0007464355 by Sam Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

My headaches were too bad. When they come I just have to lie in a darkened room and wait for them to pass.’ Understatement of the year, but broadly true.
    ‘Oh, you poor thing. You should have said. Shouldn’t she have said, Mary?’
    One of the old women waiting at the till nodded vigorously.
    ‘Have you got a mobile number?’ Mrs Millward asked. ‘Might be useful for someone else around here to have it. In case you need anything. If you get headaches a lot, I mean. You don’t want to be stuck out there in that huge house on your own, with no food or company. What if you need help? It’s not as if you’d be able to drive, and it would be no trouble. Honestly, no trouble at all.’
    Helen had to admit she was impressed. In another life this woman would have made a great journalist, of a certain kind.
    ‘Thank you, but there’s really no need,’ she said. ‘The signal out there is hopeless. But thank you, so much. That’s very thoughtful of you. Really, though … when they come – the headaches, I mean – there’s nothing anyone can do to help. I just have to stay in bed and get better. And eating …’ Helen made a face that she hoped made it clear they would not want to know what effect eating might have. ‘Eating is the last thing on my mind.’
    Margaret Millward nodded reluctantly before saying brightly, ‘Well, now you’ve found us, I hope we’ll see you in here much more often.’
    Recognising an order when she heard one, Helen pasted on her most polite smile. ‘I’m sure you will.’
    ‘And you will come to the next social, won’t you?’ Mrs Millward said, pressing her advantage as Helen sidled towards the bread shelf. Sliced white or sliced white. After all that, any locally baked loaves – assuming there had ever been any – were long gone.
    ‘Of course,’ she said, picking up a local paper and putting it down again. Instead she replaced it in her pile with a large bar of Galaxy and balanced a box of Rice Krispies on top. ‘When is it?’
    ‘First Thursday of the month,’ the woman said, almost sharply, as if repeating the same instruction for an inattentive small child. Then she softened. ‘But don’t worry about that now. It’s much too far away to remember. I’ll drop a note through your door nearer the time. I’ll bring a cake and we can have a cup of tea.’
    With her heart beating against her ribs like a bird trying to fight free of its cage, it took Helen another five minutes to extricate herself.
    Finally free, she flung her shopping on to the passenger seat. It took three goes to fire the engine into life and, when it started, it sounded like a bastard cross between a tractor and a motorbike. Still, what did she expect for £300 and less than six months left to run on the MOT? She’d taken the handbrake off and had it in gear when one of the old women barrelled out of the shop door and wheeled her trolley straight in front of the car.
    Shit! Helen slammed her foot on the brakes, grateful that this time they worked. Mind you, the way she felt right then, an old lady or two would have been justifiable collateral damage.
    The vein in her temple throbbed ominously. She couldn’t face going straight back to the house. Huge as it was, it was still too confining. Even the thought of walls made her feel claustrophobic.
    Helen had never been a popper inner, for tea or otherwise. Home was a sanctuary. Wasn’t that the theory? A place you were supposed to be free from other people; their presence and their opinions. Even if it didn’t feel that way to you – and Helen couldn’t honestly say it ever had; except, maybe, once, for a short time as a small child – you had to respect people who did. Regardless of whether their home no longer had a roof or a ceiling or a front door, and there was a hole in the wall where the window used to be, and a pile of rubble in what remained of the kitchen, the overwhelming reek of cordite to remind them that this would never really be a