Fran sat down at the pine table. She stroked the velvety material thoughtfully, running a fingertip around a cigarette burn on the forearm, one she hadn’t noticed before. She laughed softly.
Her eldest daughter Kerry had, only recently, told her off. ‘You’re a mess, Mam. The other kids’ mams are fashionable. Why don’t you get smartened up? Get your hair done?’
‘There’s more important things,’ Fran said. She had been too upset to say anything else. Kerry tutted and walked away.
Now, Fran caught her reflection in the kitchen mirror and grimaced to herself.
‘Who owns the taxidermist’s?’ Vince asked this following Andy down the stairs wrapped in a towel. His skin was cooling now, but still lobster pink from the hottest, hardest shower he had ever had. Andy had joined him and they’d fooled around some more in there. He hadn’t had so much sex in ages. Not in months. Feast or famine, that’s how it always was with him. With the odd little picnic on the way. Andy was the same, he said. They were making their way down to the kitchen at the back of the shop in search of tea, and the thought had just struck Vince that never had he asked who owned the place where Andy lived.
‘Oh… Some bloke. He’s not here much. The shop is hardly ever open.’
Andy’s voice came wafting up the hallway, part of the musty air. It was cold here, and dark, quite different to the cosy nest of Andy’s room. Strange truncated animals jutted out of the stair walls. Each of them grinned, tongues lolling, as if their heads had been rammed through the plasterboard and they were pleasantly stunned. Vince felt funny, stranded on the stairway, glancing sideways at a drooling fox as he asked, ‘Is there any tea?’
Andy reappeared. ‘Got it. Get back upstairs and get warm.’ He was in his red silk dressing gown.
‘Look at you, Noel Coward!’
‘Just get back and shut up.’ Andy gripped the creaking banister on his way up. It always amazed Vince, the number of outfits Andy had to dress up in. All his money went on clothes.
‘It feels good to be here again.’ Vince had an urge to have a poke around the taxidermist’s shop. ‘I don’t know why I stopped coming here.’
Andy reached him. ‘I don’t know either. You never said why.’
‘One of those things.’
‘I was starting to bore you?’
‘God, no! I thought… I should be looking for something else.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘You stopped scaring me. You weren’t strange any more. I let you drop for your own good. Because you weren’t making the same impression.’ Vince thought again, wanting to make it sound better. All he could add was, ‘Um.’
‘I think I see. You thought you had used me up.’
Vince was shivering badly now. His flesh was rough and white. He looked down earnestly into Andy’s foreshortened face, its eyes tilted upwards, full of cinematic menace. How could he have thought him no longer scary? ‘Yeah. And I was moving away. I was over on the other coast. Bloody miserable damp nasty Lancaster.’
‘You loved it there. Don’t pretend you didn’t.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘You stayed there over four years. You never came here.’
‘It didn’t mean I was having a lovely time,’ Vince said. ‘It was just where I was. Where my life was.’
Andy hesitated. ‘Why didn’t you let me come over? To visit? I mean, I know trying to keep something going long-distance is difficult, but we could have just seen each other… gone out, or…’
They kissed greedily under the single beady eye of the fox. Tea bags dropped, one by one, onto the stair carpet.
Liz was having a marvellous time, trying on new frocks. In the only decent clothes shop in town she was kicking up a fuss.
‘No, I don’t want any assistance. Just give me the garments and let me decide for myself, thank you.’
‘But the limit is five, madam. You have eleven.’
‘And what if I buy the lot?’
‘Are you sure you don’t need another opinion?’
‘I’m wearing the things. I only need my opinion, thanks.’ With that she yanked the curtain shut. ‘You can count them when I come out. I’m not nicking anything.’
The sales assistant sighed and walked away. She stood idly at her counter with no one left to please. Occasionally, over the music, Liz could be heard laughing at herself as she tried various new combinations.
The assistant concentrated on straightening the racks and picking bits of fluff off the carpet. Then Fran appeared with all her kids in tow. She asked the assistant to watch Lyndsey and Jeff and, like Liz, waved her assistance away, disappearing into a cubicle of her own with the maximum five garments.
She held them to herself, watching her reflection in solitary confinement. Sighing deeply, she examined them against her, one after another. As yet she didn’t dare look at the prices. Someone on the bus had said this place was meant to be good value. It was the first time Fran had been. It was a seconds shop, but she couldn’t see much wrong with the stuff. Maybe she could afford something… just something not too…
Fran was caught by the chuckling in the next cubicle. Then a familiar voice went, ‘Oh, dear! You couldn’t get away with that.’ At first Fran thought the voice was talking to her. She thought it was the voice of her conscience. And then she recognised it, and realised it was a voice speaking to itself. ‘Liz?’ she asked.
‘Yes? Hello?’
‘It’s Fran. Are you getting something for tonight, as well?’
‘Hello, Fran. Yes, I am. And I look a slut at the moment, so forgive me if I don’t pop through to see you.’
‘I’m getting something for myself.’ Fran ruffled through the items, rejecting the slutty skirts, the gold and black dress. ‘Something new.’
‘Good on you. What sort of thing?’ Liz’s voice became muffled as she struggled out of one skirt into the next.
‘I don’t know what sort of place we’re
