Fiona never even made it to the restaurant. And what made it most devastating, once she’d weathered that black, bleak, overwhelming anxiety and the indignity of cracking up in public, was the fact that there was nothing, not one, single, identifiable element that she could seize on to explain why the attack had come on in that place, a quiet junction of two suburban side streets, or at that time. If there was no particular trigger that set her off then she could be rendered disabled and petrified, suffocating and gripped by dread, anywhere, any time. Nowhere was safe.
Mike
With the neck brace on and a sling to support his dislocated left shoulder, Mike wouldn’t be up for driving for several weeks. Ian told him he’d have to let him go. Lay-offs were on the cards anyway and it wouldn’t be fair to the other lads to keep Mike’s place open when he couldn’t pull a fair day’s graft. Mike could hear the relish in Ian’s voice, bubbling under the surface of the words. Ian ran on spite: Mike knew his boss had never forgiven him for the missed deliveries on the day of the murder. And now Ian had his revenge.
‘I’ll try the post,’ Mike told Vicky. ‘See if anything’s coming up for when I’m fit.’ But they were letting people go, too. Combining rounds so posties had longer routes, longer hours, heavier mailbags. Some desk-jockey spouted how a walking pace of four miles an hour should be standard in the postal service, it would improve efficiency and keep the staff fit.
Mike tried the other contacts he had but it was the same story everywhere: short rations, hard times.
He went down the Jobcentre and found out what he could claim and when. He and Vicky spent a whole weekend filling in the forms. Pages and pages. They had to let the tax credit know their circumstances had changed. They applied for free school meals for the kids and got them. Mike had balked at that when Vicky first raised it.
‘School dinners?’ He looked at her.
‘Why the face?’
‘They’ll get picked on,’ he said. ‘The kids on school dinners, they were always the losers.’
‘That’s daft,’ Vicky countered.
‘Cheap pies and soggy mash,’ he tried, knowing that was a lost argument.
‘Not now. Decent meals. And they’d only need a snack at teatime. Every penny counts. We might get free uniforms as well.’
Mike ran a hand over his face and sighed, stared at the fridge behind her, the garish magnets and the kids’ paintings.
‘You’d rather they went hungry?’ She was riled, her eyes sparking a warning.
‘No,’ he protested.
‘Well then?’