Witness - [24]

She turned abruptly, pushing past the queue, fighting her way to the door. Outside, she doubled over, her heart thundering in her ears, her mouth gummy.

‘You all right, love?’ A white-haired woman with a shopping trolley put her hand on Fiona’s arm. Fiona couldn’t reply, her throat was locked, her chest exploding. She knew there was something she should do, something to remember, but her mind was tangled.

Suddenly her stomach heaved and she vomited on to the pavement. The woman took a step back. ‘You’d better go home.’

Fiona gulped, nodded, her mouth sour, her nose and throat stinging from the acid.

‘Can you manage?’

Fiona coughed. Her breath came fast, rapid. Stars bursting in her eyes, then she remembered: breatheslowly. Joe’s words, the policeman. Fiona tried to master her breath. Took a sip, shuddered, took another tiny sip. Little bird breaths.

The woman frowned.

‘I’ll be all right, thanks,’ Fiona managed. The woman wasn’t convinced but she gave a quick nod and set off with her trolley. Fiona sipped again. Waited until she felt able to move. Then walked home, her legs unsteady, her breath rank.

You might never have another, the cardiologist had said. Liar, thought Fiona, and now what?

Almost as great as the fear of a repeat attack was the dread of becoming housebound. She could live without town and shopping (there was the internet for that) and even without work, which had surprised her as she’d always loved her job, but not being able to walk the fields and the woods, or set out along by the river: to lose that would be intolerable. So the afternoon of the post office meltdown, even though she still felt sick and scalded, she forced herself to go out with Ziggy.

Apprehension wormed about in her stomach and her back was stiff, her thoughts edgy, as she set out. She watched Ziggy trot from scent to scent and they made their way to the nature reserve. There were blackberries, fat and shiny, alongside the path and she had a spare plastic bag in her pocket. She tasted one, the flavour deep and fruity, a perfect mix of sweet and tart. She picked lots, savouring the occasional bite of a thorn from the brambles, her fingers turning purple, gritty with specks leftover from the flowers. She attained a sort of equilibrium. When the bag was half full, she stopped. The juice drying on her hands was sticky.

Sticky like blood. A stab of horror. She flashed back to that day, the shower, peeling the tights from her knees. His eyes, the boy’s eyes. She slewed her mind away, catalogued what she could see, determined to root herself in the here and now. The horse-chestnut cases still green and heavy in the tree; the sycamore leaves dying at the edges, splashed with sooty fungus, tar spot, there every year, though it never harmed the trees; the hen blackbird, dusty brown, seeking food in the mulch beneath the hedge; the whine of a wasp, drunk on rotten fruit. The gradual dying of the year. But this would all renew, return. This was her church. She fought for control and clung to her harvest. With some apples she could make a pie, or a crumble. She wiped her fingers on a tissue, texted Owen, asked him to get some Bramleys and some cream; there was a small supermarket on his way home.

Walking back, Fiona ran into the old American couple with their terriers. She smiled and nodded, her teeth clenched as they nattered about the weather and the deterioration in the quality of the kennels they used. By the time they moved on, her jaw ached with the effort. But she had coped.

Owen arrived back without any apples or cream.

‘Oh, brilliant!’ She rounded on him. ‘I texted you.’

He stared at her, affronted. ‘I didn’t get any text.’

‘How come?’ she demanded. ‘How come you never get my texts? Or do you just ignore them?’ Her voice rising. ‘I can’t make apple and blackberry pie with no bloody apples.’

‘Big deal.’ He slung his bag down, kicked off his shoes.

‘Pick them up,’ she yelled. ‘Put them away.’ She heard the shrill of her tone, hated it.

Owen flushed, glared at her from under his fringe.

She put a hand out, grabbing the post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Look, I’m sorry. It happened again,’ she said quietly. ‘In the post office, another panic attack.’

‘Not my fault,’ he muttered and went upstairs, leaving his bag and shoes where he’d dropped them.

Three weeks after the post office and she was feeling much better. The medication seemed to be doing its work. She had some minor side effects, nausea and a dry mouth, but overall she felt calmer and safer. She was doing her best to keep a structure to her day. In the morning she did chores, the ongoing housework, then all the things there had never been enough time to do. She was clearing the spare room, sorting through old sports equipment and extra duvets, games and toys that Owen had outgrown, spare shoes. She found a set of watercolours and dabbled at them but her efforts only irritated her. The daubs on the page bore no resemblance to the pictures in her head. They’d been a present for Owen but he’d never shown any interest. If Owen had an artistic bone in his body it was a small and well-hidden one.