Angie's Anti - Wrinkle Cream

I remembered it as though it was yesterday. It was a warm, humid night in August. We had decided that we were going to make the most of our time left with Angie.
  “You will be careful, won’t you Ange? I don’t like the sound of them aeroplanes.”
  “Oh, you’re such a worrier, Lottie! I’ll be fine.”
  There was an awkward silence as we each put our things into the box. Photographs, birthday cards and notebooks all went in. Ticket stubs and a packet of our favourite sweets.
  “I hope they don’t rot,” worried Lottie, yet again.
  “We’ll wrap them up in a million plastic bags,” I said.
  “Hang on, wait a minute,”
  Angie rooted in her bag, and produced… a pot of anti – wrinkle cream.
  “When we open this again, we’ll be really old,” she grinned.
    “No! Do you think?” gasped Lottie.
  “Shut up you two! Come on let’s bury it. I, Kathryn…”
  “I, Charlotte”
  “I, Angie”
  We shot her a dark look.
  “Say it properly.”
  She rolled her eyes.
  “I, Evangeline”
  “Solemnly swear to be here in exactly 20 years time to reopen this box.”
And here I am, 20 years on, in what used to be Lottie’s back garden with a shovel.
Alone.
                                         
* * * * * *

  The shovel eventually hit something. It felt soggy, muddy, ancient. I remember we wrapped it in a Woolworths bag. Instead, it had a Marks and Spencer’s one. Lottie must have put an extra one on. She was such a worry guts. That was the irony of it.
    There was a car crash, about six years after we buried the box.
    Lottie died.
  A tear-stained letter came back from Australia with Angie’s name on it. I haven’t heard from her since.
  I pulled the box up from it’s hole in the ground. The lid practically fell off, crumbling in my hands. It hadn’t worked. The careful wrapping in plastic bags, choosing the driest place we could find. The ticket stubs were mouldy and rotten so that they were barely legible.  The sweet packet was open and empty, apart from a few crumbs. An animal had been in here. We hadn’t thought of that.
  I struggled to prise open a birthday card without breaking it. A photograph slipped out. Black and white, scratched and mouldy. It was of Lottie’s birthday party, years ago.
  It made my eyes sting.
  Lastly, there was the pot. For a moment, I couldn’t remember what it was. Then I smiled as I remembered Angie’s Anti-Wrinkle cream.
“Looks like you’ll be needing that,” said a voice behind me, in the shadows.
  “Who is it?”
  A woman came out from near the shed. She was wearing a purple scrunchy dress. As she saw the look on my face, her face grew sad.
  “Don’t you remember me?”
I shook my head, and noticed she had an Australian accent. I looked at her more closely. She had tanned skin, brown eyes and a huge smile. She looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps I had met her before.
  She held out a pot, similar to the one I had in my hand.
On it, it said “Angie’s Anti-Wrinkle Cream.”