Page 22 of None of This is True

The pavements are full of puddles and the traffic makes hissing sounds as it passes by. Alix barely notices Josie, at first, through the overhanging hood of her rain cape. She notices the dog first, looks at it and thinks, Oh, a Pomchi like Josie’s! Then she notices the denim slip-on shoes, stained wet from the rain, a denim jacket tied at the waist with a matching belt and an umbrella printed with a denim-effect pattern and she says, ‘Josie!’

Josie blinks at her. ‘Alix! What a surprise!’

‘Not exactly dog-walking weather,’ she says.

‘No. It’s not. But I could wait all day for it to stop raining and then Fred wouldn’t get any kind of walk. Where are you off to?’

Alix puts her hands on Eliza’s shoulders and says, ‘Taking this one to a birthday party. Just a couple of roads down.’

She sees Josie’s eyes mist over with some sort of longing. ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she says. ‘How old?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Well, have a wonderful time, won’t you? Enjoy every minute.’

‘She’ll be home in a couple of hours bouncing off the walls on sugar and TikTok.’

‘Well, enjoy. And have a good weekend, Alix. See you next week.’

‘Yes. See you next week.’

As they carry on down the street, Eliza looks up at Alix and says, ‘Who is that lady?’

‘Oh, she’s the lady I’m interviewing for my podcast.’

‘Why? She seems quite boring. Apart from her dog.’

‘Well, yes. But that’s sort of the point. That people who seem boring can sometimes have the most interesting stories to tell. You just need to get it out of them somehow.’

Alix stays a while at the party, long enough to have a cup of tea and swap some school-gate gossip with a couple of the other mothers. Then she makes her way back through the puddles and the umbrellas towards home. As she passes the spot where she saw Josie on her way here, she stops with a start. She is still there.

‘Oh,’ says Alix. ‘Josie. What are you doing still out in the rain?’

‘I don’t really know. I was just …’

She trails off and she looks strangely as if she might be about to cry.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. Yes. I’m fine. I just … What we’re doing, it’s making me feel a lot of things. A lot of things I haven’t felt for a long time. You know? It’s making me feel like I’ve been numb. And when I saw you just now, with your lovely little girl … I just … I don’t really know, to be honest, Alix. I don’t really know. I just sort of couldn’t get my feet to work. Does that sound mad?’

‘No, Josie. No. It doesn’t sound mad at all. It sounds completely understandable. And listen, let’s get out of the rain, shall we? Come on. I’ll buy you a cup of tea. Or something stronger?’

Alix guides Josie into the nearest café and sits her at a table while she goes to the counter and orders them both cappuccinos. She adds two chocolate cookies to the order and then brings them back.

But Josie is nowhere to be seen.

4 p.m.

Josie is soaked to the bone when she gets home. She wraps the dog in a towel and rubs him dry, then she makes herself a cup of tea to warm herself up and pads barefoot into the living room, where Walter is on the sofa watching football.

‘You’re drenched.’

‘Yeah. Don’t know what I was thinking going out in that.’

The dog looks longingly at the sofa and Walter looks at him and says, ‘No chance. You stink. Not having you up here.’

Josie scoops him up and holds him to her chest. She doesn’t like it when Walter talks sternly to the dog.

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