Louisa meandered as much as she could, but it was her habit to walk quickly, to rush as though she was late. But she wasn’t late; she had nowhere to be. That was the problem, she thought as she chose a bunch of wilting roses from the meagre selection on offer at Pilkington’s. She stuffed the roses into her basket and continued along the street to Geoffrey and Sons, where she thought she might buy some sausages.
As Louisa stood and stared into the cabinet of pink flesh, she felt a tug on her arm.
‘Is that you? Louisa?’ Hatty Kennedy, one of Louisa’s old school friends, stood beside the counter, some pork chops cradled like a baby in the crook of her arm. She smiled as Louisa turned to face her. ‘I thought it was you! And to think I didn’t want to come to the butcher’s. Such a chore, isn’t it?’ Hatty rolled her eyes as she gestured towards her pork chops.
‘Yes, a chore,’ Louisa repeated, feeling herself turn pink with embarrassment at the thought of her excitement about her walk.
‘I normally try to get out of coming to the high street, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Louisa, feeling the rude tingle of the blush staining her cheeks.
But Hatty didn’t seem to notice Louisa’s pink cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t mind shopping so much if there were some interesting things to buy. If there were great big shops with dresses and handbags I’d come every day! But I don’t have too much longer to wait until I can buy more exciting things than meat. This time next week, I’ll be in Hill’s buying all the dresses I want.’
‘Hill’s? In Blackpool?’ Louisa asked, the stench of the raw meat suddenly making her feel quite sick.
‘Yes! I’m off to Blackpool! With my parents, worse luck. But they’ll leave me to it, I hope. It’ll be sunbathing, shopping and dancing. Hopefully I will meet some boys. There are none round here,’ Hatty said with a scowl. ‘None.’
There was a silence as Louisa scrambled for something to say. But the only thought in her mind, and the only word on her lips, was ‘Blackpool.’
‘Hey!’ Hatty suddenly exclaimed as the silence grew to an uncomfortable length. ‘You should come with us! Mum offered to take a friend of mine, but between you and me, I couldn’t really think of anybody. Everybody is either already going to Blackpool or staying here to do some silly shorthand course. But you’ll come, won’t you Lou? We haven’t spent any real time together since school! Think what fun we’ll have!’
Louisa thought of the week to come. Her stomach lurched, and the smell of meat and blood drifted down around her. ‘Yes. I’ll come to Blackpool.’
As Louisa said goodbye to Hatty and paid for her sausages, she remembered the last time she had planned to go to Blackpool. Since that day when Dr Barker had brought her here to live with her father, she hadn’t been back.
Louisa had planned to return to Blackpool on her fourteenth birthday. Three weeks before her birthday, she had written a list of things to take with her. Two weeks before, she had cracked open the piggy bank that her father had given her and transferred the coins to her new red velvet purse. One week before, Louisa had asked her teacher, Mr Marlowe, how she might best travel to Blackpool. She was going to take her father there as a surprise, she told Mr Marlowe, bits of the lie trickling down her throat like poison and settling heavily in her stomach as she spoke.
The night before her birthday, Louisa counted out her money. There was definitely enough to buy a train ticket for the 9.47 that Mr Marlowe had told her about: her father had been generous during the time that she had been there. When Louisa arrived in Blackpool, she would surely find somebody who remembered her from when she lived there with her mother. Perhaps they would help her to find out what had happened and piece together why her mother might have disappeared. Perhaps she would find out if she really had wandered into the sea, her skirt billowing out with the grey waves. Perhaps she would find out if there was anything her mother had wanted to tell Louisa, something that Louisa had missed.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, Louisa thought as she drifted into sleep.
And then it was morning. Louisa had dressed quickly and stepped out of her bedroom, expecting her father’s bedroom door to be firmly shut as it always was early in the morning. But the door was flung wide open, and she heard the clattering of pots and jars coming from the kitchen. Louisa followed the sticky smell of flour and eggs until she was standing in the doorway of the large, upturned kitchen, watching her father whip a grey mixture in a bowl. He looked up, and his face fell in despair.
‘Louisa,’ he said. ‘This was meant to be a surprise. Nobody was meant to see me … ’
Louisa had thought how odd it was to see a man holding a spoon. She pictured her father getting out of bed early to make her goodness knows what kind of birthday cake on Nancy’s day off. And then she thought of the 9.47 train, and how she would not be getting on it.
That, Louisa recalled now in the bloody air of the butchers, was the day she had decided that Blackpool could wait.
Until now.
‘So your father didn’t mind you coming along with us, Louisa?’ Hatty’s mother, Mrs Kennedy, asked the following Monday as their train began to amble along the tracks.
‘No. He doesn’t really notice whether I’m there or not, these days. So he didn’t mind,’ Louisa murmured, noticing as she spoke that Mrs Kennedy’s face was a shade darker than her neck.
‘Ah, Doctor Ash is a busy man. I am sure he does notice you, even if it doesn’t feel as though he does,’ Mrs Kennedy offered, misunderstanding.
She must have known my father some time ago, Louisa thought, when he was busy and important. Time seemed to have washed away his importance like a tide. Each day, Louisa would sit with him and talk to him about his life, his house, their happy times together. As dusk fell, he would be shining with the knowledge of his life, but with the morning sun his face and mind would be blank again.
‘Yes,’ Louisa sighed, not wanting to explain. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘So!’ Hatty said rather more loudly than she needed to, eyes wide. ‘Let’s get into the holiday spirit! What do you want to do when we arrive? There’s the beach, and it’s a gorgeous day so we could sunbathe. Or we could go dancing in the Tower, or we could go to the Pleasure Beach, although we’re probably best waiting until tomorrow for that so we have a full day there, or we could … ’
Hatty’s voice drifted away as Louisa stared out of the train windows into the fields beyond. Had she done the right thing coming on this holiday? Perhaps she should try to get a train back somehow, and explain to the Kennedys the truth about why she had come and why she definitely shouldn’t have.
‘Louisa? What do you think? I don’t feel exposed in it, so I don’t see a problem. Sally Smith has a bikini, and she’s fatter than me. If she can wear one, then I certainly can.’
Louisa nodded. ‘Hatty,’ she began, ‘I think that I’ve perhaps made a bit of a mistake. I don’t … ’ Her words stopped abruptly as she thought of what she was speeding away from. She looked at Hatty, who sat waiting patiently for the rest of Louisa’s words. ‘I don’t remember packing my sunglasses,’ she finished, embarrassed by the sad little ending to her sentence.
‘Well, that’s not a problem. I’ve packed three pairs,’ said Hatty.
When the girls were finally settled on the swarming sands, Louisa lay back. She draped her arm lazily over her eyes, having yet to receive an offer of sunglasses from a rather bikini-preoccupied Hatty. Eventually, the sun managed to glare through the crook of Louisa’s arm, and she sat up. Hatty was splashing about in the sea with some boys who were staying at the hotel next door, her headscarf tied carefully