So we went into the Woolworth’s, and immediately I felt much more cheerful. Even now, I like places like that: a large store with lots of aisles displaying bright plastic toys, greeting cards, loads of cosmetics, maybe even a photo booth. Today, if I’m in a town and find myself with some time to kill, I’ll stroll into somewhere just like that, where you can hang around and enjoy yourself, not buying a thing, and the assistants don’t mind at all.
Anyway, we went in and before long we’d wandered apart to look at different aisles. Rodney had stayed near the entrance beside a big rack of cards, and further inside, I spotted Tommy under a big pop-group poster, rummaging through the music cassettes. After about ten minutes, when I was somewhere near the back of the store, I thought I heard Ruth’s voice and wandered towards it. I’d already turned into the aisle—one with fluffy animals and big boxed jigsaws—before I realised Ruth and Chrissie were standing together at the end of it, having some sort of tete-a-tete. I wasn’t sure what to do: I didn’t want to interrupt, but it was time we were leaving and I didn’t want to turn and walk off again. So I just stopped where I was, pretended to examine a jigsaw and waited for them to notice me.
That was when I realised they were back on the subject of this rumour. Chrissie was saying, in a lowered voice, something like:
“But all that time you were there, I’m amazed you didn’t think more about how you’d do it. About who you’d go to, all of that.”
“You don’t understand,” Ruth was saying. “If you were from Hailsham, then you’d see. It’s never been such a big deal for us. I suppose we’ve always known if we ever wanted to look into it, all we’d have to do is get word back to Hailsham…”
Ruth saw me and broke off. When I lowered the jigsaw and turned to them, they were both looking at me angrily. At the same time, it was like I’d caught them doing something they shouldn’t, and they moved apart self- consciously.
“It’s time we were off,” I said, pretending to have heard nothing.
But Ruth wasn’t fooled. As they came past, she gave me a really dirty look.
So by the time we set off again, following Rodney in search of the office where he’d seen Ruth’s possible the month before, the atmosphere between us was worse than ever. Things weren’t helped either by Rodney repeatedly taking us down the wrong streets. At least four times, he led us confidently down a turning off the High Street, only for the shops and offices to run out, and we’d have to turn and come back. Before long, Rodney was looking defensive and on the verge of giving up. But then we found it.
Again, we’d turned and were heading back towards the High Street, when Rodney had stopped suddenly. Then he’d indicated silently an office on the other side of the street.
There it was, sure enough. It wasn’t exactly like the magazine advert we’d found on the ground that day, but then it wasn’t so far off either. There was a big glass front at street-level, so anyone going by could see right into it: a large open-plan room with maybe a dozen desks arranged in irregular L-patterns. There were the potted palms, the shiny machines and swooping desk lamps. People were moving about between desks, or leaning on a partition, chatting and sharing jokes, while others had pulled their swivel chairs close to each other and were enjoying a coffee and sandwich.
“Look,” Tommy said. “It’s their lunch break, but they don’t go out. Don’t blame them either.”
We kept on staring, and it looked like a smart, cosy, self-contained world. I glanced at Ruth and noticed her eyes moving anxiously around the faces behind the glass.
“Okay, Rod,” Chrissie said. “So which one’s the possible?”
She said this almost sarcastically, like she was sure the whole thing would turn out to be a big mistake on his part. But Rodney said quietly, with a tremor of excitement:
“There. Over in that corner. In the blue outfit. Her, talking now to the big red woman.”
It wasn’t obvious, but the longer we kept looking, the more it seemed he had something. The woman was around fifty, and had kept her figure pretty well. Her hair was darker than Ruth’s—though it could have been dyed—and she had it tied back in a simple pony-tail the way Ruth usually did. She was laughing at something her friend in the red outfit was saying, and her face, especially when she was finishing her laugh with a shake of her head, had more than a hint of Ruth about it.
We all kept on watching her, not saying a word. Then we became aware that in another part of the office, a couple of the other women had noticed us. One raised a hand and gave us an uncertain wave. This broke the spell and we took to our heels in giggly panic.
We stopped again further down the street, talking excitedly all at once. Except for Ruth, that is, who remained silent in the middle of it. It was hard to read her face at that moment: she certainly wasn’t disappointed, but then she wasn’t elated either. She had on a half-smile, the sort a mother might have in an ordinary family, weighing things up while the children jumped and screamed around her asking her to say, yes, they could do whatever. So there we were, all coming out with our views, and I was glad I could say honestly, along with the others, that the woman we’d seen was by no means out of the question. The truth was, we were all relieved: without quite realising it, we’d been bracing ourselves for a let-down. But now we could go back to the Cottages, Ruth could take encouragement from what she’d seen, and the rest of us could back her up. And the office life the woman appeared to be leading was about as close as you could hope to the one Ruth had often described for herself. Regardless of what had been going on between us that day, deep down, none of us wanted Ruth to return home despondent, and at that moment we thought we were safe. And so we would have been, I’m pretty sure, had we put an end to the matter at that point.
But then Ruth said: “Let’s sit over there, over on that wall. Just for a few minutes. Once they’ve forgotten about us, we can go and have another look.”
We agreed to this, but as we walked towards the low wall around the small car park Ruth had indicated, Chrissie said, perhaps a little too eagerly:
“But even if we don’t get to see her again, we’re all agreed she’s a possible. And it’s a lovely office. It really is.”
“Let’s just wait a few minutes,” Ruth said. “Then we’ll go back.”
I didn’t sit on the wall myself because it was damp and crumbling, and because I thought someone might appear any minute and shout at us for sitting there. But Ruth did sit on it, knees on either side like she was astride a horse. And today I have these vivid images of the ten, fifteen minutes we waited there. No one’s talking about the possible any more. We’re pretending instead that we’re just killing a bit of time, maybe at a scenic spot during a carefree day-trip. Rodney’s doing a little dance to demonstrate what a good feeling there is. He gets up on the wall, balances along it then deliberately falls off. Tommy’s making jokes about some passers-by, and though they’re not very funny, we’re all laughing. Just Ruth, in the middle, astride the wall, remains silent. She keeps the smile on her face, but hardly moves. There’s a breeze messing up her hair, and the bright winter sun’s making her crinkle up her eyes, so you’re not sure if she’s smiling at our antics, or just grimacing in the light. These are the pictures I’ve kept of those moments we waited by that car park. I suppose we were waiting for Ruth to decide when it was time to go back for a second look. Well, she never got to make that decision because of what happened next.
Tommy, who had been mucking about on the wall with Rodney, suddenly jumped down and went still. Then he said: “That’s her. That’s the same one.”
We all stopped what we were doing and watched the figure coming from the direction of the office. She was now wearing a cream-coloured overcoat, and struggling to fasten her briefcase as she walked. The buckle was giving her trouble, so she kept slowing down and starting again. We went on watching her in a kind of trance as she went past on the other side. Then as she was turning into the High Street, Ruth leapt up and said: “Let’s see where she goes.”
We came out of our trance and were off after her. In fact, Chrissie had to remind us to slow down or someone would think we were a gang of muggers going after the woman. We followed along the High Street at a reasonable distance, giggling, dodging past people, separating and coming together again. It must have been around two o’clock by then, and the pavement was busy with shoppers. At times we nearly lost sight of her, but we kept up, loitering in front of window displays when she went into a shop, squeezing past pushchairs and old people when she came out again.
