How precisely had one shoe remained firmly affixed to her foot was the question in the mind of the driver when he tried to comprehend the scene later. How had one come off and one remained? He thought again and again, it just made no sense. Perhaps she had had one foot larger than the other? It happens. Or it was swollen, a problem faced by women of advancing years, but again: why just the one foot? As the crowd gathered, shouted, cried and screamed around him, he could not move his eyes from her feet.

That was to come. For now, the rhythmic clip-clop of the dragged woman forced the bowing of heads and doffing of hats as it passed onlookers, a funeral procession before the death, or at least during it.

Lucy Shaw recalled dropping her bags filled with frozen food, produce she resented buying, and shouting “Mum!” Lucy’s mother had died roughly three years earlier following a routine operation which had weakened her to the hospital bug MRSA. Lucy had eventually received compensation for her loss and, with perfect timing, her son Michael had convinced her to lend the money to him to pay off a portion of a debt he had incurred to some local would-be mobsters. He had not mentioned that he had passed the responsibility of paying the remainder of the money owed to her. He could not have mentioned this as he was busy running away to the continent. Suffice to say, the woman was not Lucy Shaw’s mother: she had much bigger feet than the one’s now trawling North Road and was, indisputably, dead.

Lucy still cannot explain her exclamation. The only other time she had done something similar was when, at high school, she had called her English teacher “Dad” mid-lesson. Then, as now, she wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and envelop her. The guilt of this selfish response is what she finds herself waking up with for three weeks after today’s events. Sick. Sick to her stomach. A car skidded to avoid her frozen lasagne and honked it’s horn in disgust. North Road on a Friday or Saturday night was a place where you might have expected to dodge stray food hurtling towards you, but this was a Tuesday afternoon. You’d expect this of the students, but that was a woman of fifty.

It was at the sound of the horn that the bus braked. The bus driver looked instinctively in his rear view mirror. The car was moving back into the lane having successfullydodged the rogue pasta. And he saw Lucy. Years to come, he would attest that their eyes had met in that mirror. The bus had stopped right then and there and the road was free from all sound. Opening the door he walked alone and with everyone to the back of the bus. There, he looked down at the woman’s stockinged, bloodied foot and the heeled shoe, still firmly fitted. How could that be, he thought.

How precisely had one shoe remained firmly affixed to her foot was the question in the mind of the driver when he tried to comprehend the scene later. How had one come off and one remained? He thought again and again, it just made no sense. Perhaps she had had one foot larger than the other? It happens. Or it was swollen, a problem faced by women of advancing years, but again: why just the one foot? As the crowd gathered, shouted, cried and screamed around him, he could not move his eyes from her feet.

That was to come. For now, the rhythmic clip-clop of the dragged woman forced the bowing of heads and doffing of hats as it passed onlookers, a funeral procession before the death, or at least during it.

Lucy Shaw recalled dropping her bags filled with frozen food, produce she resented buying, and shouting “Mum!” Lucy’s mother had died roughly three years earlier following a routine operation which had weakened her to the hospital bug MRSA. Lucy had eventually received compensation for her loss and, with perfect timing, her son Michael had convinced her to lend the money to him to pay off a portion of a debt he had incurred to some local would-be mobsters. He had not mentioned that he had passed the responsibility of paying the remainder of the money owed to her. He could not have mentioned this as he was busy running away to the continent. Suffice to say, the woman was not Lucy Shaw’s mother: she had much bigger feet than the one’s now trawling North Road and was, indisputably, dead.

Lucy still cannot explain her exclamation. The only other time she had done something similar was when, at high school, she had called her English teacher “Dad” mid-lesson. Then, as now, she wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up and envelop her. The guilt of this selfish response is what she finds herself waking up with for three weeks after today’s events. Sick. Sick to her stomach. A car skidded to avoid her frozenn lasagne and honked it’s horn in disgust. North Road on a Friday or Saturday night was a place where you might have expected to dodge stray food hurtling towards you, but this was a Tuesday afternoon. You’d expect this of the students, but that was a woman of fifty.

It was at the sound of the horn that the bus braked. The bus driver looked instinctively in his rear view mirror. The car was moving back into the lane having succesfully dodged the rogue pasta. And he saw Lucy. Years to come, he would attest that their eyes had met in that mirror. The bus had stopped right then and there and the road was free from all sound. Opening the door he walked alone and with everyone to the back of the bus. There, he looked down at the woman’s stockinged, bloodied foot and the heeled shoe, still firmly fitted. How could that be, he thought.