The teens quickly scarpered up the road. A burly man thundered past me, jumper sleeves rolled up, face red and sweating.
“What have I told you?” he roared after them, but they were already long gone, laughter trailing behind them.
I rubbed my head as the ringing in my ears cooled and the heat left my trembling arms.
The red-faced man turned to me, swayed slightly, alcohol on his breath.
“Kids, eh?” he said. “Spoiled rotten these days. You understand, eh? No need to get anyone else involved, eh?”
Something about the man’s face looked very similar to the boy. I nodded and hurried away from him.
“No need, eh?” he called after me.
I stopped on the other side of the street and rubbed my chest. Why did I nod?
In my head I imagined the scene again. The boy jumping out at me. The girl filming with her phone. But this time, I saw myself take off one of my boots and approach the boy. Suddenly, I started to beat him about his sniggering face, my arm flying, smacking him repeatedly with the hardest part of the sole.
Is this funny? I imagined myself screaming at him. Is this funny now?
The image of me beating him with my boot kept repeating over and over in my mind. The violence of it. The look of fear I imagined on the boy’s face. His mouth pulled wide in horror.
The satisfying thrill it gave me.
There’s the person you think you’re going to be. And then, poof, there you are.
I swallowed down the dull ache rising in my chest and took a sharp turn up one of the side streets.
CHAPTER 8
I’d been in Carlinsrest for barely an hour and I was probably already a source of gossip.
Fuck’s sake. Get it together, Tamsin.
I didn’t care where I was going. Just as long as it was away from the river.
Up the side streets and into the back alleys, Carlinsrest shucked off its tweed jacket and rolled up its sleeves. Garages, work yards and storage units lined the narrow road. At the end, a long, squat stone building hunkered against the back of the main street. Two small, dark windows were crowded with a display of practical odds and ends: hacksaws, shears, citronella candles, midge nets, fluorescent work vests, bags of tinder, seeds. A long blue sign ran the length of the building, reading in blocky white letters: CARLINSREST HARDWARE & SUPPLIES.
I stopped in front of it.
It was the sort of place that promised practical solutions to life’s problems. Life isn’t miserable, it seemed to say. You just need to replace your terrible washing machine, fix the kettle that scalds your hand with steam, or brighten your front step with flowers. Yes, this was what I needed. Maybe they had someone I could ask about whatever the hell was supposed to be heating my house. And I did need a replacement for the clotheshorse.
I stepped inside.
An electronic chime announced my arrival, a two-tone beep which probably cost more than the real bell it mimicked. Strip lights hung over a long, wide space filled with white metal shelves carrying everything from chainsaws to camping stoves. There was a smell of petrol, wood shavings and that outdoors-scent people bring in with them on their skin after they’ve been in the cold. It was cluttered, but clean and warm. All practicality and no style.
See, here people are comfortable. They don’t need to blind you with flashy point-of-sale and froofy window dressing.
But would the sales staff be as equally fluff-less? Would they roll their eyes and tut when I didn’t know what to ask for? I imagined them taking one look at my face and then fleecing me as the clueless tourist I was.
As if on cue, a man straightened up from behind a counter plastered with business cards and small notices. He was tall and broad, towering over the shelves. I imagined meeting him on a dark road and crossing to the other side. He lifted a large cardboard box up and placed it next to the till.
Then he saw me and smiled.
“Hello, shout if you need anything.”
It wasn’t the over-friendliness of city shop staff, who I always felt suspected me of shoplifting, but not the long-suffering sneer I’d half-expected of a tourist-tired local.
“Will do,” I said.
