back to Washington time. She looked around for a restaurant but there was nothing in the market square. Remembering she had seen a couple of places on the High Street she walked back that way, but when she found them she didn't like the look of them any more.
She decided to do what she would if she was at home, and headed for the big Safeway supermarket she had passed earlier. Inside, she went straight to the fresh food counters, thinking how much she would enjoy getting her own food ready, before remembering she was staying in a hotel room where there were no cooking facilities. She was still jetlagged, not thinking right. Or the sight of that man had rattled her more than she wanted to believe.
Disappointed, and kicking herself for her momentary forgetfulness, she wandered round the store instead, experiencing the inquisitiveness she always had in someone else's supermarket.
Everything was a fascinating mix of the familiar and the strange.
There was an instore pharmacy, and she paused by the counter.
'Do you have anything 1 can take for migraine?' she said to the young man who was serving there.
'Do you have a prescription?'
'No . . . wen, I'm visiting from the US. 1 do have
prescription drugs there, but 1 didn't bring them with me and 1 was hoping ... 1
She let the words run out, disliking having to explain her life to a complete stranger. Actually, the real situation was more complicated than she wanted to say: she used the prescription drugs as little as possible. After the psychotherapist's methods had worked a few times, failed a few more times, she had consulted one of her neighbours, a homeopath. She had given Teresa ignatia, a remedy for migraine sufferers, and it had seemed to have some effect. The migraine attacks cleared up for a while, and one of her last decisions before leaving home had been not to bring the tiny tablets with her. She was already regretting this, but right now she didn't want to take the time to find a homeopath in this town and submit to the long diagnosis all over again. What she wanted was something to kill the headache.
The pharmacist had turned away as she spoke, and now he laid two packets on the counter before her. She picked them up, and read the instructions and ingredients on the backs. One product was based on paracetamol and codeine, the other on codeine alone. Both had an antihistamine ingredient. In one it was buclizine hydrochloride, which she recognized from medication she had taken in the US, so with nothing else to go on she selected that one, a product called Migraleve. She paid at the pharmacy counter, fumbling briefly with the unfamiliar British currency.
Before she was through in the supermarket she bought a triangular cellophane package of sandwiches and a can of Diet Coke from the lunch counter, and lined up at the main checkout to pay a second time. She nibbled one of the
sandwiches as she headed down the High Street, again looking for Eastbourne Road and the hotel.
'Hello, Mrs Simons.'
Teresa turned in surprise, and found that Amy was walking along beside and slightly behind her. The tense expression she had worn during her confrontation in the market had vanished.
Teresa slowed. 'Hi, Amy!'
'I saw you back there, in the market square. Are you having a look round our town?'
'It's beautiful,' Teresa said. 'I love the way the houses sit on the hill, looking down across the park.'
Now she was speaking to someone, she realized that the peaceful quality of the town was a bit of an illusion. They were both having to raise their voices against the noise of the traffic.
'I love it too,' Amy said. 'I do now, anyway. 1 didn't think much of it when 1 was at school.'
'Have you lived in Bulverton all your life?'
'I worked away for a while when I was younger, but I think I'm back for good now. There's nowhere else 1 really want to be.'
'You must know a lot of people here.'
'More of them seem to know me, though. Look, Mrs Simons, I've been worrying about the room we put you in. Is it OK?'
' It's charming. Why?'
'Well, 1 went to America once on a holiday, and everything seemed so modem over there.'
In the bland, silvertinged daylight, Teresa saw that Amy was not as young as until now she had thought. Although she still had an attractive face, and she carried herself as if she was in her twenties, her hair had faint grey streaks and her body showed signs of thickness round the waist. Teresa wondered if she had ever tried working out, as she herself had done two or three years ago. The main benefit she had
found was that while there was no obvious improvement to her figure, she felt she had been doing the best she could for herself. Unless you worked out for hours every week, exercise was essentially about morale, not looking good.
'Look, don't worry about the room,' Teresa said. 'When you were in the US, did you ever stay in one of our motels?'
'No. '
'I've been in motels all over the country. Let me tell you, after a few nights in one of those a place like the White Dragon feels as comfortable as home.'
They had now reached Eastbourne Road with its continual flow of slowmoving traffic in both directions. The noise had increased, and already the slightly eccentric feeling the Old Town had induced in her was slipping away.
Amy came to a halt, and said, 1'd forgotten. I'll have to go back to the shops. I was on my way out to buy something.'
