It just felt cool. Almost a relief. It took one jab of his knife and that whole shiny, bloated muscle slid open. it burst end to end to show a plush red interior.
A very white creature nestled there. It was curled into a sac of pale yellow flesh, folded inside the rich meat. Cameron drew back at the sight of it. It was no larger than the width of one palm. You couldn’t even see its face.
“Take it,” I said.
There was blood everywhere. My ruptured leg was still pumping blood out onto the tiles. Perhaps now I did need an ambulance. My pain had lessened. A different sort was starting up. I just wanted Cameron to take up my child.
“I can’t touch that,” he said, and flung his knife into the corner of the cubicle.
I looked at my child. I looked at Cameron and at the blood soaking down, filling my shoes. I had a brief, mad image of him rifling for change, going to the condom machine and emptying it. Making himself protective gloves with which to touch my child.
In the end, I took up the tiny body and pulled it out of the space in which it had lodged itself. It came away like a pit from a peach. The muscle and sinew seemed to suck itself back into one piece, but as I held the child up to my breast, held it up so I could see his face, I knew that I had a gaping wound still. But a very ordinary wound. One that might be inflicted by a penknife in a toilet cubicle. And I had my child, too. He set up a thin, mewling cry. His eyes wouldn’t open, they were stuck with yellow, crusted mucus. He was a boy, I could see that much, and covered with fur.
Cameron had gone. He had fled.
NINETEEN
They were taking up the paving stones in the precinct again. What was that for? In the morning the slabs were laid aside, revealing pale squares of sand. Nothing was put around the holes to warn you. What about blind people? They’d be straight down one of those shallow holes, breaking their legs. Elsie thought those gaps looked like scabs someone couldn’t resist picking, and how odd to see the soil under the precinct, reminding you that shops hadn’t always been here.
Mind, the shops used to be a lot better. Everything was closing. Monday morning Elsie was cross because they’d shut the last wool shop. Without warning, with Elsie halfway through her latest thing, the shop had gone. Its windows were Windolened out. What had become of the three old women who sat by their gas fire? The scratched glass counters, the musty, woolly smell? More importantly, what had happened to the six balls of pink four-ply set aside for Elsie on the shelf? What had become of her account? She had loved the routine of popping in whenever she needed a new ball, seeing one of the old dears go off to fetch it from the crinkly cellophane packet where it was kept with its fellows. Elsie couldn’t believe all that had gone, over a weekend, with no warning. A whole way of life had vanished. Already it seemed an old-fashioned way to carry on.
“Boyes still sell wool,” said Big Sue when they bumped into each other outside Boots a few minutes later. “In the upstairs bit. But you have to buy all you need at once.”
Elsie tutted. She bet that she’d never get the same wool again and she’d have to pull out all she’d already knitted. What a waste! Knitting was an effort nowadays. She found it hard to concentrate.
“Isn’t that Eric from over by you?” Elsie nodded to an old man at the Barclays cashpoint.
“It is. I didn’t want to say hello to him while he was at the cashpoint. You can’t interrupt someone doing their pin.”
“Is that hair of his dyed, do you think?”
Big Sue laughed. “It’s pink! Of course it’s dyed.”
Elsie thought that was a bit cruel. She felt sorry for old Eric, who’d done his garden up beautifully. His seemed to be the biggest garden on the whole estate and he’d spent years working on it. A skinny old feller, out pruning things and digging with no shirt on. Elsie had been fascinated by his very pink old man’s nipples hanging on his chest. He’d not done so much in the last year, he wasn’t looking well, and the garden had slipped back. Someone had got in and ruined his rockery. Elsie supposed he’d have taken that hard. Just as she had.
Big Sue was telling her it was good to see her out and about again. She followed Elsie into Boots. “No more trouble with your Tom, then? He’s back to rights?”
Sighing, Elsie led the way up and down the medical counters. Sometimes it surprised her how Big Sue liked to tittle-tattle. She thought the woman was more religious than that. Her mind should be set on higher things.
“He’s never quite right,” Elsie said. “He’s never going to be all right, exactly.”
“Oh,” said Big Sue and they came to a standstill in front of a display of ‘Complementary Treatments’. Elsie looked as if she’d startled herself with her own candour. She went on.
“You see, I think what Tom’s spent his whole life suffering from is disappointment.” Elsie shrugged. “So it’s never going to be easy.” She picked up a box. “Look at these. Health bracelets. They’re meant to touch your pressure points and do you some good.”
“Yeah?” Big Sue hadn’t seen them before. Bangles in silver, copper and gold plate. “They’re expensive.”
“It says here it’s like acupuncture.”
“Is that what you’ve come in for?”
Elsie nodded. “For Tom to try. Fifteen quid isn’t much, really, if it will make a difference.”
“Will a man wear a bangle like this?”
“I could have it engraved, maybe.”
Big Sue examined the box. “Do they work for depression?”
Elsie said, “If they got on your pressure points for disappointment
