her chair and the desk, clutching her handbag and stooping to pick up the carrier bag. ‘Right, yes.’
At the door, she raises the plastic bag. ‘My receipts. What should I do with them?’
‘Leave them with Hilary outside. I’ll go through them later this week.’
‘Righto, well, goodbye then,’ she says.
She sits in the warmth of the car for a minute. The suburban street is littered with curling leaves a foot deep at the gutters. All that build-up and she was out in under ten minutes. She turns on the engine and pulls out from the kerb, towards the myriad of mini-roundabouts which will take her out of Scarborough to the A-road back inland. It’s a billowy autumn day, sharp-lit and dry as dust. She is hungry and she faintly needs the toilet but she’d been too distracted to ask Barry if she could use his.
So, there was no getting out now. Not with Max having a baby and lamb prices bottoming out. They’d have to press on, like Joe said. She feels herself adjusting to this idea. It was always bad news with Barry Jordan. Like going to the dentist – you couldn’t expect any good to come out of it except the satisfaction that it was over for another while. At least she hadn’t had to go through those blessed receipts.
Half an hour out of Scarborough, she pulls into the forecourt of a service station to fill up with petrol. The air has a smoked, woody smell to it; huge clouds skit over the horizon and over the A170 as it dissects the rolling flat countryside. The wind is buffeting her hair and the skirt of her mac as she stands holding the petrol pump’s handle, looking in through the window of an adjacent car where a plump baby is playing with his toes. I wonder if Maureen’s got a car seat we could have, she thinks. She smiles at the baby. A bairn. To have a bairn around the house again. She’ll get some of the boys’ old toys down from the loft to have in their lounge, for when Primrose brings the baby over.
She pays for her petrol and resists a Ginsters pasty, even though she’s ravenous. Better to save the money and make a sandwich back home. She drives back out onto the road, pulling down her visor against the low sun, shifting in her seat to ease the pressure on her bladder, and thinking about Primrose. Would any woman who took her place in her son’s affections disappoint as much as Primrose? Ann had had fantasies, she realises now, that a daughter-in-law would be the girl she never had. But Primrose, she tuts to herself, glancing in the rear-view mirror. She remembers wandering through Lipton market with her, pointing to a floral dinner set and saying ‘Ooh Primrose, isn’t that pretty?’ And Primrose had said, ‘I don’t know,’ in that blank way she had, and ‘I’m not much into household stuff.’ And she’d looked straight at her, in a way Ann half admired because it never evaded anything. Primrose. She seems to be not quite all there. Absent somehow. What had seemed like a salve for Max’s loneliness now seems a rather hasty mistake.
An hour and an interesting episode of You and Yours later, and desperate now for a wee, Ann slows the car at the first roundabout on the outskirts of Lipton. She has followed the A170 all the way, its villages strung along it like beads on a broken string. You knew them for what you needed and what they could give: firewood and liquorice at the garage outside Kirbymoorside, pork pies from Hunters in Helmsley. And here in Lipton, their nearest market town, well there was no end to its riches: Greggs for a sausage roll, the hairdressers for a rinse if you were over eighty, scented candles and chopping boards in Coopers, and of course, the Co-op, where Primrose works. Primrose and the baby inside her.
She thinks back to all those years ago, how they worried about Max, and just look at him now. She remembers Joe climbing into bed next to her, saying, ‘We’re never going to be shot of him. He’ll still be here when he’s fifty.’
She’d
At the door, she raises the plastic bag. ‘My receipts. What should I do with them?’
‘Leave them with Hilary outside. I’ll go through them later this week.’
‘Righto, well, goodbye then,’ she says.
She sits in the warmth of the car for a minute. The suburban street is littered with curling leaves a foot deep at the gutters. All that build-up and she was out in under ten minutes. She turns on the engine and pulls out from the kerb, towards the myriad of mini-roundabouts which will take her out of Scarborough to the A-road back inland. It’s a billowy autumn day, sharp-lit and dry as dust. She is hungry and she faintly needs the toilet but she’d been too distracted to ask Barry if she could use his.
So, there was no getting out now. Not with Max having a baby and lamb prices bottoming out. They’d have to press on, like Joe said. She feels herself adjusting to this idea. It was always bad news with Barry Jordan. Like going to the dentist – you couldn’t expect any good to come out of it except the satisfaction that it was over for another while. At least she hadn’t had to go through those blessed receipts.
Half an hour out of Scarborough, she pulls into the forecourt of a service station to fill up with petrol. The air has a smoked, woody smell to it; huge clouds skit over the horizon and over the A170 as it dissects the rolling flat countryside. The wind is buffeting her hair and the skirt of her mac as she stands holding the petrol pump’s handle, looking in through the window of an adjacent car where a plump baby is playing with his toes. I wonder if Maureen’s got a car seat we could have, she thinks. She smiles at the baby. A bairn. To have a bairn around the house again. She’ll get some of the boys’ old toys down from the loft to have in their lounge, for when Primrose brings the baby over.
She pays for her petrol and resists a Ginsters pasty, even though she’s ravenous. Better to save the money and make a sandwich back home. She drives back out onto the road, pulling down her visor against the low sun, shifting in her seat to ease the pressure on her bladder, and thinking about Primrose. Would any woman who took her place in her son’s affections disappoint as much as Primrose? Ann had had fantasies, she realises now, that a daughter-in-law would be the girl she never had. But Primrose, she tuts to herself, glancing in the rear-view mirror. She remembers wandering through Lipton market with her, pointing to a floral dinner set and saying ‘Ooh Primrose, isn’t that pretty?’ And Primrose had said, ‘I don’t know,’ in that blank way she had, and ‘I’m not much into household stuff.’ And she’d looked straight at her, in a way Ann half admired because it never evaded anything. Primrose. She seems to be not quite all there. Absent somehow. What had seemed like a salve for Max’s loneliness now seems a rather hasty mistake.
An hour and an interesting episode of You and Yours later, and desperate now for a wee, Ann slows the car at the first roundabout on the outskirts of Lipton. She has followed the A170 all the way, its villages strung along it like beads on a broken string. You knew them for what you needed and what they could give: firewood and liquorice at the garage outside Kirbymoorside, pork pies from Hunters in Helmsley. And here in Lipton, their nearest market town, well there was no end to its riches: Greggs for a sausage roll, the hairdressers for a rinse if you were over eighty, scented candles and chopping boards in Coopers, and of course, the Co-op, where Primrose works. Primrose and the baby inside her.
She thinks back to all those years ago, how they worried about Max, and just look at him now. She remembers Joe climbing into bed next to her, saying, ‘We’re never going to be shot of him. He’ll still be here when he’s fifty.’
She’d
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