Moroccan Holiday

The shop keeper pointed at the numbers on the till and Maggie began to scramble in her large, overstuffed basket for her purse.

Through the bibs, t-shirts, wet wipes, spare pants, odd sandal, smushed banana and juice box she delved, her fingers feeling for the hard edge of her purse. Instead, she came up with her sunglasses: looking slightly crushed and as if they’d got too cosy with the banana.

The rake thin man, so deep brown and wrinkled that he looked about 110 gave a sigh of impatience, making Maggie curse the moment she’d decided to weave through the plastic ribbons which served as a door at this hole-in-the-wall shop.
It wasn’t like any grocer’s she’d encountered before. With her two children, she’d searched the small selection of shelves wondering what on earth they could buy here, in amongst the giant of olives and white beans, floating in jars like biology specimens.

Tinned tuna, tinned tomatoes, onions the size of her toddler’s head, bags of flour and sugar made up the rest of the offerings along with trays and trays of eggs.
Maggie had never seen so many eggs, a whole corner was piled high with them. Brown, papery white, some flecked with dirt and some stuck with the odd little downy feather.

The basket rummaging continued as Maggie’s daughter Bonnie played pretend hop-scotch in front of the counter and Rory, in his buggy, licked too hard at the remaining scoop of ice cream in the cone bought to keep him from whining.

With a damp plop, the soggy ice cream rolled from the top of the cone and dropped straight past the buggy and onto the filthy lino floor, where, in total disregard for any EU legislation on the subject, a shabby Alsatian came out of hiding in the corner and licked it up, oblivious to the fact that Rory was living up to his name and roaring loudly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Maggie told the shop keeper, but he looked at her impassively and just blinked slowly.

One final search of the basket confirmed the sneaking suspicion that the purse had been left behind.