“Golden Peace!” Her eyes light up. “I did that program.”

“No way.” I stare at her.

“Online.” She flushes faintly. “I couldn’t afford to visit. But, you know, they have an app, so…I was in big trouble, spending-wise. You can imagine, working here….” Simone gestures around at the shop. “But I kicked my problem.”

“Wow.” I blink at her. “Well, then, you know what I’m talking about.”

“ ‘Buy calmly and with meaning,’ ” she quotes.

“Exactly!” I nod in recognition. “I have that in a frame!”

“ ‘Why are you buying?’ ”

“Yes!”

“Do you need this?”

“Exactly! We had a whole session about that one issue—”

“No.” Simone looks at me directly. “I’m asking you a question. Do you need this? Or are you just trying to soothe yourself?” Simone has taken the snow globe out of my bag and is holding it in front of me. “Do you need it?” she persists.

“Oh,” I say, disconcerted. “I don’t know. Well, I mean, obviously I don’t need it. Nobody needs a snow globe. I thought I’d give it to…I don’t know. Maybe my husband.”

“Great! Will it bring him consistent joy and pleasure?”

I try to picture Luke shaking the snow globe and watching it whirl around. I mean, he might do it once.

“Dunno,” I admit, after a pause. “It might do.”

“It might?” She shakes her head. “It only might? What was your thought process when you put it in your basket?”

I stare at her, caught out. I didn’t have a thought process. I just bunged it in.

“I don’t think I need it.” I bite my lip. “Or even want it, really.”

“So don’t buy it. You want me to refund it?”

“Yes, please,” I whisper gratefully.

“These T-shirts.” Simone pulls them out of the bag. “Who are they for, and will they really suit those people?”

I look at the T-shirts blankly. I hadn’t worked out who was going to wear them. I bought them because I was in a souvenir shop and they were souvenirs.

Simone shakes her head at my expression. “Refund?” she says succinctly.

“Yes, please.” I pull out the dice necklaces. “And these. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll give them to my mum and her friend and they’ll wear them for five seconds and then they’ll take them off, and they’ll knock around the house and in about three years’ time they’ll go to the charity shop, but no one there will want them either.”

“Oh my God, you’re right,” comes a husky voice behind me, and I turn to see a middle-aged woman pulling about six dice necklaces out of her basket. “I got these for my girlfriends back home. They won’t wear them, will they?”

“Never.” I shake my head.

“I want a refund.” A denim-clad woman at the next register has been listening in, and now she turns back to her cashier, who is a red-haired woman. “I’m sorry. I just bought a heap of crap. I don’t know what I was doing.” She pulls a diamanté Las Vegas baseball cap out of her carrier bag. “My stepdaughter is never going to wear this.”