Strawberries



  Strawberries

  Justin Cawthorne

  Copyright 2011 Justin Cawthorne

  for Isabel

  who will now know better than to make casual remarks about popular fruits

  Strawberries

  by Justin Cawthorne

  I never thought the world could end like this. I say that without any doubt: if anyone had asked me at any time how the world was going to end, this wouldn’t have been anywhere on my list.

  It all started yesterday - at least for us it did - after Suzie got back from the supermarket. She’s my sister, by the way; I’ve shared a house with her and Chrissie since last year. They needed a third person to cover the rent for a place they were looking at and I ended up being that person. Of course, the reason I ended up being that person was because I fancied Chrissie, but it was only after signing the contract that I realised exactly why Suzie and Chrissie were looking to live together.

  Let’s just say it’s a two-bedroom house and leave it at that.

  So, as I was saying, Suzie had just returned from the supermarket. It was a warm, sunny, perfect weekend and we’d agreed there was no better way to spend it than in the garden stuffing ourselves with whatever fine foods, wines and other treats our meagre spare cash could afford. What we ended up with was white wine, Doritos, hummus and a selection pack of miniature cheeses. Not the most refined selection, but enough to lull us into a false sense of sophistication.

  Oh - and strawberries.

  “Nearly didn’t come back with those,” Suzie told us as we unpacked the bags.

  “Strawberries?” Chrissie asked. “Didn’t even know you liked strawberries?”

  Suzie nodded. “Oh, sure, yeah... well... sometimes. They’re okay. Whatever. Thought they’d be nice. Anyway, they were on special, everyone was buying them so thought I’d better get in there.”

  I remember looking at the strawberries. It seems to me now as if I had a chance to get rid of them, as though my subconscious was urging me to throw them out but I simply wasn’t listening hard enough. In truth all I was doing was trying to decide whether to put them in the fridge or leave them out.

  “Yeah, leave those out,” Suzie instructed, reading my mind. “We’ll eat them now.”

  “So was that the last pack?” Chrissie asked.

  “Say what?”

  “You said you almost didn’t get them. Had they run out?”

  Suzie shook her head. “Not even close, they had piles of the things. No, this old fruit of woman came up to me after I paid and asked if she can have them.”

  “For free?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” Suzie explained. “She wanted me to give her the strawberries - nothing else, mind, just the strawberries - she knew I had some, I suppose she must have been watching me at the checkout.”

  Chrissie couldn’t work it out, I could tell by her face: there tended to be a lot of things she couldn’t work out. “Why? Why didn’t she just buy her own?”

  “No money. She told me she couldn’t afford to buy any more strawberries, but she had to have some. And I mean she had to have them, she wasn’t kidding. Do you think strawberries are like crack when you’re old and crazy?”

  “Did you tell her to get bent?” Chrissie asked.

  “Should’ve. Funny thing is I almost gave her the stupid things. She looked so sad and desperate, like her world was going to fall apart if she didn’t get these strawberries. And then...”

  She tailed off, staring intently at the packet of strawberries.

  “Then what?” I finally prompted.

  Suzie frowned. “It’s like she knew what I was thinking and she changed. Soon as I thought maybe I’d just give her the strawberries she stopped looking like a total loser and started to look... I don’t know, sort of hungry. She stopped looking at me and just started staring at the bag - it was like she couldn’t wait for me to get the strawberries out so she could grab them and run off. She was sort of a scary bitch by then, I’m not making it up.”

  Chrissie was still looking puzzled. “So how did you get rid of her?”

  “I pointed back in the shop, showed her the big stack of strawberries piled up in there, and told her they had plenty left. After that she wandered off like I didn’t even exist anymore. Freak.”

  Chrissie shrugged. “They’re only strawberries.”

  Ten minutes later we were in the garden. The first bottle of wine was open, and already well on its way to being empty, the hummus was being dipped into, the miniature cheeses were doing whatever miniature cheeses do and the strawberries were waiting.

  Suzie picked one out and took the first bite.

  “Oh!!” she exclaimed loudly.

  “What?” I asked. “Is it bad?”

  “Bad?! No way, it’s the most fucking delicious strawberry I’ve ever had in my life!”

  Before she could pause to take another breath she stuffed the rest of the fruit in her mouth and swallowed it down. Quickly, she grabbed another.

  Then Chrissie reached into the bowl. I saw Suzie’s eyes flash over to her and she hesitated: “Thought I’d better try one before you eat them all, yeah?”

  Suzie smiled, perhaps a little too anxiously. “Yeah, of course. Better have one while you still can, eh?”

  I watched them both, as Chrissie popped the strawberry in her mouth and as Suzie, in turn, watched her. Like any couple they bickered from time to time, but everything was always out in the open with them: I don’t really think Suzie had the patience for secrecy, and Chrissie certainly didn’t have the guile. Now it seemed that Suzie was leaving something unsaid, which wasn’t like her. I even started to wonder if there was something going on with the two of them that I didn’t know about.

  “Oh wow!” Chrissie squealed as she tasted the strawberry. “Hey, you should totally try one of these,” she said to me.

  I shook my head. “You have them - I’m not all that keen on strawberries.”

  “No problem - all the more for us.”

  As the two of them carried on eating I disappeared inside to see if our kitchen could offer up any further snacks. I was happy to miss out on the strawberries; they really weren’t my kind of thing anyway, and as long as there was still plenty of cheese and hummus to go around I wasn’t going to complain. True, it was a combination that wasn’t going to make me anyone’s best friend, but wasn’t like I was about to score with my present company anyway.

  “Hey!” I heard Suzie shouting.

  I looked out of the window and saw her angrily waving the empty bowl in Chrissie’s face: “Eat the last one why don’t you?!”

  Chrissie was flinching. “I - no, you ate the last one. I’m sure you did.”

  “There was one left in the bowl!”

  “I thought you left that for me?”

  “Left it for you? Oh, dream on why don’t you?!”

  I figured this was the sort of argument I should cut in on, and I didn’t much like the way Suzie was brandishing that bowl, so I quickly popped my head back into the garden: “Tell you what, why don’t I just go and buy some more?”

  Suzie’s eyes didn’t even move away from Chrissie. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

  I walked over and shakily poured the rest of the wine into their glasses. “Okay then,” I said, nodding. “So you two sit down and have some more wine, chill out, and I’ll be back with more strawberries before you even notice.”

  “Get two punnets,” Suzie ordered.

  “Reckon that’ll be enough for you?” Chrissie retorted smartly.

  “I’ll buy whatever’s left,” I told them, as I hurried off to the car.

  Five minutes later I pulled up at the supermarket. If I hadn’t been so unnerved by the bizarre showdown in our garden I might have noticed the police c
ar parked outside, or the small crowd of random people gathered listlessly near the entrance. As it happened I only thought about these things when it was already too late.

  Instead I walked straight inside, my eyes drawn immediately to the strawberries: they were set out on a big display which was being guarded (and I’m certain that’s the right word) by two staff members while a third man handed out punnets to the waiting shoppers. As soon as one person took a pack, another walked up, then another, and another. The staff could barely dish them out fast enough.

  I wasn’t complaining: the sooner I got to the front of the queue the sooner I could get home and stop my flatmates from tearing each others’ faces off.

  As I waited I noticed a middle-aged businessman sitting on the floor, eating greedily from his own punnet of strawberries, the juice running wildly down his chin and across his shirt.

  I didn’t even have time to properly register how peculiar the scene was before a punnet of strawberries was thrust into my hand - I had reached the front of the queue without even realising.

  “Oh, cheers - can I get a couple more of