THE RED COAT IN THE CHARITY SHOP

by Hattie Ellis (Salisbury)

A young woman came in the other day. She was looking about for a coat for her child. It was pouring with rain. She wore a body warmer and a t-shirt. It was the end of November. I said: ‘Are you cold?’ and she said I’m fine and smiled.

She was on the run from her husband. Social services had given them shelter; a flat, but nothing else. There’s a look; a very definite mask. If you’ve been in that sort of situation yourself, you see it. I have, with my mother.

I took a coat off the peg; it was a wonderful gorgeous , expensive-looking coat with big shoulder collars and a blue scarf to match. I picked them out and put them on her; she started to cry.

She came back to say thank you. We took her under our wing, had cups of coffee. The more you helped the more she opened up. It was the fear of life and starting again, away from the family. She was cut off. We get a lot of stories like that here.

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What Hattie Ellis says about THE RED COAT IN THE CHARITY SHOP:

Chrissy McAuley works at the Trussell Trust in Salisbury, where she runs their charity shop. The Trust starting raising money for abandoned children in Bulgaria, and now also running a successful franchise of food banks; there are now 37 around the country, with Salisbury’s as the original. People give objects as well as food and so the shop (and small café) began. “We want objects to have a second chance as well as people,’ says the trust’s director Chris Mould.