The Stranger on the Train (21 page)

“So cu-ute,” the tall, wafty shopgirl cooed. They always said that, to get you to buy their things. But in this case the girl was right. Ritchie did look adorable.

“It's too big for him now,” the shopgirl said, “but when the weather is cold, it will fit.” She smiled at Emma. She wore a long, silky top over linen trousers, and her white-blond hair reached her waist. Her name badge said: “Ilona.” Emma looked away. She knew she should smile back, but it was like she had a hand on each cheek, dragging her face down. It jarred her now when people spoke to her; she had to come from such a long way away to answer them. And when she did, her voice sounded deeper. She could see the way people looked at her. It was easier not to engage with them, or talk to any of them.

While the girl wrapped the fleece in frothy blue tissue paper, Emma waited by the counter and watched Ritchie totter around, examining the toys. He was still new to walking, a bit wobbly and inclined to fall over. He stopped in front of a red plastic truck with black wheels and a dip in the middle for a seat. He grasped the bar sticking up at the back and gave the truck a push. It moved.

“Muh!” Delighted, he turned to check she'd seen what he'd made it do.

“It's lovely,” Emma told him. The shopgirl was tying a blue bow at the top of the bag. “But we have to go now.”

Ritchie ignored her. He gave the truck another push.

“You like it, don't you?” the shopgirl called to him. “You like our truck.”

“Come on, Rich.” Emma took his arm.

“Poor thing,” Ilona, the slinky shopgirl, said from the counter. “He just wants to play.”

Emma said nothing. She gave Ritchie's arm another yank and hefted him into the buggy. She snatched the bag from the counter, got the shop door open and muscled her way out into the street. She marched along for several minutes, furious with the shopgirl and with Ritchie.

“Why did you behave like that?” she snapped at him. He'd never not done what she told him to before.

Ritchie sat in subdued silence, red-cheeked and upset. Emma marched on, not caring how many pensioners or tiny dogs she hit with the buggy. Oh, that smug cow in the shop, with her silky clothes and her long, prissy hair.

She walked all along the King's Road, past the town hall, and Heal's, and the cinema. Then, when she'd calmed down, she turned around again and went all the way back to the shop.

“No wrapping, please,” she said curtly as the shopgirl was getting another armload of frothy paper ready to cover the truck with.

Outside again, Emma tied a piece of string to the handle of the red plastic truck. She pulled it behind her all the way to the bus stop. The sun had ceased to be a pleasure by this time; it was just a hot nuisance in the sky. The bus blew black fumes into her face. She was tired now, looking forward to lying down.

Ritchie had forgotten all about the truck by the time they got back to the flat. When he saw it again beside him in the lift, his face lit up.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha,” he chortled, reaching for it. “Ah-ha-ha-ha.”

In the sitting room, he pushed the truck around, wobbling after it. Emma showed him how to sit on it. It gave him such pleasure, she loathed herself for ever having tried to deny it to him. She went to find her camera.

“Smile for Mummy,” she said.

Ritchie did. They were friends again now. He sat on the truck and beamed up at her; his wide, shy, Oliver smile. Emma clicked the button on the camera.

• • •

Days later, she woke before dawn, as she often did, and gazed drearily up at the long crack on the ceiling. Were she and Ritchie going to live in this flat forever? She'd only meant to stay for a while until she got sorted, but a year later, here they still were. Was she going to bring Ritchie up here? Were his childhood memories going to be of these graffitied walls, this grim, treeless view?

She hated this. It was rubbish, being on benefits, having to live where you were told. Having no choice or say or power. She couldn't fault the social workers; they'd been very helpful, but she knew what they must be thinking: yet another single mother, fleecing the system. Her own mother would be ashamed. She'd never taken one penny from the state, and neither had her grandmother before she went on her pension.

But if she did get a job, how would she afford childcare? And what if she did earn enough to move to somewhere nicer, but then got sick and couldn't work? How would she keep up with the rent? At least here was cheap. But she hated the idea of living here forever. The catch-22 went around and around in her head.

The room grew bright. Ritchie would be awake soon. All the things she had to do that day crowded in on her. She had to dress and feed Ritchie. Do the washing, which meant a trip to the communal laundry in the basement with all the clothes, and the washing powder, and Ritchie as well. Load the washing machine. Come back in an hour to reload everything into the dryer. Collect the clothes and bring them back to the flat. Give Ritchie his lunch. Go to the shops for nappies and milk and Weetabix and bananas. Do the washing up. Clean the kitchen.

She lay there, her head throbbing.

At seven, Ritchie woke up and chuckled, hanging over the bars of his cot. Emma sighed and climbed out of bed to pick him up. He'd start crying in a minute if she didn't.

God, she was particularly tired today. Rough. She felt rough. She fed Ritchie, spooning the soggy Weetabix into his mouth with one hand while she leaned her chin on the other and looked at the crumbs on the floor. The flat needed a hoover. Ritchie's clothes were all in the laundry bag, so she dressed him in yesterday's trousers with the splash of baby spinach casserole down one leg. He didn't want to have his jumper put on.

“Grraaghh.” He was in active form, wanting lots of attention.

Emma held him between her knees and forced the jumper over his head.

“Now just shut up,” she told him, “and give me a chance to get dressed.”

She couldn't be bothered having a shower. She'd have to put Ritchie back in his cot, and he'd stand there and scream the whole time. Who was going to be looking at her, anyway? She was only going to Sainsbury's. She pulled a woolly jumper on over her tracksuit and tied her hair back with a scrunchie. Then she stuck her feet into a pair of flip-flops. There. She looked fine.

The lift told a different story. In the mirror at the back, she saw flakes of dandruff in her hair. Her teeth were yellow.

Just as the doors were closing, a high voice called: “Wait. Wait.”

The doors slid back again and Rosina Alcarez, their neighbor, hurried in, fresh and neat in her blue nurse's uniform.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said, out of breath. “I am so sorry.”

She smiled at Ritchie.

“How are you?” she asked. “You never came to see me.”

Emma had meant to visit. But Rosina had a busy job. She hadn't wanted to call at the wrong time and make Rosina feel obliged to invite her in. As time went by, anyway, it just seemed too much trouble, to sit and try to make conversation with a woman she didn't even know.

Rosina was looking at Emma in a funny way. Conscious of her unwashed hair, Emma turned her head away. Rosina went on staring. Emma wished she'd butt out and mind her own business.

“Are you okay?” Rosina asked in a little voice.

“I'm fine,” Emma said shortly.

The lift bounced as it reached the ground floor. As soon as the doors opened, Emma shoved the buggy over the bump between them and walked off as quickly as she could.

The lump in her throat was gone by the time she reached the street.

• • •

She kept her eyes down in Sainsbury's, avoiding conversation with the chatty Indian cashier. On the way home, she stopped at a cash machine to check her balance.

Her wallet wasn't in her bag.

Emma scrabbled around again, making sure. She tried in her pockets, then in the buggy and all the plastic shopping bags.

“Great,” she sighed, standing back up again. She must have left the wallet at Sainsbury's. She turned the pushchair around and headed back.

“Did I just leave my wallet here?” she asked the cashier.

He was busy serving another customer; a woman in a pink poncho who swiveled to glare at Emma.

“Your wallet, madam?” the cashier asked.

“Yes.” Emma was too worried to be polite. “My wallet. I used it to pay for the things I just bought. Less than fifteen minutes ago.”

“Let me check.” The cashier searched all around the desk. Then he bent to check the floor behind.

“No wallet,” he said, reemerging. “I am sorry.”

Shit. She'd had forty pounds in cash in that wallet. A week's worth of food for her and Ritchie. Maybe she'd dropped it in the street. Emma retraced her steps to the cash machine, checking the ground as she walked. No sign. Once more, she tried all her bags and pockets. Then she took out her phone. She'd have to cancel her missing card.

“WelcometocustomerservicesDenisespeakingcanIhave­youraccountnumberplease,” the voice reeled off on the other end of the line.

“It's . . . er . . .” Emma hesitated. “Three. No . . .” Three or eight? Which? She knew that bloody number off by heart. Why was she suddenly having a problem remembering it?

“I can't seem to think of it at the moment,” she began.

“Can't help you, then, I'm afraid,” the voice sang.

“But I need to cancel my card,” Emma protested. “I think it's been stolen.”

“I need the number.”

“I can give you my name. And the address of my branch in Bath.” Emma recited the details.

A clicking noise from the phone, then: “I'm sorry. We have no record of that branch.”

“But you must do.” Emma almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “I've had an account there since I was fifteen.”

“What's the sort code?”

“I don't know. Look, can't you just put me through to my branch and I'll deal with it myself directly?”

“We don't do that, madam. Anyway, we have no record of that branch.”

Emma stabbed the end-call button. Stupid cow. She'd go to a high street branch and deal with an actual human.

In the bank, she went to the customer services desk, where an exotically heavy-eyed girl in a suit sat plucking something off her sleeve.

“Nah help you?” The girl examined a speck between her finger and thumb.

“Yes,” Emma said. “I need to report a stolen bank card.”

“View tried the helpline?”

“Yes, I have. They were no help at all. That's why I came in here.”

The girl gave a long sigh. She reached for her flatscreen.

“Account number?”

“I can't remember it at the moment,” Emma said. “But I have my branch address, and my own address and date of birth, and all my security passwords, and I can give you a sample of my signature—”

“We need the account number.”

“Look.” Emma struggled to keep her temper. “If I'd
known
my card was going to go missing today, I'd have brought the number with me, wouldn't I? But since I didn't, and since I don't want someone else using my card, I'm doing everything I can to cancel it. Only none of you seems the slightest bit interested in doing anything to help. I don't. Know. The number. You sort it out. It's your job.”

She had raised her voice by this time. Two beefy-looking men in blue shirts materialized from nowhere and planted themselves one on either side of the bank girl.

“Everything all right?” one of the men asked.

Heads were turning from the cash queue. Ritchie began to sniffle.

Shaking, Emma turned the buggy around and wheeled it out of the bank.

She knew she should go back to the flat and get her number, but she was too angry to talk to anyone else just yet. She steered the buggy towards the river, needing to get away and calm down.

Under Hammersmith Bridge, a group of teenage boys in school shirts and ties were shoving each other into the wall and laughing loudly. Beyond them, on the river path, a man was walking in Emma's direction. Even from this distance she could see that there was something wrong with his face. One eye was lower than the other, the skin on that side reddened, as if scarred.

As he approached them, the boys nudged each other and went quiet. It was fairly obvious what was going to happen. The man reached the bridge and one of the group, a boy with an unflatteringly low hairline, muttered something to his mates that Emma didn't catch. They all started sniggering.

The man stopped.

“Excuse me,” he said, in a pleasant enough way. “There's no need for that sort of talk.”

“What did you say?” The low-hairline boy straightened at once. He stepped closer to the man, sticking his face forward into his. “You mutant. How dare you speak to me like that?”

Quickly, the man walked on.

“Fucking retard,” the boy shouted after him. “People like you shouldn't be out on the streets.”

The man gave no sign that he had heard. With dignity, he kept walking and turned the corner. But Emma felt a sudden surge of rage and hatred so violent it made her jaw clench. She had an almost uncontrollable urge to run over and smack the boy in the face. Really punch him; break all the bones in his nose. Push him over the wall into the river and hope he landed on a rusty spike.

She forced herself to turn around, pushing Ritchie's buggy back up the ramp to the road. Then she turned left onto the bridge, walking quickly to get away.
Stop this, Emma!
What on earth was happening to her? But the anger grew worse, swelling inside her until she was sick with it. Was this the sort of world Ritchie was going to grow up in? Were these the kinds of people he would have to deal with? Or even turn into one day?

In the middle of the bridge, she tried to steady herself, putting a hand on the railing. The river spun around her. Ornate green and gold lanterns and towers wheeled in the sky.