by Denise Mina
I feel so sad remembering it all. I feel like a house without a fire in it. I glance at Tam driving down the small road. He looks as if he’s had a good old fire burning for the past seven years in him. His cheeks are pink, his eyes are shining. He’s upright, sitting proud of the seat back. He’s wired with bitterness and ready. I’m a sloucher.
It seems so odd, us being in a car together, driving. Neither of us could drive back then. Tam takes a minor cut-off road and we follow the line of the hill, out towards the furious sea. At the headland, along the coast, the waves are forty feet high, smashing higher than the bare black cliffs. The sea is trying to claw its way onto the land and failing. Each time it retreats to catch its breath it fails. But it keeps trying.
Suddenly we see Paki Harris’s house, a stark silhouette against the coming storm. It’s one of those Victorian oddities that seem inevitable because they’ve been there for a hundred and fifty years. It is big, squat, and solid. The roofline is castellated; the windows are big and plentiful. The wind coming straight off the water is perpetual and incessant on this headland. The house is an act of defiance, an elegant onefingered salute to the wind and the ocean.
Very much like Paki himself, from what I’ve heard.
Before I knew he might be my father, before the note, I listened to stories about Paki without prejudice. I knew they hated my mum and loved Paki but I didn’t see him as anything to do with me. Paki was a wild boy. Paki had bar fights and rode ponies into the town on the Sabbath. Paki pushed a minister into a bush. Paki burned a barn down. I heard a lot of stories about him. He was ugly but wild, and wild is good here.
As we draw up to the house the big heavy car is buffeted by the wind. Tam finds a wind-shaded spot by the side. He drives straight into it and pulls on the hand break. He wants to talk to me before we go in. He gets the hip flask out again. I don’t want anymore but he makes me take it. And he tells me quietly what will happen: he will knock on the front door. I will go around behind the house to see if the back door is open. If it is open, I will come in and find the kitchen, first door on the right. There is a knife block with carving knives on it. Karen will come to the front door and let Tam in. Tam will bring Karen into the kitchen where I am hiding behind the door with my knife. I will go for the neck.
He looks at me for confirmation and I nod. I shouldn’t be scared, he tells me. He will be right there. He smiles and makes me drink more. He doesn’t drink anymore because he is driving. He’s a cop. He can’t afford to lose his license.
We get out of opposite doors and I slip around to the back of the house. Suddenly, the wind pushes and shoves and pulls at me and I have to crouch low and run for the steps up to the door. It is open. I’m in. I find myself breathless from the pummeling wind and the short sharp run up the worn stone steps.
In the dark stone hallway the house is silent. I don’t think Karen is in. This is an eventuality that didn’t occur to either of us, so deep were we into our consensus. I flatten myself against the wall and listen to the creaking windows and the hiss of the wind outside. At the far end of the hall I can see the cold white light from the front door spilling into the hallway.
Three knocks. Bam. Bam. Bam. Tam’s shadow is on the carpet. Karen isn’t even in.
I draw a deep breath.
A creak above. Not wind. A creak of weight on floor above. Karen is standing up somewhere. She takes a step, I feel her wondering if she did hear someone knocking. Then Tam knocks again. Bam. Bam. Bam. She is sure now and comes out to the upstairs hall. At the top of the stairs she pauses, she must be able to see the door from up there. She gives a little “oh” and hurries down to Tam standing outside. She seems a little annoyed by him as she flings the door open.
Why are you knocking? she asks.
Tam keeps his eyes on the hall and slips in, shutting the door behind him, taking her by the elbow and pulling her into a room.
Thomas? She’s calling him his formal name, his grown-up name. Why did you wait out in that wind? Did the lawyer call you? She’s jabbering like a housewife talking over a garden fence but Tam’s saying nothing back.
Their voices move from the hall to nowhere to suddenly coming from the first door on the right. They are in the kitchen. They have gone through a different door into the kitchen and I am supposed to be in there right now with a knife from the knife block.
For the first time in my life, I have missed my cue.
I throw myself at the door and fall into the room. Look up. There is Tam, standing behind Karen, holding her by the elbow, sort of, pushing her forward, toward me.
There, right in front of me, is a worktop with a large knife block on it. A lot of knives, maybe fifteen knives, all sizes, and the wooden handles are pointing straight towards the front of my hand. I can reach out and be holding one in a second.
Karen’s mouth is hanging open. Tam’s face is a glowering cloud of bitterness behind her shoulder.
I say, Hello, Karen.
No one knows what to do for a moment. We all stand still.
Hello, Else, says Karen.
If I was at home, in London, and a person I had been at school with seven years ago fell through my kitchen door I might have a lot questions for them. Karen just looks around the floor in front of her and says, Cuppa?
It takes a moment to compute. Cuppa? Cup of tea? Hot cup of tea for you?
Actually, I say, looking at Tam who is getting more and more red in the face, A cuppa would be lovely, Karen, thanks.
Expertly, as if she is used to doing it, Karen twists her elbow to snake it out of Tam’s grasp and steps away. She picks the kettle up off the range. She turns to look at both of us, thinking about something or other, and then she says, Well, I might as well make a pot of tea.
No one answers. It’s the action of the elbow that makes me realize my gut was right. Tam has held her by that elbow before. And Karen has freed herself from that grip many times. He knew she wasn’t in school today. I remember his look at me last night, the laughing-eyed assessment of me as he sat at the table.
She has her back to us as she fills it from the tap. Tam nods me towards the knife block. There it is, his face says, over there.
And my face says, What? What are you saying? Oh! There? The knives! Oh, yes! I forgot about a knife! Okay then! But inside I’m saying something quite different. It’s not his fault. It’s understandable because I’m in a lot of crap on telly. Tam doesn’t know I’m a good actor.
Karen gets some mugs down and a packet of biscuits. She’s talking. To me.
Else, she says, I heard that your mum died. And I know that she died before you came to the school yesterday.
We look at each other and I see that she is welling up. I’m so sorry, she says and I wonder if she means about the book. But she doesn’t. About the talk, she says. You must have felt that you couldn’t cancel. Or you were too shocked, I don’t know, but I’m sorry.
And then she puts her hand on my forearm. I can see in her eyes that she is really sorry, for my loss, for my mum, and for the sorrows of all daughters and mothers and I start to cry.
Karen’s arms are around me, warm and safe, and I hear her tut into my ear and say Oh no, oh no, oh dear. She whispers to me, I hope you like the book. I’m sobbing too hard to pull away and she adds, Tam remembered you liked it back then.
I don’t think Tam can hear her. He thinks we are whispering lady things. We stand in this grief clinch for quite a long time, until the whistle of the kettle calls an end to the round.
She sits me down at the table and I gather myself, wipe my face, and look at Tam. Tam is staring hard at the table, frowning furiously. He has given up making eye contact with me or nodding at knives or anything. He hasn’t heard it but he has realized that I’m not going to stab her and never was. He doesn’t know what to do now. Karen puts a plate of sugary biscuits in front of me and gives me a cup of tea.
And I’ve put sugar in that for you. I know you don’t take sugar probably, but there’s sugar
in that because you’ve probably had a bad shock.
Karen sits down, her knees towards me. She picks up her mug and flicks a finger out at him without looking.
Did he tell you?
I sniff, What?
She smiles, Us, she says, a wry curl twitching at the side of her mouth.
I shake my head, baffled.
She glances at him. He is staring hard at her but she says it anyway: Married.
I lift my sugary tea, for the shock, and drink it though it is too hot. When I put the mug down again, empty, I tell her that my mum never said anything about that.
She hums. It was a secret. They married on the mainland, didn’t they, Tam. Tam? Didn’t they? In secret. Tam gives her nothing back and that makes her sort of snicker. Because of their families, you know. Because she had a lot of money and houses coming to her and he had nothing. Her family didn’t trust him. But, you know, it didn’t work out and no kids so, no harm done. They’re getting divorced now. Aren’t we Tam? Tam? Tam, are you not going to speak at all?
Tam is so uncomfortable that he cannot speak. He is eating biscuit after biscuit to keep his face busy. He is doing a strange thing with this head, not nodding or shaking it but sort of jerking it sideways in a noncommittal gesture.
Karen frowns at him. She doesn’t understand. She gives up trying and turns her attention to me. So, what is going to happen with your mum’s funeral?
I tell her: I’m flying her out of there. I’m taking her to London and I’m going to have her cremated there. Karen says, Wouldn’t it be easier to have her cremated nearby and then take her to London?
Tam came here to kill you, I say.
Karen says do I want another biscuit?
I actually wonder if I said that out loud because she hasn’t reacted at all. But then I look at Tam’s face and I know I did say it out loud. Karen lifts the plate and offers me another one, her face a perfect question: biscuit? That’s how they do things on the island.
Tam stands up then, knocking his chair over behind him. The sharp clatter on the stone floor ricochets around the kitchen. He turns to the door and walks out, through the hall and out of the front door, slamming it behind him. A skirl of wind curls around our ankles.
Apropos of nothing, Karen says to me, This was Paki Harris’s house.
I eat a biscuit and when I’ve finished I say, I know.
Karen nods. I don’t know if you ever discussed him with your mum?
No.
She puts a hand on my hand and cringes, tearful again. Do you know who your father is, Else?
We never discussed my father.
Hm. Karen doesn’t know what she can and can’t say.
It just falls out of my London mouth: You think Paki raped my mum and that’s why she ran him over?
Karen sighs. I don’t know, she says, I don’t know what happened. Not for me to know. But, Else, I think this house might be yours.
I don’t want it.
It’s worth a bit of money—
I don’t want it.
Karen looks at me and I can see she’s glad. She likes the house. She belongs here. These are not sometimes houses.
I was so mean to you when we were young. I’m sorry.
And I say, Oh! Forget it! because I’m flustered.
But she can’t. She’s been thinking about it, a lot, she says. But she is really sorry. She was jealous, because I was an incomer. It seems so free to me back then, she says, to not be part of all of this—
Aren’t you worried, Karen? I blurt, Tam invited me here to stab you in the neck! Doesn’t that concern you? You’ve just let him leave. Where’s he going?
She looks fondly towards the front door. Gone to get drunk, I think. It’s a rough week. Our divorce is final tomorrow.
And I understand finally. He wanted her killed today so he could inherit this house. And if I committed the murder I couldn’t inherit from a woman I killed. It would be his outright.
I think he still has a thing about you.
Really?
Yeah.
I don’t think so.
Well, you’re wrong.
I look at her and realize that she’s nice, Karen. She’s not bitter. She is tied to this place and always will be. She accepts what it is to be from here and of here. There’s no escape for Karen, not from my rapist father’s house or from Tam who wanted to kill her. She accepts where she is and who she is and what had happened. She’s like my mum. Karen is winning her race.
Let me drive you back to town, Else, as an apology. And as a thank you, for soldiering on yesterday. She pats my hand. Soldiering on is important.
She goes out to the hallway and pulls on a coat and I see past her to the vicious sea. The wind is screeching a ferocious caw. The waves are streaming over the cliffs. The grass on the headland is flattened and salted and Karen looks back at me. She smiles her soft island smile that could mean anything.
I am getting out of here. I am getting away, and this time I’m taking my mum with me.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Denise Mina
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
978-1-5040-2596-6
Published in 2015 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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