Seventeen

Walking down the road, Irene marvelled at the softness of the air on her skin and the dazzle of the sun in her raw and blinking eyes. Everything seemed bright and new: the leaves that shimmered on the trees, dappling the light, the silver clouds that puffed on the turquoise horizon, the flowers in buckets outside the florist’s – blazing blue delphiniums, lisianthus in floppy pink and lilac, the haze of yellow mimosa.

At the greengrocer’s she stopped for a few moments to breathe in the heady scent before entering the cool, dark interior of the shop. There were open-mouthed sacks of muddy potatoes, tomatoes on the vine, purple lettuces with veined and curling leaves, baskets of small strawberries, velvet peaches, golden melons whose tops she pressed with her thumb to test their ripeness and vast green-striped water melons, some of which had been cut into thick red-pink slabs, blackcurrants mixed with tart redcurrants, gnarled organic apples, passion fruit. There were little, madly expensive baskets of wild mushrooms as well – stout ceps and fluted orange chantarelles, withered black horns of plenty and white parasol mushrooms. She bent her head and sniffed in the odour of soil and decay. Joy caught her by the throat and for a moment she could hardly move or breathe for surprise and terror.

Inside the shop she bought a small bag of chantarelles, a pouch of basil leaves, two glossy nectarines, six purple plums with golden drops of juice oozing like sap out of their tops and a punnet of raspberries. At the baker’s she bought a couple of crusty rolls and a square of the home-made, spicy gingerbread that Adrian used to get on Friday evenings for the family.