, all seeming to converge on the glass-sided stalls at the start of the pier, where the sweet smell of spinning sugar was sticky and tantalising in the air. And toffee apples: how she longed for one of those bright red glistening things on a thick, square stick. But however politely she asked, however persistently she whined or grizzled, however good she was – whatever she did – nothing worked; it was always ‘later’, or ‘you’ll spoil your dinner’, or ‘no, you’ll get in a mess’, or ‘it’ll attract the wasps’. And they’d drift along the seafront towards the quieter, deader end, where the ‘crazy’ golf courses petered out and gave way to car parks and pathetic gift shops that had glossy seashells, hideous cups and saucers, and wasps in pride of place in the window display.

She remembers one magical evening, though, an evening when some of her deviant, ungrateful desires for fast food were satisfied. Mum and dad were walking hand in hand for once: she remembers that clearly, it was so rare. And their shoulders were touching – they were leaning into each other as they walked along in the dusk – she could see them becoming a single silhouette joined at the shoulder as she trailed along behind them.

It must have been late in the season, because she remembers the evening air starting to chill her legs where they were bare, between her long white socks and the hem of her yellow linen skirt. She’s sure – almost sure – that she remembers smelling the colour of the burger buns toasting in the Wimpy Bar…she has a sense of the pale bread browning under an orange grill, and the colour and smell entwined as they spilled out of the doorway, out into the cool air. She can feel the crumbly cut surfaces of the bun crisping into ridges and scratchy nodes of toasted dough. There was a cliff-face looming over the road, darker than the sky, and the lights of the shops and the pier ahead. And then they were inside, amidst the bulky, shiny seating, the smell of caramelising onions, and the tacky feel of tabletop grease and smeared ketchup against her elbows. She barely dared ask for what she wanted, so she chose the cheapest things she could see, sure that this was too good to be true, and that, if she overstepped some vague behavioural mark, all hope of actually getting her meal would be dashed away. So she gambled low: the standard hamburger, orange squash, a share of her parents’ French fries. She’s never enjoyed a meal as much since.