Short Story Competition Winner 2007
'Loosening Up'
by
Andrea Owens
He didn’t laugh. Earnestly he told me his stage name was Mr Squishy – ‘Like Mr Blobby, only softer – I want the kids to see me as soft and sensitive,’ he said.
Being a freelance graphic designer is as much about your people-skills as anything else; I could see this one was going to need a lot of hand-holding. They’re always the worst kind of client, the ones who say they’ll leave it all to you to imagine what they want and then say ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ when you show them the result.
Anyway. I made a special trip to a swish blue-lit Chelsea greengrocer’s to get the right kind of tomato – I knew the supermarket ones wouldn’t do – which made me a little late for our meeting, but I figured, What difference does it make to him? It’s his flat, he was only going to be there anyway.
Martin, his name was. He lived over a shop displaying wheelchairs and colostomy bags in its window; the star item, 20% off, was a plastic leg clad in a black sock and brown Oxford shoe. He turned out younger than he’d sounded on the phone, only thirtyish, though it made no difference to his evident unsuitability for his chosen new career: he had ‘office clerk’ written all over him. He was small, with a gingery tinge; frazzled hair, freckled skin, rabbity eyes and of course glasses.
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