LOOSE CHANGE

“Please insert cash or select payment type.”

Inserting cash had indeed been Glyn’s plan, but at that moment he hesitated. Glyn set down the plastic bag of loose change and tried to place the feeling that had suddenly washed over him. It was impossible to place, like déjà vu but for something forgotten or lost.

Glyn didn’t normally pay by cash, he had by now almost completely phased out physical money from his life, choosing instead to pay by card for most transactions. Three weeks ago, however, he was clearing his attic and came across a box full of old change and expired foreign currency. After sorting the crowns from the krona and the bahts from the buttons, he then separated the pennies from the pounds and put all the change he could still spend into separate bags. Upon completing this rather tedious task, he then made a point of bringing a bag of coins with him on each subsequent shopping trip and decant the change into the self-service checkout machine for a small discount off his groceries. He had spent the bag of pennies, the two pence bag, the ten pence, the twenty pence and then the fifty pence pieces. Now, all he had left was to offload this last bag of pound coins and the occasional two-pound coin, before the currency was updated and these coins became worthless.

Although accrued over the years from various sources including leftover holiday cash, found pennies and pocket change, the largest portion of the stash came from Glyn’s childhood piggybank, frugally neglected until lumped in with this box many years later.

Glyn had forgotten the origin of his piggybank savings, but the forgetting had begun many years earlier, when he was just a child. Glyn had forgotten, perhaps deliberately, about his friend Oliver.

***

Despite their differing personalities, Glyn and Oliver had become good friends quickly thanks to their shared love of playing ‘spies’. It became almost all they did, that and discussing what they would do once they grew up and became globe-trotting secret agents. Whilst many friends fall out over who gets to play the hero and who plays the villain, Glyn always wanted to play the good guy and Oliver happily played the baddie.

One day Oliver took Glyn to their secret den behind the school and showed him a new wallet he’d bought. Oliver neglected to mention that it wasn’t new and he hadn’t bought it, but ‘borrowed’ one from his father. That day they made a pact to each contribute no less than one pound every week from their own pocket money and eventually, they would have enough to buy a secret base.

The plan was simple, Glyn would have it for a week and at the weekend give it to Oliver a pound heavier. Oliver would then look after it the next week before returning it to Glyn with his contribution. This continued for some time until the wallet became fully stuffed and rather too cumbersome to keep carrying between the two boys. Oliver by this point had also become rather worried that someone might find out about their plan and intercept their savings.

Thus, one weekend, rather than making the usual exchange, the two cycled out into the woods and ceremoniously buried the wallet in a small hole in the stump beside the rusted gate. Now the boys could surreptitiously add their contribution without even needing to meet, which, to Glyn’s disappointment, became increasingly frequent.

One weekend Glyn rode out to place another pound in the stump. By this point, the wallet had overflowed into a pile of coins stuffed inside the old tree. It had been so long that the niggling question of the money’s true purpose had begun to play on Glyn’s mind. Glyn dismounted, climbed the gate, and walked over to the stump. Upon crouching down and lifting aside the stone, Glyn found an answer to his question. The money was gone.

Initially, Glyn feared a passing walker had somehow come across their stash, just as Oliver had suspected might happen. However, when Oliver failed to appear at school the next day, or any day after that, Glyn constructed his own narrative. Glyn now believed that Oliver had planned this from the start and Glyn had been foolish enough to play along. Oliver had hoped the pot would keep growing, but when his parents decided to move house, he had been forced to cash out early.

This explanation stuck with Glyn and his resentment grew until the bad overshadowed the good and he had little memory of their friendship left. Glyn did not hear from Oliver again, apart from one day, years later, when cycling in the wood, Glyn took a shortcut and found himself by the old gate. On a whim of curiosity, Glyn dismounted, climbed the gate once more and knelt beside the stump. Glyn pushed away the stone and looked into the stump. There it was, all the coins returned. And on top of the sum there was no old wallet, but instead, a scrap of paper, dusted with mould that read simply, “I’m sorry.”

***

“Please insert cash or select payment type,” the impatient machine repeated. Glyn blinked back to reality. He had been unable to place his feeling, unable to remember that these specific coins had carried such weight for him as a child. After all, surely a pound coin is the same as any other pound coin.

And so, Glyn poured out the bag of cash. In the end his secret base fund was spent on a pint of milk, six eggs, a loaf of bread, a bag of carrots, six apples…

ANAX