Stuart Pawson: Limestone Cowboy

So which was it to be: Balmoral Castle or Sandringham House? This was the sort of decision she hated. Should she choose Balmoral, with its pine trees and purple mountains, or Sandringham, with that impossibly blue sky?

"Oh, for God's sake! Make up your mind," she snapped silently to herself, but still no decision came. Never mind, perhaps she'd do better with the lightbulbs. She turned to go, turned back again, reaching out her hand, then withdrew it and almost fled into the aisle marked Electrical. Her heart sank when she saw the stacked shelves. A lightbulb was a lightbulb, she'd always thought, so why were there so many different types? She read the labels in mounting panic: sixty watt, forty watt, a hundred watt, and so on. Then some were plain and some were pearl, whatever that meant, and others had screw caps and bayonet caps. She felt like screaming. "I only want a lightbulb. A common or garden lightbulb. Any friggin' one will do." Another woman muscled alongside her, picked up a pack of four sixty watts and moved away. For a moment she thought of asking for help, then realised the stupidity of that and gave an involuntary giggle. How could she possibly have explained what she wanted it for?

A female store detective casually walked round the end of the display and watched her. Only two weeks into the job, but she recognised the type: early twenties; hair pulled back and fixed with a rubber band; spotty complexion from chips with everything but usually by themselves. And wearing a cheap quilted jacket with Michigan emblazoned across the back, even though it was a fine summer's day. Single parent, no doubt, living in one of the project flats after her boyfriend walked out. She'd fill her basket, and perhaps those pockets, with toiletries and hardware here in Wilko's, then walk round to Lidl to buy groceries. Then she'd have to splash what she'd saved by taking a taxi home because she'd never manage everything on the bus. The bus station was half a mile away and the service erratic, whilst there was a queue of taxis right outside the store waiting for fares such as her.

A gaggle of schoolgirls came into the shop and headed for the toiletries, noisy as geese. Wilko's are good at toiletries, often charging half what the more fashionable stores charge for the same branded items. The detective sighed and looked at her watch. There were still three more shops to be visited before she could go home and make the kids' teas. She gave the woman in the Michigan jacket a last look and headed in the direction of the noise.

It was easy, the woman in the Michigan jacket realised. Why hadn't she thought of it before? Choose the cheapest; it was as simple as that. She picked up a bulb — 25p, size and type irrelevant — and placed it in the wire basket she was carrying. What about the tea towels, though? They were the same price, so how would she overcome that hurdle?

She'd choose the nearest. She'd walk round the corner, reach out and pick up the first one. She couldn't remember which it would be, the Balmoral or the Sandringham, but it didn't matter. Tomorrow it would be a long way away, in the landfill site, so it didn't matter at all.

It was Balmoral. She almost changed her mind because she'd seen a programme about Sandringham on TV when it was the Queen's Jubilee, but she summoned what little resolve she possessed and grabbed the Balmoral. At the end of the aisle she checked in the big convex mirror that nobody was following her and stuffed the towel into one of her pockets. At the end of the next aisle she did the same with the lightbulb.

The schoolgirls were taking the tops off bottles and sniffing the contents, alternately pulling faces or expressing approval. She pushed between them, saying: "Excuse me" and felt a pang of regret mixed with jealousy as their perfume assaulted her nostrils. She wanted to warn them, tell them that there was more to life than boyfriends and pop music and the latest fashion, but she knew that she wouldn't have listened and they wouldn't, either. She picked up a bottle of Revlon shampoo — 95p here, Ј2.35 in Boots — and dropped it into her basket. Fifteen minutes later she was on the bus home, with a receipt safely in her pocket saying that at 11:59 she had purchased one item costing Ј0.95.

The flat was on the third floor and she had to rest twice on the way up the stairs. Whoever lived below her was still piling stuffed bin-liners out on the landing, and somebody had peed in the corner. The incessant dum-dum-dum of a drum machine came from the ground floor flat where Heckley's aspiring answer to Bob Marley lived, and the smell of somebody's curry competed unappetisingly with that of stale urine. She leaned out over the wall, took a deep breath of slightly fresher air, and tackled the last flight.

As soon as she opened the door she heard the baby's whimpering. His tears had dried long ago and his crying was reduced to a low keening noise that grated on her nerves like a fingernail across a blackboard. He hesitated for a moment as she loomed over him, but started again almost immediately with renewed energy. She swatted away the flies that were flying and crawling around the carrycot and picked him up.

"It's OK," she said, matter-of-fact, as if talking to an adult. "Mummy's brought something home for you."

The baby wasn't placated. He had a flat face with small eyes, and sweat had pasted his hair to his head. She rested him awkwardly in the crook of her arm until the wetness seeped through and she had to dump him roughly back in his carrycot, her face contorted with disgust. The whimpering escalated to full-blown bawling and she fled from the room, slamming the door behind her.

With the television turned up loud she could hardly hear him. The bin men were due in less than an hour so there was no time to waste. The woman laid the tea towel on the work surface alongside the kitchen sink, the picture of Balmoral surrounded by symmetrical pine trees face down, andjaid the lightbulb on it. She folded the cloth once, covering the bulb, and stooped to bring a pan from a cupboard.

The first blow was half-hearted and the bulb didn't break. The second shattered it and the next one reduced the pieces to smithereens. She carefully unfolded the cloth to inspect her handiwork, the shards of glass that clung to the material sparkling in the dilute sunlight that struggled through the uncurtained window. Some too small, most still too large, she decided. Another two blows and she was satisfied with her handiwork.

The bin men came dead on time, the roar of the lorry's engine announcing its arrival as it emptied the dumpsters and compacted their contents deep within its interior. She stood on the landing, watching, as the evidence of her thieving was engulfed by the collective waste of this end of the housing project. Balmoral Castle and lightbulb were swamped and smothered by waste food, empty cartons, disposable nappies and all the other jetsam of modern society. Cabbage stalks and cereal boxes were mashed and compressed with takeaway trays, rotten fruit, chicken bones and used cat litter. Jam jars and cigarette packets were mixed with ice cream cartons, ketchup bottles and potato peelings in a stinking stew fit for nothing beyond dumping under the earth, out of sight, out of mind. Powerful hydraulics compressed the tea towel between a semen-stained copy of the Littlewood's catalogue and an unwanted hamster cage, but no one would ever know that. No one at all.

The baby was still whimpering, his throat too dry to cry, his narrow eyes too tired for tears. She picked up a plastic spoon and the tin of peach and banana baby food she'd opened earlier and went into the bedroom. He looked at her, wary and confused, lifting his arms as if reaching for her, then dropping them again. She picked him up, sat him on her knee and let him nestle against her breast. When he was comfortable she dipped the spoon into the gooey mix of fruit and brought it out piled high.