Claire drove aimlessly for a while. She put the radio on. Some consumer programme with OAPs whinnying about being scammed. The weather outside was icy and grey, and the few people she saw walking were huddled like penguins in their cheap coats and Primark leggings. For no real reason, she drove through the city centre; how run-down it was now! More and more shops empty and boarded up. The scrubby little market was still clinging on, selling tired-looking fruit and knock-off football shirts, but it wasn’t a patch on the old days. Clusters of people hunkered down on their heels by the town hall steps, drinking lager, some arguing, none of them with anything in particular to do, it seemed. A drunk woman shouted at a teenager outside Cancer Research. It began to sleet. Claire sped on, past the industrial estate, past the turn-off to cousin Derek’s area of new builds, to the supermarket.
She picked up a basket. Chicken. Chicken and green beans, was it? Bland. The sort of meal that Norma would have hated before she got sick. Now the fact that she wanted to eat at all was heartening. Maybe get a few? In case she has a streak of feeling well? What else . . . ginger ale? She liked that. A nice bottle of wine? Her mouth sores were better now after the last round of chemo. Yes. Get one. They could always give it to Derek as a peace offering if they didn’t open it. That’s the problem with these big supermarkets, you end up buying more than you came for . . . fabric softener. Another thing Norma had previously eschewed, but which was now a necessity, her skin was so sensitive nowadays. I’ll need a trolley.
She kept her head down in the shop, going straight to the freezer section and stacking ready meals neatly at the end of the trolley. Some tins. Norma managed baked beans the other day – get a few of those. Peach slices? Why not. But not pineapple – too stringy, acidic. Ginger ale, that’ll be with the mixers. The bottle of wine? I’m drinking too much. Am I drinking too much? Oh, what’s the harm.
There was more traffic in the wines and spirits aisles. Single men and large loud families clamoured round the shelves of cans. Jostled by bored children, Claire was nudged aside again and again until she found herself pushed next to the nuts and dips on the corner.
She felt a tug on her coat, and automatically apologised. Someone laughed. The tug grew bolder.
‘No, Miss. Here. Hello!’
Claire looked down. ‘Lorna?’
Lorna nodded, smiled. She was a little taller, and her teeth had grown in more. She must be nine, now? Or nearly anyway. Her fringe straggled to one side as if she’d cut it herself.
‘You’re not at school now.’ She peered at Claire’s face, concerned.
‘Well, not at the moment, no.’
‘Are you getting married?’
‘What? No!’
‘People have been saying that you’re getting married. To a really rich man, and you’ll be moving away.’
Claire smiled. ‘And where would I be moving away to?’
The girl hesitated. ‘Where would you like to move away to?’
‘Oh, the seaside I think.’
‘There, then. That’s where you’re moving to.’ Lorna nodded.
Claire smiled. She was such a sweet little girl. Inventive. ‘How is school at the moment?’
‘I was a villager again this time in the play.’
‘Oh, well—’
‘But being a villager is crap.’
‘Oh, don’t use language like that, Lorna.’
‘You coming back to school?’
‘Oh yes. Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Well, I’m having to look after someone at the moment. Someone who’s ill. When they . . . get better, I’ll be able to come back.’
‘Who?’ Lorna demanded. Claire looked down, took some breaths. She felt cold, sticky fingers worming their way into her closed palm. ‘I know who,’ whispered Lorna. ‘Your little girl. Or boy. They’ve got the flu. That’s bad. I had that. A week ago.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yeah. I thought I was going to die!’ One bitten fingernail gently stroked Claire’s palm. ‘But I got better. I’m fine now. Look,’ and she pirouetted perilously close to a tower of cut-price gin.
‘Who are you here with, Lorna?’ Claire smiled.
‘Pete. Mum.’
‘Carl?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s he getting on?’
The girl smiled oddly. ‘He’s not very clever, Carl.’
‘Well, we can’t all be.’
‘No.’ Lorna nodded sagely.
Claire looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be getting on, Lorna.’
‘I’ll see you again, Miss.’ And she skipped off, suddenly.
On the way out, Claire remembered mint imperials and had to go back. Lorna was a few aisles over, and Claire waved, but she mustn’t have seen her, because she didn’t wave back. Pete was with her, Claire could tell it was him, it must be him, and Lorna, her head cocked to the side, smiling, was telling him something, some fey little story more than likely, and she laughed, a clear, guileless giggle. It made Claire smile to hear it. But Pete didn’t laugh, and Lorna, small and shivering in her thin school cardigan, began to cry as an angry Pete, inches away from her face, began to shout at her, close enough for his spittle to hit her cheeks. Shoppers slowed to watch, swapping concerned frowns. Carl, a few metres away, absently scratched his balls through his tracksuit bottoms.
Claire was about to step forward when a large woman, quivering with indignation, got there before her, and told Pete to stop. Pete turned his wrath on her then, and the scene degenerated into the kind of hysteria normally reserved for daytime reality shows. The woman was screaming that he shouldn’t talk to a kiddy that way. Pete screamed that she should mind her own fucking business, and eventually a security guard placed himself between them both, while onlookers smirked and shook their heads. Claire looked for Lorna, but she was nowhere to be seen.