#flashfiction

She was folding someone else's forgotten sock when the machine behind her stopped.

It was half past ten in a launderette on a side street, the kind of place that keeps the lights on for anyone who needs them. Three machines were running, but only she was there. The fluorescent strip above the change machine had been flickering since she arrived, and she'd stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing a dripping tap.

The sock was grey, crew-length, with a small hole worn through the heel. She folded it anyway and placed it on the lost-property shelf — a plank above the radiator, holding a child's glove, a belt, and a paperback with its cover torn off. She felt, obscurely, that someone would come back for it.

She was sorting the kitchen drawers when she found the list.

It was written on the back of an envelope — her mother's handwriting, the letters leaning slightly right as though heading somewhere. Milk. Brown bread. Batteries (AA). Tulips if they have them. The date at the top was from three months ago. The ink was blue and entirely ordinary.

She set the envelope on the counter and kept working. There were four drawers in the kitchen and all of them held more than made sense: rubber bands gone brittle, a door key for a lock she couldn't place, a pencil sharpener shaped like a world globe, a coupon for something discontinued years ago. She dropped the rubber bands into the bin. She kept the globe and didn't examine why.

The last machine at the end of the row was still running when she arrived at half past eleven, the drum turning with someone else's clothes inside. She took the middle machine — habit, she supposed — and fed her coins in without counting them.

The launderette smelled of warm lint and something faintly sweet she couldn't place. A paper notice taped to the wall said PLEASE COLLECT YOUR ITEMS PROMPTLY and someone had written or else in biro underneath, then a small smiley face.

She sat on the plastic bench and watched her clothes begin to turn. A cardigan she'd had for years. Two mismatched socks. A shirt she'd worn to the interview that hadn't gone the way she'd hoped.

She was wrapping the mugs in newspaper when she found it — the cherry magnet, still clinging to the fridge door as if it hadn't noticed.

It had held a note for as long as she could remember. The note was gone. The magnet stayed.

She set the mug down on the counter and stood there a moment, in the flat that smelled still faintly of her mother's soap and something else — a particular kind of quiet that rooms accumulate after decades.