21

A Glimpse into Next Door

Her corner shop has gone posh in recent years and Helga feels an indignant injustice at having to wait for the guy behind the counter to serve her. He’s busy with the giant hissing coffee machine and takes an age to get to her and to ring through her milk, eggs and flour. She’s not religious, but she heard on the radio this morning that it’s Shrove Tuesday and she fancies making pancakes. Dominica had predicted it, saying the snow wouldn’t last long, but Helga can see a looming dark-grey cloud and she’s not going to have long to get home before the heavens open. She knows the power of clouds like that. A few long splatters arrive on the shop front glass, heralding the start of the downpour, and she tuts, wondering whether to just dump her things and make a run for it.

Instead, she forces herself to stay calm, her mind drifting back to the ‘Tweet of the Day’, her favourite programme on Radio 4 and the fascinating facts about chaffinches and bramblings. She hadn’t realised that the chaffinch develops regional dialects to their call, which always finishes with a flourish. The programme had pointed out that the flourish sounds to some like ‘ginger beer’ and Helga rather likes that description and has been listening out for her chaffinch friend in the tall sycamore at the end of the lane. She picks up a bottle of ginger beer from the shelf next to her on a whim and pays. The man watches her warily over his mask.

Outside, Helga puts her hood up on her ancient yellow oilskin coat and crosses the road to the entrance to the alley leading to the cottages. There’s a young guy in a doorway, smoking a foul-smelling joint, and a whole cloud of it wafts up into Helga’s face. She coughs at the offensive odour. They make eye contact.

‘Why don’t you stop smoking that shit,’ she mutters. ‘That’ll rot your brain.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘It might improve your comebacks, too.’

She walks on, feeling his menacing stare on her back. Her pulse quickens, but she doesn’t speed up. She stands by her words. She can’t bear to see these young guys ravaged by drugs and wrung out with alcohol abuse. She’s always taken it as a point of pride, as her defining character trait, that she’s unafraid to call a spade a spade, but as she walks down the narrow alley, she can see that perhaps she’s been foolish. What if he were to follow her?

And then it occurs to her … what if that kid is Jamie? Maddy’s son? She turns, wondering whether to go back and ask, but he’s gone. There’s only a bit of cardboard where he was sitting getting soaked in the rain. She’s shocked to think that she might have a personal connection, that the junkie might not just be ‘one of them’, but could actually be ‘one of us’.