chloe flash

Barter

“Look at 'er.” Angie tilted her head toward the cardboard cut-out in the window on Strand and Masons. “What I wouldn't give to have her life.”

“What I wouldn't give to have her figure.” Chloe licked the last of the chocolate from the KitKat wrapper and looked for a bin to drop it in. It the absence of a suitable receptacle, she twisted the plastic into a strip and knotted it, holding it casually on the inside of her second and third fingers until she was close enough to a woman with laden bags from Redman's supermarket, then dropped it casually among her vegetables.

“I know what you mean.” Angela twisted to look at her own bum.

“What you on about?” Chloe couldn't look at her own bum with a pair of mirrors. “You're even thinner than she is.”

“I'm still young though. She's old. Twenty-five at least.”

“That's not old. My brother's older than that and he's still a prat.”

“Yeah. Dishy, though.” Angela pushed open the door. “You coming?”

“Nah.” Chloe had a general disagreement with the policies of Strand and Mason's. She'd rather buy clothes that fitted more than one of her legs. “I'll wait out here.”

“What would you give to be her size?”

Chloe jumped at the voice and turned, her heart hammering. She hadn't even heard the bloke walk up, and it was a cobbled street. “You what?”

“Would your give your right arm?”