Chapter 7·Ruth Vale · Manchester

Ruth Vale. Manchester. Saturday 13 March 2032, 09:20.

The shutters went up at twenty past nine because Marcy could not find the key, and by then there were nine people on the pavement and none of them were talking to each other.

Ruth let them in, and stood by the door with her lanyard on and said good morning to each of them, and each of them said good morning back, and went past her to the shelves, and started taking things.

Not taking. Packing. A woman in a good coat put nine tins of beans in a basket and studied the basket and went and got a second one. A man Ruth half knew from the bus filled a trolley with nappies and had no child that she had ever heard of. Nobody ran and nobody pushed, and it went on for an hour, and then the shelves at the back were bare to the wall and the people stopped coming.

Marcy worked the till and Ruth restocked from the cage until the cage was empty, and then stood with her hands in her apron and watched the door.

Poppy was in the stockroom on an upturned crate with a colouring book, because the school had sent a message at seven that said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE and nothing else, and there was nowhere else for her to be. Every twenty minutes Ruth went back and checked on her. Every twenty minutes Poppy looked up and said, "I'm fine," and went back to colouring, and Ruth said, "Good girl," and went out again.

At half ten the radio in the office did the news.

She stood in the doorway with her back to the shop and listened to a woman with a calm voice read out numbers. The woman was reading cities. She said a city and a number, and then another city and another number, in the voice they used for the weather, with no weight on any of them, and by the fourth or fifth city Ruth understood that the numbers were people who had been killed in the night.

One of the cities was a place in America she had seen on films. The number was bigger than any number the woman had said yet, and the woman said it in the same voice.

Then the woman said Manchester, and said nothing had been reported, and moved on.

Ruth went and stood by the till.

"Did you hear that," Marcy said.

"Yes."

"Nothing reported." Marcy laughed, a short one, and put her hand on the phone in her apron pocket and took it off again. "Nothing reported. What does that mean. It means nobody's phoned it in, that's what it means. It doesn't mean nothing's."

"No."

"Sean's gone to his mum's."

Ruth let her get to it.

"Thursday night," Marcy said. "Packed a bag. Said he'd be back next Friday. I said what for. He said, you know what for." She straightened a stack of carrier bags that were already straight. "So I do, apparently. I know what for."

"Marce."

"I'm fine. I'm fine. Honestly, Ruth, I'm better than I've been in a year, I had the bed to myself." She looked at the door. "It's just the idea of him sat in his mum's front room counting. That's all."

There was a version of this where Ruth said, Gavin's the same. The words were right there. She left them.

"How is he," Marcy said.

"Who?"

"Gavin."

"Gentle," Ruth said, before she had decided to.

Marcy held her eye a second longer than Ruth wanted. Then the door went, and a lad of about nineteen came in fast and went straight down the aisle to the back, and they both watched him.

He was in the shop four minutes. He took what was left on the spirits shelf, which was not much, and two cartons of cigarettes from behind Marcy's head while she stood there, and he put them in a rucksack in front of both of them, and he zipped the rucksack up.

Then he stood at the till.

He was waiting for one of them to say something. Ruth could see that. He had come in wanting the argument, he had come in with a face on him for it, and neither of them gave it to him, and he stood there with the rucksack on his shoulder and did not know what to do with his hands.

"Well," he said.

"Well what," said Marcy.

"I'm going, then."

"Go on, then."

He went, and the door swung and settled, and Marcy leaned on the counter and breathed out through her nose.

"Right," she said. "Right. That's the day, then. That's Saturday."

"You should phone it in."

"Phone what in. Phone who." She nodded at the radio through the wall. "Nothing reported."

Ruth went back to the stockroom. Poppy had done the whole page and started on the next, a fish, and was giving the fish stripes in six colours, carefully, inside the lines.

"Mum."

"Yes, love."

"Was that man stealing?"

Eight. Sat on a crate in a stockroom with a felt tip in her fist and her tongue out, doing stripes.

"Yes," Ruth said.

"Why didn't you stop him?"

"Because it wasn't worth it."

Poppy thought about this. Then she nodded, once, like her dad did when he'd been told a price, and went back to the fish.

Gavin came for them at one, and he was not meant to come till three.

He came at one, in his good jacket, and stood outside on the pavement and did not come in, and when Ruth saw him through the glass her stomach did something she had no name for.

He had flowers, petrol station ones, in the plastic, and he was holding them down by his side like he did not want anyone to see them and had nowhere else to put them.

"Shop's shutting," Marcy said. "Manager just rang. Shut till further notice. Same as the school." She started counting the till. "I'll do this. Go on."

"I'll stay and help."

"You won't. Go on, Ruth. Go and see your gentle husband."

Ruth got Poppy's coat on her and her bag on her shoulder and walked her out through the empty shop to the door, and Gavin pushed it open from the outside and held it, and crouched down to Poppy first.

"Alright, chick."

"I did a fish."

"Did you." He looked at the fish for longer than a fish needed. "That's brilliant, that. Six colours. Stripes and everything." He stood up. He gave Ruth the flowers without looking at her, and she took them without looking at him, and they walked to the car with Poppy between them holding a hand each, in the sun, on a Saturday, past the shut shops, and nobody they passed was talking to anybody.

He drove careful. He had always driven careful, and today he drove like a man taking his test, both hands, mirror, signal, mirror, twenty-eight in a thirty, and she sat with the flowers on her knee and watched his hands.

"Thought we could get a takeaway," he said. "Tonight. If anywhere's open. Chinese. Poppy likes the ribs."

"I like the ribs," Poppy said from the back.

"See."

"That'd be nice," Ruth said.

They stopped at the lights by the park. There was a police car across the junction with its lights going and nobody in it and nobody near it, parked at an angle, the driver's door open. Gavin's eyes went to it and came back.

"They said on the radio," he said, and stopped.

"I heard."

"Five days." He said it to the windscreen, very quiet, and she did not think he had meant to say it out loud. His thumb moved on the wheel. "I've been counting. Daft, isn't it. I keep doing it. I get to Thursday and I go back and do it again like it might come out different."

"It won't."

"No." The lights changed. He pulled away, slow, mirror, signal. "No. It won't."

She turned the flowers over on her lap, and the price sticker was still on the plastic, three ninety-nine, and it was twelve years, and he had never once in his life brought her flowers home, and here she was in the passenger seat of her own car holding the first ones.

She left the sticker on.