My Beautiful Launderette

The bloody washing machine has broken down again and there’s no way her daughter Bella will wear her leggings once they’ve hit the heap on the floor. She probably only wore them for a couple of hours, and now thinks they’ll magically get washed and returned ready to wear, but that’s teenagers for you. It’s cold and dark, raining as thick as the grey vegetable stew she dished up for dinner last night. Sam just wants to go back to bed and stay there until summer finally decides to show up.

But motherhood demands full and unquestioning devotion to other peoples’ dirty washing, so Sam pulls herself together and gathers the sweet, sweat-scented laundry to her chest, feeling like some pregnant animal preparing to give birth. No chance of that happening again, even if Harry were still around. And the years of servitude she has given are enough already. Not that she doesn’t love her sulky, infuriating daughters, but the chance to sit quietly with a cup of tea, free of interruptions just for once. Well, there’s no use getting upset about it. Not going to happen.

The laundry basket is too small and, as she lifts it, she watches the soft plastic tear down the side, spilling clothes back onto the floor. She kicks it violently and it tumbles down the stairs, thump-rattle-thump against the paintwork as it goes.

It’s Sunday. The launderette will be closed of course. So Sam goes to the garage on the corner which has three machines outside. Pay twice the price for the luxury. But the show, and the leggings, must go on.

The pathetic excuse for a car park is full so she slides her car neatly into a patch of mud and puddles. Precariously balanced from the driver’s seat, she leans across to empty the shopping bags in the back. A shower of socks, shirts and grimy dishcloths land randomly on the seat and floor. She’s not one to let a temporary setback get in the way, so she gropes in the gloom, bum grazing the headrests, to retrieve and sort the wayward washing into separate loads. Her hand brushes against something hard and she pulls it upwards along with a sweatshirt and a pair of tights. It’s a book, one of those Mills and Boon type things. No idea how that got there, though one of the girls seems a likely culprit.

Having braved the mud and the downpour and the bristling wind, Sam bundles back into the car. And she stares at nothing in particular, as raindrops throw themselves suicidally at the windscreen. She could go back home, taking the risk that some pervert might steal her children’s undies. But no, she remembers the book and picks it up.

Half an hour later, the car is steaming up. Sam is engrossed in the tragedy of a girl fallen in love with the man of her dreams, only to find he was not the superb human she thought he was. Story of life, she thinks, but she still can’t resist turning the pages to find out what will happen next.

A tap on the window makes her jump, the book hitting the car horn as it drops to her lap, scattering pages around the gear lever. There is someone peering in at her and she wipes away condensation with her sleeve to see better.

It’s a man, tall, with dark hair and chiselled features. His blue eyes sparkle with amusement. Sam is still put out with being interrupted and embarrassed by the sound of the horn. She lets the window down just a little and asks, quite abruptly, what he wants. He dangles a muddy, pink pair of knickers at her.

“Think you might have dropped your pants”, he says, laughter erupting in his eyes and lips twitching provocatively.

For Sam, it is all too much. She presses the button to wind the window back up and bursts into tears. The man and the knickers disappear, and the car steams up again.

She doesn’t really know what to do when the alarm on her phone goes off. She needs to retrieve her laundry from the machine but her eyes and nose are red with crying and she can’t face that awful man again. It’s not even as if the offending item of clothing belonged to one of her daughters. They were hers and it feels as if he has seen a part of her that no man has been near for a decade.

But Sam can’t sit there for ever so she opens the door a crack to check if the coast is clear before wrapping her coat around her as if it will somehow shield her from evil. And she gets out of the car. Too late, she spies him. He is bent over a laundry basket folding washing. And she stops still, as she realises with a shock that the clothes he is folding are hers.

The man stands up, causally flicking a glossy lock of hair from his eyes and then notices Sam standing staring at him. He stutters a sorry, tries to explain that he didn’t mean to upset her, that he thought he’d help with her washing by way of apology. Looks as if she has children, he does too so he knows how busy she must be. She nods, still a bit dazed, watching him carefully fold Bella’s leggings. They begin to talk, to swap stories about their children and he lets slip that he, too, is a single parent.

And a friendship forms, as indeed it must. They swap phone numbers, and Sam develops a preference for taking her laundry to the garage on the corner on a Sunday. They fall in love, and steam up the car together as their washing tumbles and foams in the machines behind them. Sam buys new underwear, shamed by the vision of her muddy pink panties. And every so often, their children find items of clothing that are not theirs and question them mercilessly. But Sam says nothing, as she lovingly gathers the sweet, sweet laundry to her chest.

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