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Josie sits outside the café where she once thought she’d seen Roxy. She has a cappuccino, and the dog sits on her lap. Her hands shake slightly and her mind pulses and twitches with contradictory thoughts. She thinks of Alix’s stupid-faced husband, with his mud-coloured eyes, leaving Alix and his children to go out drinking to the point of stupefaction. She thinks: At least Walter has never done that. She thinks: Walter has always been there for me and the children. But then she thinks: Walter is always, always there. Walter is never anywhere else. She would like it if Walter could be somewhere else. She would like it if she could be somewhere else. Forever. But then she thinks: What is my alternative? And she thinks: Alix. She thinks Alix is the answer to everything, somehow, but then Alix ‘loves’ her stupid-faced, cheating husband, which makes Josie think that Alix is maybe every inch as stupid as she is. And Josie needs Alix to be cleverer than her. Josie has always needed people to be cleverer than her. And she doesn’t know how she feels about Alix any more. She also doesn’t know how she feels about Walter. As her eyes scan the pavement for the daughter she hasn’t seen for five years, her thoughts spiral back to the day Roxy disappeared and the reason why she left and she feels a nauseating darkness envelop her, and as it begins to smother her, her breathing grows laboured and panicky and she knocks her coffee cup as her hand goes to the pocket of her jacket and she pulls out the teaspoon that had rested on the side of her coffee cup in Alix’s studio.
She caresses it gently and slowly brings her breathing back to normal. She checks around her to see if anyone is looking her way, and when she is sure they are not, she puts the teaspoon to her lips and kisses it.
She gets home an hour later. Walter turns and smiles at her from the table in the window.
‘Never see you any more,’ he says.
‘Don’t be silly. Of course you do.’
‘What’s going on with you and this school mum?’
‘Nothing. We’re just getting to know each other.’
‘Where do you go?’
‘Here and there. Cafés. Her house. The park.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Alix.’
‘Alix? Isn’t that the name of the woman, when we were at that pub on your birthday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it her?’
‘Yes.’
She sees Walter’s face crumple with confusion. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you might think it was weird.’
Walter’s right eyebrow lifts slightly, and he turns back to his laptop with a sigh. ‘Like I’d ever think you were weird,’ he says drily.
Josie’s wiring is all off after talking to Alix. Instead of ignoring Walter, as she normally would, she feels the nauseating darkness fall upon her again and she folds her arms across her chest and says, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh, nothing, love. Nothing. Obviously.’
‘No! Walter! Seriously. What is that supposed to mean? Just say it.’
Walter slowly removes his reading glasses and rubs away the sweat at the bridge of his nose. Then he turns to her and says, ‘Josie. Leave it.’
‘I’m not going to leave it, Walter. If you’ve got something to say, then say it.’
‘No. I’m not doing this, Josie. I’m not going there.’
Suddenly she finds herself striding across the room, propelled by pure adrenaline. She stops a foot from Walter and breathes in hard and then slaps him, ringingly, hideously hard, across his face. ‘I FUCKING HATE YOU,’ she screams. ‘I FUCKING HATE YOU!’
She stops, recoiling slightly in the wake of her own violence.
Walter blinks at her, touches the side of his face with his fingertips. Then he slowly returns his glasses to his face and turns back to his computer.
2.30 p.m.
‘Alix? Isn’t it?’
Alix turns to locate the source of the greeting.
