Page 57 of Lost Luggage
‘Nothing. Come on, let’s get to Prince’s Street and that charity shop.’
Dolly drew to a halt and pulled the sides of her coat more tightly across her chest. She peered up from under her hood. ‘What if they’ve sold the frame?’ she whispered.
Fred held the tops of both of her arms. ‘You and me, we never used to do what ifs. Why start now?’
That had been a quality she’d loved about Fred – he very much lived for the moment, a possible consequence of growing up in care. If she ever said the words ‘what if’, he’d challenge her immediately – ‘What if I don’t get on with my new flat mate? What if the dentist can’t fix this toothache?’ – he’d raise an eyebrow and distract her, often with a kiss. She forced her gaze away from his face. His lips. Kissing Fred would trigger a cocktail of emotions, an intoxicating blend that no other man had ever replicated.
Ten minutes later they stood outside the shop. Dolly glanced in the window, at the orphaned belongings. Fred pushed open the wet door and they went up to the till. She explained about the frame and the man fetched the manager. A sturdy woman with large, purple-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck, appeared from the staircase at the back.
‘It was with a bag of good quality clothes and shoes – a tweed coat, cashmere jumpers.’ Greta wasn’t extravagant as buying the best meant her clothes lasted for years.
The woman put on her glasses and pushed them firmly up the bridge of her nose. ‘A black-and-white photo of a mother and two children, you say?’
Yes.
No.
More like a child and two mothers.
‘I dropped the bag off a couple of weeks ago.’
‘We keep personal items we find for three months before throwing them out. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
Dolly and Fred searched the shop, scanning the shelves of books, CDs, DVDs. A couple of frames stood amongst a collection of ornaments but were the wrong size and colour. The woman didn’t take long.
‘Sorry love, it’s as I thought, we’ve hardly got any personal items, only a pair of fancy prescription reading glasses and a handkerchief embroidered with a name. At the moment upstairs is practically empty. Times are hard and donations have really dropped off the last year or two. Most bags are sorted and on the shelves within a couple of days.’
‘You’re sure?’
The woman’s face softened. ‘I hope you find it elsewhere.’
Dolly and Fred went out into the rain again, and made their way back to the shopping centre. Her hair became soaked. Dolly didn’t care as much as Fred, who put his umbrella up and held it over her.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘If it’s not in Greta’s room or in that shop, where can it be? We’ll check the car boot again when we get back.’
Dolly dug her hands deep into her coat pockets. ‘One of the bags had a hole in the bottom, I’ve been telling myself it didn’t matter – I laid the tweed coat over the bottom first. But I had to lug the bag across a couple of streets. It dragged at one point. The hole must have torn more and if the frame was inside and slipped down the side…’
They stood opposite Primark and Fred pointed up to the left. He suggested they go to Costa for a drink. Dolly hadn’t eaten breakfast, couldn’t face it, but now she ordered a croissant and large Latte. She also bought a sandwich and juice carton; Fred didn’t ask why. They sat in silence by the front window as, now and again, shoppers outside passed by. Since Marks and Debenhams had closed down, Stockport was never as busy.
‘You always did love hot chocolate,’ said Dolly. ‘Said it was the drink of angels.’
‘More the drink of the devil, these days; it plays havoc with my indigestion.’ When he’d drained the cup and she’d finished her croissant, he reached across the small table and squeezed her hand. ‘Did I do the wrong thing? Telling you the truth about Greta, the private detective, her threats?’
‘The truth can never be wrong, can it? Otherwise, what’s the point? How many people must pass from this world to the next without realising their whole existence here was based on lies? How could Greta have passed from one decade to another carrying such secrets?’
Fred wondered aloud if Greta had ever offloaded to a stranger as sometimes that was easier, in the way she had as Maisie, to Phoebe. It happened a lot in prison. Fred was out of his depth when he first went in, the other lads who been in trouble many times could see that. He kept out of the way of a lot of them but a few were decent enough. Fred picked up his teaspoon, turning it from side to side, drops of hot chocolate falling on to the saucer.
‘I talked about you in a way I couldn’t have to any of my friends on the outside. The plans I’d made for us. We’d have a villa in France, a flat in London, and a family home in the suburbs with our two children. I confided in one lad, Mick, about what Greta had done.’ Fred looked up. ‘He said she sounded like one hell of a woman. Mick meant it in a good way. Over time I came to think that too. She always had your back, Dolly.’
Fred had made plans? Dolly had too. When they were together she’d dreamed of a short, glittery wedding dress with the Bee Gees playing as she’d walked up the aisle; they’d have a disco afterwards to celebrate, with party food like cheese-and-pineapple hedgehogs. She and Fred would rent a flat within walking distance of their favourite Manchester haunts and would eventually own a cottage in Glossop and enjoy two weeks a year on the Costa del Sol.
They finished their coffee and on the way out Dolly gave the juice and sandwich to a homeless man outside. She and Fred walked around the shops, not buying anything, just talking comfortably.
‘Remember that time I thought I was pregnant?’ she asked as they eventually stopped for soup and a roll, out of the showers, in a café up a backstreet.
‘I’ve thought about it often – broken my own rule about “what ifs” and imagined how things might have been different if you’d tested positive.’
The two of them had talked of nothing else at the time, both daunted by the responsibility and practical aspects of becoming a three. In her teens and all alone, pregnancy must have filled Greta with such fear.
