The Box

The Box

S OMETIMES, THEY COME

back.

‘Did you sell that Pink Panther jumper yet? My mother knitted it by hand.’

‘Has the gold clock gone? I hated the thing, but it reminded me of Grandad.’

‘I donated an emerald ring. Is it still here?’

Once in a while, the item will be on the Eddie Shelf, and I tell them we will search the back room after closing so that I can scuttle home and bring it back and then ‘find’ it in our non-existent storeroom. Sometimes they are so relieved that they make a big donation to say thank you. If the item has already been sold or sent to the tip, I fumble for the words. I offer them tea. But they rarely take it.

The girl with the pink hair didn’t stay, and I have a heavy sense of dread as I heave the box she donated on to the floor of the back room.

Among the neatly folded T-shirts with what seem to be skateboarding brands printed on them I find a notebook. It is full of scribbly drawings of the girl with the pink hair, from the

side, laughing, asleep. All in scritchy-scratchy black biro and with a liveliness to them. There are also song lyrics and poetry, but I don’t stop to read, I just enjoy turning the pages and the crinkle they make from being so laden down with black ink.

I’m closing the notebook when out slips a collection of glossy photographs.

Everything about the girl with the pink hair changes from photo to photo. Her hair colour, her make-up, her clothes. But in every picture the young man beside her is the same – tall, slim, dark-haired and wearing some combination of T-shirt and jeans and a pair of white Converse trainers that appear to be covered in writing. It seems he never took those shoes off.

Yet at the bottom of the box, here they are, worn to the shape of his feet and absolutely covered in love.

And no longer needed.

On the right trainer is a drawing of the two of them which is quite good considering it’s on a shoe. ‘I love you’ loops around the laces beside a date – 12.12.18 – and across the back of the heels in black writing that has been gone over and over are the words ‘Bella and Jake Forever’ .

I will keep them safe, until she’s ready to come back.