Thinking of lips brought me right back to Samantha. I stared out of the shop window at the passers-by, mostly determined-looking housewives with empty wheely shopping bags, heading to the marketplace for the best selection of fruit and veg. Bet none of them had ever felt another woman’s breast. They didn’t know what they were missing.

‘Oi, Earth to Meredith,’ said Alaric crossly. ‘If you’ve got nothing better to do, go and sweep the dust bunnies out from under the display racks while we’re still quiet.’

I scowled but obeyed. With men like Alaric about, who wouldn’t want to date a woman instead?

28

1983
Meredith

One day before the end of term I was walking into town after school with Julie and Charlotte. We’d just sat our first mock A level – English lit – and had decided to treat ourselves to tea and a jam doughnut at Reeves the Baker. We were ambling along the gravel riverside path that was the more scenic route into the centre of town, our waistbands rolled over so many times that our grey skirts resembled wide fabric belts, and our ties in knots bigger than our fists.

I had tuned out of the conversation they were having about whether Steve Francis and Neil Hart fancied them – mostly because I could have told them the answer was almost certainly ‘no’, at least, not half as much as they fancied themselves. My head was full of Keats, The Fall of Hyperion, particularly a line that ran, ‘one minute before death, my iced foot touch’d the lowest stair…’

That line stuck with me. I’d laughed about it with the girls – ‘my iced foot’, like an iced bun or a foot in a bath of ice cubes. But secretly it haunted me, the cold descent to your fate, the knowledge that you’d reached the end of your life, the bottom of the staircase, no going back, not ever…

Dad’s iced foot had touched the lowest stair three weeks ago. It was as if, from the moment he told me he was dying, back in April, he had to get down to the business of actually doing it. Almost overnight his eyes turned yellow and the knobs of bones sprouted everywhere on him, like a grim budding magnolia but in reverse.

It was unbearable to watch, so I’d closed my eyes and turned the other way.

Selfish.

During the funeral I had yearned for Samantha. She was my future, but I hadn’t heard from her since April. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again, and to my shame, this upset me almost as much as losing Dad.

I hadn’t thought about Mum at all.