The lino was sticky. It was crunchy with pieces of glass. Lemonade bottles had been smashed up the middle aisle. Now that she stopped to stare, she could smell the thick sweetness in the air. Almost hear the distant fizz of spilled pop going flat. And lying on the floor in front of the meat counter was a boy. A grown man, in a T-shirt and pants, curled up as if he was sleeping. He lay in the debris. Judith wanted to run screaming, but there was also something vulnerable about him, the way he was lying, that drew her. His hair was smarmed to one side, stuck down with something. One arm was flung out in sleep along the floor and his fingers twitched slightly in time with his breathing, which sounded heavy and disturbed.
It was that lad from over the road. “Andy?” she said. Why would he have broken in?
She stumbled closer and her heart was making a racket in her chest. She couldn’t hear his breathing pick up as he started to wake. She looked at the spots up his arms and legs. Those limbs shifted, stirred under her scrutiny. One arm was clutching a heavy, wet object to his body. It had left dark smears on his shirt and his face. As his eyelids flickered he nuzzled this object, the size and shape of his own head, almost lovingly.
Judith had been bending to help him. What Andy clutched to him was slick with blood and it glistened. She could smell what it was before she could see for sure: a massive and fatty hunk of raw meat. He’s pulled it out of the freezer, she thought. He’s defrosted it by hugging it to him.
She backed off.
His eyes opened fully. “You broke in,” Judith told him.
He sat up. His face crumpled as he realised what he could taste. He dropped the joint. “Blood,” he said. “Where am I?”
“Why did you break in?” Judith asked. She went to turn on the main lights.
When they came on it was too bright, fluorescent. He stared down at himself and he was stained pink from the meat and his own blood. His palms, he saw, were shredded from climbing the walls, from breaking in.
“I don’t remember coming here,” he said, as Judith came back up the aisle to get him.
“What is it you’re covered in?” she asked.
“You mean my spots?”
They both stared down at him. Then Judith snapped into action.
“Listen, there’s not much damage. I don’t know what you did, or why, but I’ll not say owt. You’re a neighbour. Just go.”
Andy struggled to his feet. “I don’t know why I’m here.” He wanted to spit so badly.
“I can see you’re not your right self,” she said. “You could do without the police interfering. Just get yourself home, bonny lad.”
He didn’t need telling twice. Judith led him to the back room and opened the door.
“Thank you,” said Andy. “Judith, isn’t it?’”
She nodded, looking at his mouth, smeared in blood. His teeth were pink. Look at what I’m helping, she thought. He could be anyone. “Go!” She pushed him out.
Andy ran.
Big Sue and Charlotte called for Elsie that morning. They
banged on the door for twenty minutes.
“Even if she’s gone crackers, her son should still answer the door,” reasoned Charlotte. But there was no sign of her son, either.
“And where’s that Penny?” asked Big Sue, backing down the garden path and staring at the upstairs windows of Elsie’s house. “I thought she’d virtually moved in with them. Give it another knock.”
Charlotte was wearing that dashing hat of hers, the one with the scarlet feather. It bobbed in time with the knock she gave the front door. Nothing. “All the blinds have been pulled.”
Big Sue gave a sigh. “She can’t say we haven’t tried to pull her back to the land of the living.”
“That’s right,” said Charlotte. She’d wanted to tell Elsie that the shop was shipshape once more. That, no thanks to Elsie, they were up and running again.
“She must have gone into one of her depressed phases,” said Big Sue.
“Or she’s drinking again,” muttered Charlotte.
“Could be.”
“She could be lying in a stupor. Choking on her own vomit.” Charlotte shuddered. The last time Elsie was drinking, she’d been doing it at work. She was too scared to drink at home, where her Tom could see. At first it had been quite amusing, Elsie livening the place up by trying on all the clothes. She kept dashing into the changing cubicle and coming out dressed up in the most ridiculous things. Layers and layers of multicoloured outfits.
Big Sue said, “Where should we go, then?” They had banked on spending their shared day off at Elsie’s, cheering her up.
Charlotte nodded at Nesta’s house across the close. “I think we should check on the mum-to-be,” she said. “They say the house is filthy inside. I wouldn’t mind getting a peek in.”
“Ha’way then,” said Big Sue, who was concerned too.
When they left, Elsie bent to peer through the blinds, making sure they were really going. She was in the kitchen, holding her breath.
Water ran down the walls. The floorboards were soaked through. The lights were still off. Craig hadn’t come home last night, with or without Penny.
Elsewhere in the house the floor creaked. “Craig?” she asked unsteadily.
Andy was
