When you were lost you needed a map. Ariadne and her thread, Tilly the Leeds A–Z that she found in a newsagent. Somehow or other she had wound her way back from the car park to the shopping centre. It was very brightly lit, brighter than the sun. Tilly could have sworn that she felt the hum of electricity passing through her bones. She had been disconcerted by hearing her mother’s voice on the tannoy system, echoing down the years from her childhood, saying, ‘If you get lost, go up to a policeman.’ Tilly knew she must be mad because the last time her mother said that to her was well over sixty years ago, not to mention the fact that her mother had been dead for three decades and even if she had been alive it seemed unlikely that she would be making public announcements in a shopping centre in Leeds.

Anyway there wasn’t a policeman to be seen anywhere.

The newsagent was familiar, she had definitely been here before. She put her spectacles on and opened up the A–Z. Why? What was she looking for? A way out of the ninth circle of hell. That was where traitors went, wasn’t it? Where Phoebe belonged, not Tilly. As she walked out of the shop, face buried in the A–Z, a mean-faced, gum-chewing girl behind the counter shouted, ‘Oi!’ at her. Tilly thought it best to ignore her, you never knew what girls like that wanted.

She reached the foot of an escalator. The A–Z flapped uselessly in her hand. It was very hot in here, it must be the heat that was affecting her brain. She fanned herself with the A–Z. A youth, face raw with acne, like the inside of a pomegranate, loomed in front of her.

‘Have you paid for that, madam?’ he asked, pointing at the A–Z. Tilly’s heart began to pound, a steam hammer threatening the end. Her mouth was dry, there was a buzzing in her ears as if an insect was trying to escape from her brain. A curtain descended before her eyes, waving and undulating, how she imagined the aurora borealis would be, although she’d never seen it. She would like to, she had always wanted to go to the North Pole – such a romantic destination. The Northern Lights. She was so hot, feverish. Be not afeard. Think of something cold. Tilly remembered shivering on the dockside with her father in the winter, watching the trawlers sailing into harbour after fishing the Arctic waters. Mysterious places – Iceland, Greenland, Murmansk. Ice still slick on the decks of the boats. Her father buying fish in the market, great trays of cod, bedded on crushed ice. Big fish, pure muscle. Poor things, Tilly used to think, swimming in the deep, cold waters of the north and then ending up on her father’s slab. From the north. Like the wind, like winter monarchs. King Cod.

‘Do you have a receipt for that, madam?’ The spotted youth’s voice boomed and receded. The curtain of Northern Lights vibrated and shrank, disappearing to a pinpoint of black. ‘Please, excuse me,’ Tilly murmured. Going down, she thought but then a pair of strong arms had her and a voice was saying, ‘Steady the Buffs. Hold on there. Are you OK, do you need some help?’

‘Oh, thank you, I’m all right really, you know.’ She could hear herself panting. Like a hart. Her heart pulsing like a fleeing hart. If a hart do lack a hind, / Let him seek out Rosalinde. She had done As You Like It twice when she was younger. Nice play. The white hart was a harbinger of doom for the Celts. Douglas told her that. He knew so much! Wonderful memory. The White Hart in Drury Lane, used to go there sometimes with Douglas and drink pink gins. No one drank pink gins any more, did they? Oh God, make it all stop.

‘I was looking for a policeman,’ she said to the man who had asked her if she needed help.

‘Well, I used to be one,’ he said.

The nice man who used to be a policeman steered her into a room. The spotted youth led the way. Bleak little room, painted in several different shades of institutional beige. Reminded her of the sick room at school. There was a Formica-topped metal table and two stiff plastic chairs. Was she going to be interrogated? Tortured? There was a girl there now instead of the spotted youth, she pulled out one of the chairs from the table and said to Tilly, ‘Stay here, I’ll be back in a minute,’ and was as good as her word, returning with a cup of hot sweet tea and a plate of Rich Tea biscuits.

‘My name’s Leslie,’ the girl said, ‘with an “ie”. Do you want one?’ she said to the man who used to be a policeman.

‘No, you’re all right,’ he said.

‘Are you American?’ Tilly asked the girl, making an effort to enter into polite conversation. Tea, biscuits, chat. One should keep one’s end up.

‘Canadian.’

‘Oh, of course, so sorry.’ Tilly usually had a good ear for accents. ‘I lost my purse, you see,’ she said.

‘She’s not going to be arrested for shoplifting, is she?’ the man who used to be a policeman said.

Shoplifting! Tilly moaned with horror. She was not a thief. Never knowingly stolen so much as a pencil. (All those knives and forks and key rings and packets of crisps couldn’t be stolen because she didn’t want them. Quite the opposite.) Not like Phoebe. Phoebe was always ‘borrowing’ bracelets and shoes and frocks. Borrowed Douglas, never gave him back.

‘Are you going to be OK?’ the man asked, crouching down next to her.

‘Yes, yes, thank you very much,’ she said. So nice to encounter a proper gentleman these days.

‘Right, I’ll be off then,’ she heard him say to the girl.

‘Feel better now?’ the girl called Leslie said when the man had gone.

‘Are you going to prosecute me?’ Tilly asked. She could hear the wobble in her voice. Tilly supposed the girl thought she was doolally. Not that Tilly blamed her. She was a stupid old woman who couldn’t find her way home. Silly Tilly.

‘No,’ the girl said. ‘You’re not a criminal.’

The tea was wonderful. Tilly could have cried when she took her first sip. It restored her in every way. ‘Silly me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why, I just went blank, you know? No, of course you don’t,’ she added, smiling at the girl. ‘You’re young.’

‘It must have been the shock of losing your purse,’ the girl, Leslie, said sympathetically.

‘There was a woman,’ Tilly said, ‘she was being horrible to a child. Poor little thing, I wanted to find someone who would do something about it. But I didn’t. You’re really not going to arrest me?’

‘No,’ Leslie said. ‘You forgot yourself, that’s all.’

‘I did!’ Tilly said, immensely cheered by this idea. ‘That’s exactly it, I forgot myself. And now I’ve remembered myself. And everything will be all right. It really will.’

He thought of Leeds as a place where it always rained but the weather today was perfect. Roundhay Park was full of people who were anxious to wring a good day out of the English climate. Hordes everywhere, didn’t anyone have a job to go to? He supposed he could ask himself the same question.

He came across an unexpected picture of happiness. A dog, a small scruffy one, was racing around the park as if it had just been released from prison. It disturbed a flock of pigeons intent on an abandoned sandwich and the birds rose up in a flutter of annoyance when it yapped excitedly at them. It started off again, running at full tilt and skidding to a halt, a second too late, next to a woman lying on a rug. She yelled and threw a flip-flop at it. The dog caught the flip-flop mid-air, shook it as if it were a rat, and then dropped it and ran off towards a small girl who screamed as it jumped up, trying to lick the ice cream in her hand. When the child’s mother threatened it with blue murder the dog ran off and barked for a long time at something imaginary before finding a broken branch that it dragged round in circles until its attention was caught by the scent of something more interesting. It truffled around until it found the source – the dried turd of another dog. The dog sniffed it with the delight of a connoisseur before growing bored and trotting off towards a tree where it lifted its leg. ‘Bugger off,’ a man nearby shouted.