She gritted her teeth and fixed her determined look. It had to be done. January was the top month for friends and family birthdays, and she must go shopping where there was some possibility of finding a suitable gift. She was from the sticks, a one-horse town where only nail bars, betting shops and Turkish barbers exist. Well, there were charity shops, but you couldn’t rely on those to come up with the goods – literally.

So, it was off to MK. She was braced for the road system and the parking. All she had to do was to go round and round until she saw signs for Central MK and then park in a red zone. Obviously, the red zone was the most expensive but at least she knew that once she had finished shopping she could go out of a centre door and her car would be there, as long as she had memorised the door number. She was sweating profusely before she had even arrived but she was resolute. She was not a stupid woman. She could do it.

It was all working marvellously. It was early, there were parking spaces, and she had that app on her phone which made paying for parking so much easier. To be fair, it wasn’t as straightforward as her son had led her to believe as the app sometimes couldn’t identify her location, and neither could she. Anyway, she was now parked, paid, in the centre and feeling smug. She knew she could go in any direction and she would find John Lewis. Bingo. Oh, she was doing so well. Past women’s clothing and into gifts and kitchenware. And there was the escalator. Marvellous, it usually took her much longer than that. She was on a roll.

She went up it. There was another one, so she went up that. Things were going great. She hadn’t actually bought anything, but she was wandering successfully around the shop. Ah, the café. Well, let’s have a cup of tea and a cake to celebrate. Perhaps an early lunch too. She didn’t get out very often.

It was perhaps the heady mix of complacency and cake that led to her guard dropping when she left the café. She just needed to find the down escalator but, as was their wont, they had hidden it again. She had noticed this before about John Lewis, probably a ploy to keep people in the shop. She was exhausted. Finally, she spotted it. Just keep going down, she said to herself. But even when she was down she couldn’t find the exit door, had no shopping, and was aimlessly wandering.

Oh, the rug and carpet department. So lovely and quiet, and such soft rugs. She knelt down to feel a beautiful oriental rug. Then she lay down to feel it a bit better. She closed her eyes, and thought that gifts from charity shops would do just fine.