Dot (Araminta Hall)

herself, she had read in the Cartertown Gazette how residents from the nearby estates, both private and council, formed groups and lobbied the police, but nothing was ever done. The police simply didn’t have enough officers to approach these children who roamed in packs like animals and were so emboldened by their mass that they were capable of any wrongdoing. Instead the police resorted to responding as quickly as they could to the muggings and burglaries and intimidation that found its way out of this feral environment, as if acting after the event was as good as preventing it in the first place. Mavis suspected that this was a more accurate vision of the city of the future.
    Topshop had always reminded Mavis of a joke, if that was the right word, one which she had heard being played on Primrose Duncan in the first week of secondary school. Primrose Duncan who was so badly bullied that her father found a new job, sold their house and moved her hundreds of miles away to a school with a great reputation. Primrose Duncan, who Mavis had read about in the Guardian last year, was the youngest solo cellist to play at the Royal Albert Hall. Two year nines had approached Primrose and told her a complicated story about a fish riding a bicycle, and then they’d started to laugh. Primrose had obviously copied them and they’d stopped as suddenly as if she’d slapped them and asked her what was funny, a question she’d been unable to answer because nothing was and so they’d started laughing again, but this time most definitely at her. Dot and Mavis had watched them walk away and Primrose cry and they had assured each other they’d never have fallen for such an obvious prank, but now Mavis wondered who they had been kidding. She imagined Primrose telling this story to an interviewer in years to come; she imagined turning on the television to find her laughing over it with Graham Norton or Alan Carr. Now that’s what you called revenge.
    The clothes on the rails wilted under Mavis’s touch and she found herself simply following Dot, sucked into an ennui so deep she feared she might never have another useful thought again. Of course the Grazia dress was nowhere to be seen, the shop assistant didn’t even recognise it and Mavis thought it probably only existed on the pages of magazines. Dot ploughed on until she found another, infinitely inferior version of the dress which she held in front of her, held away from her, wondered at, rubbed between her fingers, squinted at.
    ‘Just try it on,’ said Mavis wearily.
    ‘You really not going to try anything?’
    ‘No.’ The changing rooms were being guarded by Stacey Young from their class and Mavis felt the last vestiges of energy drain from her body.
    Stacey lazily handed Dot a tag, her expression doubting the wisdom of trying on the dress, of them even being in the shop. ‘You can’t go in without something to try on,’ she said to Mavis.
    ‘Seriously?’
    ‘It’s policy.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Mavis grabbed the nearest thing to hand, a pair of lime-green hot pants, and held out her hand for a tag.
    Stacey laughed. ‘You’re never trying those on.’
    ‘Give me the fucking ticket, Stacey. Or shall I call your manager and tell her you won’t let me try on any clothes?’
    Stacey slapped the numbered plastic circle into Mavis’s hand and mimicked a Jamaican gangsta accent to say, ‘It’s not my fault you is mingin’.’
    ‘And it’s not my fault you’re too thick to even speak properly,’ answered Mavis.
    ‘There are some parts of the new you I could get used to,’ said Dot as they made their way inside. But Mavis didn’t agree. Dealing with people made her feel sad now.
    The changing room was bright and there didn’t seem to be any other option than to take your clothes off in full view of everyone, so Mavis slumped on to the floor by the mirror as Dot struggled out of her jeans and into the dress. She looked quite pretty in it really and Mavis was moved by the slight rounding of her stomach and the curve of her unblemished upper arms. But at the same time none of it seemed real. Dot looked like one of those cardboard dolls Mavis had played with as a child, with the cardboard clothes that never stayed on however hard you pressed on the ineffectual tabs which were meant to hold them on to the body. You would try a dress, then a skirt and shirt, move on to a pair of jeans, try in vain to get any footwear to stick, end up with a hat. The