In Yvonne's eyes, Lauren looked fresher, sharper and more certain of herself than the very first day when she was back home. This was the life, she thought, back to the good old days. This was a curiously labelled part of her life, one, which was wedged between the aftermath of Ritchie's suicide, and the nightmare that started with Fenner's death. Fortunately, time was a healer and was softening the sharp edges of both events. As these were the good old days that she should have had, then Yvonne was all the more determined to enjoy the present and at last had Lauren to enjoy it with. What better way could there be but a spot of retail therapy?
"Come on Lauren. Put your glad rags on. We're going shopping." Yvonne's carrying voice met Lauren as she was half way down the stairs and rang out from another room.
Lauren felt dazed as the full meaning of her mother's words sank home. She meant here, at this minute, right now? Her mouth opened but refused to speak.
"Hey, give your mum a chance to spend some money on herself as well as you. We'll enjoy it together."
"Oh, very well," Lauren intoned vaguely. Once again, she was following orders even if it was for her pleasure, a little voice inside herself told her.
"Is there any post for me?"
"Don't worry, the Inland Revenue ain't coming after you as you've dropped off the map as far as they know." Yvonne's cheery answer was delivered with a wicked grin as she came in sight of Lauren.
"I mean, the appointment with the psychiatrist like the judge said."
"Hey, there's nothing wrong with you. Nothing that a few days of good living won't put right and that includes Harvey Nichols. He's the best shrink in town that I've ever known," Yvonne joked.
"I mean it, mum. I've only just got back into the outside world. I don't think I'm out of the woods. Just remember what they said at the trial."
Yvonne mentally pushed that away from her as something that would be faced whenever. She was ready down to her immaculate makeup and soon Lauren bustled herself and was ready in short order. Prison had at least sharpened up her ability in that respect. Yvonne glanced at her daughter and noted that she looked a little washed out but there was nothing that couldn't be fixed.
"You drive, mum," Lauren answered firmly. "I want to take my time to get back into the swing of things. I don't want to wrap your Ferrari round a lamp post."
Lauren started feeling a little strange, as they got further towards the big city. Her mother was smiling as she drove, threading her way confidently through the busy lanes and built up traffic. Lauren's eyes were fixated in horror as the lorry moved ahead of her in the inside lane and the huge cliff like shape of it towered over her and came dangerously close to her and in danger of grazing the side of the car. What was worse, the relative movements weren't smooth and flowing but jerky, as if seen at an old fashioned cinema with a badly running film.
"You all right, Lauren." Yvonne asked out of the side of her mouth.
"I'm fine. Really," Said Lauren, her glassy smile convincing no close scrutiny, least of all hers. She hunched herself down in the passenger seat and inclined her vision to look at Yvonne's side of the road. She ought to be enjoying herself, she reasoned to herself, she had gone into town with her mother many times before.
When they turned into a multi storey car park, Lauren was plunged into this dark cavernous space, lined with dirty grey concrete. The sharp turns up the ramp three floors up from where they entered made her dizzy. At last, to her relief, they came to a halt.
"You lead the way, mum," Lauren said faintly. She desperately sought to keep up with Yvonne's rapid strides as she made their way to the gaping opening that seemed set to swallow up streams of shoppers. They all moved forward with an almost manic confidence in contrast to her faltering mood. She was caught up in the rush of strangers all around them and sucked up into the narrow channel. Yvonne was majestically confident and edged them across the stream of people to what her sharp eyes had spotted. Suddenly, they were swept into the glossy vastness of Miss Selfridge, which spread opulence in a stream before her, rack after rack on display offering a bewildering range of clothes of all colours and styles. Was she supposed to make a single choice from this impossibly vast range of options? The prospect was terrifying.
"What do you want, Lauren. It's on me."
"I wouldn't mind some perfume and make up. Let me take it easy."
"Take it easy? That's what you do after you spend."
To Lauren's ears, her mother's enthusiasm seemed to be strident and pressed down on her with unnatural force even if it was for her benefit.
"Just till I get used to things. This is a far cry from the Julie's sewing room," Pleaded Lauren. Her nerve ends felt as if they were standing off her skin on stalks and a feeling of sheer indescribable panic was welling up inside of her. She desperately needed to make her mother understand what she was feeling without screaming it out loud. She could start to feel sweaty all over.
"What on earth's happening to you Lauren?"
"Just too much, too soon," Mumbled Lauren and she could feel the room swim round her with the incessant sound of voices, the glittering lights and the people pushing past her, oblivious to everyone. A feeling of weakness rose up inside her and suddenly the world switched off and disappeared into oblivion.
It felt like ages later that she was vaguely aware of the faintest sensations of being limply laid out in a nearly flat comfortable position, unable to move. She had been on a long journey somewhere. Out of the haze of sound and vision, her mother's anxious voice and that of a man starting to become clear.
"She's coming round. Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Atkins. She just had a funny turn. I've checked her over but there's nothing wrong that I can see."
"You're sure. My Lauren is as strong as they come. She's never done anything like this in her life."
Lauren's eyes looked over and a paramedic in his yellow uniform was talking to her mother as if she were little again. Her eyesight became clearer as she took in her surroundings.
"Try sitting up a bit and sipping a glass of water, Lauren."
She spat out a little of the water back into the beaker but she could gradually feel her spirits reviving.
"Let her rest for a bit and she may feel like moving but she ought to take it easy."
"You've got some colour in your cheeks. When you came in here, you looked as white as a sheet." Added a third concerned voice.
She took in the shape connected with the voice who had spoken these last words, a middle aged woman in the usual assistant outfit who was obviously concerned and had helped Yvonne carry her through to the back of the shop. Her instinctive kindness made Lauren feel that there was generosity all around her. It was just that her upbringing of Charlie's grand egotistical schemes had not made her feel receptive to the idea of it being a normal part of life. It was not just confined to prison or her real friends but casual strangers would step in and help.
"I'm really sorry about rushing you around like this. I should have known better."
Yvonne's eyes were clouded with real regret. She could kick herself for letting her enthusiasm run away with her. Lauren could sense those feelings.
"Let's take it easy, mum. Give me ten minutes and I'll be ready to move if the doctor says I can."
Her time in Larkhall had chipped away at any sense of embarrassment she might have felt at making an apparent exhibition of herself in public. It had taught her that life's events will happen and to respond to what was really important and to disregard the rest.
She left off trying to move until she was sure that she was strong enough and then climbed a little shakily to her feet.
"You look after her", the shop assistant urged her.
"Mum, I don't want to sound like an ungrateful cow but all I really feel like getting today is a pair of jeans, a top and some makeup and getting the hell out of here. I'm not really up to 'shopping till I drop.' Maybe in time but not now."
They were sitting in a corner in a nearby McDonalds, which was noisy enough but was at least comparatively small and had that banal quality which wasn't overwhelming. Queuing up for a Big Mac meal with diet coke with the teenagers was on a whole other level than choosing designer clothes at Harvey Nicholls.The choices were simpler, more circumscribed and that was what appealed to Lauren right now.
"I'm happy with whatever you want, Lauren," Came Yvonne's incredibly tender reply.
"I'm glad that I've only got you to pay for today. Ritchie used to be a greedy little sod when he was little when I used to take you here. Even then, he could charm a second helping out of me and never put on any weight."
"No justice is there, mum."
Lauren joined in Yvonne's throwaway humour. The words brought back memories all right. It was like both of them to remember the light hearted, more trivial moments and to steer away from the more recent fraught memories of him. They both let the time drift on and the noisy background clatter stayed where it was, in the background. The shops weren't exactly going to disappear in front of their eyes.
"I'm ready mum but let's take our time."
They both strolled out of that archetypal American monument to bad taste eating that had colonised the world. Lauren freely admitted that it was cheap and plastic but the taste of the food was something that went back to her childhood. It was a basic insecurity in Lauren that made her crave any apparently insignificant good memory in her past. She certainly understood that craving in her and if it meant ignoring the Atkins sense of style, then so be it.
The rest of the day progressed more smoothly. Yvonne's eye kept darting to one side just as she used to years ago to check that Lauren and Ritchie weren't lost in the crowds only this time, to make sure that Lauren wasn't emotionally lost. Her active sense of guilt reproached her for overlooking that possibility earlier on. If it meant that she had to treat Lauren as if she were walking on eggshells, then that was what a mother had to do. In the shop, Lauren admired herself as the pair of jeans fitted herself to perfection. She had lighted on the first pair of jeans, which caught her eye, and Yvonne bit back the suggestion that she try a few more shops before finally selecting her choice. In a low-key way, they wandered round a few of the shops, Yvonne selecting a top, which caught her eye.
"You ready to go home?" Yvonne asked to which Lauren nodded. She had managed better than she had feared and the mere periodic edginess was a million miles reduced from that overwhelming feeling of mental and physical collapse of before. She felt footsore but was satisfied to have achieved what she had done. She was ready for home and the walk back to the car was easier as the crowds seemed to have thinned out. She slumped in the car and was happy being driven home like she always used to be way back when.
Trigger greeted them enthusiastically when they returned and when they had dumped their bags, Lauren went to pick up the rectangular buff envelope off the floor. It smacked of officialdom except for the personal manner of address on the front.
"Well, mum, looks like I'm going to be kept busy. The psychiatrist I'm seeing is Meg Richards who saw me before the trial….and got to see right through me… At least I had the sense to open up to her….."
Lauren looked thoughtful as she remembered the softly spoken, sympathetic woman who tapped into the very defensive, uptight and very afraid woman that she used to be. The other guy just didn't get it and was that bit too earnest for her liking.
"……..I couldn't wish for anyone better…she's also attached to the local hospital and that's where I'll be seeing her. This is what the doctor or rather what the judge ordered like I said earlier on."
"Well, it had to come," Yvonne said philosophically and then fell silent as the mention of her name prompted her to start searching her capacious memory. It was a name or a face or some distant memory that enabled her to get to the truth.
"…….I think I've seen her before the trial come to think of it."
"When did you know her before, mum?"
"She was the shrink who took on some of Larkhall's most screwed up prisoners in one go, like Dockley for one. That's when Dockley went all funny."
"I suppose she can't win them all."
Lauren looked a little downcast at the woman whose sympathy had helped stop her being sent down for life being placed in authority over her. It made her feel a little uneasy and Yvonne picked up on it.
"Just remember, don't think of it as something that if you fail on, they're going to run you straight back to Larkhall, but think of it of something you need for your sake. You're my daughter and I know you'll get through somehow."
The husky emotion choked tone in Yvonne's voice was reassurance enough for Lauren fore the moment. The future was just another day.