The mother looked over at Lara and caught her in the act of gazing at her baby. Her questioning mascaraed eyes flicked up to meet Lara’s.
‘What a lovely baby,’ Lara blustered.
‘Why, thank you so much,’ the mother said.
‘How old is he?’
‘Three days.’
‘Gosh. Well then. Good for you. He’s gorgeous.’ Lara smiled, then turned and swept Jack and her own trolley away as quickly as possible.
That woman and her baby appeared every time they rounded a corner. They were there, choosing bagels from the bewildering array shielded from germs in giant perspex bins. They were there sliding past the automatic misting at the green vegetable display, and they were there when Lara looked up from a swimming-pool-sized freezer full of lobster and giant shell-on prawns. It was as if the woman were following her around expressly to rub the baby in her face. It was as if she were some sort of physical manifestation of Lara’s own guilt –
look what you went and didn’t do
, she was saying.
And then, when Lara had just about emptied the entire contents of her trolley on to the checkout conveyor belt so there was no turning back, she looked up and there they were, standing directly behind her in the queue.
Lara tried to look away, to concentrate on setting the last bits of her shopping on their passage to the till.
‘Hey, how ya doin’?’ The rotund checkout girl smiled up at her.
‘Oh, um fine thank you,’ Lara mumbled.
‘Say, I love your accent!’
‘Thank you.’
Jack dropped his ball.
‘Get it for me, Mummy,’ he said.
‘“Mummy”. Say, ain’t that just the cutest?’ the checkout girl chuckled, as Lara bent to retrieve the ball.
‘Oh shoot,’ the new mother gasped behind her. She was struggling to get her shopping on to the conveyor but her baby was now awake and demanding attention with its newborn mewl. ‘Oh shoot.’ She looked flustered, unable to deal with the competing demands of her baby and her shopper’s duty to keep the checkout machine running smoothly.
Three days was too soon to bring a baby to a supermarket, Lara thought. For the first time, she noticed the spotlessness of the woman’s appearance. Her face immaculately made up, she wore a silk shift of lime green and fuchsia swirls on a black background.
‘Can I help?’ Lara said, gesturing at the woman’s trolley.
‘Oh, thank you so much,’ the woman said, lifting the baby out of its cage and placing him into Lara’s startled hands. Then she turned back to her trolley and started unloading formula milk, nappies, packets of cake, a gallon of grape juice …
That wasn’t what Lara had meant.
She stood there, her lips opening and closing like a carp as she stared down at this unwelcome burden. The baby strained, his eyes tight shut, his mouth a gaping hole in his red little face. His body contracted with each sob, as he alternately arched his back and drew his knees up to his stomach.
He was so alive, yet so vulnerable. She could just throw him down on the ground and …
‘Ahhh. Baby,’ Jack said, reaching out his hand.
‘Yes. Baby,’ Lara managed to say. She put the baby up on her shoulder and did the little dance every mother knows, jiggling him and patting his back, helping him with whatever his problem might be. She made sure she breathed through her mouth, so she couldn’t smell his delicious head.
That would have really been too much.
While Lara stood holding the baby, her own shopping made its passage through the checkout. At the other side, a spotty, low-browed boy of about Olly’s age packed her purchases, putting one or two items into each of the thin plastic bags positioned on a metal carousel. If Lara hadn’t been lumbered with the baby, she would have been worrying about whether or not she should be helping. She certainly thought he was using too many bags. And was she supposed to tip him?
‘You’re all set!’ he said, looking up with a gormless smile that revealed crooked yellow teeth. Lara was surprised. She thought all Americans were dragged off to the orthodontist as soon as their last adult molar came through.
‘Oh, um …’ Lara tried to fumble in her bag for her purse, the baby still in her arms.
‘I’ll take him back now. Thank you so much.’ The smart young mother reached over for her baby.
Lara paid with her credit card.
‘Have a nice day!’ the checkout girl beamed.
‘Have a nice day!’ the bag-packer gurned.
‘Thank you,’ Lara muttered. Then she wheeled her trolley out into the steaming car park, relieved to be leaving that baby far behind her.
She found the liquor store, where she bought a dozen assorted bottles of Californian reds and whites under the disapproving eye of the bearded proprietor, who asked her for age ID, which, at thirty-six, she chose to view as something of a compliment. She pushed the trolley back across the baking mall car park, bottles clanking in their box next to the plastic bags of her shopping. But when she got to the front of the supermarket, the car wasn’t where she thought she’d left it.
‘Shit,’ she said to Jack.
She felt a surge of panic. If the car had been stolen, they would have to pay the swingeing thousand-dollar insurance excess. Her mind went back to the hissed argument she and Marcus had had in the car rental depot at Newark. She had suggested that, in view of the free upgrade, paying an extra seventy dollars to waive the excess in case of an accident would be a sensible move because they were driving an expensive vehicle on the wrong side of the road. Marcus had countered that they were just going to have to drive carefully, because the bloody car and child seat were costing them a fortune as it stood, upgrade or no upgrade. Lara was concerned now that this economy, like so many chosen by Marcus, might prove to be very false indeed.
‘Where’s the car, Jack?’ Lara said. Jack turned around in his trolley seat. The sun baked down on them both, burning through the haze, and Lara realised she should have put sunblock on him – little lines of red had started to track between his freckles, matching the colour of his eyes, which were puffing up again. She pulled his baseball cap down so it shielded his face more effectively. For her own part, she could feel the beginnings of a headache setting in.
‘There, Mummy, look.’ Jack pointed a little finger at the other side of the shimmering expanse of tarmac. If you drew a line down the centre of the symmetrical supermarket building and its car park, the Chevy was standing in the mirror image place to where Lara thought she had left it.
‘That’s odd,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m sure I parked over there.’
‘Silly Mummy,’ Jack said, giggling.
‘Yes, silly Mummy. Must be more bonkers than I thought.’
She trundled the trolley across the car park, by now more concerned for the fate of the ice cream she had bought than about having got confused as to where she had left the car. It was hardly unprecedented – she was always forgetting where she had parked the Volvo – and in this case she could add jet lag to her list of excuses.
‘Oh, no,’ she said as they neared the car.
‘Bum,’ Jack said.
One of the front tyres, the one closest to her, was completely flat.
‘I don’t believe it.’
She lifted Jack out of the trolley and they bent to look at the tyre.
‘What do I do?’ Lara said.
Jack shrugged.
‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ A tall security guard, uniformed all in khaki, appeared behind her.
‘I’ve got a puncture,’ Lara said, straightening up and lifting a strand of hair out of her eye.
The security guard squatted down to take a closer look, and Lara wondered where she had seen him before. Something about the set of his shoulders reminded her of someone. Then she smiled to herself. She was going quite mad, first forgetting where she left the car, then thinking she knew a security guard in a supermarket car park in upstate New York.
‘It’s a nail,’ the guard said, standing up with the culprit held between his long fingers.
Lara looked up at her reflection in his mirrored aviator sunglasses. She was wrong, of course. She had never seen this man before in her life. The nose, the shape of the face, the dark skin. Nothing was familiar.
‘I can get a guy out to see to it for you,’ he said.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Lara said. As the guard pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, she realised who he reminded her of. There was something about the form of him, the way he moved, that brought Olly to mind. That was all.
The guard walked round the car as he made the call.
‘You got another flat here, ma’am,’ he said, pointing to the tyre Lara couldn’t see.
‘My God,’ Lara said. ‘I must have driven through a nail spill.’
‘He’ll be here in an hour,’ he said, pocketing his phone.
‘An hour? I don’t think my shopping’s going to last that long in the heat,’ Lara said.
‘If I’m not mistaken, you’ll have a factory-installed refrigerator on this model,’ the guard said, leaning an arm on the top of the Chevy. Lara could see a dark patch of sweat on the underarm of his khaki uniform.
‘Really?’ Lara said. ‘I wouldn’t know. It’s a hire car.’
‘Gimme the key,’ he said, and without really thinking, Lara did as she was told. ‘There you are.’ He summoned her round to see a black box inside the boot. He opened it and, holding her wrist, put her hand right in so she could feel the cold. ‘Hear that hum? Stays on for an hour after you stop the engine.’
‘Thank you,’ Lara said, drawing her arm back. She made to get her trolley, but he beat her to it. ‘It’s fine,’ she said, as he started to unload her shopping, opening each bag to inspect its contents and putting the cold stuff in the fridge. ‘I can manage by myself now.’
‘You like your wine, ma’am,’ he said, ignoring her and heaving the box of bottles from the trolley.
Lara began to feel uneasy. Was this man overstepping the boundary of helpfulness into some other sort of territory? Or was he, like the bag-packer and the checkout girl, just showing that American knack of casual courtesy? She went to scoop up Jack, who was busy kicking his new ball around on a patch of scrubby grass to the side of the car park.
‘Thank you,’ she said as the guard loaded the last piece of shopping into the boot. ‘I think we’ll sit in the car now, with the air-conditioning on.’ She held her hand out for the key.
‘Good idea, ma’am.’ He handed it over, and she felt relieved. ‘Be sure to keep an eye out for the tyre guy, though. I told him to look out for a pretty little lady with a handsome young man. He won’t see you if you’re hiding inside.’
‘I’ll be sure.’ Lara put Jack into the passenger seat then went round to the driver side. ‘Thanks once again,’ she said, getting in.
‘My pleasure. Part of the service.’
Relieved, Lara shut the car door behind her, pressed the
Lock All Doors
button and got the engine running so she and Jack could start to cool down. She watched through the wing mirror as the guard wheeled her empty trolley towards the store. Just before he went inside, he turned and gave her a salute, as if he knew she was watching him.
Cocky twat, she thought. But something troubled her. It had been over two hours since she had parked the car. But the fridge, which he said kept going for an hour, had still been on.
THE NEW TYRES COST HER NEARLY SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS
, because she had to replace exactly the model used on the car, which was, of course, of a top specification. This also meant that the mechanic had to go back to his depot to pick them up, so the operation took up most of the afternoon. She called Marcus on the house number and told him what had happened.
‘Shit,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘It seems to be taking an inordinately long time. And there’s no food in the house.’
‘Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ve got everything under control here. There’ll be a lovely meal waiting for you when you get back.’
Wow, she thought. That’s a turn-up for the books.
It took her quite a while to navigate out of town. By the time she found herself out on unfamiliar, deserted country roads, Jack had fallen asleep and it was the tail end of the day.
She was never much good at being alone with nature, even within the fortification of the big car. Her imagination had an annoying tendency to bloom. Turning a bend, she would half expect to discover a ghastly old crone cursing her from the side of the road. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, she would be afraid of encountering mad, glinting eyes and the outline of a figure in the back seat, breathing down her neck, meaning her harm.
A little way out of town, a greyish-brown car roared right up behind her, tailgating her along a particularly twisty stretch. By the time the driver overtook her, flashing his lights, blaring his horn and going to the extent of winding down his window to flip her the bird – at which point she realised he was in fact a she – Lara was in full fight-or-flight mode, palms sweating, heart pumping.
‘Wanker,’ she said to the other driver, just to steel herself.
As she forced her breathing back to normal, she tried not to think about what might be going on up in the densely wooded hills all around her. That car could have forced her off the road and no one would have known until she was found years later, a desiccated skeleton, the rusting Chevy obscured by creepers.
As she finally rolled into Trout Island, past the graveyard, Lara decided not to mention the tyre bill to Marcus. If he asked, she would say it was a hundred dollars. He would think that sufficiently outrageous, but nowhere near as bad as the real amount, which would trigger a whole week of silent brooding. Thankfully, his squeamishness about money stretched to him not even being able to open the envelopes containing their bank and credit card statements. Financial management was entirely her realm, and she saw it as her duty to protect him from some of the harsher realities by occasionally scaling down the truth.
She turned into their driveway. If she looked through half-closed eyes, the house still hinted at what must have been a former glory. But the overgrown front garden and the loveless tarmac at the rear were stark reminders that those days were long gone.