The Day She Died (2 page)

Two

So Dot struck out
for the top of the town to catch the Thornhill bus back to Drew and the bungalow and the corgi, and I peeled off at the bottom of the High Street for the five items or less queue in Marks and Sparks food hall.

“Morry's is actually closer,” Dot said, like she always did. “Never mind cheaper.”

“It's not my road home,” I said, like I always did too.

“You youngsters,” said Dot. “My mother fed a family of eight on a foreman's wages and saved enough—”

“—for skiing every winter and a second home in Tuscany, I know.”

She made as if to cuff me, then looked at her watch and started walking again. “Be good,” she called over her shoulder. “See you Friday.”

So Steve was on tomorrow. Okay. Dot's a bit dittery, which means a lot of extra work voiding the forms she mucks up, but she brings scones from Gregg's and apples from her garden, whereas Steve makes his own deodorant from baking soda and—I'm sure of this—nicks the stock if he sees something he fancies. He says he's an anarchist, but the Project isn't exactly a multinational. And the worst of it is that he's about five foot five, and we've never got enough stuff for short men. We get loads of donations from tall people, but it's a hundred percent Hobbits that come in the front door. Break your heart to think, in this day and age, rich people are still bigger than the rest of us, like in Dickens's time or Henry the Eighth or something, but there it is. The war, Dot said once when I asked her, and then smoking and then microwaves. Triple whammy.

And I swear to God, it was right then, halfway up the soft drinks and groceries aisle, when I was thinking about work and how all our clients are basically Borrowers, that I saw him, pushing his daughter along in the trolley, like neither one of them had a care in this world.

It wasn't the first time I'd clapped eyes on him. It was actually the fourth. When I recognised him, my throat got a sudden lump in it, like the thing people call their heart leaping. It's hard to say why. I mean, he's tall and broad, but he's got that kind of sandpapery skin that sometimes goes with red hair. Except not as bad as that sounds, really. I smiled. He looked straight at me and then away, and the smile died without me having to kill it. I never remember, never bloody learn, even though the only reason I shop in Marky's, spending a fortune, is so I don't run into them all every day. It's the worst thing about my job, to be honest—apart from the obvious, which goes without saying. I hate seeing people's faces fall when they spot me, seeing them whip their heads away and pretend I don't exist. Must be the same for prostitutes, only they get better money.

Kids are different. Sometimes they dance right up to you and twirl, show off their outfits. They don't know the Project isn't a shop like any other one. Father Tommy's dead right there.

“Children are too easy, Jessica,” he says. “Show me a pretty little girl in a wheelchair and I'll show you ten people who want to run marathons to get her a better one. Show me a smelly alcoholic in his seventies, cursing at the top of his lungs and throwing his fists about, and I'll show you someone St. Vincent's will get all to itself.”

Which is why he took such a lot of persuading to get involved in that Barrie House project, because a children's respite home with a magical garden attached is definitely at the pretty-kid-in-a-wheelchair end of things.

“
Practical
Christianity is my game, Jessie,” he told me. “Not fairies and wishing wells.”

But Father Tommy's favourites are easy too. Proper tramps that just want a warm coat and thick boots. They're a dying breed, with their long beards and purple faces and their country accents. Irish tinkers, Dot calls them, no matter how many times Steve asks her not to. And then she spreads her hands and lifts her eyebrows and asks how it can be racist if it's true.

Mostly our clients aren't pretty little girls or quaint old Irish tinkers. They're either reeling from some disaster or worn out from years of them. Either way they're pissed off, and there's no one but me, Dot, and Steve for them to nark at. Especially the parents, like this guy. And of course, here he was again. I'd pass him on every aisle in the place unless I did a Uey.

Strictly speaking, mind you, he wasn't a client at all. And it wasn't the Project I knew him from, not really. And anyway, he'd decided to pretend I was invisible. He was bending over the wee girl standing up in the belly of the trolley, blowing raspberries on her neck, making her giggle. I sneaked a good look as they passed me. I'd have remembered that dress and sandals coming in: bright coral corduroy pinafore, the nap still velvety, sandals with not a single scuff on them.

On the other hand, it was even worse than usual, because there
was
a time I thought we might be pals. Or—be honest, Jessie—there was a time when he was a wee tiny bit friendly to me like anyone might be, and I thought we might be … Anyway, I was wrong. Turns out it was wishful thinking.

Now eggs, cakes, and baking. He was on his phone, she was sitting down, fat legs braced under her, tugging open a bag of figs. Figs! Not many of our clients give their kids M&S figs for a snack. Not in a world with Pringles. Except that made me sound like Dot, saying they were poor managers, was all. “They're not poor managers,” I tell her. “They're just plain poor.” And then Steve (who's taken every social science course the Open University ever invented) says that expression's inappropriate.
Inappropriate
is Steve's second favourite word, after
unprofessional
. Everything he doesn't like is one or the other. Never
cruel
or
rotten
or
clueless
or
mean
. We've had run-ins about it, proper set-tos, because I reckon it's better to try to be funny and kind and make mistakes than to be a sodding appropriate professional robot all the time.

The first time I'd ever met this bloke was a prime example. It had been months ago, maybe even a year ago, and he'd been dressed different then—a polo shirt and trousers like a uniform, ponytail under a baseball cap. He'd been standing in front of the Disney princesses birthday cakes in Morrison's, just staring. I'd noticed him because usually it was women who stood in front of cakes and stared. Then I'd seen him again at the Kiplings, with a sponge sandwich in his hands, a chocolate one, and he was gripping it so hard his knuckles were white and his chest was moving up and down so that the untucked polo shirt hem lifted and fell underneath his wee bit of a belly. He put it back on the shelf just as I passed him and, when I turned at the aisle-end, gawping over my shoulder, I saw him heading back to the bakery section. I couldn't help myself. Inappropriate, unprofessional. I followed him.

It wasn't until I was right at his side that I noticed what he was doing, and by then it was too late to back away. And in my defence, Lauren, that I'd been talking to about stuff, had just the day before told me that I should … Oh God, I don't know. Typical Lauren guff. Own my past, feel the sadness, bring what I was missing into my life whatever way I could. I liked her a lot, but I didn't always listen. Anyway, I steamed in.

“Excuse me?” I said. “Can I help you?”

He stuffed the handful of notes and coins back in his trouser pocket and turned, frowning. “Eh?” His voice was a bark.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” he said. He picked up one of the cakes without looking. “How?”

“I don't mean to butt in … ” Liar.

“I'm just—” He put the cake back on the shelf. “Cannae believe how much they are. Size of them too.”

“Can I get it?” I asked.

He blinked, drew his chin back into his neck. “Why should—”

“Please? I haven't got a wee girl. I've never bought a Disney cake. Goan let me buy it for yours.”

He stared at me for such a long time that my heart started to pump, and I wondered if he could see my shirt going up and down like I could see his. I remember wondering if he was drunk. I also remember thinking I'd never seen anyone look so angry who wasn't actually shouting and, between work and my childhood, I've seen a lot of angry people.
Random acts of effing kindness my arse
, I remember thinking. Steve was right after all.

“Sorry,” I said. I saw his hands clench into fists at his sides and I took a careful step backwards. “I didn't mean to offend you. Sorry I barged in.”

“Right,” he said. “You're sorry.” For a minute I thought he was going to say that playground thing,
you will be
. Moving slowly, I backed away.

He sounded angry now too, standing in the middle of the aisle, growling into his phone, the wee girl chewing a fig, solemn eyes fixed on him.

“Becky, for Christ's sake,” he was saying.

Becky. Of course he had someone. He was just a friendly guy and the rest of it was my imagination. Not that there was much “rest of it” anyway. Only just that a couple of weeks after the cakes, he'd come to the Project one afternoon when I was on my own, and he'd just kind of stood there.

“Have you got a form?” I'd asked him. “Are you just looking? We're not actually a charity shop, not really. You need a form if … ” He was shaking his head, sort of smiling. “So, you'd be better off up at Cancer Relief, actually.”

“I'm not after clothes,” he'd said, and he'd smiled wider.

But clothes was all we had, so what was he doing here? And that was the moment I thought I knew what the smiling was. He wasn't here to buy stuff; he had come to see me, talk to me, maybe ask me something. I smiled back at him and, without another word, he opened the door and was gone. I puzzled over it for a minute or two and then put him out of my mind.

Good thing too, since it turned out there was this Becky, whoever she was, that he was talking to now.

“It's not forever, Becks,” he was saying. “It'll stop again.”

I wasn't listening, but I had to squeeze right past. I don't think he even noticed me.
It's not forever
. I was at the fridges. Pomegranate and raspberry juice. No drinking tonight. I'd put myself back together right as rain after the bit in the cupboard, but it had cost me. I was drained, kind of heavy and soft, like a birthday balloon three days after the party, and one glass of wine would be one too many. I'd put pomegranate juice in a stem glass and pretend. “It's not forever,” I said to myself. What would that be then? Sounded like a duff job, or staying on your friend's couch. But “It'll stop again” sounded like … what? Noisy neighbours? Hay fever? I put on a wee spurt to catch some more of it on the next aisle.

At first I thought he'd gone. The trolley was crossways between the shelves with the wee girl standing up in it, holding onto the side, looking over. She was probably four-ish, I thought, not big enough to climb out but plenty big enough to try. And she had the look of a climber to me. Standing four-square with her hands clamped on the rim. As I watched, she pushed up the sleeves of her jumper, all but spat on her palms. So even though her dad was a bampot and he hated folk sticking their noses in, I scooted forward, letting my trolley carry me, and that's when I saw him. Sitting on the bottom shelf in a space where someone had taken a jumbo pack of kitchen roll away, his head in his hands.

He'd been sitting like that the third time I'd seen him too.

My flat's right opposite the library on Catherine Street, and public libraries are total nutter magnets. (Steve would go daft if he heard me say it, but nobody ever asks what I mean.) They're always open, always warm, and they can't turn anybody away, so it stands to reason if you're the sort that couldn't get past a bouncer or maybe you'd have a security guy follow you round Safeway, the public library's the place you'll go. And if you smoke, then the bench outside the public library's the place you're going to go for a break.

Mind you, he wasn't smoking the day I saw him there. He was just sitting, with his head in his hands, staring down at the ground. I watched him a while—I was doing nothing better—until he stood up and went back inside. Then I decided to go over and change my DVDs.

Another mystery solved. He'd only been waiting for his photocopying to get done. A great big pile of it from the reference desk where they keep the papers and all the history of the town and that. He'd maybe just been thinking, with his head in hands that way.

I was pretty sure he wasn't just thinking now, though, sitting there on the space on the bottom shelf.

“Dad?” said the girl. “Daddy?”

“Hey.” I hunkered down beside him. “I'm sorry for sticking my—Are you okay? Your wee one's worried about you.” His hair had fallen forward over his face and arms and it made a solid barrier; that crinkly hair's like armour if you brush it down. I turned and smiled up at the wee girl. She scowled back at me. She had a great face for scowling, her eyes, nose, and mouth bunched together, plenty of cheek and jaw all around, and her own halo of red hair fluffed out in a cloud all around her Alice-band. I can take or leave pretty wee girls, but plain wee girls melt me; I was one myself. Still am.

“I don't think your Daddy's feeling too good,” I said. I gave her one last smile—like dropping a stone down a well—and looked around for help. There was no one. Because what kind of moron buys kitchen roll and cleaning stuff in Marks and Spencers? He was moving. I turned back and got ready to leg it if he looked like going for me.

“She's gone,” he whispered. “She's left me.”

“Your girlfriend?” I whispered back. I'd assumed he was a divorce case that night with the cakes, assumed he was going round to see his kid at the mum's, not wanting to turn up empty-handed. “Could take your wee one back to her—” He needed to get over himself and stop spooking his daughter was what I was thinking.