Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson Page A

of one hand, whereas the funerals she had attended in her time were stacked to the rafters. Murder victims mostly. Never been to a christening. Said something about your life, didn’t it?
    The burnt orange had been a particularly unfortunate choice for Amy’s friend Chloe Pallister with her mousy hair and tallow complexion. ‘Mother of the bridesmaid, never mother of the bride,’ Linda Pallister said, sidling up to Tracy, smiling hopefully. She didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Linda Pallister’s own wedding clothes, a black velvet T-shirt and a skirt that seemed to have been made out of tiedyed cobwebs, couldn’t have been more out of place. Linda was also sporting a large assortment of silver rings and bracelets as well as an enormous crucifix on a leather shoestring. The crucifix looked more like penance than religion. Linda had become a Christian in the eighties, an unfashionable decade for evangelism, although Linda had gone, uncharacteristically, for straight-down-the-middle C of E. No sign at the wedding of Linda’s eldest, Jacob. Tracy had heard a rumour that he was a bank manager.
    ‘Your Chloe looks lovely,’ Tracy lied.
    If Tracy phoned Linda Pallister and started asking about Kelly Cross’s kids she’d be flagging herself up, wouldn’t she? What, one of Kelly Cross’s children missing? Why only the other day Tracy Waterhouse was asking me to count them! Tracy had nicked a kid. Didn’t matter how much you paid, didn’t matter how much you dressed it up with righteousness, it didn’t make it legal.
    She took the kid for lunch in Bella Italia. Kid worked her way through her own weight in penne and Tracy nibbled on some garlic bread. She had lost her appetite. The kidnapper diet. Tracy had done them all in her time – grapefruit, F-Plan, cabbage, Atkins. Selfinflicted torture. She’d been a big baby, a big child, a big teenager, it seemed unlikely that she would suddenly become a small, postmenopausal woman.
    In Gap, Tracy bought clothes for Courtney, holding them up against her to gauge their fit, rather than going by the labels which didn’t seem to relate to the kid’s actual size. ‘How old are you, Courtney?’
    ‘Four,’ Courtney said, more of a question than an answer. She fitted the ‘2–3 year’ clothes easily. ‘You’re small for your age,’ Tracy said.
    ‘You’re big,’ Courtney said.
    ‘Can’t argue with that,’ Tracy said. Unsure of the rules of engagement with a small child, Tracy had decided it worked best if they both pretended they were grown-up and conversed accordingly.
    She bought more clothes for Courtney than she had intended, but they were so nice and pretty, the kind of clothes Tracy never had when she was a little girl. Half a century ago her mother had dressed her in limp pinafore dresses and nylon jumpers with brown lace-up Clarks shoes, a look which even a cute kid, let alone Tracy, would have had trouble pulling off. Her parents had been over forty when Tracy was born, already old before their time. ‘We’d given up,’ her mother said, as if it had been a relief to do so. ‘And then you came along.’
    Her parents had been too much at war with each other to bother with their child. They had battled passively, locked together in silent hostility while Tracy lived in the solitary confinement of the only child. Tracy thought of herself as a war baby even though the war was long over when she was born.
    Courtney wiped her ever-present trail of snot on the sleeve of her grubby pink top. Tracy would have to buy tissues, tissues were the kind of thing that people who looked after kids carried in their bags at all times. There must be a caravan of kid-related supplies that she needed but Tracy had no idea what they might be. It would be helpful if kids came with instructions and a list of requirements.
    Tracy’s final purchase for Courtney was a red duffel coat in the sale, a garment that a younger Tracy, dreary in brown gabardine, had always coveted. The