by Jay Howard
Decimal Point
Martha pushed the back door closed with one hip and gratefully let the four carrier bags slide to the floor. There were white ridges across the inside of her fingers from the weight of her shopping; she gingerly flexed them, then rubbed them against each other to bring some life back.
“Jack!” she called up the stairs. “Put your bike away in the garage, please, before it gets nicked.”
There was a thundering down the stairs as she started to unpack. “Sorry, Little Woman,” he said and ruffled her hair in passing. At six foot two he dwarfed his mother.
“Don’t do that!” She slammed a bag onto the kitchen table and grabbed the first couple of cans to put away in the cupboard.
Jack looked sheepish and went out to move his bike from the drive, where he’d carelessly dumped it on his way in. When he returned he quietly started unpacking one of the bags. “Bad day?” he asked after a while. “Sit down and I’ll make you a cuppa.”
She slid into a chair and cradled her head in both hands, fingers laced through her short curly hair. “I don’t know which I miss most,” she said, “my car or my job.”
“I guess that depends on whether it’s a work day or a shopping day,” Jack said. He picked up a bag of potatoes and checked the weight printed on it. “Or both. This is heavy stuff, Mum. You should have given me a list; I could have picked this stuff up after lectures.”
“Hey, the only advantage of being a checkout chick is the staff discount.”
Jack frowned. “I hate you doing that job.”
“It’s paying some of the bills so don’t knock it,” she said and stretched her arms up, arching her back and rotating some of the kinks out of her neck. “I need to make that redundancy money last as long as possible.”
“But someone with your qualifications and experience shouldn’t be wasting away in a menial job.” He added milk to the two mugs and passed one over.
Martha took it gratefully and blew on it to cool the first sip. “You know as well as I do that, in this area, my skills were only useful to BioMed.”
“So we should move,” he said.
“To Czechoslovakia? Mmmm…” She put on a mock thoughtful face, one finger to the side of her mouth. “The relocation offer was very generous, and I’ve heard the brand new facilities there are excellent.”
He grinned. “Maybe not quite that far.”
“We’re not going anywhere, not so close to your finals,” she said and got up to start preparing a bolognese. “Get your degree and then we’ll have a rethink.”