'Not you,' he pleaded as the children piled downstairs. 'They've gone now.'
'Who? Are you sure?'
'I saw them go. Just kids being like kids are – well, we weren't, I don't think.'
'Listen, Hugh.' As he wondered what she was urging him to listen for she said 'I appreciate what you were saying before, truly I do, but this isn't the right time for me just now. I can't expect you to understand, but will you try and be patient with me?'
'Maybe if you told me what's –'
'Trust me, Hugh, it couldn't be wronger. Just let me say it's not your fault. It's nothing to do with you.'
He couldn't claim any right to feel excluded. As he uttered rather less than a word of agreement she said 'Any other memories?'
Hugh had no idea how she could use it, but he wasn't a writer. 'Just a dream I had when we were sleeping there.'
'You remember that.'
'I just did. I was in some house with no lights and I didn't know which way to go.'
'Where did you need to?'
'Out.' Even if this was for her book, he regretted having brought it up. 'Away,' he said.
His brusqueness failed to truncate the memory of knowing he wasn't alone in the darkness as thick as the clay it had smelled of. He'd sensed that any way he turned would deliver him into the clutches of whoever was waiting, so silently it seemed they'd given up the need to breathe. He was sure his outstretched hands would touch a face, if it was recognisable as such. Perhaps it would bare its teeth in delight, if they could be exposed any further, and widen its eyes as his fingertips groped at them, although that was assuming it still had – 'I'm there,' Hugh gasped.
'Where? Hugh, where are you?'
'My stop,' he said and struggled to laugh at the misunderstanding, not least to overcome the panic she seemed to have communicated to him. If this was how it felt to be as imaginative as his cousins and his brother, he should be glad that he ordinarily wasn't. He had never looked forward so much to his supermarket work, the more mechanical the better. He clattered downstairs just in time to halt the bus beside a shelter surrounded by the hailstorm of its glass. 'I'm off,' he said.
'Should I let you go?'
Beyond the concrete path into the retail park Frugo was visible across hundreds of emptied cars. 'Not unless you want to,' he said. 'I've got minutes yet.'
'I haven't upset you, have I? I wouldn't want to.'
'It's like you said, there'll be a better time. You can tell me when.'
'I meant about your bad dream.'
'Forget it,' Hugh said and glanced around to see that nobody was observing how mottled his face had grown as he struck out across the car park. 'I found out something for you,' he managed to admit.
'Will I like it?'
'I don't know.' He had the sudden wholly irrational notion that he should invent a discovery rather than tell her the real one, but of course he was incapable of any such invention. 'Where we all slept,' he said, 'it's the same.'
'I should think so, but I don't think Rory would.' He couldn't tell if she was disappointed in him or with the information as she added 'Does it make much difference either way?'
There was only one, Hugh thought, and that was straight ahead. The gaps between the cars didn't constitute a maze, or if they did he could see his route. He oughtn't to feel distracted by saying 'It's been like that for, I don't know, a hundred years?'
'Watch where you're going, son,' a driver apparently felt entitled to protest as he backed a van almost too large for its parking space into Hugh's path.
By this time Ellen was repeating 'Like what, Hugh?'
'The cliff where we were, it was the same shape eighty years ago. All the rest has changed but it's still sticking out like there's something inside it. You'd wonder what's keeping it that way.'
The van hadn't made him late for work, but he kept an eye on the supermarket while he dodged around car after parked car. He was so intent on it that he had to make an effort to grasp Ellen's question. 'What are you suggesting?' she hardly seemed to want to know.
'Will the rock be harder? That's just me being unimaginative. I'm sure you can think of something, I don't know, more magical.'
'It isn't rock, it's clay.' Quite as sharply she said 'How do you know about it?'
'Found it on the Internet for you.' At last he was clear of the labyrinth of parked cars. 'I've got to go in now,' he said.
He sounded like a child summoned by a parent. Had Tamara and Mishel overheard him? They'd just emerged blonder than ever from Hair You Are. As they sauntered to the nearest Frugo entrance Ellen said 'Let's speak again soon. Shall I let you know how my book goes down with Charlotte?'
Hugh found her turn of phrase inexplicably ominous, but he said 'I'd love you to.'
The girls shared a glance about this and loitered as he made for the entrance, pocketing his mobile. 'Girlfriend, Hugh?' Tamara said.
If he hadn't been struggling to forget his dream he mightn't have mumbled 'Are you offering?'
The girls produced identical momentary frowns. 'Justin warned you about that,' said Mishel.
'Stop doing it to me, then.'
'She was asking if you'd got your girlfriend there.'
'Might be.'
'How long have you been with her, Hugh?' Tamara said.
'I haven't.' To fend off their instant sympathy he said 'I've known her a lot longer than I've known you.'
'Lucky her,' Tamara said without quite winking at Mishel. 'Have you told her how you feel about her, Hugh?'
They were passing the checkout desks. Hugh might have terminated the interrogation by taking a longer route to the staff quarters, but the ground floor seemed bewilderingly crowded, not least with children for some reason out of school. He couldn't escape Mishel's contribution to the survey. 'Don't you want her knowing you care?'
'She'd know how he feels just from looking at his face. Ooh, I don't know what kind of feeling that's supposed to be, though.'
Was it betraying more nervousness than he preferred to understand? He trailed the girls to the Staff Only door beside the shelves of Frugogo energy drinks. Beyond it a concrete passage almost featureless except for staff notices all entitled GO FRUGO! led past the staffroom to the toilets. As she pushed open the door marked female, Mishel turned on Hugh. 'Why are you following us now?'
'I have to go as well.'
'Not in here you don't,' she said while Tamara retorted 'That's right, away from us.'
As they stalked into female he hurried past to male. Opposite the door a concrete wall sported oval urinals, out of sight from the corridor, while the wall at right angles was occupied by cubicles green-eyed with vacant signs. The urinals faced a row of sinks beneath a mirror, and Hugh glimpsed his reflection as he crossed the room. That must be why he had to overcome an impression that someone was there with him or at any rate uncomfortably close, unless it was his awareness that the girls were next door. He couldn't hear them, and surely they couldn't overhear his trickling in the porcelain. The fluorescent lights hummed as if trying to display nonchalance on his behalf. He zipped up his flies, although he felt nervous enough for the action to seem premature, and headed for the sinks. He saw his reflection turn to face him, and at once he had no idea which way either of them had turned.
He was straight ahead, but that was no help. The exit was to the left or right, whichever contained most of the maddeningly monotonous hum, although how could that be true in the mirror as well? He could see the door twice, and he only wished that were twice as helpful. He snatched his hands back from a gush of aggressively hot water and sidled alongside his distressed reflection to rub them under the snout of the hand dryer. The machine was still exhaling without having stopped for breath when he heard the girls emerge into the corridor. At once, in a panic that felt as if a hole had opened under his guts, he realised that only the girls' banter had prevented him from
