Chapter 21
There’s a man waiting outside the doors when Suzie gets to work that morning.
He appears brittle and agitated, pacing back and forth.
Her first thought is that he’s waiting on the methadone clinic, but that’s been moved eleven miles away to the next town.
Teddy says that Idless needs cleaning up, but Suzie knows it’s just what happens when towns get bigger.
It’s economic. Where there is poverty, there are drugs.
She feels sorry for the man in the big overcoat and scruffy boots, the way his eyes shift when he sees her.
She gives him one of her patented Suzie White hundred-watt smiles. “Be open in a few minutes. You okay to wait? It’s pretty cold.”
“Sure.”
“If you’re desperate, the pharmacy in the shopping center is twenty-four hours. There’s also the addiction clinic in Truro, if that’s what you need.”
“I’m okay, I’ll wait.” He gives her a grin of his own, revealing crooked yellow teeth. Not an addict, then, she thinks, but he looks like he hasn’t showered in a few days, his eyes pouched with fatigue.
Inside, Suzie flicks on the lights from the bank of switches on the wall and starts counting out the float for the till, one eye on the clock above the door.
She’d missed her jog that morning, opting instead to lie a little longer in bed, but now she feels cranky and out of sorts, her joints stiff.
The radio had warned that snow was sweeping in, which means there will be queues at the supermarket this evening.
Suzie doesn’t know what’s got into people these days.
Ever since the pandemic, it seems like people want to panic-buy at the first sign of a crisis.
When the Idless River flooded its banks last year, there had been signs up in the windows of the mini-mart: ONLY ONE PACK OF brEAD PER CUSTOMER!
The world’s gone nuts, she thinks, glancing back to the door.
There’s no rain, but there is a fine mist snaking over the pines.
It’s cold too. She can see that just by looking at the waiting man with his collar up and his hands dug deep in his pockets.
His shoulders are hunched, head down. Poor guy, she thinks.
Suzie is soft-hearted. Teddy is always telling her so.
She switches on the radio and lifts the hatch that separates the counter from the shop floor so she can walk through, pulling her keys from her pocket and sorting through them.
“Can’t leave you out there like a wet dog.” She smiles as she opens the door to allow him in. There is no one else outside at this time, just a few pigeons sheltering beneath the raised flower beds on the precinct. “Come on in where it’s warm.”
“Thanks.”
Suzie takes another look at him as he brushes past her.
She wishes she hadn’t made the comment about wet dogs, because that’s exactly how he smells.
Damp and muddy, as if he has been sleeping in the earth.
He doesn’t lower his hood or remove his cap, and when she smiles, he does not return it.
Suzie walks quickly back behind the counter.
There’s a panic button back there, and an automatic grille which rolls down from the ceiling if there’s trouble.
Suzie had always thought it was for her protection, but Teddy had pointed out it was to prevent access to the valuable prescription drugs that were kept back there.
They’re not protecting you, Teddy had laughed, ruffling her hair, it’s the profits, silly!
Now, why am I thinking about that right this moment?
Suzie asks herself, shaking her head a little.
She doesn’t usually mind being in here alone—she enjoys the silence and the feeling of getting ready for the day, a quiet sort of productivity—but now her stomach flutters anxiously and she moves a little closer to that panic button as the man approaches the counter.
“Hey.” He plants both hands on the counter and leans forward a little. “Can you help me out with a medication? I’m looking for, uh, Leprazine.”
Suzie frowns. “Leprazine? Do you know what it’s used for?”
He laughs softly, and she’s struck again by that strange sensation that she can’t quite put her finger on, like déjà vu.
“I’m not entirely sure. It’s for my fiancée, who spent some time in hospital recently. It’s almost certainly something for her head.”
“Like an injury? Is it a painkiller?”
Another laugh. But it has no depth, Suzie thinks. It’s just a sound he’s making out of his mouth, that’s all.
“No, she—uh, she went a little crazy back in the summer and wound up in hospital.”
“Okay. Leprazine. Can you spell it for me?”
The man rummages in his big pocket and pulls out a crumpled note.
It’s small, no bigger than the palm of his hand, and as he begins smoothing it out on the counter, Suzie’s heart sinks.
His hands are dirty and so is that paper by the looks of it—soft with damp and slightly curled at the edges.
Without thinking about it, she gets out the hand sanitizer and squirts it into her palms.
“There.” He stabs a finger at the shaky writing at the top of the page. “Leprazine. You heard of it?”
Suzie can only stare, a sound like a long, high whistle ringing in her ears. It’s not the word itself—which she’s pretty sure isn’t something the pharmacy carries in their precious stock out back—but at that little smiley face drawn in the lower right corner.
“No.” Her voice is slightly strangled as she reaches for the paper and pulls it toward her. “But I’ll go take a look. You mind if I take this?”
“Be my guest.”
Some memories are like bullets, Suzie knows.
The impact of them can lift you off your feet.
This memory is one of those, taking her right out of the pharmacy and into a cramped school toilet cubicle, trying not to breathe in the rancid perfume of ammonia and limescale, the sickly yellow gels the cleaners pour into the toilets.
Hazel and Abigail are with her, the three of them gathered tightly together like a coven, voices low and husky.
Hazel pulls out a candle stump from her pocket and sets it on top of the cistern.
Her eyes are bright and luminous, her tongue coated red with cherry Wonderland.
“So I found out what’s in those goofy letters my sister is sending to Matt Davey. You want to see?”
Abigail and Suzie nod eagerly, yesyesyes, crowding in closer.
“I found it in Cathy’s drawer last weekend after Dad grounded her.”
Hazel slowly unfolds a piece of pink notepaper from her shirt pocket. Around the edges, a hand-drawn border of flowers and peace signs, little hearts scrawled in red ink.
“Read it.” She passes it to Abigail. “Out loud.”
“‘Dear Matty,’” Abigail says in a mimicking falsetto that makes Suzie and Hazel giggle, “‘I wish I could see you on Friday, but my stupid parents are being lame. Thinking of you, Cathy. Kiss-kiss-kiss.’”
“Pretty boring, right?” Hazel grins. She looks anything but bored. “Light the candle, Suzie.”
Suzie takes the lighter Abigail is holding out, flicking it nervously. She has to curve her hand around the flame to keep it steady. There is a hiss of water through the pipes as a toilet is flushed somewhere in the building, and all three girls laugh nervously.
“You watching?” Hazel holds the notepaper over the candle flame, high enough to draw heat but not go up in flames.
“Oh my God!” Suzie whispers. “Look!”
Brown letters are forming on the surface of the notepaper, seemingly conjured out of nowhere. They appear in Cathy’s distinctive hand between the lines of inked text, a secret message slowly rising to the surface.
Abigail whistles low under her breath. “Holy shit,” she says. “That’s amazing.”
“That’s lemon juice.” Hazel pulls the paper away and snuffs out the candle with pinched fingers. “You have to heat it up to see it.”
“What does it say?”
Hazel grins, turning the paper to face them. Abigail and Suzie read it with their eyes slowly widening, hands pressed over their mouths.
“OMG, Hazel, your sister is a slut.”
“Does she really do that?” Suzie’s eyes are round, her cheeks lightly pink. Suzie, who still goes to Sunday school and whose father collects her from every party right at the door.
“This is so cool, Hazel. Hey, we should do this!”
“Right?” Hazel is nodding. “Then we can talk about anything we want and no one can see it. Only us. It’ll be our secret.”
“You can do this with lemon juice?” Suzie is incredulous. It looks like magic to her. Her parents will not like that.
“Sure! Or vinegar. I looked it up. You know in the Second World War, they used urine.”
“Ewww!”
“I’m just saying, if it’s acidic, it works. And you don’t need a candle, a radiator will do. Any heat source, the book said.”
“We’ll use a code so we’ll know if a letter has a secret message or not.” Abigail taps her fingertips together thoughtfully. “Like a lightning bolt.”
“A smiley face,” Suzie says. It’s her parents she is thinking of. Trying to imagine them stumbling on a stack of letters with lightning bolts drawn in the corner. It would look too punk to them, maybe make them suspicious. A smiley face, though? Well now, that’s just cute girl stuff.
“Don’t expect me to be writing any dirty letters like that, though,” Suzie adds, frowning. “That stuff’s dis-gust-ing.”
Suzie stands in front of the shelves at the back of the pharmacy, so absorbed by the memory that she is almost unaware that she is shaking.
She is still looking at the receipt, the little smiley face in the corner.
Coincidence, her rational mind insists. But Suzie isn’t convinced.
It’s not just the little face. It’s the slightly crumpled texture the paper has.
Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Suzie remembers that summer so well, the bitchy secrets they had passed to each other, all as caustic as the cut lemons they’d used to write them.
Her whole room had smelled of citrus that summer, and the juice had made her fingertips raw and cracked.
That’s when she’d started washing them, over and over again.
Slowly, carefully, she turns the paper over.
Printed on the back is a receipt. Suzie notes the name of the pharmacy and checks the date and time at the top, her heart quickening.
It’s a short list of purchases, but there at the bottom are two packs of Wonderland gum.
I haven’t tasted this since I was fifteen, Hazel had said, and even though she’s alone, Suzie speaks aloud, in an awed, low whisper.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
When she returns to the counter, the man is standing a little to the side with his head lowered, watching her from beneath beetling brows. Suzie smiles at him, despite the feeling of unease tightening in her chest.
“Sorry. We don’t have it. I can order it in, it should only take a few days.” She turns to the computer. “I just need your wife’s name.”
Fiancée, she thinks, not wife. That’s what he told me.
But the man doesn’t correct her. He scratches at his jaw thoughtfully. “She really needs it today. What do you think the half-life is on these?”
“I’ll need to look that up for you.”
She starts tapping on the keyboard. Suzie knows what Leprazine is, but she’s only dispensed it a handful of times—it’s a medication she thinks of as being heavy-duty, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to prescribe it over the counter to a complete stranger without a prescription.
She doesn’t want the man to know this, though.
Not yet. There’s something off about his request, about the way his eyes shift restlessly in their sockets. She felt it the second he came in.
“It depends what dosage she’s on.” Suzie glances over the top of the screen. “I don’t suppose you have that information?”
He shakes his head. He’s moved closer now. His eyes are the tawny brown of sucked toffee. “I suppose what I really want to know is, how long?”
“How long?” Suzie frowns.
“Until … you know. She loses it again. How long till the drugs are out of her system?”
“About ten days, if she’s on an average dose. Tell you what would really help, if I could speak to her and ask some questions. Can you give me her number?”
Suzie holds her gaze on him. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, not exactly.
A flinch maybe, a dart of the eyes. Even some color building in his cheeks, like the lie is burning him from the inside out.
That’s what would happen in the movies she likes to watch.
But there is nothing. His expression remains stubbornly neutral.
He shrugs. “I’ll tell you what”—he smiles—“why don’t I go out to the car and ask her? I’m parked just round the corner.”
She’s surprised. Maybe it’s all a whole heap of nothing after all.
A coincidence that snowballed. It’s how she’s been feeling since she woke up this morning, she realizes.
Upset and ill at ease, jumping to conclusions.
She’ll feel better once she has a cup of coffee and can wash her hands.
A good scrub with some of that carbolic soap they keep by the sinks in the dispensary.
The bell tings as the man opens the door and leaves, and Suzie thinks of the day Hazel had come in, how keyed up she’d looked, like she couldn’t stand to be in her own skin.
Suzie knows that look. She’s seen it in Hazel before; eyes turning to pitch, her restless, agitated smile.
We’re house-sitting for our parents, she’d said.
We. Our.
Such small words, Suzie thinks. Funny how they’ve got stuck in my head like splinters.