The Girl in the Red Coat

30

DAY 163

Firsts. First day into town on my own.

I’ll walk, I thought, it’ll give me some exercise, though I knew really that way I could be looking too.

It felt peculiar to be alone out in the countryside. The wide sky, full of watery blue and grey, was still there. The cries of the birds echoed unchangingly around me. I was moving through a world that knew nothing except for the progress of the seasons. And was there, could I feel it, a nip of autumn in the air? Was it that time of year already?

The tramp of my footsteps marked out a steady beat. Every so often I would stop and lift my nose, and turn in a circle, scanning. I’d become a pair of eyes, a functionary being made for searching: my legs a forked vehicle, nothing but a looking post. Stop it, I scolded myself. She’s not here.

I carried on along the familiar country road until I was on the outskirts of town. The houses, scattered at first, began to bunch closer together and form into streets. I stopped and tilted up my ear. The muted sounds of children playing drifted over me in a chattering cloud. With a convulsion I realised I was near Carmel’s school and if I carried on I’d pass the red-brick Victorian building with the cheerful butterfly collages in the window.

‘Oh my, oh my,’ I muttered to myself, changing direction so I would skirt the little school entirely.

Then I was in the street surrounded by shops and people pushing past, some loaded with shopping bags, or smoking, or eating rolls from paper bags — little snow flurries of grated cheese cascading onto their lapels — or talking into their phones, or staring into space. Being among this mass of people felt as strange as being alone had done an hour earlier; so strange I moved close to the shops on the side of the pavement and crept along with my hand running along the buildings for support. Further along I encountered an old man in a tweed coat who was employing the same method — creeping snail’s pace — and we had to negotiate for a moment which one of us would part company with the wall.

But I knew what was ahead and it was getting closer and closer and I wanted to see but I didn’t. Because I’d been playing a silly mind trick — if the red shoes are there, is that an omen that she’s alive? But how could they be, after all this time? So I changed it to — if there’s any red shoes in the window, I’ll take that. That can be my sign.

All the while I was telling myself I couldn’t live on omens and tricks of the light and signs from the heavens because if I did it would make me go mad. But still I had to see. I glimpsed the familiar Clarks green of the awning ahead and I crept and crept like a cripple towards it, until finally I was right in front of the window and looking at the green felt miniature landscape inside and the little ledge where the shoes had perched for so long. And the red shoes were gone: in their place a brown pair with ornate white zigzag stitching and a fat pink flower stitched to each toe. They were placed at a perky angle to each other, as though ready at a moment’s notice to go running right out of the window and down the street. I scanned the window — blue, brown, pink, black, not a single pair of red, not one. I held onto the windowsill because for a moment I thought I’d fall and crash through the glass.

‘Oh, oh …’ My breath came out shallow and fast. I grabbed onto the brass column of the door handle and pushed, falling into the cool dark shop. Inside it was quiet, small shoes the colour of sweets displayed on white painted mountings. Bright plastic foot-shaped measuring devices with outsized tape measures and a plastic machine in the corner where Carmel had once laughed when the device tickled as it clamped her foot.

A young woman behind the counter, examining her nails.

‘Is there something I can help you with?’ she asked. ‘Or do you want to browse?’

‘Browse.’ My voice sounded hoarse.

I went round the shop, stopping sometimes and picking something up, pretending to examine it. Though God knows why. My eyes took in children’s shoes: little brown boots with fat laces; patent leather with round toes and a dusting of cut-out patent flowers; squashy blue sandals. It seemed the only thing I was looking for these days was red, red coats or red shoes, and sometimes I caught a flash of it — like sudden blood — across the room. But now, in my state, I felt it had to be the shoes, nothing else would do, and I’d pounce on anything red to see if they were the same ones, knowing I was torturing myself stupidly because so much time had gone. Each time I picked up a shoe, of course, it wasn’t the pair I would recognise anywhere, with the twin diamond shapes cut out of the front and the tiny holes punched in the toes like a whiskerless muzzle.

When finally I had done a lap of the shop I found myself back at the counter again with the girl. Frosty white make-up gleamed beneath her eyebrows as she appraised me, and gratefully I saw I hadn’t been recognised.

I cleared my throat. ‘There was a pair of shoes in the window …’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Red ones.’ I think I might have been whispering because she leaned forward to catch what I was saying. ‘They were there for ages.’

‘Boy’s or girl’s?’

‘Girl’s. With diamond shapes cut out. And a buckle. Sandals.’

‘Sandals? Oh no, it’s all back to school now.’

‘Back to school?’

‘Yes. No sandals any more. They were put on sale.’

‘D’you think, d’you think it might be possible that some are still here?’

She sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Hilary …’ she shouted through an open door that led into gloom. Then Hilary came through — an older lady with glasses on a chain around her neck — and I had to explain all over again: the window, the diamond shapes, the buckle and the red leather.

‘Yes, dear. Our sale is over now. But … why don’t you go and look, Chloe? Look under the window there. I’ve been having a tidy up.’ Chloe really didn’t want to bother, I could see that. But she started lifting lids off the stack of green boxes piled beneath the window and each time she did, she said, ‘No,’ ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Like we’d sent her on a stupid mission that was doomed to failure.

‘Doesn’t your little girl need to be here to try them on?’ she asked, after she’d opened the last box and delivered her ‘No.’ And the older woman said quite sharply, ‘Chloe, go and look out the back. They could be there,’ and I realised that Hilary had recognised me and was cleverly, discreetly not calling attention to it.

‘We’ll find them, dear. If they’re here.’ My throat closed up at the kindness of her manner and I stood there waiting for resentful Chloe to finish what I imagined to be a cursory search of the stock at the back.

‘I’ll go and help her, dear.’ Hilary joined her colleague in the dark recesses of the stockroom and I imagined Chloe being told and her shocked face with its white make-up popping out of the gloom like two moonbeams.

After some rustling they walked back in a procession with Hilary bearing a green box in her hands and the other girl peeping at me in fascination over her shoulder.

‘Now I can’t be a hundred per cent sure. But are these the ones?’ She lifted the lid and there were the fat ladybird shoes nestling there as if they’d got fed up of being in the window and flown away to hibernate in the box amongst white tissue paper.

I put my hand up to my mouth and grasped at the counter with the other for support.

‘Yes. Yes, they’re the ones.’

‘Well, isn’t that lucky? Doesn’t it just go to show what can happen? All the unsold summer shoes in the stockroom were about due to be sent back.’

‘Can I buy them, please?’ I grabbed at my shoulder bag and dipped my hand in it, fishing around for my purse. Hilary rang them up on the till.

‘You’re not going to …’ Chloe hissed at her. But the older lady waved her away.

‘That’ll be twelve ninety-nine. Cash or card?’

‘Card.’ I remembered my pin number even and Hilary folded the tissue paper gently and carefully, covering up the red, and bagged up the box.

‘There we are, dear. We found them in the end, didn’t we?’

We had. I clung onto the box in my arms. Was this my omen? If so, what did it mean? I’d told myself they had to be in the window, or something red at least. But they were here, the real ones, hidden in the back, in the dark.

I held the box tighter to my chest so I was nearly crushing it. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

I wrapped my arms round the bag with the shoes and hugged them as I set out for home. I have the shoes, I have the shoes, just the fact of them being in my possession made me walk taller, made my stride more purposeful. This time I took the route that went past the red-brick school — first time past her school — so two firsts today.

The playground was empty now and a dozing silence hovered over the building as I stood motionless looking over the wall at it. I could imagine the children inside, drowsy with lessons, ready for the end of the day. Soon the parents would be gathering in the playground to collect them and that thought made me stir myself to leave.

‘There,’ I told myself as I hurried away, hugging my carrier bag with the box of shoes inside, ‘that wasn’t so bad, was it? See what you can do?’ It was the shoes, I knew, the incredible chance of finding them.