Sunstroke and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

checking basics. She had to follow after him, out through the bus station back entrance into a twilit cobbled street and then up right beside a high grim wall that curved round to join a busier road. The tall buildings of a hospital with their lighted windows rose sobering and impassive against the evening sky, where the murky day in its expiring was suddenly brilliantly deep clear blue, studded already with one or two points of stars. The man walkedahead and Hilary followed, hurrying, struggling with her suitcase, three or four steps behind. The suitcase was an old leather one embossed with her grandfather’s intials; he had taken it to ecumenical conferences in the thirties. Because the clasps were liable to spring open she had fastened an elastic Brownie belt around it.
    Unwell! Unwell was the word they had to use to the games mistress at school when they weren’t having showers because they had a period. Hilary saved the joke up to amuse Sheila. Then she was flooded with doubt; why had she followed this rude man so obediently? She should have at least questioned him, asked him where Sheila was and what was wrong with her. Sheila had told her to wait, whatever happened, at the bus station. She opened her mouth to protest to him, to demand that he explain to her, and take a turn carrying the case. Then stubbornly she closed it again. She knew what a squeak would come out of it if she tried to attract his attention while she was struggling along like this. And if she put the case down and stopped she was afraid he’d go on without noticing she was no longer behind him, and then she would be truly lost in an unknown city, with nowhere to spend the night, and certainly not enough money to pay for anywhere. She could perhaps have hired a taxi to take her to Sheila’s hall of residence, although she wasn’t sure what that would cost either. She had never been in a taxi in her life, and would never have the courage to try and signal to one. And what if Sheila wasn’t at the hall of residence?
    Pridefully she marched on, though her breath was hurting in her chest and her hand without its glove – they were somewhere in her shoulder bag but she couldn’t stop to find them – was freezing into a claw on the case handle. Her arm felt as if it was being dragged from her shoulder. It wasn’t clothes that made her case heavy, but some books Sheila had asked her to bring. Every forty paces – she beganto count – she swapped her case and shoulder bag from hand to hand, and that gave a few moments of relief. She fixed her eyes on the back of the rumpled pinstriped jacket. Once or twice, on the zebra crossings, he looked back to check for her. Luckily his bare feet seemed to slow him down somewhat, probably because he had to keep an eye out for what he might be walking in. There were quite a few people on the streets, even though the shops were closed; sometimes he held back to let a crowd go by, perhaps because he was afraid of someone stepping on his toes. Perversely Hilary started slowing down too whenever this happened. She was damned now if she wanted to catch up with him. Even if he stopped to wait for her, now, she thought that she would stop too and wait, as if the distance between them had become a fixed relationship, an invisible rigid frame of air connecting them and holding them apart in the same grip.
    She thought she recognised the streets that they were walking through. When their father had driven Sheila over with her things at the start of the autumn term, Hilary had come with them; she had wanted to be able to picture where Sheila was, when she wasn’t at home. This shopping area was on a hill behind the city centre: it had seemed lively and fashionable, with tiny boutiques, cafés, a department store whose long glass windows were stuck with brown and yellow paper leaves. She had seen Sheila taking it all in from her front seat in the van, satisfied with her choice, impatient to be left alone to explore. At