grasping that unless he'd followed them into the staff quarters he wouldn't have known which way to go.
He lurched towards their voices and into the corridor. Mishel emitted more of a gasp than he quite believed was genuine, and Tamara said 'Don't bother trying to scare us.'
'Nobody needs to be scared,' Hugh did his utmost to believe.
'Why are you wandering after us now?' Mishel demanded.
'I have to go to work too, haven't I?'
So long as he stayed behind them they would lead him to his section next to theirs. They emerged among the bottled drinks, where a younger man whom Hugh couldn't have named without reading his badge was restocking the shelves. If Justin had left Hugh in charge of them he mightn't be at such a loss. Were the girls trying to lose him? Was this another of their sly games? As he dodged shoppers and their equally sluggish trolleys Tamara veered into a side aisle, Mishel into another. He nearly cried out to them to stop, but he mustn't betray his condition. He struggled past two double-parked trolleys and dashed after Mishel, who turned on him. 'What do you think you're playing at, Hugh Lucas?' she said loud enough for customers to hear.
'Nothing.' Since this seemed feebly defensive, he tried retorting 'I was going to ask you that. Can't we just walk along like workmates?'
'You know what, I think you're a bit sick in the head.'
'More than a bit,' Tamara said, having arrived at his back.
He had to deny it before he was out of another job. As he twisted around to keep both girls in view, however, he saw what he'd been in too much of a hurry to notice: he was faced by shelves of feminine necessities that couldn't have been any more intimate. His face blazed, and he would have fled if he'd known which way to turn. A straggle of schoolchildren appeared behind Tamara, visibly attracted by the prospect of an argument, and Hugh was about to retreat when Justin blocked the other end of the aisle. 'What on earth are you doing there?' he said well before reaching Hugh.
'I was with them.'
'You were no such thing,' Tamara declared.
'He was harassing us again.'
'You keep doing it to me,' Hugh complained. 'You've got me so I can't think.'
Justin glanced at each of the girls in turn before waving Hugh away with a regal gesture that smelled of the latest deodorant. 'Get where you belong and be quick about it. I'll be having a word with you later.'
As Hugh blundered past Tamara he had an oppressive sense that someone was delighting in his situation, which was why he couldn't help blurting 'Aren't you supposed to be at school?'
'They're here at the invitation of your manager.'
This information was provided by an at least middle-aged woman as severe as her grey suit. Too late Hugh noticed that the children had clipboards, though nobody was writing on them. 'Thinking of getting a job here when you grow up?' he blustered, which was less than placatory, since he was gazing at the teacher while he struggled to remember which way he ought to turn. The ranks upon ranks of merchandise seemed to be arranged with no logic he could grasp, and he couldn't see the sign for his section, never mind the aisles themselves. In desperation he swerved away from Justin as the supervisor caught up with him. He'd taken several paces before Justin said 'Where are you gadding off to now?'
Hugh spun around and marched in the opposite direction. Justin waited for him to be well past and then said 'Not that way either. Having a joke? I don't see anybody laughing.'
Somebody was, however silently. Hugh felt almost suffocated by their secret glee. When he heard a stifled giggle he rounded on it and saw a boy covering his mouth. He and two companions were skulking at the back of the school group and up, Hugh was sure, to no good. In a moment he realised – the clearest thought in his mind, the only clear one – that they already had been. 'I know you,' he warned them. 'You were on the bus.'
More than one of them wanted to be told 'Who says?'
'You know you were. You know I know.'
This suggested he was clinging to the only knowledge he had, and he was about to remind them what else he knew when the teacher addressed Justin. 'Excuse me, is this the way you usually treat your visitors?'
'It isn't, and it can stop right now. What are you waiting for, Hugh?'
Hugh felt as if the secret glee were pinning him to the spot, surrounding him with his aggravated confusion. 'They were smoking,' he informed the teacher. 'Not just smoking smoking either.'
'We never, Hugh,' the boy with the giggle said.
'William,' the teacher said, but then, more reprovingly to Hugh 'Excuse me, if you have something to say –'
'Cannabis.'
'I beg your pardon?'
She might almost have taken him to be offering, given her tone. 'That's what they were smoking,' Hugh insisted.
'And may I ask how you're so sure?'
'Yes,' Justin said quite as heavily. 'I'd like to know that too.'
'Oh, come on. You'd both have been able to tell. Everyone can these days.'
'I most certainly can't, and I hope none of you can.' Having been rewarded by various demonstrations of innocence from her charges, the teacher stared hard at Hugh. 'I'm afraid,' she said, 'I think there's only one way anyone would know.'
'Which way?' Hugh pleaded, inflaming his panic. 'What are you trying to say about me?'
'He's a druggie,' someone whispered.
'I'm nothing of the sort. Who said that? Too scared to own up? Can't you keep your children under control? Isn't that your job?'
'That's it,' Justin said. 'Enough.'
'I'm not standing here to have people tell lies about me.'
'That's right, you aren't. You're not here.' Before this had finished exacerbating Hugh's disorientation Justin said 'You're suspended. Go home.'
'Will he be able to find his way?' the teacher said, and Hugh saw too late that his section was beyond the aisle at her back.
'He'll have to. We can't spare anyone to go with him,' Justin said while continuing to face Hugh. 'You'll be hearing from us. Better stop whatever you've been doing to yourself and sort yourself out unless you want to end up playing round with litter on the moors.'
Hugh might have searched for a retort to this, except that he could see the moors across the car park outside the window beyond the checkout desk at the far end of the aisle behind Tamara and Mishel. They were all in a straight line ahead, and once he was in the open he would be able to see the bus stop. He strode forwards like a robot with a rudimentary brain, hardly aware of the girls as they dodged aside. He blundered past the tills and followed a parade of laden trolleys out of the supermarket. The bus stop was almost as good as ahead between the parked cars, and he made for it at once, hoping that the relative openness would lift at least some of the confusion from his mind. Once he was home he would be free to think of ways to help Ellen if he could – and yet for a moment too fleeting to grasp, the ambition seemed so mistaken it was nightmarish.
FIFTEEN
At first Rory thought it was the deepest sleep he'd ever had – so deep that it seemed he might never wake up. His eyelids were gummed shut with such thoroughness that he couldn't tell how dark it was around him. When he tried to blink they didn't begin to respond. He lifted his hands to his face, however little he could feel them. His fingertips must have reached his eyes, despite the absence of sensation. He pushed at the lids, and plucked at them, and clawed at them to no avail. His eyes weren't gummed shut at all; they'd grown shut. They were covered by a senseless mass of flesh.
He cried out. He must have, even if he couldn't hear a sound. He felt as though he were struggling to raise a scream beyond the surface of the inert lump he'd become. He had only the vaguest impression of scrabbling at his
