Bordering on desperation now, I throw a few more items into my basket – four shrivelled carrots and a tattered leek, and then a bottle of tonic water. I search for a lemon but there are none, save the ones made of bright yellow squeezy plastic. There are no potatoes left either, so I grab a packet of Smash and, because I am already beyond cooking anything from scratch, a tinned steak and kidney pie.
Finally, I reach the till. The assembled group there has been in no hurry to move on, happy to let Bridie ask her questions and to listen with interest to my answers. Their judgement hovers above my head like a sparrowhawk intent on its prey. I set the basket down and adjust my grip on my soggy, smelly daughter, thankful that she’s fallen quiet at last. When I glance over my shoulder I realise that her silence is a result of the chocolate buttons Bridie is feeding her, which Daisy is dribbling down the back of my suede jacket. I bought this jacket in another lifetime, when I had money and a lifestyle that went with such luxurious garb. Now I wear it because I can’t afford to buy anything more practical. I’m aware how it must look, though. Like its owner, this jacket doesn’t belong here.
I smile at Morag behind the till. The group of women watch, assessing each item as Morag rings it up and then packs it into a cardboard box, emblazoned with a logo, which reminds me . . . ‘Oh, and a bottle of gin, too, please.’
She reaches one down from the shelf behind her and I carefully avoid catching the eye of any of the other women. Their unspoken judgement hangs even more heavily in the air. I pay and then look up at last with a defiant smile at the assembled company.
‘Hello, Lexie,’ says a blonde-haired young woman with a pushchair, from which an immaculately dressed toddler, just a little older than Daisy, watches the scene with wide blue eyes. It takes me a second to recognise her.
‘Elspeth? Hi. It’s good to see you. And you have a wee one too now?’
We were friends at school, but lost touch when I moved south.
She nods. But makes no further attempt at conversation.
Awkwardly, I bend to gather up the cardboard box of groceries, balancing the weight of Daisy in my other arm. She smiles beatifically at Bridie, Morag, Elspeth and the other womenfolk, her cheeks flushed, her eyelashes spiky with her recent tears.
‘Here,’ says Bridie, ‘let me give you a hand with that.’
She tries to take the box of groceries from me, but I shake my head. If she sees that my car is packed to the roof with my worldly belongings it’ll be a dead giveaway: as well as clearly doing a very poor job of raising my fatherless child, she’ll know that I have slunk back to Ardtuath, homeless, my tail between my legs, my career in tatters, several months too late to care for my poor abandoned mother in the last days of her life.
‘Don’t worry, I can manage. If you could maybe just open the door for me? Thanks.’
As I balance the box on the bonnet of the car and dig in my bag for my keys, the tinned pie topples and clatters on to the tarmac. Behind the window of the shop, several faces turn in our direction.
I open the door and bundle Daisy into her car seat. Not surprisingly, she makes her thoughts on this outrage known at the top of her lungs. I wrestle the straps over her flailing arms without a word because if I open my mouth I’m not sure I’ll be able to restrain myself either from swearing loud and long or bursting into tears.
I turn to pick up the pie from the road. But Elspeth stands there, her big-eyed baby gazing up at me inscrutably from her pushchair.
‘Here,’ she says, holding out the dented tin.
‘Thanks. Not much of a supper, but it’ll have to do for tonight.’ My embarrassment and shame make me babble nervously.
Elspeth nods, glancing through the windows of the car, taking in the box of kitchen stuff and the desk lamp that are wedged against the glass. She looks as if she’s about to say something, then thinks better of it and turns her pushchair around. ‘Be seeing you.’
‘Yeah.’ I stand there lamely for a moment, watching as she wheels her fragrant, neatly dressed baby back along the road, turning in at the gate of one of the houses that overlook the harbour before manoeuvring the pushchair through its yellow-painted front door.
Then I ease my stiff limbs back into the driver’s seat and take a deep breath before turning the key in the ignition. ‘Right then, Daisy,’ I say, as cheerfully as I can, hoping she doesn’t hear the wobble in my voice, ‘Keeper’s Cottage, here we come.’
The sound of knocking awakens me the next morning. After being up into the small hours, the pair of us had at long last collapsed and fallen into a deep, deep sleep before the dawn began to suffuse the sky beyond the hills.