In the dark by Billingham Mark

Author:Billingham, Mark [Billingham, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘There you are.’

‘Steady on, love, don’t want to be having it in here.’

And some odd looks as well, of course. And the sly nudges as other shoppers tried not to stare at the heavily pregnant nutter, moving at a snail’s pace and mumbling to herself.

‘You’re right, Hopwood, I’m a nasty piece of work, but you always knew that.’

Cheese, semi-skimmed milk, natural yoghurt . . .

‘So come back and haunt me, then. Why not? Rattle your fucking handcuffs at me in the dark.’

Bleach, toothpaste, toilet roll . . .

‘What was I supposed to think, for crying out loud? Maybe if you’d been here.’

Then she saw the little boy: running up the aisle towards her, side-stepping a trolley in his haste to get to his mum; waving the packet of cereal he wanted so badly. The same sort . . .

She saw it and froze. Heard the cereal rattle as the boy ran past, and as Paul poured it into his bowl. Then everything started to slip away.

277

She was already falling forward as she felt it rise like boiling milk; as she heaved it up. Her foot felt for the brake on the trolley’s wheel and missed. She was hot as hell. She told her hands to let go, but they weren’t listening. Her head was swimming with the people who had stopped to watch, the colours they were wearing, as the trolley took her with it; pulling her down to her knees at the same time as the wail began to escape, and the first fat sob felt like a kick in the chest as she hit the floor.

A woman, the boy’s mother, asked if she was all right. Helen tried to speak, but then the woman hurried away to fetch someone, and when Helen glanced up again all she could see was the little boy staring at her. He started to cry right back at her while she watched a security guard come marching round the corner. He leaned down behind her and put his arms through hers; asked if she wanted a hand back to her feet. But she was crying so hard that she couldn’t answer, so he stood up again. He told her to take as long as she liked.

Helen could hear him telling other shoppers that the lady was all right. Then he said something into his walkie-talkie, and, in the gap between sobs, as she sucked in breaths like a baby, she heard it squawk back at him.

The security guard had refused to let Helen drive, putting her into a cab, taking her keys, and promising to drive her car home for her when he’d finished his shift. He was the second person in a few days whose name she’d asked and who she’d told that she might name the baby after him. He’d told her his name was Stuart and had looked a lot more taken with the idea than the boy she’d met in Lewisham.

She was thinking about the boy, about the look

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