Jeremy Clarke: Running into Rachel

I’d been trying to curb the habit — one day at a time — and then I felt a bit toxic and marched smartly into my favourite local charity shop as though I were on rails. I’ve been in this particular one a thousand times — a peasant enamoured with tat. I know all the volunteers by sight. One day it might be the big humble guy in the frock and with the devil-may-care approach to applying his lipstick. Or it might be the elderly deaf woman who taps at the touch-screen till with a trembling, apprehensive forefinger, as though the thing were an unexploded bomb; and always, always making a catastrophic error, and having to call the shop manager out from her Aladdin’s cave at the back of the shop, to void the transaction, reset the till, and begin again; and you are standing there for five minutes or more, by which time your almost concupiscent urge to own that £2.50 James Last and his Orchestra anniversary boxed set has entirely evaporated.

Or it might be the suspicious young Pole who imagines that the moment his back’s turned we’ll all be frantically stuffing Coronet paperbacks down the fronts of our trousers. Or the other young man, psychotic with amiability, who imagines he’s working in haute couture and suavely compliments sir or madam on their excellent and discriminating choice of garment. ‘What lovely material, sir! Such a quality cut! Between us, sir, I’ve had my eye on that one ever since it came in,’ he exults, as he folds some deceased old farmer’s best market-day shirt with elaborate care and guides it reverently into the bag.

But on this particular day, the woman leaning heavily across the counter and gazing out of the window was a volunteer I hadn’t seen before.