Woman with a Secret Read Free

ears, in the skin of my face; I can even feel it in my hair.
    There’s no way a noise like that car horn isn’t going to make a policeman—any policeman—turn around and see what’s going on.
    It’s OK. It’s fine. Nothing to worry about. How likely is it that he’d remember my car registration? He’ll see a silver Audi and think nothing of it. He must see them all the time.
    I keep my head facing away from him, my eyes fixed on the other side of the road, willing a gap to appear. One second, two seconds, three . . .
    Don’t look. He’ll be looking by now. No eye contact, that’s what matters. As long as you don’t see him seeing you . . .
    At last, there’s space for me to move out. I spin the car around and drive back along Elmhirst Road toward Spilling town center, seeing all the same things that I saw a few minutes ago, except in reverse order: the garden center, the Arts Barn, the house with the mint-green camper van parked outside it that looks like a Smeg fridge turned on its side, with wheels attached. These familiar objects and buildings seemed ordinary and unthreatening when I drove past them a few minutes ago. Now there’s something unreal about them.They look staged. Complicit, as if they’re playing a sinister game with me, one they know I’ll lose.
    Feeling hot and dizzy, I turn left into the library parking lot and take the first space I see: what Adam and I have always called “a golfer’s space” because the symbol painted in white on the concrete looks more like a set of golf clubs than the stroller it’s supposed to be.
    I open the car door with numb fingers that feel as if they’re only partly attached to my body and find myself gasping for air. I’m burning hot, dripping with sweat, and it has nothing to do with the weather.
    Why do I still feel like this? I should have been able to leave the panic behind, on Elmhirst Road. With him.
    Get a grip. Nothing bad has actually happened. Nothing at all has happened .
    “You’re not parking there, are you? I hope you’re going to move.”
    I look up. A young woman with auburn hair and the shortest bangs I’ve ever seen is staring at me. I assume the question came from her, since there’s no one else around. Explaining my situation to her is more than I can manage at the moment. I can form the words in my mind, but not in my mouth. I’m not exactly parking. I just need to sit here for a while, until I’m safe to drive again. Then I’ll go .
    I’m so caught up in the traumatic nothing that happened to me on Elmhirst Road that I only realize she’s still there when she says, “That space is for mums and babies. You’ve not got a baby with you. Park somewhere else!”
    “Sorry. I . . . I will. I’ll move in a minute. Thanks.”
    I smile at her, grateful for the distraction, for a reminder that this is my world and I’m still in it: the world of real, niggly problems that have to be dealt with in the present.
    “What’s wrong with right now?” she says.
    “I just . . . I’m not feeling . . .”
    “You’re in a space for mothers with babies! Are you too stupid to read signs?” Her aggression is excessive—mysteriously so. “Move! There’s at least fifty other free spaces.”
    “And at least twenty-five of those are mother-and-child spaces,” I say, looking at all the straight yellow lines on the concrete running parallel to my car, with nothing between them. “I’m not going to deprive anyone of a space if I sit here for another three minutes. I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling great.”
    “You don’t know who’s going to turn up in a minute,” says my persecutor. “The spaces might all fill up.” She pushes at her toothbrush-bristle bangs with her fingers. She seems to want to flick them to one side and hasn’t worked out that they’re too short to go anywhere; all they can do is lie flat on her head.
    “Do you work at the library?” I ask her. I’ve never seen a Spilling librarian wearing stiletto-heeled