Reluctantly Home(4)

Pip could hear the pride in her mother’s voice, and she had to swallow her anger down even deeper. She was working in a charity shop. Of course she was doing well. It was hardly difficult. This time last year she had been appearing in the European Court of Human Rights and now she was folding other people’s cast-off clothes in a scruffy second-hand shop in Southwold. And which of these jobs did her mother seem to hold in the highest esteem?

Pip swallowed hard. ‘That’s nice,’ she managed. ‘Right. I’d better be going,’ she added, anxious to get away before the conversation descended into another argument.

‘But you still haven’t had any breakfast,’ she heard her mother objecting to her disappearing back.





3


It was a bright, fresh morning as Pip cycled along the narrow lanes to the Have a Heart charity shop. The zinging electric yellow of the rapeseed crop was just starting to bloom in the fields and birdsong rang out from the hedgerows, but Pip barely noticed any of it. She was entirely focused on getting herself from A to B without falling apart.

Obviously driving herself to the shop was not an option. She hadn’t driven anywhere since the accident and couldn’t imagine ever getting behind the steering wheel of a car again. Her father had suggested that they dig her old bike out of the shed, where it had lain quietly rusting for the last ten years. He had spent time lovingly cleaning it up for her, oiling its creaking chain and gears so it was almost as good as new. The frame was a shocking pink, a colour that felt so alien to her freshly minted London persona that Pip couldn’t quite believe she’d ever chosen it, and it had a creaking wicker basket that hung from the handlebars and made her feel even more provincial.

There had been no helmet with it, though. When she’d asked her father where it might be, he had looked first surprised and then incredulous.

‘The shop’s only down the road, Pip,’ he’d said. ‘What on earth do you need a helmet for?’ But then he remembered why she needed to use the bike and not her car and he’d shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to another. ‘But I’m sure we can get you one if you’d feel safer,’ he added, placing a large, rough hand on her shoulder and squeezing.

So a helmet had been duly purchased, in black, not pink, and Pip could now get herself into town and back without the humiliation of having to ask for a lift.

It had been a struggle at first; any encounter with a road made her heart rate soar. But gradually, she had got used to it, and now she could just about deal with the country lanes without too many panics, although she often got off and pushed when the traffic got heavy.

The Have a Heart charity shop sat on the main shopping street in the town, and was run like a military operation by a distant friend of the family. Volunteering there had been her mother’s idea to try and ‘take her out of herself’.

‘It’ll do you no end of good, Pip,’ she’d said. ‘Getting out of the house and meeting people is probably just what you need. And it’ll give some structure to your days, too.’

Pip was less sure. She had barely even been in a charity shop, let alone contemplated working in one. But her mother was right; she did need something to do, and it began to feel, to a small degree at least, like a way of giving something back. Of course, it went no way to appease her guilt, but she hoped it might send a message to anyone who was watching that she was trying to atone.

The shop work was remarkably unchallenging, which was exactly what she needed, and it kept her mind busy, so she didn’t spend all day thinking about the accident. Its main benefit, however, was that it got her away from the claustrophobic atmosphere at the farm.

As she approached the shop door, she saw the usual pile of abandoned black bin bags disgorging their contents across the doorstep. It was the same most days. Audrey had placed a laminated sign in the window kindly requesting that people deliver their donations when the shop was open, but nobody took any notice. Pip wondered whether this was a matter of simple convenience, or whether it was really just embarrassment at being associated with their cast-offs. Some of the items that people left were barely fit to be used as rags, let alone sold on for future wear.

Pip locked her bike to a drainpipe and dropped her helmet into the basket in full confidence that it would still be there when she returned at the end of the day. Then she went to sit on the bench opposite to wait for Audrey to open up. A couple of minutes later her boss came bustling down the pavement towards her. Head down, she walked fast, as if she were carrying out a vital but rather tiresome mission, sidestepping anyone in her path without raising her gaze. When she reached the shop, she stared at the pile of donations and shook her head vehemently, her grey perm barely stirring. Pip could see her lips moving with muttered curses.

She stood up and moved to the edge of the pavement. Some days merely standing this close to the road would be enough to trigger a panic attack, but today she was fine, and she crossed without incident. There was no predicting how she’d be from one day to the next. Some days, the road posed no problem at all, but on others it was all she could do to stand within ten feet of it. Not knowing how she was going to react made her more anxious still. The whole thing was a downward spiral that she couldn’t seem to crawl out of.

Audrey was still muttering under her breath, her consonants spiked and vicious, when Pip reached her, her heart sinking. It was going to be a long shift if her boss was in a bad mood before the day had even begun.