‘I mean, what would you say? If you could make just one call? I guess it’s better than no warning at all … or is it?’

‘Where was that plane headed? Do they know?’ 204

‘It turned back to Washington, didn’t it? They say they reckon it was going for the White House.’

‘That’s all speculation,’ a voice shouts from somewhere. Jemima. I crane my neck. Can you even make phone calls on a plane? ‘Rampant speculation. We’ll never know for sure.’

‘It was hardly supposed to crash in a field though, was it?’

I sneeze as ball-gown woman unwinds a feather boa from around her neck.

‘Sure, it feels unlikely,’ Jemima says, appearing behind me. ‘But all the crew and passengers are dead. There will probably be more clues when they find the black box … Ooooh, thanks, that’s perfect!’

She beams at me, grabbing the handle of my trolley. How could a black box ever explain anything by itself?

‘Could I borrow this? I promise we’ll bring it straight back once we’ve dropped them all off. We won’t be more than thirty mins…’

‘Marie!’ I jump as Moe repeatedly shouts to me from another till. ‘Can you jump on? We can sort out the restock later.’

‘Excellent,’ Jemima says, as I hurry to the empty till station on my other side, abandoning my overloaded trolley next to her. ‘Can we slide in here?’ She’s unloading sheets of cans on to the belt before I can even start it up, ignoring the ball gown moaning and complaining about queue-jumping. I start ringing up her purchases as fast as I can. There must be more than a hundred cans of Red Bull and at least thirty – wait, no, forty – jumbo bags of crisps.

‘There is no way I am carrying all those,’ her blonde friend says, sulking at the exit end of the aisle. I blush as Jemima rolls her eyes at me.

‘Chill your boots, will you? We’ll use the trolley. Marie, is it?’ I gawp at her, clutching the bag of crisps I was about to scan. Is she still talking to me? ‘Marie says we can borrow it so long as you return it straight away. You, that is, not me.’

I flush harder as she smiles at me again. I guess she can borrow 205it. Why not? Moe will leave me out of this management conversation for sure if he finds out. I pass the last of the crisps across the belt as they stack their supplies high in the basket, gasping as I ring up the total. No one ever spends more than twenty quid in here, overnight anyway.

‘Jesus wept,’ the blonde one says, eyeing the numbers blinking on the screen. ‘And you think we’ll get away with that?’