Her uncle’s property is one of three identical shops positioned some twenty metres into the small alleyway. First comes her uncle’s shop: the indecisive, ineffectual hardware-cum-stationery shop. Next door is an optician’s run by a very efficient-looking Spaniard by the name of Lando Landaidas – the man who has just strolled past. Lando came in to introduce himself as a neighbour within a week of her starting in the shop. A neat man, in his late thirties, with short dark hair and a grey goatee, he bought a plug and a pencil sharpener, neither of which she suspected he needed. She would have liked to return the compliment, but she knows she doesn’t need glasses and doesn’t want to waste his time.
Next to the optician’s is a tattoo artist, whom Jo just knows as Eric. And she only discovered this because she once heard someone call after him down the alleyway. Eric waves to her as he bounds past the store each morning (usually around 10.30 a.m.), grinning cheerfully. She finds it harder to guess at his age – is he even thirty? At the end of the summer, he wore black shorts and orange flip-flops, his legs a swirl of inked crescents and stars. Now the weather is colder, he is in jeans and short furry boots, but with arms still exposed, displaying an array of complex symbols in black ink. Eric has a short beard and messy ash-blond hair – hence Jo’s nickname, Eric the Viking. When he had started to wear furry boots in the colder weather, she experienced a feeling of satisfaction that he was living up to his nickname. They have never spoken, but he always waves and he always smiles.
For three such close neighbours, it surprises Jo how little interaction there is between them. She wonders if it is because each is looking out onto a brick wall, and so the day-to-day lives of the shops carry on as if in isolation. She also suspects that Lando and Eric the Viking are an awful lot busier than she is. They probably have little time for socializing, judging by the number of people who walk past her window to reach their shops.
It also occurs to her that when you feel most in need of new friends, is often the time when you feel least capable of making them. She appreciates the irony of this, but the realization does little towards encouraging her to call onher neighbours. She thinks back to articles she has read in the past about how to kick-start your way to a new life/new friends/new interests. These still have the power to ignite her sense of inadequacy, even though she now recognizes their naivety.
Her reflections are interrupted by a bump against the shop window. A young woman has just steered the side of her pram into the low windowsill. The girl holds up a hand apologetically and calls through the window, ‘Sorry!’
Jo heads outside, wanting to reassure the girl – the pram only lightly grazed the paintwork.
‘Sorry!’ the girl repeats, pulling the pram back to straighten the wheels so she doesn’t veer into the shop again. ‘I’m new at this,’ she says laughing. ‘They don’t give you lessons when they sell you one of these!’
Jo looks into the pram at the baby. A tiny, sleeping bundle completely oblivious to the fact its mother is a poor driver. She wants to say something about how lovely the baby is, but it isn’t really. It is small and squidgy and blotchy. Despite this, Jo feels what she recognizes as jealousy spreading through her veins. She catches the young mother’s expression as she gazes at her infant and there is a knot tightening within Jo that takes her breath away.
The girl does not seem to register Jo’s silence and continues, cheerfully, ‘You know the last time I pushed a pram, it had a doll in it and I would have been about six.’ Looking past Jo into the shop’s interior, she exclaims, ‘Oh, you sell stationery. Do you have invitation cards for christenings? Although Guy thinks we should go for a naming ceremony rather than the church stuff. I guess he’s right. It was bad enough with the wedding. His family are Catholics and my mum’s not bothered. I don’t think his mum and dad really care, but I’d say his granny will kick off. She certainly did when we got married …’
Two things come to Jo at exactly the same moment – a double distraction from the knot of pain. This women sounds like friends she has known with new babies, who have been stuck on their own for too long with no one to talk to. Secondly, and more importantly, she now knows exactly who it was who was in the shop talking about God.
‘Sorry,’ Jo explains, apologetically, ‘we don’t sell that sort of stationery.’
She is tempted to say the next statement out loud, but stops herself.
You will never guess who I just sold some envelopes to.
The girl smiles and nods, then heads off on her erratic course down the alleyway and Jo returns to the shop.
She is sure she is right.
The comment about God.
A black-and-white photograph. But wearing a very different outfit from the long raincoat. A clerical outfit. Jo is now sure of it. It had come with the mention of christenings and weddings.
She has just sold some envelopes to the ‘Runaway Vicar’.
Jo immediately reaches in her bag for her phone to start Googling.
The ‘Runaway Vicar’ sobriquet had been the inspiration of a journalist who was reporting on the disappearance of a country vicar. Jo remembers first seeing thestory deep in the inner pages of the paper she was skim-reading as she sat in the café on the corner.
The vicar had left her vicarage in the manner of theMary Celeste; chair pushed back, meal half eaten. A churchwarden had raised the alarm. No sign of forced entry, back door left ajar. Car still in the drive. The parishioners were ‘flummoxed’. Jo wondered at the time if anyone actually said this any more, or, indeed, ever had. She remembers that the vicar was described as someone that, ‘No one had a bad word to say about.’ Which, Jo reflected, told her very little about the woman. The same woman, who she is now certain has just been in her shop.
Thinking back to the first article, she doubts if she would have remembered all this if the headline of ‘Runaway Vicar’ hadn’t appeared the following day on her news app. But, even then, it was the merest ripple in a tsunami of other news. Would she even have spotted it, if she hadn’t felt the conspiratorial empathy of a fellow runaway? She now wonders whether – if she had said something to the bad pram driver – she would have any idea of who Jo was talking about.
The question now is: should Jo do anything? Tell somebody? Does anyone know that the vicar is safe?
Jo stares out of the window to the brickwork opposite. Really, is it any of her business? The Runaway Vicar was here in the solid flesh, buying a pack of envelopes; she was not teetering perilously close to the parapet of a bridge.
Jo turns back to her phone and follows more links. The Runaway Vicar (who she now knows is called Ruth Hamilton) has not been in touch with her extended family … they seem to be in Glasgow. A longer article from a Warwickshire paper gives more background on Ruth, a 57-year-old vicar (divorced); her parish covered a large village and several hamlets near the town of Rugby. The article includes a couple of photographs of Ruth: one by the cake stand at a village fete; one of Ruth outside a church, with a crowd of children and animals gathered around her. In the pictures, she is smiling.
Jo enlarges the images on the screen. It is definitely the woman who was in the shop. She wonders how long ago the photos were taken. The woman buying envelopes looked older, more careworn. Or is she imagining that, now she knows she’s the Runaway Vicar? Jo scans the screen once more for a clue as to why this woman walked out on what looks like an idyllic parish. The woman has a nice face; broad-browed and open. She is the sort of vicar Jo would have liked to marry her and James.
And there it is. The barb that catches her. Just when she has been experiencing the peace of not thinking about him for an hour or so. And once the hook is in, she knows that conscious thought will not dislodge it, only dig it in deeper.
With a supreme effort, Jo tries to focus back on the Runaway Vicar. She studies her face once more, looking for some clue. She wonders if she will ever see that face again. And if she does, whether she will say anything to the Reverend Ruth Hamilton.
4
A man called Malcolm
