The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton Page A

Tin Lizzies, with their goggle-eyed drivers and honking horns. The roads were dusty then, full of potholes and horse manure. Old ladies pushed spoke-wheeled perambulators and little boys with empty eyes sold newspapers out of boxes.
    The salt seller always set up on the corner, where the petrol station is now. Vera Pipp: a wiry figure in a cloth cap, thin clay pipe permanently hanging off her lip. I used to hide behind Mother’s skirt, watching bug-eyed as Mrs Pipp used a big hook to heave slabs of salt onto her handcart, then a saw and knife to carve them into smaller pieces. She turned up in many a nightmare, with her clay pipe and shiny hook.
    Across the street was the pawnbroker’s store, three telltale brass balls out front, same as every town across Britain at the dawn of the century. Mother and I visited every Monday to exchange our Sunday best for a few shillings. On Friday, when the mending money came through from the dress shop, she would send me back to collect the clothes, that we might have something to wear to church. The grocer’s store was my favourite. It’s a photocopy place now—the last grocer shut up shop a decade or two ago when the supermarket was built out on Bridge Road. Back in my time it was run by a tall thin man with a thick accent and thicker eyebrows and his roly-poly wife, who made it their business to fill customers requests, no matter how unusual. Even during the war Mr Georgias was always able to find an extra packet of tea—for the right price. To my young eyes, the store was a wonderland. I used to peer through the window, drinking in the bright boxes of Horlicks malt powder and Huntley & Palmer ginger biscuits. Luxuries the likes of which we never had at home. On wide, smooth counters sat yellow blocks of butter and cheese, boxes of fresh eggs—still warm, sometimes—and dried beans, measured out on brass scales. Some days—the best days—Mother would bring a pot from home, which Mr Georgias would spoon full of black treacle . . . Ruth tapped my arm and hoisted me to my feet and we set off again down Saffron High Street toward the faded red-and-white awning of Maggie’s. The scratchy blackboard menu boasted its customary array of ill-assorted modern fare—cappuccino grandes, Cajun chicken burgers, sun-dried-tomato pizzas—but we ordered the usual, two cups of English breakfast tea and a scone to share, and sat at the table by the window.
    The girl who brought our order was new, both to Maggie’s and to waitressing I suspect, judging by the awkward way she clutched a saucer in each hand and balanced the scone plate on a trembling wrist.
    Ruth looked on disapprovingly, raising her eyebrows at the inevitable pools of tea on the saucers. She was mercifully restrained, however, remaining tight-lipped as she planted paper napkins between our cups and saucers to soak up the spills. We sipped in habitual silence until finally Ruth slid her plate across the table. ‘You have my half as well. You’re looking thin.’
    I considered reminding her of Mrs Simpson’s advice, that a woman can never be too rich or too thin, but thought better of it. Her sense of humour, never abundant, has all but deserted her of late.
    I am looking thin. My appetite has abandoned me. It is not that I don’t hunger so much as I don’t taste. And when one’s last brave tastebud curls up and dies, so does any lingering inducement to eat. It is ironic. After striving hopelessly in my youth to affect the fashionable ideal—thin arms, small breasts, no blood—it is now my lot. I am under no misapprehension, however, that it suits me as well as it did Coco Chanel.
    Ruth dabbed at her mouth, chasing an invisible crumb across her lips, then cleared her throat, folding the napkin in half and in half again, and tucking it under her knife. ‘I need a prescription filled at the pharmacy,’ she said. ‘Are you happy to sit?’
    ‘A prescription?’ I said. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’ She is in her