Friday.
Kept turning it over on the drive home last night. You look different. Mai's little circle in the air, near her cheek.
Probably the LumiSpa, I decided somewhere around the Epping Road lights. Every night for weeks now, same two minutes, no skipping. And the mask on the couch beside my daughter. Not that I'd know. Could still be Dad's soup.
But the idea wouldn't leave. So this morning, before the shop, I opened the hallway drawer.
One tube of the Spa Day mask we hadn't opened. Squat and white, like a tube of toothpaste. Put it in my bag, under the lunch box. Felt faintly ridiculous. Like smuggling a sandwich into a cinema.
The morning was parcels and tape, the usual. By half past twelve, nobody. The street had gone still. Rain holding off.
Waited until Mai put her phone down. Then took the tube out and held it across the counter.
You said yesterday my skin looked brighter, I said. I think it's this. Why don't you try it too?
She looked at it. Then at me.
No, no. I can't. You paid for that.
Pushed it an inch back toward me with one finger. I pushed it back. We did that twice, like two people fighting over a restaurant bill.
So I told her how it goes. My daughter and I have done it a good few times now. Wash first. A thin layer, like icing, not a thick one. The label says ten minutes, but we always forget and sit at least fifteen. Phone down. Then a spritz of the NaPCA mist over the top — and I didn't have a spare mist, I said, only the one, and it lives in our hallway.
Next time I put an order in, I'll get an extra for you.
That was the part that did it. She laughed, put her hand over her mouth, and said aiya. Then took the tube in both hands, turned it round to read the back, and put it carefully into her bag. Next to a folder of invoices and a pink lunch box with a cartoon cat.
Thank you, she said. Quieter than the rest.
Looked at her then. Properly. Standing at the counter, a metre from her.
Mai is about my age. Two kids at home. Her husband's parents live with them, out in Dundas, and she's up before everyone and last to bed. I've known all of it for months — it comes out in pieces, over the roster and the tape gun. She's never complained.
But knowing it and seeing it are different things. I'd known it the way you know a timetable.
The skin under her eyes was a colour I hadn't really looked at in a long while.
All these weeks, she'd been the one covering my shifts, sliding coffees across the counter, putting the tape gun back on its hook. And I'd thought of her as the steady one.
Funny. Handing someone a tube doesn't feel like selling. It doesn't feel like anything, really. Just a small thing moved from one bag to another.
The afternoon went slowly. Mai wrapped bottles in newspaper at the back, humming.
At five she grabbed her bag. Stopped at the door with her hand on the frame.
Fifteen minutes, she said, mostly to herself. With three bathroom queues and my mother-in-law.
Smiled at her. Said nothing.
The door swung shut behind her. I stood there a while with the cloth.
Wondered where in that house she'd find it.