Supermarket

It might be nice, she thought, to never leave her house again. She dropped them both into the cart. With her hands on the handlebar of her shopping trolley and the fluorescent lights giving her a headache, isolation seemed an attractive idea. She remembered a recent dream where she had walked into the ocean. Fragments of her unconsciousness, a white nightdress, the starless sky, and the dark waves lapping at her feet.

Steering towards the check out, she pushed on.

The teenage girl behind the check-out till had green hair. The two of them exchanged tense smiles and the woman looked away, wondering if the girl’s mother had been put through hell. If that was what motherhood meant.