Free Spin Cycle by Sue Margolis

“don’t ask.”
    “The thing is with you, Jack, you don’t eat enough roughage. Your idea of a balanced diet is a fried egg sandwich in both hands. I tell you, carry on like this and you’ll end up with a colostomy. Look, your sister dropped off that Boots enema this morning. Why won’t you at least give it a go? She said your brother-in-law only used it once. And she sterilized it thoroughly afterward.”
    “Rachel, tell your mother she’s mad, will you? Who in their right mind uses a secondhand enema?”
    “I’m mad?” Faye retorted. “May I remind you that I’m not the one who sees eating a bit of broccoli from time to time as a threat to his manhood. And I told you, she sterilized the enema. Rachel, tell your father he should give it a go.”
    Having no desire to be drawn into an argument about her father’s bowels, Rachel decided to say her good-byes.
    It was only as she pulled up outside her flat, having spent most of the journey home trying to figure out if Tiggy Bristol was real or an invention—and if she was an invention, why—that she remembered she’d run out of orange juice. It wouldn’t have mattered, except Sam refused to put anything else on his cereal. Each morning she went through the same routine, trying to convince him that milk was food and far more filling than juice, but he wasn’t interested. What was more, since cereal was the only thing Sam would agree to eat in the mornings, failure to provide the juice to pour on top of it meant he would go to school on an empty stomach. Since there was more of the Jewish mother in Rachel than she cared to admit, she wasn’t about to let this happen. If he went to school hungry, she reasoned, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. It then followed that if his blood sugar got dangerously low, he could pass out. If he passed out he could hit his head. As she turned off the car ignition, there was no doubt in Rachel’s mind that if she didn’t find some orange juice tonight, by midmorning tomorrow her son would be lying on a gurney in the Royal Free Hospital, with a concussion.
    The 7-Eleven was a five-minute drive away. She decided to pop round the corner to the pub and see if Terry could spare a carton.
    As usual on weekday nights, the Red House was pretty quiet. She walked toward the bar. From what she could make out, Terry, the excabbie, salt-of-the-earth landlord was the only person serving. He appeared to be pulling a pint for a youngish bloke who was sitting at the bar doing a crossword. She was struck by his pallor—he looked like a blood donor who couldn’t say when—and his wild Bob Geldof hair.
    Having eyed the hair for a moment or two she decided he didn’t use Wash and Go—he used wash and forsake. She leaned on the bar, a couple of feet from him. Terry looked up, smiled and mouthed that he’d be with her in just a sec.
    “OK, Tel,” Rachel heard the mad-hair guy say, “what about three across? Exclusively female, ending in
u-n-t
.”
    Terry continued to pull gently on the pump.
    “Aunt,” he said.
    “Oh yeah, right,” the bloke said, drawing on his cigarette. “Course it is. Otherwise three down—largest antipodean country—would’ve been Custralia.”
    Rachel shook her head and laughed quietly to herself. She watched him cross out his previous answer. He was wearing a very fitted seventies-style royal-blue velvet jacket with wide lapels. Underneath it was a tangerine-colored shirt unbuttoned to the chest, with a long pointed collar and frill down the front.
    He threw the newspaper and pen down on the bar and grinned.
    “Right. Finished,” he declared. “OK, I spent a couple of hours on it yesterday morning after Kilroy. Three more in the afternoon. Twenty minutes now. So that’s what . . . ?”
    “Five hours, twenty minutes,” Terry said, picking up another glass.
    “
Wick
-id. Blimey, I reckon that’s my best time yet.”
    “So it took you as little as five hours then,” Terry said, putting the pint glass