Chapter 2

Claire sent another text to Jim. According to WhatsApp, he was online 30 minutes ago and had not yet read her messages. Not a big deal, but she was now in the supermarket queue with the shopping for tonight's dinner and she wanted to know if he was ok with cottage pie. He will bloody well have to be ok with it now, she thought to herself, slightly annoyed but not really sure why. She knew he was at work and could not spend all day looking at his phone. He was usually on it a lot, though. She often looked at WhatsApp just to see when he was last online. He seemed to be rarely offline.

Claire paid for the groceries and put them in her reusable 'green' bag. Bugger paying for a plastic bag when it would only end up in the kitchen drawer with all the others. While juggling the bag and her purse, Claire reached into her back pocket for the car keys. She watched the checkout girl scan the items of the next customer and wondered whether the young 'retail asset executive' really was as unhappy as she looked. The girl was only about 17, with her whole life ahead of herfull of options and potentialno doubt to be wasted away like most of Weston-super-Mare's young generation. A cycle of young pregnancy, marriage, divorce, marriage again, maybe another pregnancy; followed by an unsatisfying job, welfare assistance, complaining about welfare assistance, drinking, debt and passing the cycle on to her offspring. Evolution in action.

Claire smiled at her cynical thoughts. For all she knew the girl could be saving money before going to university and studying medicine. She could end up winning the Nobel prize for cancer research in twenty years. Or not.

Realising that her keys were now free from the debris of her too-tight pockets, Claire wandered out past the trolleys and into the car park. There were a lot of empty spaces near the entrance and she wondered why she'd chosen to park so far away. Especially with this torrential rain.

One bag in hand and handbag on head, Claire jogged at a pace barely faster than walking and was pretty much saturated by the time she slumped into her driver's seat. She slipped the grocery bag into the passenger side footwell, the handbag onto the passenger seat and slipped her key into the ignition. The inside of the windows was already starting to steam up, so she set the wipers running and flicked the heater on to full blast, hoping to clear the condensation.

"I'd rather be at work." She said to herself, thinking of the comfy office chair where she designed the artwork for children's books. Her office, unlike Jim's, was bright, open and contained only two people. Claire and her colleague worked on state-of-the-art Apple Mac computers, took long lunch breaks and gossiped incessantly. It was a wonder they managed to meet their deadlines. Although today was a weekday, Claire always seemed to accumulate days off and was being forced to take them before she accrued too many and had to forfeit them. As the glass began to clear, Claire reversed her little red Ford Ka out of the parking space and headed home, to the flat she shared with her sister. She would much rather move in with Jim, but he was adamant that they needed space before getting into the serious business of living together. He was far too interested in playing his Xbox to be tied down in a serious lifestyle. At least, that's what Claire assumed. The truth was that Jim would be happy for her to move in with him, but he knew that this would soon lead to moving somewhere bigger and he simply enjoyed the peace and quiet of his own private world.

Arriving home less than half an hour later, Claire dropped her keys on the kitchen worktop and set to putting the food in the fridge. She would take it with her when she went to visit Jim lateras she did most nightsand toyed with the idea of pre-cooking everything so she could spend more time on the sofa with him. She checked WhatsApp again, slightly dismayed to have not yet received a response. She was surprised that Jim's 'last online' time had not changed and wondered what he was doing. She knew that he hated his job and spent more time procrastinating on his phone than doing anything remotely productive. She opened up 'find my friends' to check his location. Slightly stalkerish, she thought to herself, but it was just a bit odd that he hadn't replied, or at least read her messages. The app loaded up, showing her location correctly at home and showing Jim's as on the A369. A frown creased the skin above Claire's nose and her heart picked up pace. Her first though was to call him, but she thought that might alert him to her secret stalker tactics. Instead, she flicked out a new text message, reading, 'everything ok? You're not usually too busy to tell me what food you want! ;) too late now. I'm making us cottage pie and we can watch American Horror Story later. C u at 7 xxx'.

The A369, she knew, was a road leading out from Portishead, where Jim lived. However, it was not the road he would take to work. In fact, it was in the opposite direction. She wondered, and then immediately dismissed the idea, if he was seeing someone else. Not a chance, she thought, he's far too lazy to go to the effort. That brought a smile to her lips, only briefly, as her self-humour faded into worry. It was just a bit weird, and she hated not knowing why he was supposedly on that road today. She considered the probability that it could be an error on the GPS signal and he was, in fact, in his office. She planned to give him another hour and then she would call him.