She hurried on, past the man with his look of surprise and puzzlement. It wasn't him, he wasn't there. She was mad. Everyone knew that, she had papers. She hurried on, knowing her mouth was open - gaping like a dead fish. Deliberately, she closed it. Remember to breathe.
BREATHE!
She gripped tight to her shopping basket - fixed her gaze on the tomatoes, the bread, the plastic packet of milk. Her eyes, she knew, were hunted eyes, brimming panic, gleaming fear. It wasn't him, he wasn't there, she was mad. Everyone knew. There was no Sioban. Miss Howells, only Miss Howells. He wasn't there, had never been there. Sioban was dead: forgotten. Mad. Quite mad.
But she'd never been quite this sort of mad: never seen things; people. Him.
At the corner of the main street she met Mock - leering, sneering Mock. She almost bumped right into him.
'Morning, Miss Haitch. Howzit?'
And he didn't quite stand fully aside; didn't quite let her by unmolested; made her feel - as she twisted her body to pass him, as if she'd been touched. Violated. Mock grinned as she slid by, grinned and leched: bleary red, boozed-up eyes which never cleared, and tobacco stained teeth; his sensuous lips stickily varnished by his tongue as he revelled in her daily discomfort. She stared straight ahead; didn't look back.
First page from my unpublished novel ‘The Other Place’