The Shadows in the Street Read Free Page B

well maybe three.
    The street was empty. The others had gone. She’d take a cut along the canal towpath and over the footbridge. She didn’t like going that way usually but it saved ten minutes.
    As she passed the bollard by the factory, she saw something. Maybe Les had left his satchel behind, though that wouldn’t be like him. Neat and tidy, that was Les.
    She couldn’t make it out until she got right up to it. It was a plastic carrier bag from the supermarket on the Bevham Road. She hesitated. You never knew.
    ‘Les left it for you, I was going to text you.’ Marie appeared out of the shadows. ‘He went but then he came back with it.’
    ‘You OK?’
    Marie sounded odd. She had her head turned away.
    ‘Nothing that won’t go away. I’m off, Abs, I’ve had it. You walking back a bit my way?’
    It was a couple of miles to the field and Marie’s caravan. She carried flat shoes in her pockets, put them on instead of the heels once she was ready to go, and as she bent down to pull one on, Abi caught a glimpse of her face.
    ‘You want to get that bash seen to, Marie. Did you take his number? You don’t have to put up with that stuff – you can go to the cops, you know, if you get their number.’
    ‘Yeah, right.’
    ‘You can.’
    ‘That’s what you’d do then?’
    ‘Only saying.’
    ‘Well, fuckin’ don’t.’ Marie wobbled as she put on the second shoe.
    ‘I don’t mind going to the top with you, only I’ve got to get back to the kids.’
    ‘Nah. You’re all right.’ Marie waited.
    ‘What?’
    Marie pointed to the carrier.
    ‘Yeah.’ Abi picked it up. Reached inside.
    Two Hundred Tea Bags. Full Flavour. Economy size.

Three
    Nothing happened for a day, sometimes, miraculously, even a couple of days. Everything went on as usual; she got up, made breakfast, drove the children to school, did her job, shopped, collected the children, made supper. It was dry or it rained; it was cold or mild. The world turned. And then the grief roared up towards her again quite without warning, hit her so hard it took her breath away and left her sobbing or shaking, sick or terrified, a tidal wave of recollection and misery and hopelessness.
    Cat Deerbon opened the door of her car and then leaned against it for a moment, head on her arm, trembling with tears that seemed to come from somewhere in the depths of her body, another wave with the power to knock her off her feet. Behind her, the lights of Imogen House fanned out onto the tarmac. It was twenty to ten.
    She had been fine for the past half-hour or so, altering the dosage of a patient’s pain relief, talking to a family, even fine while she had been examining Cassie Porter and sitting by her bed, listening to her, holding her hand. Fine discussing Cassie and another two cases with the night sister. Fine having a cup of tea with Lois, the receptionist. Fine. And all the time knowing that she would not be fine once she had left the building and stopped being a duty doctor and could let her guard drop. Fine, until she was alone.
    Cassie Porter was twenty-seven and dying of a brain tumour.
    People did. This was a hospice. Cat was a doctor.
    A year ago, her husband, Chris, had died of the same type of brain tumour, though not here but at home, in their bed, as she lay with her arms around him. He had sent plenty of his own patients into Imogen House, he was hugely supportive of the place and encouraged Cat to do more palliative care work. But he had refused to be admitted there himself, refused to die anywhere but at home. Cat did not know whether the fact that at least there were no memories of his death held forever in the hospice made it easier to work there or not. Nothing affected her either more or less. It got worse. That was all. Time passing made it worse. People told her it got better and people were wrong.
    She wept on, tears running down her arm and onto her hand. Tears were infinite and the well was bottomless. She had learned that now. In a few