‘I don’t think he was going to use the scissors on the stuff,’ Emma soothed, clearly guessing my train of thought. ‘He came in to ask me about washing everything. Didn’t want to shrink stuff or have it unravel. I gave him a list of temperatures and stuff for the different fibres.’ Emma looked quite proud of this display of customer service, and I was pleased she’d been able to give advice. Or would have been if it had been doled out to anyone else but the knitwear bandit.
‘He probably just wants to sell it and then, you know, it’ll be with people who really appreciate it,’ Emma said hopefully. ‘And he was wearing the jumper. The cursed one, so… it isn’t going to waste.’
‘Well… that’s that then, I suppose,’ I managed to say, trying to sound adequately soothed and not at all like I was having a crisis over some crochet. ‘Nothing I can do about it now.’
Emma patted my arm and went to make tea. I sat on my stool and stewed. First Richard, now this. How many more unpleasant surprises did the universe plan to spring on me?
Chapter 8
We were only tenminutes from closing and I was pulling the internal blinds down when I saw it. The jumper. It was walking down the street, fresh from a trip to Londis by the looks of it. I froze and stared as it sidled past without a care in the world. Twice in one day it had been by the shop. If that carried on, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I’d never wanted to see that thing again and now it was practically stalking me.
‘Emma!’ I called back towards the stock cupboard. ‘I’ve just seen it again!’
She came hurrying over, clutching a bag of polyester toy stuffing – the single item we’d sold that day and needed to restock. ‘The jumper?’
‘Yeah… it went that way.’ I pointed to the left, the way towards the car park and not much else.
‘Maybe he’s heading home now and you won’t see him again?’ Emma said, squeezing the bag of stuffing like a stress toy. ‘He might have only been visiting for the day. I’ve never seen him before, have you?’
To be honest, I hadn’t really been looking at the man inside the jumper. I’d seen the distinctive pattern, the colours I’d been focused on for weeks, stitch after stitch, and nothing else had mattered beyond the shock of seeing it again. I’d got a general impression of a stocky figure carrying a Londis bag and a plastic-handled mop.
‘I hope so,’ I sighed. ‘God, I wish I’d burned it. Just that one thing, so I’d never have to see it again.’
‘It was too pretty to burn.’ Emma patted my arm reassuringly. ‘You’d have never been able to do it. Not after all that work.’
She was right. Damn it. Set fire to cashmere? I’d sooner burn my own hair – while it was still attached.
We closed up and Emma hovered on the pavement, waiting for me to lock the door. She had her car keys in hand and was jingling them worriedly.
‘Do you want to come and stay at mine, for tonight?’ she asked, as I shouldered my tote bag. ‘Or I could come over? Just so you don’t have to be on your own.’
‘I’ll be all right – thanks, though! And for yesterday,’ I said. ‘I think I need to decompress and just get my head on straight. I’ll be all right by tomorrow and I can start sorting everything out.’ This was me lying to both Emma and myself, to be honest. I was trying to be positive because I couldn’t avoid these feelings forever. It would be best for everyone if I just dealt with it in private.
‘He’s not going to pop by today?’ Emma asked, chewing her lip. ‘Like if he needs clothes or polish for his cloven hoofs?’
I laughed despite the weight in my chest. ‘Not if he knows what’s good for him. Besides, I’ll put the chain on so he can’t burst in and surprise me.’
As Emma gave me a quick hug and left for her car, I found myself thinking that, if Richard had bothered with the chain yesterday, I wouldn’t be in this mess. Though, obviously, he still would have cheated on me. I winced as I imagined all the other times he’d probably got away with it. All those ‘meetings’ with investors and weekends spent golfing. He’d probably been laughing behind my back for months. My insides felt like a ball of wool being pulled in all directions at that thought. Oh God, how long had he been at it?
Suddenly the idea of going back to the flat for an early night had lost its appeal. I didn’t want to confront all this stuff right now. Not if I could put it off for a little while longer. It wasn’t even dark yet, the long evening persisting into a golden sunset. I could go for a walk, get some fresh air, maybe grab some food from the Moonlight Chinese on the way home. Delay the inevitable moment I’d be by myself, surrounded by my life with Richard. A life that I was no longer going to be living.
I set off in the same direction Emma had gone, towards the car park. Halfway down the road a footpath branched off and crossed a field full of lazily droning insects and crisp, fragrant grasses. I followed the footpath of baked earth to the hedgerow at the far side, where some of the best blackberries could be found in August. There, a kissing gate led on to the towpath. There was a long way round – down to the car park and then up the path – but my route had brought me out around the bend from there. I didn’t want Emma to see me and decide to come over. Some time alone was what I needed. Time to not be ‘okay’.
The air was sweet with the remnants of berries and I had the urge to pick some as I walked up the towpath, watching the ducks drift along. The canal water was a murky olive green, almost black in the shade of the willows. The setting sun was blinding through the trees, setting them ablaze as I walked by. The scents of summer – lavender blooms gone crisp and grass baked to hay, mingled with those of early autumn – the sweetly ripening crab apples and rich damp earth under the hedges. I listened to the cries of moorhens and the raspy bark of a magpie. This, I decided, was what I needed. Peace and tranquillity.
A crash of breaking china snapped me out of my relaxed mood.
‘Bollocks!’ a voice exploded from upriver, and for the first time I noticed the boat.
It was parked – moored? – up by the viaduct, a red-brick wall shining so brightly in the sun that I’d missed the shadowy little blob under a clump of elder nearby. Not that the boat was particularly eye-catching. Maybe once it had been something special but it was currently peeling paint flakes into the river, the same dull green as the water. The gold writing on its side windows, ‘The Lady Di’, was almost all rust, and the wooden planters on its roof were fully stocked with weeds gone to seed. It could not have been camouflaged better had someone intentionally tried to hide it.
I was about to turn back and leave this loud interloper to it, when the tiny doors at the nearest end of the boat flew open and a man emerged. He was carrying a box piled with what looked like china dolls. The pile obscured his face, so all I could see was his legs, until he turned and I gaped at his back – the back of my jumper!
Before I could think better of it, I was rushing up the towpath, My Little Pony boots clopping on the uneven tarmac. I was really starting to wish I’d worn more practical shoes, but it felt like acknowledging that would be letting Margaret win, something I refused to allow even in the privacy of my own mind. Even though my formerly numb toes were now throbbing something awful.
‘Excuse me!’ I called as the man dumped his box on the deck of the boat and turned back to the doors. He was slightly bow-legged, as scruffy as Emma had said he was, squinting at me against the sun with crinkles around his eyes, his shoulders hunched up by his ears. Late thirties, though? Emma had to be joking. Or hiding a serious eye problem. He was maybe thirty, though the premature grey in his curly hair and the stress lines around his eyes and mouth made him look older.
He glared at me. ‘I’ve got permission to be here, so you can bugger off!’
