The supermarket was busy but there was still room. You could fill a bag with buns, and it was cheap. So, they did that. Even though buns weren’t on their list. Some of the vegetables they wanted weren’t in season and were expensive, so they stood in front of them and negotiated. It was a bit like the blind leading the blind, but they imagined if someone saw them from down the aisle they would look like anyone else. Just flatmates getting their weekly shopping. But no one would look at them for long, because no matter how well they’d trained themselves not to see it, people were freaked out by them.

‘What’s like courgettes though?’ one of them said.

‘Carrots?’ To Peggy, every problem could be solved with carrots.

‘They’re the same shape,’ Dell said, reaching out and touching a carrot. ‘But do they cook the same?’

They all shook their heads. ‘Do they taste the same?’ Heidi asked.

They shook their heads some more. They didn’t think so. Carrots, they decided, were not like courgettes. But maybe pumpkin was. They’d try it. Pumpkins were cheaper but also were scarier. No one quite knew what was inside them. They bought broccoli because broccoli was cheap. It felt like every time they had been to the supermarket up the road – to make the quiche – broccoli had been cheap. ‘Should we get two?’ Heidi asked.

‘Does it last?’ Peggy said. After the sandwiches today, she was scared they would end up with broccoli again.

Everyone shrugged and Heidi put one in the trolley and Dell added it to the calculator.

One of them had written down ‘Fruit’. They looked. Apples were cheap and so were bananas. All the oranges were from overseas. They all agreed that they probably all liked apples, even though, right now, there was an apple that had been left to go bad in the fruit bowl at home. They promised each other they’d eat them, and put apples in the trolley.

Things were confusing. Especially around the grains. There were different types of flour and the yeast was out in the open and needed to be refrigerated but only once it was opened. Around the aisle where the tea and coffee were, the calculator hit eighty dollars. They looked in the trolley. It looked pretty good. They even had biscuits. It seemed kind of positive. They went to the checkout and each of them got twenty dollars out of their pocket and handed it to Heidi, who handed the notes to the checkout person. They even got some change.