After a while she switched on the TV, as it was time for the start of the afternoon Heartfelt Production. The film was about an American family, mother and father in their early thirties, boy of ten, and a baby girl, who lived in a large house in some pretty suburban town. Everything in their world looked soft, sunlit, and hazy, and cheerful music played while the family went about their lives.
Then Marion remembered that she had bought some Cadbury Creme Eggs the day before and put them in the fridge. She would have one with a cup of tea when the advert break came on. As soon as she had promised herself the chocolate treat there was no room for anything else in her head, and she found it impossible to concentrate on her film for thinking about the sticky texture of chocolate in her mouth and the sweetness washing around her tongue. It was as if she were a fish caught on an invisible hook that was pulling her towards the kitchen.
The first egg she swallowed in only three bites, standing with the fridge door open, but her treat was over so quickly that she felt cheated and allowed herself to take the second back to the sofa to eat it in front of the TV, but by that time the commercial break had begun, and she felt annoyed because she wanted to enjoy the chocolate during the film, not while watching some silly advert about car insurance. Try as she might, she was unable to wait three minutes for the adverts to end and stuffed the second creme egg into her mouth while a woman on the TV mopped her kitchen with SupaClean. When the film came back on, the little boy was now in a coma in hospital, and the father was being interviewed in the police station; Marion realized she must have missed some crucial plot development while she was in the kitchen and it would be impossible for her now to get back into the program, so she switched off the television.
As she sat back on the sofa, a dust-laden beam of sunlight squeezed through the gap between tapestry-thick curtains and poked her like an accusing finger.
“Perhaps I ought to go out and get a little bit of exercise. It might do me good,” she thought with that sense of guilt people get from being inside on a pleasant day.
“Don’t get up,” said a voice in her head. “Another film begins in just over an hour.”
“No,” she told the voice. “Judith is right, I don’t get out often enough, at least to leave the house and go for a walk would be something. I can’t just lie here all day long—I’ll turn into a vegetable.”
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IF YOU WALKED right to the end of Grange Road, you came to Northport High Street, then to the promenade and eventually a wrought-iron pier jutting out into the Irish Sea. In the Victorian era, men who had made their fortunes in the cotton trade took their families to Northport to stay in its grand hotels and bathe in the sea. While other northern seaside towns had become run-down in the last thirty years, their hotels filling with asylum seekers and drug addicts, Northport retained its elegant, pastel-colored charm. One or two celebrity chefs opened restaurants along the front, and the beach won awards for cleanliness and beauty.
As she made her way down the high street, breathing in the sharp, salt-tinged air, Marion felt pleased she had made the decision to get out of the house. Passing Stowe’s Tea Rooms, she glanced through the window at customers eating cakes and drinking tea. Years ago she used to go in there with Mother and they would share a plate of chocolate éclairs.
The shop next door, formerly the Beauty Emporium, its window filled with jars of cold cream and opulent bath oils, was now a Bargain Land, where you could buy three antiperspirant sprays for a pound. Next she passed Barbette’s Boutique, where Mother used to buy her clothes. They were having a closing-down sale, and a lone salmon-pink suit with a bright red “Reduced for Sale” sash stood in the window. Marion herself rarely bought clothes; if she desperately needed something, she got it from one of the many secondhand shops in Northport. This was not because she was short of money (though the fabric wholesale business had been sold for a pittance after Dad drowned in the accident, she and John had inherited money from Mother’s side), but because dress shops and the women who worked in them intimidated her.
Object, Judith’s gallery, stood out from the other shops on the high street. Through the window, Marion saw Judith talking to Greg. He wore a checked shirt, and his full beard made him look like some Victorian gentleman. He was nodding solemnly while Judith pointed at things in the shop.
Then Marion saw the cats made by the drug-dealing prostitute, and thought them just about the ugliest things she had ever set eyes on. The artist had taken two glass cat’s eyes, either green or blue, and several wires meant to represent whiskers then stuck them in the middle of hideous lumps of brown clay. The cats were all labeled with names like “Tufty,” “Nibbles,” and “Gingersnap,” and the smallest of them cost ￡155. Who would be stupid enough to buy something so horrible for that price? wondered Marion, walking away quickly before Judith could see her and pull her into the shop.
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THE SCREAMS OF people riding the Shooting Star got louder as she approached the seafront. Marion heard her mother’s voice in her head: Five people burnt to death at the top of the roller coaster when I was a girl. My sister Agnes and I watched them eaten by flames while they were still hanging upside down. This was just one of the stories that Mother had repeated so many times, it had become stuck in Marion’s brain. Just walking past a particular place would trigger the play button, and she would hear the tale recounted as clearly as if Mother were right next to her.
The promenade was choked with families visiting Northport for the day. Even a hint of warm weather would cause these people to hatch from nowhere like bluebottles, then swarm all over the town. Parents led groups of sour-faced children holding inflatable toys like battering rams, and Marion often had to step into the gutter to avoid being barged out of their way. They called out to each other like wild beasts: “Darren! Callum! Kelly! Hurry up or we’ll never get t’ beach!” Where do they get these people from? Mother’s voice demanded, as if they had been ordered in bulk from a wholesaler. You used to see a much better class of person coming to Northport when I was a girl.