The first time I’d ever met this bloke was a prime example. It had been months ago, maybe even a year ago, and he’d been dressed different then-a polo shirt and trousers like a uniform, ponytail under a baseball cap. He’d been standing in front of the Disney princesses birthday cakes in Morrison’s, just staring. I’d noticed him because usually it was women who stood in front of cakes and stared. Then I’d seen him again at the Kiplings, with a sponge sandwich in his hands, a chocolate one, and he was gripping it so hard his knuckles were white and his chest was moving up and down so that the untucked polo shirt hem lifted and fell underneath his wee bit of a belly. He put it back on the shelf just as I passed him and, when I turned at the aisle-end, gawping over my shoulder, I saw him heading back to the bakery section. I couldn’t help myself. Inappropriate, unprofessional. I followed him.
It wasn’t until I was right at his side that I noticed what he was doing, and by then it was too late to back away. And in my defence, Lauren, that I’d been talking to about stuff, had just the day before told me that I should… Oh God, I don’t know. Typical Lauren guff. Own my past, feel the sadness, bring what I was missing into my life whatever way I could. I liked her a lot, but I didn’t always listen. Anyway, I steamed in.
“Excuse me?” I said. “Can I help you?”
He stuffed the handful of notes and coins back in his trouser pocket and turned, frowning. “Eh?” His voice was a bark.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. He picked up one of the cakes without looking. “How?”
“I don’t mean to butt in… ” Liar.
“I’m just-” He put the cake back on the shelf. “Cannae believe how much they are. Size of them too.”
“Can I get it?” I asked.
He blinked, drew his chin back into his neck. “Why should-”
“Please? I haven’t got a wee girl. I’ve never bought a Disney cake. Goan let me buy it for yours.”
He stared at me for such a long time that my heart started to pump, and I wondered if he could see my shirt going up and down like I could see his. I remember wondering if he was drunk. I also remember thinking I’d never seen anyone look so angry who wasn’t actually shouting and, between work and my childhood, I’ve seen a lot of angry people. Random acts of effing kindness my arse, I remember thinking. Steve was right after all.
“Sorry,” I said. I saw his hands clench into fists at his sides and I took a careful step backwards. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry I barged in.”
“Right,” he said. “You’re sorry.” For a minute I thought he was going to say that playground thing, you will be. Moving slowly, I backed away.
He sounded angry now too, standing in the middle of the aisle, growling into his phone, the wee girl chewing a fig, solemn eyes fixed on him.
“Becky, for Christ’s sake,” he was saying.
Becky. Of course he had someone. He was just a friendly guy and the rest of it was my imagination. Not that there was much “rest of it” anyway. Only just that a couple of weeks after the cakes, he’d come to the Project one afternoon when I was on my own, and he’d just kind of stood there.
“Have you got a form?” I’d asked him. “Are you just looking? We’re not actually a charity shop, not really. You need a form if… ” He was shaking his head, sort of smiling. “So, you’d be better off up at Cancer Relief, actually.”
“I’m not after clothes,” he’d said, and he’d smiled wider.
But clothes was all we had, so what was he doing here? And that was the moment I thought I knew what the smiling was. He wasn’t here to buy stuff; he had come to see me, talk to me, maybe ask me something. I smiled back at him and, without another word, he opened the door and was gone. I puzzled over it for a minute or two and then put him out of my mind.
Good thing too, since it turned out there was this Becky, whoever she was, that he was talking to now.
“It’s not forever, Becks,” he was saying. “It’ll stop again.”
I wasn’t listening, but I had to squeeze right past. I don’t think he even noticed me. It’s not forever. I was at the fridges. Pomegranate and raspberry juice. No drinking tonight. I’d put myself back together right as rain after the bit in the cupboard, but it had cost me. I was drained, kind of heavy and soft, like a birthday balloon three days after the party, and one glass of wine would be one too many. I’d put pomegranate juice in a stem glass and pretend. “It’s not forever,” I said to myself. What would that be then? Sounded like a duff job, or staying on your friend’s couch. But “It’ll stop again” sounded like… what? Noisy neighbours? Hay fever? I put on a wee spurt to catch some more of it on the next aisle.
At first I thought he’d gone. The trolley was crossways between the shelves with the wee girl standing up in it, holding onto the side, looking over. She was probably four-ish, I thought, not big enough to climb out but plenty big enough to try. And she had the look of a climber to me. Standing four-square with her hands clamped on the rim. As I watched, she pushed up the sleeves of her jumper, all but spat on her palms. So even though her dad was a bampot and he hated folk sticking their noses in, I scooted forward, letting my trolley carry me, and that’s when I saw him. Sitting on the bottom shelf in a space where someone had taken a jumbo pack of kitchen roll away, his head in his hands.
He’d been sitting like that the third time I’d seen him too.
My flat’s right opposite the library on Catherine Street, and public libraries are total nutter magnets. (Steve would go daft if he heard me say it, but nobody ever asks what I mean.) They’re always open, always warm, and they can’t turn anybody away, so it stands to reason if you’re the sort that couldn’t get past a bouncer or maybe you’d have a security guy follow you round Safeway, the public library’s the place you’ll go. And if you smoke, then the bench outside the public library’s the place you’re going to go for a break.
Mind you, he wasn’t smoking the day I saw him there. He was just sitting, with his head in his hands, staring down at the ground. I watched him a while-I was doing nothing better-until he stood up and went back inside. Then I decided to go over and change my DVDs.
Another mystery solved. He’d only been waiting for his photocopying to get done. A great big pile of it from the reference desk where they keep the papers and all the history of the town and that. He’d maybe just been thinking, with his head in hands that way.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t just thinking now, though, sitting there on the space on the bottom shelf.
“Dad?” said the girl. “Daddy?”
“Hey.” I hunkered down beside him. “I’m sorry for sticking my-Are you okay? Your wee one’s worried about you.” His hair had fallen forward over his face and arms and it made a solid barrier; that crinkly hair’s like armour if you brush it down. I turned and smiled up at the wee girl. She scowled back at me. She had a great face for scowling, her eyes, nose, and mouth bunched together, plenty of cheek and jaw all around, and her own halo of red hair fluffed out in a cloud all around her Alice-band. I can take or leave pretty wee girls, but plain wee girls melt me; I was one myself. Still am.
“I don’t think your Daddy’s feeling too good,” I said. I gave her one last smile-like dropping a stone down a well-and looked around for help. There was no one. Because what kind of moron buys kitchen roll and cleaning stuff in Marks and Spencers? He was moving. I turned back and got ready to leg it if he looked like going for me.