Hanging from her fingers is a big paper carrier bag and I knowingly asked if she’d been to the checkout. Mum nodded. I pushed my foot into my shoe and pressed my heel into it. “Did you find some shoes?” I asked as we exited the store.
“I did.” Mum replied. “I’ll show you them in Burger King.”
Like everywhere else in the city, Burger King was busy. It felt like there was a black hole forming in my stomach by the time we finally sat down to eat. I sank my teeth into a cheese burger whilst Mum dipped into the Primark bag. “I bought these for Hannah.” she said, briefly showing me a simple pair of flat black pumps. “Do you think she’ll like them?”
I nodded as I chopped, eventually saying, “Yeah I think so.”
With other customers seemingly inches to my left and right, I was glad that she didn’t pull out the knickers, vests and knee socks too. We ate and made small talk, but mostly ate. Afterwards we had a look around an indoor market where the goths and emos shop and spent a good hour looking at the various stalls. Like the Corn Exchange, there’s loads of little curiosity shops, vintage stalls, alternative fashions, posters, comics, FRP, army surplus and various other outlets. “I didn’t know this place existed.” I said as we awkwardly made progress through its narrow busy corridors. Mum said it’s been here for years and added that it’s not usually this busy. After struggling our way around two of its four floors, Mum suggested we head home rather than head up to the next floor. I was also getting bored of being in a crowd so we headed back to Picadilly. Our timing couldn’t have been better because a train was due in ten minutes.
Like the city, the platform was busy and so was the train. We had to stand all the way to Stockport where pretty much everyone alighted. With a near empty carriage we sat ourselves down. Mum asked if I’d had a nice afternoon. I said I had but confessed to it being a bit awkward and scary at times, such as when she got the shoes out in Burger King and the dubious glances from some shop assistants. “I guess it’s not every day they get boys in the girl’s shops.” I supposed.