‘Big deal.’ He slung his bag down, kicked off his shoes.
‘Pick them up,’ she yelled. ‘Put them away.’ She heard the shrill of her tone, hated it.
Owen flushed, glared at her from under his fringe.
She put a hand out, grabbing the post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Look, I’m sorry. It happened again,’ she said quietly. ‘In the post office, another panic attack.’
‘Not my fault,’ he muttered and went upstairs, leaving his bag and shoes where he’d dropped them.
Three weeks after the post office and she was feeling much better. The medication seemed to be doing its work. She had some minor side effects, nausea and a dry mouth, but overall she felt calmer and safer. She was doing her best to keep a structure to her day. In the morning she did chores, the ongoing housework, then all the things there had never been enough time to do. She was clearing the spare room, sorting through old sports equipment and extra duvets, games and toys that Owen had outgrown, spare shoes. She found a set of watercolours and dabbled at them but her efforts only irritated her. The daubs on the page bore no resemblance to the pictures in her head. They’d been a present for Owen but he’d never shown any interest. If Owen had an artistic bone in his body it was a small and well-hidden one.
The idea of learning a craft, finding a hobby, appealed to her. Something for the afternoons, and those evenings when she wasn’t interested in what was on television. At school she’d loved pottery, the heft of stone cold clay in her hands, the giddy spinning wheel, the magic of the kiln. They’d made coil pots and ornaments, hedgehogs and little dishes shaped like leaves. Pedestrian. But she’d used clay for her O level art project. Made a large vase, the green slip glaze on it luminous, as vibrant as she could get it. Her parents had displayed it on their sideboard but she’d no idea what had happened to it. After they’d both died, when she’d cleared out her mother’s retirement flat, there’d been hardly anything left.
Pottery was impossible on her own at home. No wheel or kiln. The only place would be a night class and that meant going out, meeting people. That frightened her. She completed jigsaws and worked in the tiny back garden. She tried sudoku and crosswords but the afternoons began to yawn and her walks with Ziggy grew longer.
Since the post office she practised walking to the local shops and back every other day. Her own form of behavioural therapy. At first just there and back. Then going into one place and buying something. Then a couple of places. She managed fine. Taking things gradually and helped by the medication, she grew more confident.
Shelley had been more than happy to come round and visit. But she thought Fiona might try going out with her now. A meal maybe? Fiona liked the idea. She was lonely and the thought of Shelley’s anecdotes from work, gossip about the other staff, her smiles, a restaurant meal, would be a welcome change. Would Shelley come to Chorlton, so Fiona could walk there? Could they meet early before it got too busy? Sure. Shelley agreed to all her conditions.
Fiona never even made it to the restaurant. And what made it most devastating, once she’d weathered that black, bleak, overwhelming anxiety and the indignity of cracking up in public, was the fact that there was nothing, not one, single, identifiable element that she could seize on to explain why the attack had come on in that place, a quiet junction of two suburban side streets, or at that time. If there was no particular trigger that set her off then she could be rendered disabled and petrified, suffocating and gripped by dread, anywhere, any time. Nowhere was safe.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mike
With the neck brace on and a sling to support his dislocated left shoulder, Mike wouldn’t be up for driving for several weeks. Ian told him he’d have to let him go. Lay-offs were on the cards anyway and it wouldn’t be fair to the other lads to keep Mike’s place open when he couldn’t pull a fair day’s graft. Mike could hear the relish in Ian’s voice, bubbling under the surface of the words. Ian ran on spite: Mike knew his boss had never forgiven him for the missed deliveries on the day of the murder. And now Ian had his revenge.
‘I’ll try the post,’ Mike told Vicky. ‘See if anything’s coming up for when I’m fit.’ But they were letting people go, too. Combining rounds so posties had longer routes, longer hours, heavier mailbags. Some desk-jockey spouted how a walking pace of four miles an hour should be standard in the postal service, it would improve efficiency and keep the staff fit.
Mike tried the other contacts he had but it was the same story everywhere: short rations, hard times.
He went down the Jobcentre and found out what he could claim and when. He and Vicky spent a whole weekend filling in the forms. Pages and pages. They had to let the tax credit know their circumstances had changed. They applied for free school meals for the kids and got them. Mike had balked at that when Vicky first raised it.
‘School dinners?’ He looked at her.
‘Why the face?’
‘They’ll get picked on,’ he said. ‘The kids on school dinners, they were always the losers.’
‘That’s daft,’ Vicky countered.
‘Cheap pies and soggy mash,’ he tried, knowing that was a lost argument.
‘Not now. Decent meals. And they’d only need a snack at teatime. Every penny counts. We might get free uniforms as well.’
Mike ran a hand over his face and sighed, stared at the fridge behind her, the garish magnets and the kids’ paintings.
‘You’d rather they went hungry?’ She was riled, her eyes sparking a warning.
‘No,’ he protested.
‘Well then?’
‘Just do it!’ He flung a hand at the school meals form, pushed away from the table and walked to the fridge.
‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ Her voice tight as he opened the door.
Swearing, Mike slammed it shut, the fridge rocking, bottles and jars inside clanking.
That he should come to this. A man unable to feed and clothe his children. After years of solid hard work, careful budgeting. Years of being prudent and reliable, responsible and honest – and for what? Now he couldn’t even provide for his family.
The dole officer had the decency to be honest with Mike about the prospects. Over fifty people chasing every vacancy, more if it was above minimum wage.
‘Anything you can do to improve your profile would help.’
He gave Mike leaflets and offered him a special assessment interview. The lad was friendly, polite and sympathetic but they both knew he was on a hiding to nothing with Mike.
Mike’s dad had been on the dole for a couple of years back in the eighties. He’d become depressed and irritable, carping at Mike’s mum about the meals she scraped together, bossing Mike about more than usual. He was in danger of turning into his father. An appalling thought.
Danny Macateer’s murder was on Crimewatch. They showed a re-enactment, and some of what Mike had told Joe Kitson was repeated.
‘I told them that-’ he turned to Vicky – ‘about the car, the colour of the guy’s clothes.’ He’d a sense of delight, a glow of excitement, daft but there all the same.
Vicky looked like he’d slapped her.
‘What?’
Kirsty Young on the telly was talking about how someone must know something, asking them to pick up the phone.
‘The reason no one’s come forward is because it’s a gang thing,’ Vicky said.
‘The lad wasn’t in a gang, they said that all along,’ Mike told her.
‘But those that did it are, and no one will dare say anything. If they do they’ll be punished.’
‘It’s not right.’ He shook his head, not seeing where she was going with it.
‘What if they come after you?’