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I clear a spot in the condensation on the window of the café to watch the storm. People gather under the striped canopies and in the doorways of the shops, waiting. Yet more squeeze in, shrieking and scowling at the sudden ferocity of the downpour. The sky is heavy and dark, the rain is falling in sheets.

The café door keeps swinging open and the bell rings, people looking for somewhere to sit to wait it out, shaking umbrellas all over the floor. Each time, the waitress, a teenage girl in a pink cropped mohair sweater, runs over with a mop and metal bucket, wipes most of the grey water up and repositions the yellow caution sign.

Looking through the porthole I’ve created, it feels like I have my own private view of a film. They have barely changed the shopping centre in the twenty years I have been away. A few different shops, but some of the original ones are still here too. The main shopping area is in a square over two levels, a balcony running right round it. The stonework is even more blackened than I remember it. There’s something about the drabness of the shops that makes my stomach feel heavy. Davidson’s Family Butchers is directly opposite.

‘Family Butchers’ always made me think of massacres when I was younger: cannibalism. Dad would shake his head at me. ‘I don’t know what goes on in there, where you get these ideas from,’ he’d say, tapping on the side of my head.

But that image has been replaced by another one now. Seeing the dead meat sitting in the window, some bearing no resemblance to the animal it’s from, some gruesomely retaining the shape. A pig’s head gaudy on the green felt at the front of the window. I am back in the maternity ward in the stillness after the noise and violence of the birth. The nurse said it was a ‘bit of a bloodbath down there, but you’ll live’, and she sewed me up, chattering about Strictly Come Dancing while I stared at the white strip lighting. She might just as well have been doing a cross stitch in front of the TV.

Mother and baby doing well, the word went out.

Outside, a man sticks his hand out under the canopy and looks up at the sky but rushes back in again. It’s showing no signs of stopping yet. I force in a mouthful of the iced custard slice. I’m not hungry really, it’s too sweet, but comforting too. Me and Mum used to come to this café every Saturday with Grandma. I’d have a prawn mayonnaise sandwich with an ice-cream float, followed by a custard slice. Mum and Grandma would have black coffee, and Mum would smoke and watch me, occasionally stealing the smallest nibble of my food.

‘Excuse me. This seat taken?’

I look up and do a double-take at the woman looming over me, her hand still on my shoulder. Her face is blooming into a new expression too: recognition. She narrows her eyes and zooms in.

‘Sylvie? Is that you? I never saw you come in.’

Judith looks as neat as ever. Slim, well-fitting clothes. Her bouncy, rollered hair is wilting in the weather. Faint mascara smudges under her eyes.

‘Judith! God, I didn’t… Please, sit down.’

‘Oh, well I need to get home really, but this weather!’

She scrapes a chair out, setting my teeth on edge, and sits down.

‘And who is this?’ She touches the handle of the pram next to me. ‘They’ve a fine pair of little lungs on ’em, eh? I remember what that’s like.’ She pushes her lips together and looks out across the shopping centre.

A crack of wind lashes rain against the window so hard it sounds like gravel, setting the whole café chattering. It looks like night-time outside now.

‘This will be punishment for the two sunny days we got back in the summer, eh?’ Judith says. ‘Mind you, even then we got those terrible floods a few days later. It’s hardly worth it, is it?’

‘I heard that on the news.’

‘I didn’t know you were back, Sylvie. You should have come to see me or let me know.’ She smooths down her coat and tries to rearrange her hair.

‘I just got back very recently actually. I need to sort things out at my mum’s, you know. I was going to get in touch.’

Judith looks down at the shopping bags of baby things by my feet. I couldn’t carry everything with me on the train.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t go to the funeral, love. I don’t do very well with them, I’m afraid. After, well… you know. I sent her my wishes privately.’

Judith taps the side of her head. ‘Will you come round to the house?’ she says. ‘I know Peter would love to see you and it would be so lovely to catch up and hear all your news. You’ve obviously plenty to tell us all about.’

She’s looking at the baby the whole time, as if she’s talking to her, not me. People often do.

‘OK, I’ll come round. You still in the same place or…?’

‘Oh yes, same place. That’s us now, that house. We’ll not move from there. Do come round… I’ve been trying to contact you, actually. There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

‘Oh, really? What’s that?’

‘Can you come tomorrow?’ Judith says.

A cry distracts us both. Judith reaches out her hand. ‘What’s her name, pet? She’s absolutely gorgeous.’

I take a swig from what’s left of the sugary remnants of my coffee. ‘It’s Victoria. Her name is Victoria.’

Judith tenses and her eyes start to glitter.

‘I’m sorry, Judith… I…’

‘Don’t be, dear. That’s lovely. It’s absolutely lovely. It means a lot to me. Really. She’s just gorgeous.’

I want to ask Judith again what she wanted to talk to me about, but she’s already standing up to leave the café. ‘Anyway, the weather looks to be lifting now.’ She pulls the belt of her coat tightly around her waist and leaves, clattering into a couple of chairs along the way, accidentally dragging them a short way across the floor.

Outside, it’s still pouring with rain.