She thanks him, says she’ll be back as soon as she can, doesn’t tell him she misses the damn place almost as much as she misses her house. For all the frustration and agitation the shop causes her, it is still the place—apart from home—where she feels most relaxed, most in control. She has her locker in the back, her mug in the kitchen, her own checkout—number 5—which the night and weekend girls know to return to her settings when they are finished. She has seniority and, more importantly, the respect of her co-workers. She is the one they come to first if their register isn’t reconciling or they need to change a shift or ask for time off. She can’t solve any of that stuff directly, but she knows which manager is the best to approach for which problem and what turn of phrase or explanation will be most likely to get a good result.

She wishes this lot here could see how she is at work, how important and respected. Then they might speak to her properly, let her know what she has to do to get home.

LENA

LENA

Nic waking up made Lena feel—for a minute at least—happier than she thought she would ever feel again, but it also meant she no longer had an excuse to stay at the hospital. Awful though it had been, Nic’s accident had allowed her to avoid the scene of the crime. Was that too dramatic a way to think of it? No, it felt right. She had been criminally fucking stupid and the evidence of that was being replicated second by second.

The bus was packed and the air conditioning struggled. Three stops past the hospital a blur of children in navy school uniforms boarded as one. The temperature and noise level were immediately unbearable. She needed those noise-cancelling headphones that Annie wore around her neck like a pharaoh’s collar. What did a person who could afford to Uber everywhere need with those things? They should be subsidised for everyone who spent more than three hours a week on public transport. Think of the public health benefits of preventing rocketing blood pressure, anxiety and random punching attacks. Like, right now, Lena’s blood was pounding in her ears as if in an attempt to block out the vaguely threatening tittering of the school kids, and when a few of them got off and their racket receded, the far worse assault of wet, rhythmic sniffing right behind her head. She wondered if anyone’d ever studied how many strokes happen on public transport and/or in close proximity to someone who doesn’t know how to use a fucking tissue.