Free She's Leaving Home by Edwina Currie

light-fingered. Sometimes she would pick out a damaged cuchon or slightly burned loaf, deduct it from the total and make the man sign for the number accepted – but the offending article tasted just as good for elevenses with salty Welsh butter, if she could grab a few minutes. Some customers, Sunday papers under their arms, would time their arrival to coincide with the second bread delivery about ten. Then would appear Danish pastries stuffed with almond paste and stewed apple or half an apricot, and cinnamon rolls and marbled cakes with their swirl of coffee and cream sponge, and best of all warm chalahs , the sweet milk loaves perfect for Sunday afternoon visitors, shaped like a plait of burnished brown hair, queenly and womanly; so much more tempting, in her view, than the masculine hardness of the pale bagels which had to be dunked in a cup of tea to make them chewable.
    Five-forty. Not too bad. Time to pull the moped out of the shed and kick it into life – no buses at this hour. Still dark out, and would be for hours yet. But a bird could be heard somewhere down the park, singing sweetly if slightly desperately, totally alone. Bit like her own position in life: doing her best according to her lights, even if nobody took a scrap of notice.
     
    Helen rose at seven. She could earn more if she arrived as the shop opened, but in truth her presence was not needed until the first rush. And Nellie was so irritable early on that it was wiser to keep out of her way. By eight-thirty the manageress, as Helen thought of her, was metamorphosing into a more human creature and could be expected to greet her cheerily, and slip her a knob of Cheddar for her breakfast.
    She would see Mr Feinstein twice that day, for he would come to her house at night to play bridge with her father and other friends. Not that she would be around, of course: Sunday evenings were reserved for Harold House, the youth club.
    The shop was close enough for her to walk to, though had it been wet she would have begged a lift from her father. As she arrived it seemed the cold bright weather had drawn more custom than usual, until she remembered that today was a Catholic feast of some kind and the convent would have laid on extra masses. From a hundred yards away she could hear the chatter inside.
    Feinstein’s Famous Deli stood in the middle of a row of suburban shops, its double frontage proud and disordered all at once. To one side was a newsagent’s run by a recently arrived Pakistani, to the other a barber’s: all three were busy in these few hours. Painted in white on Mr Feinstein’s window were that week’s special offers – Canary Island bananas at l0d a pound, Norwegian salted fish at two shillings a quarter. Outside rickety trestles covered in green plastic carried boxes of fruit and vegetables, onions in three sizes and colours, potatoes and carrots and pale cabbage for sauerkraut. Labels on oranges and tangerines proudly proclaimed their Israeli origin. Mr Feinsteinwould not buy from South Africa. His cousin in Jo’burg had recently seen a sign on a golf clubhouse door: ‘No coloureds, dogs or Jews’.
    Helen pushed her way inside and hurried into the tiny back room where she hung up her coat and collected her overall. With a twinge of disgust she noticed it had not been washed since the previous week, though Mr Feinstein had promised. No sooner was she installed behind the counter than the calls started.
    ‘Oi! Young lady! I’ve been waiting ten minutes. You gonna serve me or not?’
    He was a fat elderly man, red in the face, a large string hag in his outstretched hand. Nellie was absorbed with another customer with a long hand-written list. A brassy woman next to the shouting man poked him indignantly and announced that she was first. Some half-hearted pushing ensued. Helen ignored the fat man who was often at the centre of a fuss, as if it were a necessary adjunct to his shopping. Instead she addressed the woman: Sylvia Bloom, another