“What’s inside?” I was thinking about the pram again.
“Wrap-around video screen. Plays a video of the rooms. With sound.”
“Empty rooms?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t creepy.”
“It’s not. Well, the breathing is till you get used to it. Dave shot the film and he had a cold. He kind of whistled under his breath a bit too.”
We were back at the garden fence. I looked at the cottage, the orange light over the door, the net curtains turned see-through by the lights on inside. There was a replica of this place inside a barn in the next field. A dead man whistling. Not exactly stale bread in a bog, but not exactly the Mona Lisa.
“How will you move it?” I said. I could see the gleam of his teeth when he smiled.
“Thanks,” he said, and then he laughed at my confusion. “You think I’ll need to move it. When someone buys it or asks to show it somewhere.”
He opened the front door to the sound of Dillon sobbing, dry cracked sobs as if he’d been crying for hours.
“Daddeeeeee!” he shouted.
“What the hell?” said Gus, charging to the bedroom. “Did you switch that bloody monitor off when you were touching it?” He slammed the door behind him.
Shame and rage flooded me, both together, so strong I was almost reeling. Then together they ebbed away.
Did I? What did I know about baby monitors? Did I turn it off without knowing? Like he did with the light? Except I was a grown-up and Dillon was a baby. I could have turned the light back on but Dillon just had to cry and cry, just like yesterday, and had no way of knowing why nobody came. How I could do that to a little kid? What was wrong with me?
So I went to the kitchen, stupid bitch, to see if there was anything left to tidy up after I’d tidied up earlier when he was bathing them. The table was clear, dishes draining, cloth wrung out and hung to dry on the edge of the sink. I had already washed out some clothes for myself, spun them, and hung them up on the pulley to dry. I could sweep the floor if I could find a broom. Or I could clean out the fridge, check the dates, write a shopping list. I sure as hell couldn’t go through and sit down and see what was on the telly and just be sitting there like the Queen of Sheba when Gus came back. Imagine switching off the monitor after what they’d already been through. Except I didn’t. I knew I hadn’t, and there was one right there on the windowsill, nearly the same design, and there was no way I could have switched it off without noticing.
Maybe the batteries were dead. Finally, something I could do: I could look for new batteries. I slipped the compartment cover off the monitor on the windowsill so I knew what I needed and then eyed the kitchen, wondering which drawer was the Sellotape, cracker prize, spare key, dry biro, and battery store. There had to be one. I found it on the third go, right after tea towels and Clingfilm. All of the above, and hair bobbles and dummies too. And mid-rummage I found the other thing that always ends up there with the foreign coins and chargers for old phones you’ve flung out. Photographs. Real photo-booth photographs of two girls, one sitting on the other’s lap, both mugging and gurning and giving it duck-face for the camera. Gus only had a brother. It was too new a picture to be his mum. So this had to be Becky. One of these dark-haired girls was lying in the mortuary in Dumfries right now, waiting for them to cut her open. I couldn’t take my eyes off their shining faces, both of them. Which one was she, and who was the other one? Her sister? They looked enough the same.
“What’s that?” said Gus. I hadn’t heard him come in. I almost put the photo strip behind my back like a kid would. Look over there! And then hide it in the biscuit tin. Something about this guy unhinged me.
“Photos,” I said. “I was looking for batteries for the thingy. In case that was why we didn’t hear it, you know? Was Becky a twin, Gus?”
“Becky?” He was giving me his turned-to-stone face again. “What photos?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking about Pram, I suppose.” He crossed the room and took the pictures out of my hand. “How’s Dillon?” I said.
He stared at the photographs. “Fine. Just dropped his Spongie. And Ruby wouldn’t get it for him. She can be a right wee besom.” He turned the pictures over, looking for dates and captions, I guessed. “I bought the pram at a boot sale.” He took his wallet out of his pocket, folded the strip in half, and slid it in. “Good thinking about the batteries, by the way.” He went to the fridge and opened it. Sighed. Slammed it closed again. “Do you like red wine? How do you fancy a glass of red wine sitting outside looking at the sea?”
Maybe that was as close as he was going to get to saying sorry. Maybe he didn’t remember that he had shouted and sworn at me.
“Okay.”
“Getting frostbite,” said Gus. “Should have included that, I suppose.”
“If Dillon didn’t suck that blanket away to nothing, I’ll take it.” He smiled. “So who is it? In the pictures. With Becky.”
Gus put his hand on the pocket where his wallet was and shook his head, like a dog just out of water.
“God! I was so … I was looking at Becky. I’d never seen those ones before. That was Ros. Her that left. Becky’s pal.”
“They could have been sisters,” I said.
“Except then she wouldn’t have left and maybe Becky would still be here,” he said. He took a breath as if to say more but let it go. Took another that went the same way.
“Is this a cure for hiccups?” I asked. Gus’s laugh was like fresh air, like a cold splash of water.
“I want to tell you something,” he said. “But I’m bricking it. Come out and sit with me.” Maybe he was one of those guys who think saying sorry is the biggest deal on the planet. That would suck. But at least he was trying to say it anyway.
I was glad of the blanket, even over my coat. The wind was stiff and salty, making me lick my lips, making the cold wine taste sweeter than my first sip had in the kitchen, and I drank half the glass as we sat there in silence, listening to the dead leaves of the rowan clattering on the bricks of the path as the wind stirred them, listening to the slack sound of low tide sloshing in the distance, listening to the quiet murmur of The Big Friendly Giant on the Fisher Price soothing Dillon to sleep again. It was so long before he spoke that I jumped at the sound.
“I didn’t love her,” Gus said. “There.”
“Okay,” I said. “Things were pretty tough, I know.”
“Ever,” he said. “She was—I love the kids and I loved the idea of a family. Making a family. But I didn’t love Becky. I didn’t even like her very much. And the cops and the undertakers’ guys and the folk at the hospital last night are all treating me like I’m heartbroken.”
“I heard you on the phone,” I said. “Trying to talk her down. I saw the state you were in. I see you trying to stop the cops finding out bad stuff about her.”
“I don’t want the kids hurt, that’s all that is. But I didn’t love her, Jessie. I’m not sorry she’s gone.”
“You’re in shock,” I said.
“I would never have left her,” he said. “But all I feel now is free.”
“Okay,” I said again, needing to stop him. I couldn’t bear it. That dark-eyed girl, whichever one of them she was, cold and dead and her kids not even old enough so they’d remember her. “You’re telling me how you feel. I shouldn’t be arguing. I’m sorry.”
“Have I got a free pass to say anything then?” he said. “Get out of jail?”
I couldn’t speak. What more could there be?
“When Ruby was born,” Gus said, “I felt love like I never even imagined before. No way to explain it. Same with Dillon.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Gus. “Bugger all to do with genes. Manky wee space alien screaming his head off in a hospital blanket. Bang! It was just like someone hit the on-button.”
He took a big drink of his wine, and his throat made a dry, sore noise as he swallowed it. “I thought it was only kids that could do that to you.”
I drank every drop of wine in my glass, right down to the specks of black stuff.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he said.
“You mean … you sort of did love Becky, just not as much?” I asked. “Is that it?”
“No,” he said.
I closed my eyes and listened to the sea, to the wind, to the leaves, to The Big Friendly Giant, to the buzz of the bulb in the orange light above the door. Kept them closed so that I wouldn’t see the world rushing away from me and have to hold on. Anytime I’ve ever been up high looking down, I’ve wanted to jump. Or maybe push someone. How can you not? And that’s what I felt like then. Like I could fall off the shore into the water. Could pull him over with me, drown the pair of us.
“I think you know what I mean,” he said even quieter than before.
He was sitting close enough so I could feel the heat of his body. Except how could the heat of his body jump over two inches of cold October air so I could feel it? It wasn’t that after all. It was just every hair on my arm and my leg all down that side of me, standing up on its own wee goose-pimple mountain, trying to grow long enough to touch him. It was the blood in my brain washing up against that side of my skull trying to float my head over to his shoulder. It was the earth underneath that foot nearest his foot, tilting, hoping to slide my ankle over to twine under his.
“Gus,” I said at last. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going home, and maybe after Christmas or something, give me a call and we can go out for a drink.” Go out for a drink and never spend another day apart until we die in our bed on the same night when we’ve just turned ninety-nine.
“I’ve got no one, Jessie,” he said. “I’ll never make it to Christmas alone.”
And who did I have? Dot and Steve. Father Tommy and Sister Avril. My brother that screened my calls and pretended he didn’t. My chocolate teapot of a mum. How did I end up with no pals? When did that happen?
“I need a friend,” he said, mind-reading me.
“Friends,” I agreed. I didn’t need any more than that. If I could just see him, feel the ground tilting under my feet, feel all my hairs standing up on end, feel my blood course over to whichever bit of me was nearest him instead of going round and round me like it used to do before he was there, I could wait. I’d rather wait. I’d rather build my reserves for the next bit, in case—like it felt it might—it just plain killed me. Like a frog in a blender. One wild whirl and then gone.
But he stretched his arm up and back and around me and pulled me along the bench. Made me think of those things for shoving chips about in a casino, like you see in films. Or a window-washer’s blade pulling suds off the glass, like you see everywhere. And when he put his mouth close to me to whisper, his breath was hot, sour with the wine.
“I lied about the friends thing,” he said.
It wasn’t really that comfortable, the way he was holding me, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“You need to sleep,” I told him.
“If I put Ruby and Dillon in her room and promise not to lay a finger on you, will you sleep next to me?” he said.
“If you promise,” I said. And he did.
But that was a lie too.
Eleven
Thursday, 6 October
By six o’clock the next morning, when I woke up in the grey light of near-dawn, it all seemed like a dream.
It had started when he put his hand out, feeling for mine, on top of the covers. I’d been lying as far away from him as I could get, but I reached out and grasped his fingers, making my heart rattle high up inside me, really fast, kind of scary.
He took my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
“I don’t want to have to go to a church,” he said. For one wild moment I thought he meant a wedding. “Or take whatever minister they dish out at the crem.”
“Was Becky religious?”
“Dunno. We never talked about it. Are you?”
“They tried,” I said. “It didn’t take.”
“I don’t think I could sit through God’s plan and everlasting life and all that. Couldn’t make the kids sit through it.”
“Oh! Are you taking—” I caught my tongue, but not in time.
“Would you?” he said. “Would you not?”
“I really wouldn’t,” I said. “They’re too young.”
“Will you watch them for me then?” he said. “Whenever it ends up being?”
“Course,” I could hardly say no. “And I’ll look up the humanists. That’s the ones you’re after.”
“Cool,” said Gus.
“You won’t be offending anyone, will you?” I said. “Cos you could pick a good bit: let not your heart be troubled. That bit. In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you.”
“Christ, they really did try, didn’t they?” He turned on his side to look at me. “Don’t tell me you know the whole thing off by heart.”
I laughed. “Just the sound bites.”
“But you’re not a big fan?”
“For God so loved the world,” I said, “that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Gus let go of my hand to prop his head up. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want,” he said. “That’s what I just said.”
“I’m agreeing,” I told him. I shuffled round and propped myself up too, even though sitting like that gives me pins and needles in my arm. “That’s why I’m not a fan, is what I’m saying.” He shook his head. “Okay,” I said, “For God so loved the world, right? Pretend you’ve never heard any of it and try to finish the sentence. “For God so loved the world that … ” I waited. “Well?”
“He … ” said Gus, “cured all the diseases and banned evil?”
“Exactly.” I lay back down. “How long would it take you come up with the right answer? From our studio audience of one hundred, zero people chose gave his only begotten son. Might as well say, God so loved the world that he painted butterflies on all the wheeliebins, that whosoever saw the butterflies should not perish. Makes as much sense.”
“Well, sacrificing your only—”
“Makes you a shit dad not a great god. And it’s not like he couldn’t have had another one if he’d wanted to. Only you’re not supposed to focus on that bit.”
“So what … was it nuns, or something?” said Gus. He had put his hand flat on my belly.
“God no. Nuns would have been great. Nuns would have been a party. These were Brethren. My dad skipped off. Couldn’t stand it. Brother swallowed it whole. I just wound them up. Wound her up. My mother.”
“Likes of how?” said Gus. He had curled his hand round my side and was using me as leverage to pull himself closer.
“Didn’t take much,” I said. “When she told me Jesus died for my sins, I’d say ‘Aye, for three days, big whoop!’ That kind of thing.”
“You know who you remind me of?” said Gus. He was hanging right over me. A bit of hair was tickling one of my cheeks.
“No,” I said, thinking please God, not Becky.
“Roobs,” he said, and he leaned down and kissed me quite hard, for quite a long time, with his lips open, until I had to breathe out through my nose and it made that sort of whistling sound. And it was so weird that he would tell me I made him think of his four-year-old daughter and then kiss me like that, that it sort of overshadowed how weird it was that, lying there in him and Becky’s bed, he would kiss me at all. And I’d been wrong about needing to get ready. I think I was so electric already just with the thought of it that when he touched me, I went too far, nearly numb.
“So what do they think of you working
for St. Vincey’s now?” he asked, when he broke off. “Or aren’t Brethren funny that way?”
“Brethren are funny every way,” I said. “But they—she—gave up on me years ago.”
He shifted until he was lying on top of me, a smooth move that should have been awkward. He should have grunted and had to sort his arms and legs out. Something anyway. But he did it in one gliding move, like a snake.
“All the more for me,” he said and, when he kissed me this time, there was a rhythm to it, pushing against me and pulling away, and the rest of his body moved to the same pulse, and I kept thinking about how a snake moves through grass until I joined in and then I was part of it too, and it didn’t feel weird anymore.
Of course, he had pyjamas on, and I had kept the new knickers I’d filched from work on under the long t-shirt I’d borrowed from him, so it wasn’t all undulation. There was a bit of wriggling and buttons and that. And then it turned out, of course, that the condoms were on my side, in a drawer, so that was awkward. And after we got all that sorted out, it was actually kind of crap, to be perfectly honest. Pretty basic, completely silent, and nothing to distract me from what I was doing. So between that and the conversation we’d just been having, my mother appeared for the first time in years. Just her face, just behind his shoulder, looking at me like it was all she could do not to retch. And as soon as I’d had that thought, retching was all I could think about, so I held my breath and gritted my teeth, and if he had kept going, I think I would have got up in the morning and left, never seen them again.
But he stopped.
“What?” he said, pulling right up until his arms were straight and looking down at me.
“Ghosts,” I told him. “Sorry.”
He drew carefully away from me, shifted over until he was just to the side and lay down with one arm and one leg still over my body.
“Did some guy hurt you, Jessie?” he said. “Is the … can I say the word?”
“Feathers?”
“Is that a bed thing?”
“Not the way you mean,” I said. “No guy ever hurt me, no.”
The Day She Died Page 10
