Flesh and Wood - a new novel by Roger Frederick

three

Jemma had to pause by the entrance to Morgan Lane as a small lorry was parked in the narrow alleyway. She could see the driver helping Chinese Tony to carry crates of bottled beer into the back of the Jasmine Dragon, which traded as traditional tea rooms during the day and served Szechuan cuisine at night. There was almost enough room to squeeze between the side of the lorry and the wall of the Red Lobster Kebab and Pizza Takeaway. But the bin on the corner had tipped up (possibly just having been clipped by the reversing lorry). The gap was littered with ice cream, chip wrappings, rotting fish and beer cans. Gulls were already circling hungrily overhead calling their feathered friends to the feast.

Jemma didn’t care for gulls. As far as she was concerned, they were the uncouth youth of the natural world - clustering in squawking gangs to gorge themselves silly on fast food and confront passers by with their pale beady eyes. They were nothing but winged vandals that trashed litter bags, smashed crabs and strutted around showing off menacing orange beaks like hoodies’ flick knives.

Dodging a large black-backed gull that swooped bolshily close to her head, Jemma retreated a few yards down the street and waited outside Carters Coastal Gifts. The pavement outside the gift shop was normally jammed with racks of flip-flops, inflatables and cricket sets, wind-breaks and body boards. But, the shop was closed and Jemma could see the baskets of beach stock all stacked in the gloom inside.

While Jemma waited for the lorry to move, she glanced idly at the gift shop’s window display. Striped plaster seahorses and glittery starfish gathered dust among model lighthouses and boats in boxes of sand. A family of fluffy seals lolled beside a jazz group of dragons made from old engine parts - springs and washers and cogs and bolts. Flimsy china dolphins swam past shell-encrusted mirrors and photos of Nant Llwyfen in wood-effect plastic frames. But there was nothing carved from real wood, save for a solitary love spoon laid on a Castles of Cymllynion tea towel.

Jemma patted the wooden hand in her pocket as if consoling an injured child.

After a few minutes the driver returned to his cab clutching a crumpled pink delivery note. He gave Jemma a cursory nod and swung the lorry back out onto the main road. Jemma gave the spilled rubbish a wide berth and made her way to the end of the alley where the holiday flats occupied two storeys above Janine’s the hairdressers and the back of JY’s Amusement Arcade.

The steps up to the flat - which always reminded her of a New York fire escape - were at the end of the alley by the dense hawthorn hedge that bordered the council car park and the recreation field beyond. The alley was popular with the village’s teenagers who would gather there to smoke dope and swig cider when it got too dark to skateboard.

When the teens had eventually skulked home, the alleyway was used by bladdered grockles who had hooked up at Roosters nightclub on the far side of the arcade. Most of them were probably too far gone to consider the need for contraception, but that morning someone had thoughtfully discarded a used condom on the third step, which Jemma flicked into the bushes with the tip of her walking stick.

Jemma shuddered as she made her way carefully up the steps. She could not think of anywhere less romantic than the back entrance to the flats where the stench of piss (rat and human), booze and rotting bins mingled with the smell of chow mein, candy floss, Guinness and hair moose that wafted from a row of rattling extractor fans in the walls of the groundfloor shops.

On hot days, Jemma felt those warm, sickly odours seep into her skin as if they carried with them all the filth from the floors behind the fans - hair, meat, sweat and syrup vaporized into a venomous gas. She was just thankful it was cold and the smell wasn’t too unbearable.

Jemma started with the flat above Janine’s. It stank of stale fags and kung pao chicken, but aside from that seemed OK. She opened the windows, took off her gilet and placed the wooden hand on the table.

As she stretched over the table, it rocked back and forth and she felt one leg splinter slightly. It had been like that since the incident with the curtains.

One sultry August evening an amorous couple had decided to light candles and make love. They were so consumed by shared passion (over the table), they didn’t notice that a gust of wind had dislodged a candle from the window sill and set the curtains alight. Eventually, they realised that the burning smell was not coming from outside (nor from their loins). They managed to beat out the flames with cushions and blankets, but not before smoke had sooted the ceiling and flames had scorched the walls. There was still a discoloured patch on the paintwork where Jemma had covered the black marks with a fresh tin of Magnolia silk.

Peter had fixed the broken table leg with a hidden bracket. However it was not really strong enough to bear someone leaning on it. Jemma cagily pushed herself upright and used her good leg to kick the table leg straight again. The hand wobbled, but remained standing on its wooden wrist, which was flat, but at a slight angle, so that the fingers titled back as if reaching to catch a fast moving ball.

From the far side of the kitchen diner, the hand (although a paler colour that the varnished surface on which it stood) seemed to be fused with the wood - as if a person was trapped inside the table and was trying to push their way out, like some born-again corpse in a horror film rising from its grave.

With a quick glance back at the hand, Jemma continued on to the bedrooms. She was glad to discover that the occupants (a couple of young couples) had stripped both beds and placed the contents in the clear blue bags provided. In summer, a local laundry collected the bags, but during the quiet season her mum would launder the sheets herself in the old stable block behind the cottage she’d brought with Peter (which was in fact two adjoining cottages knocked into one vast thatched mansion).

They’d been fortunate enough to buy the cottage (and the flats) before the local housing market went ballistic. Prices had tripled in almost as many years, mainly due to a flood of incomers. Middle-aged locals (including her mum) constantly grumbled that they could no longer afford to live in the village, but most had been happy to profit from the inflated prices and retire early by moving to the houses further out along the Penlyn road.

Jemma couldn’t complain on that front. She’d made a decent whack on her flat in Westing and now lived rent free in the chalet at the quiet end of the Parade opposite The Cherries. And, despite her own difficulties, she felt sorry for youngsters like the couples who’d stayed in the flats that week. They’d probably spend most of their lives paying off interest-only mortgages on ex-council houses in the few streets that were still unpopular enough to be affordable.

However, as Jemma completed the cleaning of the bathroom, her sympathy for the couples drained away quicker than the soapy dregs from the shower tray. As she lifted the lid of the toilet to squirt bleach on some unsavoury stains, she saw that the hinges were caked with regurgitated Chinese chicken, and jammed with twists of dried noodle.

She was tempted to slip one of her yellow marigolds onto the wooden hand and used that to dislodge the mess. But, as she looked out through the bathroom door and toward the table, the hand appeared to be dismissing that notion.

The hand was undoubtedly feminine and, although she knew it was just a piece of shaped wood, its carved slender fingers had a certain elegance and poise. The hand was not designed for cleaning vomit from toilet seats. And, somehow, it seemed to know it.

After checking the other flats, Jemma returned to the one above Janine’s to retrieve the hand from the table. She gave the lounge and bathroom one final spray with industrial strength Lily of the Valley air freshener, then zipped the hand back into her gilet and headed across the road and through the harbour car park.

The sun was coming out and the tide was coming in. Relieved that the cleaning was over, she took a deep breath of the ozone-rich air blowing in from the Atlantic, then made her way down the slipway to rinse her stick in the outfall pipe in the sea wall, where a stream spluttered onto the rocks and meandered a shallow groove through the sand before forming at the water’s edge a small delta much beloved by visiting Geography teachers.

She knew this, as one such teacher had recently stayed at the flats. She’d met him and his partner out walking on the beach. Having politely asked them how their stay was going, the teacher had given her an impromptu lesson on the formation of the Mississippi alluvial plain. Before the accident, in her sales days, she would instantly have made some petty excuse and marched briskly away. But she no longer had the mobility nor speed of thought to do so. And she’d been forced to feign interest for ten minutes, while his partner (a plump languages teacher) pulled apologetic faces over his hairy, sunburned shoulder.

Although they were pleasant enough, there was something creepy about the two teachers. He had a moustache like a gay biker. And she had a fetish for short gingham dresses that would have been more appropriate on her pupils. But, then everyone who stayed at the flats seemed slightly odd.

Even with her limp, facial scarring, mild brain damage and post-traumatic stress disorder, Jemma felt significantly more normal than the majority of the temporary tenants who visited Nant Llwyfen.

By the time Jemma reached Dawson’s, the greengrocers only had a few limp bouquets left on display.

“Are you getting any fresh bunches delivered today?” Jemma asked the lady inside, whom she vaguely recognised.

The lady looked at her as if she’d just asked for chocolate coated squirrel brains.

“Good God no,” she said. “Deliveries twice a week tops, now the season’s over.”

“Of course,” said Jemma.

She chose a couple of the least bedraggled posies from which she could select a few half-decent stems. Normally, she would have asked for a few pounds off. But the women didn’t look as if she had the inclination (nor the authority) to offer discounts. So Jemma reluctantly paid her full sticker price and took the flowers back to Lavender Spray where she arranged them in a Poole vase glazed in plum and orange.

Most days Jemma made lunch at home in her ground floor flat. But she wanted to visit Jenkins the hardware store for wood glue and pop into the boat yard to ask about the wooden hand, so she decided to buy a sandwich from the newsagents by the harbour car park.

The nameless newsagents in Nant Llwyfen was an eclectic mix of the old and the new. There was a bell that jangled when you entered the door, a dusty display of old-fashioned chocolate boxes and pipes, and a manual till with typewriter style keys. Any passing grockle who entered the shop for the first time might easily mistake it for a museum.

However, deeper inside, the newsagents was more modern (if not exactly contemporary). Around the corner from the archaic display of confectionary, tobacco and puzzles, were shelves of cheap plastic toys and magazines, which Jemma had to pass to reach the chiller cabinet where the sandwiches and rolls (locally made and delivered daily) were stacked beside milk, fromage frais and packs of cheese slices.

Having selected a cheddar salad baguette, Jemma paused to look at the magazines. On the top shelf was a bizarre selection of porno mags and DVDs, which she could not help but glance up at with a mix of distaste and amusement. The magazines looked as they had been printed in the 1980s and recently discovered in some continental warehouse. On the covers were swarthy men in brown nylon slacks straddled by saggy bleach blondes, or groups of Slavic housewives in nylon lingerie who had clearly not been airbrushed. Some titles appeared to be in Hungarian, others translated into awkward English - Heavenly Horny, Pleasure Me Dirty, Barely Birds. The covers looked as if they had been designed by a hyperactive ten-year-old with a copy of 3D Fun Fonts, supplied FREE with the October issue of Power PC, which was stacked six-deep on the shelf below.

Beside the computer titles was a games magazine, featuring a cyberchick riding a giant futuristic cannon, and a magazine for military obsessed weirdos with features on Nazi weaponry and post-Armageddon survival techniques.

It was hidden by a selection of tartan shortbread tins and a couple of tapestry kits (which had obviously overflowed from the front of the shop). In a basket, in front of the shelf, were yo-yos and frisbees, unplayable red plastic flutes, silver plastic sabres and a design-your-own felt donkey set (glue included).

The mix of conflicting images and products made Jemma feel irrationally anxious (thanks to the PSD). At the same time, she felt comforted that society as a whole was infinitely more fucked up than she was.

Despite the slight panic she felt whenever going into the newsagents, she admired the tenacity of the owner (the nameless man with a large belly and a penchant for saggy cardigans) who kept the place afloat against the odds. She felt it her duty to support his eccentric struggle against the cancer of branded blandness that had so voraciously sucked all character from the general store opposite, which had long since succumbed to the lure of a Londis franchise. Its lurid orange and green frontage was plastered in posters for tinned pears, tampax and bargain lager, designed to stand out on busy roads that led to the wrong side of larger towns. But they seemed hideously out of place among the quaint, pastel cottages of a secluded seaside village.

As Jemma gazed trancelike at the shelves, she suddenly noticed, among the fishing and car mags, a selection of woodworking titles - Advanced Carpentry, Woodturners Monthly and Woodworking Techniques. She was suddenly conscious of the wooden hand again, its fingers numbly poking into her ribs (almost as if it were pointing the titles out to her).

She was tempted to ask the nameless man about the people who brought those magazines. Maybe he’d know if any of them did wood carving, and might be able to shed some light on the origins of the hand. But it was all too difficult to explain.

Besides, the nameless man in the cardigan never chatted. He just grunted as he handed over your change. And he seemed to be scribbling numbers on the back of a paper bag (video prices or betting odds, probably). So, Jemma just paid for her baguette and made her way back past the harbour car park.

After her morning exertions Jemma paused briefly to nibble at her baguette in the Millennium gardens (a collection of graffitied benches and raised flower beds on the corner by the car park) then limped slowly up the hill towards Jenkins the hardware store. She stumbled slightly as she negotiated the large advertising board that blocked the pavement outside the Laughing Cavalier.

The board was designed to lure passing pedestrians with lunchtime specials written in wobbly pink chalk - steak and chips, lamb shank, egg and peas all just £3.99. Jemma presumed this meant £3.99 per item. However, judging from some of the grockles she’d seen waddling out of the pub in recent weeks - with gravy and ketchup stains dribbled down their nylon-wrapped bellies - it did perhaps mean £3.99 the lot!

Jemma struggled on up the hill past the fishing tackle shop, and around another pavement sign advertising cut-price lugworms. Eventually, rasping for breath and aching like she’d just trekked from base camp on Kilimanjaro, she reached the entrance of the hardware store.

She paused for a few moments, leaning wearily against the shop’s doorframe, then hobbled inside.

As Jemma made her way to the paint and filler section, where she guessed the wood glue would also be stocked, her attention was drawn by a vast display of chisels. She was amazed that a relatively small store should store such an array of blades all different sizes and shapes - the round nose scraper, the oval skew, the spindle gouge. She had no idea what on earth they were all for. Perhaps, unbeknown to her (and why would she know such a thing?) Nant Llwyfen was the wood working centre of Wales. She imagined hundreds of wizened old inbreds beavering away in their garden sheds creating hand carved wooden candle sticks, bowls and Pinocchios.

At the sound of a deep cough behind her, Jemma snapped out of her daydream and turned to see a tall and bulky shop assistant with an unkempt mass of curly brown hair. He wore wire-frame spectacles spattered with white paint, and a racing green Jenkins sweatshirt smeared with more paint, creosote, polyfilla, oil and a large yellow splodge that could possibly have been DIY related, but was quite probably a blob of fried egg (courtesy of the Laughing Cavalier).

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

Jemma cowered slightly as he towered over her, and blushed. She felt rather like a man who has mistakenly wandered into a lingerie department - conscious that she had no business to be looking at products that were so obviously the domain of the opposite sex.

However, determined not to be fazed by the shop assistant, she took the chance to put out feelers about the origins of the mysterious hand.

She said casually, “I was admiring your range of chisels.” She sensed the shop assistant wasn’t entirely convinced by this, but continued. “Do you get much call for them in the village?

The shop assistant shrugged. “We keep one of most items in stock. Most of these are quite specialist. They’re used by wood turners mostly.”

Jemma nodded.

“Woodworking seems to be popular around here.”

“I guess so,” said the shop assistant. He shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot - obviously unused to talking DIY with young females. “There’s a club over in Penlyn, I know a few guys from the village drive over there on a Thursday evening. Mostly old men. I don’t know as it would really be your thing.”

“I’m more interested in wood carving.”

“Well, obviously we’ve got your standard steel quarter inch.” He plucked a chisel from the stand. “This is a popular one. Or we can order in the Henry Millers - specialist ones for sculpting like, with the heavy duty handles and the leather washers. They’re pricey mind. But I can check in the catalogue if you’re interested. We gets them now and again for a lad who lives up Wilderness Way.”

“That’s OK,” said Jemma. “I was really just looking at the moment.”

She was tempted to ask more about the local sculptor he’d just mentioned (maybe he’d know something about the hand). But she could sense the shop assistant’s patience was waning.

“Actually, I was after some wood glue.”

“PVA?”

She fumbled in her gilet pocket and withdrew the hand.

“It’s to fix this,” she said.

“You’ll be wanting the conservation grade,” he said, as he carefully surveyed the hand.

“You carve this?” he asked incredulously. He pushed his specs back up the bridge of his nose and squinted, still struggling to figure her out.

“Oh, no no,” she smiled. For some reason, she didn’t want to admit she’d just found it on the beach, so lied. “It belongs to a friend.”

“Oh, right.”

“The finger got knocked off.”

“I can see that.”

“But I’ve got it here.” Jemma smiled and patted her pocket. “Nice and safe.”

The shop assistant looked unmoved and disappeared into the back room, leaving Jemma feeling like a complete fool. He returned after a few seconds with a dark blue plastic bottle, which he held up to her face so that she could read the label (like a wine waiter proffering a vintage chardonnay).

“This OK?”

Without her reading glasses the words on the bottle were just a blur (not that they would have meant anything to her anyway).

“Yes, yes,” she bluffed. “Just the job.”

When Jemma arrived back down at the harbour the gates of the boat yard were shut. She sat on a bench on the harbour wall and watched a fishing boat bob across the bay. She could hear the distant shouts of the mussel fishermen in bright orange jackets, their jokey voices carrying across the churning waves. The ocean wind had blown away the morning mist. Smokey black clouds raced past a creamy froth of slower white ones. Along the sea wall chilly gusts swirled litter high above blue railings, but Jemma was sheltered from the worst of it by the curved brickwork of a raised flower bed and the back of a Toyota landcruiser, gunmetal grey.

The smell of chips and fried doughnuts wafted across the car park. Jemma felt her appetite return and slowly finished off her baguette. She wiped her mouth and tilted her head back to watch gulls circle higher above the car park. Patches of blue appeared beneath the layers of cloud. Snatches of sun shone through, bathing her with brief bursts of warmth.

Jemma shut her eyes sleepily. When she opened them it felt as if the sky was pressing down on her like a vast iron. She knew she’d had overdone it that morning, with the cleaning, the walking and the nervous excitement of finding the hand. But what did it matter? She had nowhere to go that afternoon, so she simply slumped into the bench and watched the fishing boat pootle safely up to its mooring. The wooden hand had settled fingers-down in her gilet pocket - giving her a gentle hug. It reminded her of the way new lovers tuck hands in each others back pockets on autumn walks.

“Don’t worry,” murmured Jemma. “I’ll have you fixed soon.”

She realised her lips were moving and looked around self-consciously to check no-one had seen or heard her. But the car park was deserted. She brushed her hair over her face. Her fingers traced the depression in her forehead. It was shallow, about an inch across, but it felt like a soup bowl, into which her brain might seep if she were to press too hard. When she was tired or bored, she felt an obsessive urge to press her finger into the hollow. She generally tried not to do so in public. But it had been a stressful morning.

By way of distraction, she touched the hand in her pocket, gently tracing the intricate whorls of its wooden fingerprints. How it had arrived on the beach was still a mystery. But over the course of the morning she had somehow got used to it and it now felt inanimate, benign, just a piece of carved wood.

Jemma was glad that the boat yard was shut. She didn’t really matter where the hand had come from. She made up her mind. She would simply take it home, glue the broken finger back on and stick in the bay window facing the street. If one day its original owner happened to pass by and rang the bell demanding its return, then so be it. In the meantime, it could wave through the window to passing grockles. She eased her back straight and planted the end of her walking stick against the step in front of the bench. Then, with a rather unladylike grunt, she forced herself to her feet and began to make her way back to her chalet.

Halfway along the parade, Jemma took a breather by the window of the clothes shop. Inside, the dull glow of sparse strip lights lit up one third of the shop floor. Parked on double yellows outside was a rusty green Montego estate, its boot open, spilling out surf wear seconds and seasonal woollens in crinkly plastic bags.

Jemma glanced in through the doorway to see if there was anything vaguely tasteful among the racks of lurid colours and misshapen sleeves. Before the accident there was no way she would ever have dreamed of looking in a seconds shop. She had bought her clothes from the exclusive boutiques on Hallam Street in Westing. She had so many suits and skirts and tops and slacks, she had to buy two extra wardrobes for the spare room in her flat in Westing. Some months she’d probably spent more on clothes and shoes than pensioners like Winnie Wilkins lived on for a year.

In the rehabilitation unit, by the pay phone in the corridor outside Churchill ward, there had been a poster with an address for a charity shop. The shop, which raised money for the Douglas Law trust for brain injured adults, was ‘always in desperate need of good quality clothes’.

During phone calls to her mum, Jemma had frequently looked at the poster and had inadvertently memorised the address. It occurred to her that she had several work suits she seldom wore any more and could donate. She’d made a mental note to sort out the clothes as soon as she returned to her flat. But the sort out didn’t quite happen the way she’d expected.

When Jemma was finally discharged from the rehab unit at Westing General, she was adamant that she could cope by herself. But the hospital insisted on sending her an occupational therapist.

At first, Jemma resented (in fact, loathed) Julia the OT. The fact that Julia was a thoroughly nice only served to irritate Jemma even more. She had a round fleshy face. He teeth protruded like dentures in a lump of dough, and she sported the shaggy perm of a seventies soft rocker. Despite this, Julia was still quite pretty in a cute kind of way. And the first time Jemma met her she thought, Jesus, they’ve sent me a toy rabbit!

Without being unnecessarily bitchy, it also had to be said that Julia was not a follower of fashion. She always wore translucent blouses through which (over the weeks) Jemma observed the frayed greyness of a collection of tired bras. It was not a look calculated to be sexy or seductive or to close a deal. Rather, it reminded Jemma of a schoolgirl clumsily coping with the onset of adolescence.

Although Julia was roughly the same age as Jemma she reminded her of her mother. She took charge of Jemma’s life with the same relentless jollity, blithely transfusing her bitterness with sweet, stewed tea.

No matter how hard Jemma scowled, Julia never lost her smile. It drove Jemma crazy. She wanted to slap that socially-aware grin from Julia’s face and scream, ‘I’m fucking scarred for life you condescending cow. I’m brain damaged. I’ve lost everything. What have I got to fucking smile about?’ But she didn’t have the energy to keep fighting Julia’s relentless bonhomie, and eventually she had to give in and meekly follow the OT around the house to demonstrate that she could still use the oven, the kettle and the loo.

On the morning of Julia’s third visit, Jemma was having a particularly bad day. She felt suicidally depressed, ached all over and her right hand struggled to even grip a tea spoon. Moments before Julia arrived, Jemma - in a fit of pique - had deliberately thrown her breakfast bowl and a mug of hot tea onto the kitchen floor.

Although Jemma had dabbed at her eyes with a buttery tea towel before answering the door, it was quite obvious that she had been crying.

Julia had been her usual reassuring self. It was quite normal to feel down she said (beaming all the while like the Cheshire cat). She cleared up the smashed crockery, re-boiled the kettle and made a fresh mug of tea. Then she listened patiently as, between sobs, Jemma talked about her hand, her aching limbs and her sense of loss.

After a few minutes, with a quick glance at her watch, Julia showed Jemma some simple exercises she could do to help strengthen the grip in her hand. She suggested she should contact her GP to check if any adjustments were needed to her medication. Finally, she asked if Jemma could show her how she got in and out of the bath (her bathroom had no shower, just a hose and nozzle attached to the mixer taps).

“Why? Do I smell?” Jemma asked belligerently.

“No, of course you don’t,” simpered Julia. “It’s simply that I didn’t have a chance to check last time. And we want to do everything we can to help you maximise your independence.”

Jemma pulled a face, but wearily went along with the charade.

“You don’t expect me to get undressed do you,” she asked, as they entered the bathroom.

“No, silly,” said Julia. “Just show me how you step in and out.”

Jemma sighed, but obligingly began to lift her leg over the edge of the bath. She had done this many times, using her good arm to support her body weight on the wall by the shower hose. And although it was a little awkward and uncomfortable, she had always managed the manoeuvre without any massive problem. But, that morning her joints seemed to have seized up completely.

“Just take your time,” said Julia.

“It’s OK,” snapped Jemma. “I do this every day.”

She tried to lift her leg again. But it had gone completely rigid. As she struggled to raise her knee over the rim of the bath her frustration grew and the stiffness worsened until it felt as if there were some huge, dead branch strapped to her hip.

Julia calmly stood and watched her. She didn’t say anything. But Jemma knew exactly what she was thinking.

“Don’t look at me like that, you smug bitch,” she snapped.

Julia looked slightly shocked. “Come on now Jemma. I know this is difficult for you, but...”

“It’s not fucking difficult. It’s just my leg.” It was no good. Her right thigh felt like solid wood. She screamed - a long drawn out primeval howl of pure frustration.

Julia backed away.

Jemma made one last almighty effort to shift her leg. Her whole body spasmed. She slipped on the mat and ended up half on her knees, sprawled over the side of the bath.

Julia stooped down to help her.

Jemma glared at her through a fringe of tangled hair, her eyes red with anger and despair, back arched like a cornered stray.

“Don’t fucking touch me. Just get away from me.”

She waved her hands theatrically in Julia’s face like some Shakespearian witch, fingers like crow’s claws snatching at the air. Her anger peaked and she felt herself rapidly wilt. Her limbs grew limper and limper, until all energy had seeped from her. She slumped onto the bathroom floor. The grief broke out again in great bawling sobs. And she lay rolling back and forth moaning, “I’m sorry, Julia. I’m so sorry. I just can’t go on like this.”

Julia seemed to relish her ability to cope with this wretched outpouring of emotion and implacably helped Jemma to her feet.

When she thought Jemma had calmed down, Julia started to talk about having some kind of a handle fitted to the bathroom wall, or even installing a bath with a door.

“I’m fine,” said Jemma, who couldn’t begin to imagine how such a bath would hold in the water. “I don’t need any help. I’m just having a bad day.”

Julia had the sense not to pursue the matter there and then. But Jemma could sense the OT’s mental notebook was working overtime.

Julia suggested that maybe Jemma should find a fresh task to focus on - such as sorting through her clothes.

Jemma reluctantly agreed. But opening the wardrobes in the spare room simply unleashed another great damburst of anger about her lost looks and career. Julia had to duck as Jemma launched a blizzard of dresses and blouses at her.

Julia suggested that they should resume the task when Jemma had calmed down a bit.

“Just take the bloody lot,” Jemma had responded, and dragged the entire contents of the clothes rail onto the floor.

Julia let herself out. And the mountain of clothes remained on the spare room floor until later that week when the OT appeared again clutching a toilet seat extension that looked like a giant potty. Jemma sighed as Julia clipped it to the loo. Christ, thought Jemma, does she expect me to shit standing up? But she said nothing.

“Do you want to test it for size,” asked Julia.

“No thanks,” said Jemma with forced politeness. She closed the door firmly before she was tempted to smash the plastic monstrosity through the bathroom window. “I thought we might take another look at those clothes. I’m afraid they’re still in piles.”

The OT accompanied Jemma to the spare room and helped place the clothes in bin bags for the charity shop, leaving her with a wardrobe of sad, naked hangers.

Among the final items was an Amanda Wakeley silk wrap dress, which Jemma had brought a couple of years earlier for the WIS company barbecue. The event was rained off, and the dress had never been worn. To be honest, Jemma wasn’t too bothered, as she’d just brought it on impulse one quiet Thursday afternoon and it didn’t really suit her. Julia was totally smitten with it.

“Oh this is really lovely,” she said. She clung onto the dress, gazing mournfully at the pattern of chocolate and cream, rubbing the silky fabric between her fingers. “So beautiful.”

“You might as well take than one,” said Jemma.

“Oh it wouldn’t fit me,” laughed Julia. “I can’t anyway, it’s against the rules.”

“Don’t be silly, it’ll look great on you,” said Jemma. “Who’s going to know?”

“No, I can’t,” said Julia wistfully. “It’s very kind of you, but really I can’t.”

For once, Julia looked helpless. And, with their roles momentarily reversed, she gazed up at Jemma like some little lost puppy.

“Well,” said Jemma. “It’s going to the charity shop, anyway. I don’t see why you shouldn’t make a donation and then take the dress. You’re simply cutting out the middle man.”

Julia sighed.

“Well, I’m not supposed to, but...” She continued to stroke the chocolate and cream fabric. “But, as you say, if I made a donation directly to the Douglas Law Foundation - perhaps something along the lines of fifteen or twenty pounds?” She looked enquiringly at Jemma.

Jemma snorted inwardly. The dress had cost her £475, two years previously. But she smiled generously, and said, “That would seem very appropriate.”

Minutes later, having blithely transferred three bin liners containing roughly ten grand’s worth of clothes to the boot of her white M-reg Polo, Julia gambolled out of the flat clutching the Amanda Wakeley wrap like some seven-year-old who’d just got Barbie’s horsebox for her birthday.

Jemma grinned to herself at the bitter sweet memory. It was gutting to see the remains of her former life carted away in bin liners, to be bickered over by grannies in some grimy charity shop. But she had genuinely shared in Julia’s joy - and that brief rekindling of her powers.

Julia had never mentioned the dress again (and Jemma had put her flat on the market shortly afterwards, effectively ending their acquaintance). However, she would bet anything that the OT had rushed straight home to try the wrap on in front of the mirror. And good luck to her, though Jemma, wherever she was now.

“Can I just squeeze past please.”

Jemma looked up to see a short, dark haired girl laden down with patterned cardigans.

“Oh sorry, I was miles away.”

“I thought you were in a trance,” said the girl.

“Something like that.” Jemma smiled and nodded and, for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, tugged her hair over her forehead.

“Were you looking for something?” asked the girl.

“Oh no, not really,” said Jemma hurriedly (and rather curtly).

“Oh,” said the girl. “It’s just that I couldn’t help but notice you’d been hovering there for quite a while. We’re only open at the weekends now, but if there was something in particular you wanted...”

“Sorry,” said Jemma. “I didn’t mean to get in your way. I was just day dreaming.”

“Don’t worry,” said the girl. “I do that all the time.”

The girl was younger than her - barely twenty, Jemma guessed. But she instantly warmed to her. She was short but pretty, like a compressed Zeta-Jones. She was not a girly-girl though, her mascara and lippy dashed on heavily like a glamorous clown running late for an alternative circus - a compact bundle of easy going Celtic energy. As Jemma continued to stare, the girl peered back at her enquiringly through a low fringe of black hair cut in a studenty, art-rock zig-zag.

Since the crash, Jemma often got lost in her thoughts, looking at people too intently for too long. When it happened - in the street or in a queue in a shop - she would normally just limp away embarrassed. But, on this occasion, she found herself unexpectedly opening up to the girl with the armful of jumpers.

“I’m sorry, if it seemed like I was staring,” she explained. “I sometimes go into a bit of a daze. I had a car accident a few months ago.”

“Shit!” exclaimed the girl.

Jemma waived her stick in the air. “I can still get about OK, but it’s like everything is in slow motion. Not just my walking - my speech, my thinking, my reactions - everything!”

“Oh that would do my head in,” said the girl. “I’m manic. Not at this exact moment. But if I’m going out or something, I go hyper. My mate Charlie’s just the same. She’s on these slimming pills. They’re like speed or something. The bouncers down Roosters think we’re both mental!”

Jemma smiled ruefully. “I was like that once - hurtling along at a million miles an hour.”

The girl looked doubtful.

“Hard to believe now, I know,” said Jemma.

The girl smiled at her expectantly, waiting to hear more. But Jemma’s mind went blank.

There followed a slightly awkward interlude before the girl said, “I’ve got to put these jumpers in the car now, my arms are killing me?”

“Sorry,” said Jemma shuffling to one side. “I’ll let you get on.”

“Oh don’t worry about that,” said the girl as she dumped the jumpers in the boot of the old Montego. “I’m bored shitless today. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

Jemma nodded and smiled vacantly, her brain struggling to keep up with the conversation. There was another pregnant pause.

“I’m just going for a cup of tea,” said the girl. She nodded across the road at the Dolphin - a rather hippyish café, directly opposite the clothes shop. She paused. “Do you want to come?”

“Well...” It was not the kind of place Jemma normally went to (all kids and whale huggers) and the girl, although pleasant enough, was acting like she might be on something.

“Sorry,” said the girl. “I go on a bit don’t I?” then added, almost with pride, “I do everyone’s head in.”

“Not at all,” said Jemma. “It’s been really nice talking to you. I’m just a bit tired. All part of it, I’m afraid.”

“Shit, yea,” said the girl. “That’s some shit to deal with - the accident and all that.” She shook her head. “Did it hurt?”

Jemma was thrown momentarily be the directness of the question.

“When you crashed your car?” said the girl.

Jemma almost laughed. She ran her fingers through her fringe.

“Afterwards. Yes. It hurt. But, at the time, I didn’t know anything about it. One moment I was driving along. Next thing, I was upside down in a river, and they were dragging me out of the wreck with a tree in my head.”

“A tree?” asked the girl.

“A bit of branch. Look.”

Jemma lifted her fringe to reveal the dent in her temple and the scarring that extended like scorched plastic from her eye socket to her ear. It was the first time she had ever deliberately revealed her disfigurement to anyone (other than Dr Stevens).

“Fuck,” said the girl. “Fuuuckking hell.” She shook her head in disbelief, her gaze glued to the side of Jemma’s head.

“I know,” said Jemma. “It’s Halloween every day.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said the girl. “I ain’t bothered by it. I mean, you notice it’s there. But I’m honestly not bothered. It doesn’t matter to me what anyone looks like. I don’t care what colour or race they are. Or what size they are. Or if they’re gay or whatever.”

Jemma brushed her fringe back over her face. “It’s OK. I’m not a lesbian. Just ugly.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think you were lezzing on me. And you ain’t ugly.” The girl paused. “I’m not saying I can’t see what’s happened to your face. But you can tell you were really pretty. I mean, you are.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Jemma, with faux huffiness.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I always talk crap. I’ll get meself a spade from Jenkins and dig meself a bigger hole.”

“It’s OK,” said Jemma. “You’ve been very nice. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shown you. I don’t know why I did, really. It’s been a very strange day.”

Jemma felt like showing the girl the wooden hand, but she felt that might exceed even her tolerance for weirdness.

“No I’m sorry,” said the girl. “Not sorry for you - just sorry for what’s happened to you - sorry that I’ve been talking shit.” She looked suddenly crestfallen.

“Don’t be daft,” said Jemma. “You’re the first person I’ve had a decent chat to in weeks. There’s a couple of friends I speak to on the phone. But everyone I know in the village is over fifty or just down for the weekend. It’s nice to meet someone like you.”

“What? A mouthy git?” said the girl. She laughed.

Jemma smiled. “Maybe I like mouthy gits.”

“You should come over the Dolphin, then.”

Jemma was half tempted to join the girl in the café across the Parade. But after all the day’s walking and talking, she was feeling dizzy and didn’t want to pass out on her.

“I really should get home now,” she said. “But I’ll definitely pop in next time I’m passing, and say hello.”

“Tell them you’re my mate,” she said, then added mischievously. “Mind you, they’ll probably charge you double, or spit in your cappuccino!”

“Well that sounds very enticing” said Jemma.

“Naa, not really,” said the girl. “They don’t mind if you’re a bit mental in there. Ask for Mark. He’s my boyfriend - the good looking one, with short dark hair and the smile.” She smirked. “He’ll look after you.”

“Sounds nice,” said Jemma.

“He is,” said the girl. “Very!” She kicked the tyres of the Montego. “Well, I better get this heap of shit shifted.”

“I’d better head off too,” said Jemma.

The girl smiled. “I’ll see you later, OK?”

“That would be nice. And, I’m sorry about all that,” she touched her hand to her temple.

“Like I said, I ain’t bothered.” The girl waved her car keys and started to open the car door. “You take care of yourself.”

“And you.” Jemma felt like giving the girl a huge hug. “By the way, what’s you name?” she asked.

“Cindy,” she said, as she sat side-saddle in the driver seat. “After the super model, not the doll.”

Jemma smiled and nodded. She watched as Cindy performed an expert three-point turn, before the Montego squealed off towards the harbour car park. Through the cluttered rear window of the retreating estate, Jemma saw the girl’s head turn slightly and the silhouette of her hand raised in a wave.

“Don’t drive too fast,” she murmured to herself. “And for Christ’s sake keep your eyes on that road.”