by Mark Tufo
‘He was a smashing lad, Willy,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Willy McCunnie. The chap who lived in your house before you.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘He spent almost as much time in this surgery as me near the end, you know. Lovely fella. Was cancer that finished him off. Such a shame.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Ah, well, he was past his prime,’ the doctor said, navigating his computer with ponderous speed, looking from keyboard to screen after virtually every key press. ‘We’re practically neighbours, you know.’
‘Are we?’
‘Yes... May and I live just down from Jeannie and Lou.’
‘Who?’
‘Jeannie and Lou. The twins. You must have seen them. Lovely girls.’
‘We’ve seen them,’ she smirked.
The doctor checked her blood pressure and measured her height and weight, then checked George over too. Dr Kerr had been talking constantly throughout the appointment and Michelle wondered if he’d listened to anything she’d said. He had. He’d taken it all in. He’d been doing this job for so long he made it look easier than he should have, to the point where it seemed he was no longer concentrating. It took Michelle by surprise when his expression suddenly changed and became more serious. He looked straight into her eyes and held her gaze. ‘Your wrist,’ he said. ‘I noticed it was tender. I could see from the way you were holding it.’
‘I twisted it the other night.’
‘A bit accident prone, are you?’
‘No more than anyone else. Why?’
‘Just that you’ve had a lot of little injuries recently.’
She shifted awkwardly in her seat. ‘It’s par for the course when you have kids. Always on the go, you know how it is...’
He smiled. ‘I know how it is. Is everything all right at home?’
‘Fine. It will be once we’re settled, anyway.’
‘Good,’ he said, smiling again. He adjusted his glasses and looked at his computer screen, struggling to control the cursor with the mouse. ‘Fluoxetine. Now, how long have you been taking that?’
She struggled to remember. ‘Six or seven months, I think. Maybe a little longer.’
‘Things been tough?’
‘Very tough.’
‘The depression any better?’
‘I’m getting there.’
‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘No, we just wanted to register as patients and the lady said I had to book an appointment so...’
‘No, not here, here. Is that why you moved to Thussock?’
‘Partly.’
‘Do you want to come off the pills?’
‘Eventually. Now’s really not the time, though.’
‘Why not?’
‘New house... my husband’s got a new job and the girls have started a new school...’
‘Fair enough. Got enough to last you a while?’
‘A few weeks.’
‘Will you come in and see me again when you’re running out?’
‘Okay.’
‘And in the meantime, don’t do anything silly. If you’re feeling low, come straight back and see me. Take no crap from Alice. Call at the house if it’s out of hours.’
‘Thanks. I’m not about to do anything stupid, you know.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘I think I’d have already done it by now if I was.’
‘I get that impression. You seem like you have your head screwed on, Michelle.’
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. ‘Thanks.’
He paused and looked at the screen again, doing all he could to make his next question sound as casual as possible. ‘And how are things between you and your husband? You’ve been under a lot of pressure, I imagine.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘I’m sure that’s true. You’re okay, though?’
A moment of hesitation. ‘We’re okay.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of the family.’
‘They’re great kids.’
‘I’ve no doubt. Just remember, if you need to see me, I’m only a little way down the road.’
‘I will,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
And Michelle watched the doctor as he added to his notes, and all she could think was he knows.
Michelle phoned Jackie and arranged to skip the toddler group session and do coffee together instead. She didn’t feel like spending time with the sour, stony-faced women in the community hall. She felt like going back home even less.
Jackie’s terraced house was right on the main road through town, protected from the traffic by a waist-high wire-mesh fence and a narrow sunken pavement. Over the years the constant fumes had blackened the front of the building. Half-hearted attempts had been made to clean patches, but that had just spread the muck about. The whole building was dirty-looking.
Michelle drove past then took the next left and pulled up behind a car she thought she recognised. It was an old Ford Focus. Dirty and full of crap, it was splattered with mud and its exhaust was hanging off. It took her a while to remember where she’d seen it before. It had been less than a week, but it felt much longer. When she saw the man who’d stopped to speak to her and Tammy at the bus-stop last Sunday evening, it clicked. He emerged from Jackie’s front door and gave way to Michelle. Shifty-looking bugger, she thought. He was wearing the same faded football shirt as before, the same denim jacket too.
‘Sorry,’ she said as they side-stepped each other and both did a double-take. The man made less of an effort than she did, brushing up against her.
‘No apology necessary,’ he said, staring for a little too long. ‘You must be Michelle.’
The seedy man made her flesh crawl, but she did what she could not to let it show. ‘That’s right. How did you...?’
‘Psychic,’ he said quickly. He broke into a huge smile and an over-exaggerated laugh which seemed to fill the entire street. ‘Not really. I’m many things, lover, but psychic ain’t one of them. Jack’ll tell you.’
Michelle looked up and saw Jackie standing on the doorstep, wearing a short dressing gown and not a lot else. ‘Piss off, Dez,’ she said. ‘That useless bugger is my other half,’ she explained as she beckoned Michelle inside. ‘Really landed on my feet with that one, eh?’
‘Nice to meet you again,’ Michelle said, turning back around, but Dez had already gone. A couple of seconds later his car raced past the front of the house at a ridiculous speed, the noise of its tired exhaust taking an age to disappear.
‘Again?’ Jackie asked, puzzled. Michelle explained as she followed her into her small, cluttered house. They went through into the kitchen, every available bit of work surface covered with crockery, saucepans and food.
‘I was having a bit of trouble with my eldest last Sunday evening. She had a strop and walked off. I was sitting in the bus shelter with her, trying to get her to come home, and he stopped to check we were okay. I think he was just concerned.’
‘You reckon? Perving, more like. Funny, though, he never said anythin’.’
‘Probably forgot about it ’til now. I had.’ Michelle thought she should try and steer the conversation into safer waters. ‘So what does Dez do?’
‘As little as he has to,’ Jackie answered quickly as she filled the kettle.
‘And you’re okay with that?’
‘Don’t have a lot of choice, really. As long as he brings enough money in, I’ve learned not to ask too many questions.’
‘Like that, is it?’
She laughed. ‘I’m making it sound worse than it is. Dez isn’t scared of hard work, but he can’t hold down a regular job to save his life. He does odd jobs for people, helps folks out, all cash in hand. Everybody knows Dez.’
Michelle couldn’t help asking. ‘What kind of odd jobs?’
‘Whatever needs doin’. Look, I k
now it sounds dodgy, but it’s all kosher. He just does things different to everyone else, that’s all. People jump to the wrong conclusion too easy about Dezzie.’
‘Sorry, I...’
‘I didn’t mean you, love. He gets it all the time. Just this Saturday gone Sergeant Ross stopped him for no good reason. Mind you, he was off to see his mate with a load of beer and knocked-off DVDs in the back of the car. Dez don’t exactly help himself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah, he asks for trouble half the time. Carryin’ on like he’d a load of hard-core porn stashed away or worse.’
‘And he hadn’t?’
‘It was a stack of Star Trek videos. Him and his mate Murray, that’s the guy who works up on the fracking site by Falrigg, are proper geeks. Sergeant Ross thought Dez was into sumthin’ mucky, fact is him and Murray were just plannin’ a Star Trek all-nighter.’
Michelle laughed at the ridiculousness of the story, then took her coffee from Jackie and followed her into the living room where the children were playing. The room was scattered with toys. Scattered. She thought that was a good word to use to describe the whole house; everything where it had been last used, nothing where it should be. She picked her way through the chaos to get to a seat, having to shift newspapers, TV listings magazines, remote controls and toys so she could sit down. Jackie took them from her. ‘Sorry about the state of the place,’ she said, noticing Michelle’s wandering eyes. ‘Fast as I clean it up, Dez and the kids trash it again.’
‘You should see my house,’ Michelle said quickly, worried that she’d caused offence. ‘We’ve still got a load of boxes to unpack. It takes forever. It took me weeks to get everything ready for the move and it’s going to take twice as long to sort it all out at this end.’
‘You sure you want to?’
‘What?’
‘Unpack? I mean with everything that’s happened here since you arrived? Ken Potter killing that girl then doin’ himself in... your other half finding the body... you sure you’re safe here?’
‘You taking the piss? Tell me you’re taking the piss?’
‘Course I am,’ Jackie laughed. ‘Jeez, you’re easy to wind up. I was just messin’ with you. Like I said the other day, I know what you’re goin’ through. Thussock takes some getting used to.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Actually, it’s not the place, it’s the people. Most of them are all right, it’s just that when they’ve lived here all their lives, they’ve never known nothin’ else, you get me? What’s wrong to us is normal to them. Dez has got these cousins on his dad’s side what live right up in the Highlands, miles away from anyone else. He took me up to meet them once – just the once – and I swear they were the weirdest buggers I’ve ever met. Had their own words for things, like they was talkin’ their own language. Kept a bloody pig in the bathroom.’
‘A pig in the bathroom? You serious?’
‘Absolutely. Thing is, they didn’t have nowhere else to keep it and it was a downstairs bathroom so it kinda made sense. Point is, sittin’ having a piss with a pig lookin’ up at you was normal in their house. If they came to your place they’d be freaked out if you didn’t have no livestock in your bathroom. You get me?’
‘What’re you saying? The further north you go, the more screwed up people are?’
Jackie just shook her head and smiled. ‘I’m sure you had your fair share of fuck-ups down south too.’
‘You can say that again. I could tell you a few tales.’
‘Then we’ll do that one night. We’ll get some drink in, get rid of the kids and the men, then sit here talking bollocks ’til we’ve drunk so much we’ve forgotten our own names. Probably do us both good, that would.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ Michelle said, feeling herself slowly beginning to relax. Being here felt reassuringly, unexpectedly, normal. She drank her coffee and watched the children. They were tolerating each other, warming to one another’s company. In her book, that was good enough.
‘So your man’s at Walpoles?’ Jackie asked.
‘Yeah. Driving work, mainly.’
‘That Barry Walpole can be a bit of a bugger at times.’
‘Can’t all men?’
‘You’re not wrong there.’
‘Scott’s a typical bloke. Never tells me anything about work.’
‘Ah, he’ll be fine, I’m sure. Thing about Barry is he’s a big fish in a small pond, you know? Gets himself on every committee he gets wind of, jus’ ’cause he reckons he’s some big businessman or sumthin’. Likes the sound of his own voice.’
‘I get that impression.’
‘But he’s not the worst,’ she added. ‘Unless you rub him up the wrong way or try to short change him, then he’ll come gunnin’ for you.’
‘You’re not making me feel any better, Jackie. There’s no one more stubborn than my other half.’
Jackie, still barely dressed, pulled her dressing gown tighter around her and watched Michelle drinking her coffee and watching the kids. She waited a few moments longer, the silence getting ever louder, before asking another question. ‘What are you doin’ in Thussock, Michelle? You don’t seem the type, no disrespect, nor your family neither. You’re better than this place. Why sell up and move here?’
Michelle looked anywhere but at Jackie. How much did she tell her? ‘Scott’s business went belly-up. We needed a fresh start.’
‘Yeah, but there’s fresh starts an’ there’s fresh starts. You didn’t need to come out all this way, did you? Or if you did, why not keep going that little bit further and go somewhere that’s not such a bloody dead end?’
‘Housing’s cheap here, and we’re short of cash. Really short of cash. Scott’s a builder. He’s going to do up the house and then...’
‘And then what? Housing’s cheap around these parts because there’s more folk movin’ out than in. They did up a load of houses on the other side of town a couple of years back an’ half of them are still empty. So are things really that bad, Chelle?’
Still avoiding eye-contact, Michelle looked past Jackie and out of the window, watching the slow trickle of eye-level traffic driving up and down Thussock high street. She wiped away a tear. ‘Yep,’ she answered, voice cracking, ‘things really are that bad.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not supposed to.’
‘Says who?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘I’ll not tell. Honest, Chelle, I’m no gossip. I don’t talk to many folks, and Dez never listens to anythin’ I tell him.’
‘Honestly, it’s very boring. You wouldn’t want to hear it.’
‘Maybe it’s not about me wanting to hear it, though? Maybe it’s all about you gettin’ stuff off your chest? I seen it in you from when we first started talking the other day. You’re holding onto things. Carryin’ stuff for other people.’
‘You’re wrong, Jackie. It’s been a tough few months, that’s all.’
‘No disrespect, love, and tell me to mind my own business if you want, but I think it’s more than that. I was with this bloke once... he liked to drink. Never let me do anything. When things went wrong – an’ they usually did ’cause he was pissed most the time – he’d blame me, tell me it was all my fault. Thing is, when you hear that stuff for long enough, you start thinkin’ it’s true.’
‘Scott’s not like that.’
‘I didn’t say he was.’
‘Like I said, it’s complicated.’
‘And like I said, you’ll do yourself no good holdin’ onto it all.’
‘It’s the kids more than anything.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Michelle was crying freely now, fishing for a tissue from her handbag. Jackie threw a half-empty box across the room to her. ‘They’re the ones who are struggling most. It’s not fair. We make the mistakes, they pay the price.’
‘They�
�re not stupid, though. They know what’s what, do kids. They know more than we give ’em credit for.’
‘So what happened, Jackie?’
‘What about?’
‘You and your fella? The one who drank?’
‘My dad happened. See, I thought he’d washed his hands off me on account of him not likin’ Kevin. Turns out he knew exactly what was goin’ on... he’d worked it all out long before I had. I went to see Dad when I couldn’t take no more, an’ he beat the shit out of Kev. Nearly bloody killed him. Took nearly two years, but it got sorted in the end. This kind of stuff always does. I reckon it’s better just to take a deep breath and deal with it.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ Michelle said, wiping her eyes furiously, cursing herself.
‘Why not?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘I’ve staked everything on coming here and trying to make things better, Jackie. I need to give it a chance.’
‘Makes sense,’ Jackie said, drawing her legs up and watching Michelle over the rim of her mug. ‘But that just reminds me of sumthin’ Dad used to say.’
‘What was that?’
‘He said things don’t get better, people do.’
Michelle didn’t say anything at first. ‘I could do with a drink,’ she said eventually.
‘Another coffee?’
‘No, a drink drink.’
‘Bit early for that.’
‘Shame.’
‘One night soon, yeah? We’ll have that session we were talking about.’
‘You’re on.’
Another pause. Michelle sensed more questions were coming, but did nothing to encourage them. ‘So is that it then?’ Jackie asked after a while. ‘Your man’s business went tits up? That’s all you’re gonna tell me?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘I heard what you said about housin’, but couldn’t you just have downsized, sumthin’ like that? Why d’you move so far? You got family up this way?’
‘No, none.’
