Free Love Your Enemies by Nicola Barker

expression.
    ‘Honestly, it was perfectly clean.’ Stephanie’s face crumpled. ‘Oh God! I feel … I don’t know. I was going to say I feel awful, but in fact I feel almost the opposite.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I feel rather, almost hysterical. Pent up. I’ve done the strangest thing.’
    Jane was frowning. ‘Is everything all right at work?’
    Stephanie nodded wordlessly.
    ‘Chris? Nothing’s happened between you and Chris?’
    Stephanie shook her head, ‘No, Chris is fine.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t feel as if I can tell you …’
    Jane clucked her tongue, exasperated. ‘What can’t you tell me? You always tell me everything. What’s going on?’
     
    They had been best friends since primary school. Jane had always been dominant and Stephanie softer, better intentioned but easily swayed. She saw life as a set of rules which she obeyed. Jane saw life as a set of rules which she supported. She thought Stephanie’s passivity occasionally subversive, but knew her well enough to be sure of her back-up and understanding in most situations. They came from the same stock, a simmering, warm if unadventurous stew of suburban values; their schooling the same, parents the same, boyfriends the same, and their ambitions …?
    Jane stared at Stephanie across the table and wondered what it was that she had done. She shoved around a set of geometric boundaries in her mind, a variety of fully contained and containable possibilities. ‘Pregnant?’
    Stephanie grimaced. She looked up at Jane and felt almost helpless; she must tell her because who else could she tell? (God knows, not her mother.) And the notion of saying nothing was virtually inconceivable. She knew that all acts suffered in the doing because of the inevitability of the telling. She must tell her.
    Jane watched, waiting. Stephanie took a further sip of herdrink, laced her hands together on her lap and then took a deep breath. ‘I’m downstairs in the Men’s Knitwear Department this week, occasionally on the till, but mainly involved with stock, pricing, you know …’
    Jane nodded, she had a picture of the knitwear department in her mind, and a cardigan that she wanted to buy for Mitch. ‘Knitwear Department. So?’
    Stephanie looked down at her hands. ‘Well, I was … It was dead during the last hour, you know how it can be, hardly anyone about, and I was tidying up, straightening jumpers on hangers and refolding … I don’t know if it’s the same in the bank, but the last hour is always the worst and the best, the way the minute-hand keeps you in but the hour-hand points towards the door …’
    Jane was nonplussed by Stephanie’s attempts to wax lyrical. ‘The last hour. Right.’
    Stephanie took a deep breath. She knew this wasn’t going to be easy. ‘I was folding up some vests and socks when I noticed a man nearby, well, I think that initially there were two of them, but the other one wandered off. They were skins, really tall in puffy green jackets and tight, short jeans and boots …’
    Jane frowned. ‘White trash.’
    Stephanie bit her lip and nodded. ‘Really short hair, just like, just really short, soft, like a coloured shadow on the scalp. But smart, not like normal skins, with bleached trousers and tattoos on their necks, like ugly roosters, dirty. This one was smart …’
    Jane reiterated her earlier point, which made a class distinction as opposed to a value judgement. ‘White trash. Yuk. Shoplifting I bet. Pringle jumpers or long socks for under their boots.’
    Stephanie nodded. ‘Socks.’
    She was silent for a moment. In her mind she outlined what she was going to say and felt her stomach contract with theextremity of it. She thought momentarily of not telling and then knew that she must tell. She tried a different approach. ‘Do you ever have that feeling sometimes when everything feels sort of, strong, like soup or evaporated milk, sort of condensed, as though some things just must happen in a specific way,