House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  “Lars heard some of it.”

  “And this was today,” he said, not quite a question. “Or we’d have heard at the shift change.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “Amazing,” he said. Then he blinked his eyes hard again a couple of times. “I need to get a hold of myself or I’ll lose a lens. Such vanity. I should wear my specs and be done with it. Congratulations, Ali. Whatever you did, I applaud you.”

  I gave him a tight smile, but I couldn’t speak. Flour bombs going off again. Only this time they were more like fireworks, setting light to little dry scraps of memory.

  “It was Julia,” I said to Dr. F as I turned to go. “Not me.”

  I bounded up the stairs to her room and walked in with a cursory couple of raps on the door.

  “Ju?” I called.

  “I’m having a shit!” she shouted from behind the half-open bathroom door.

  “You sound like you’re feeling better again,” I said. “I know what it is you’re here to try and find out. I’m going to help you. But you need to come back to Sylvie’s room.”

  She blatted the door open and strode out. “What?” she said. “How?”

  “Aren’t you going to wash your hands?” I said. “Or flush the bog?”

  “Oh, FFS! I wasn’t shitting. I said that because it’s inappropriate and inappropriate is textbook histrionic.” I gave her a look. “Yeah, I know you’ve busted me, but I’ve got in the habit. And it’s a good laugh too.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to can it,” I told her. “You’re going to have to sit quietly and let your elders and betters talk about important stuff, okay?”

  I watched a few candidate comebacks cross her mind and her face, but in the end she nodded. I took her arm and pulled her out of her room and down the stairs.

  “Your dad,” I said, once we were in the side corridor that led to Sylvie. “Ralph, I mean. Ralph Boswell? You said he tarted himself up for a fancy woman. I’m guessing he got his teeth fixed as well as buying contact lenses. Am I right?”

  “He looked like a game-show host,” Julia said. “From photos, I mean. I was too young to remember him for real.”

  “Yeah, you said,” I told her, squeezing her tight just for a second as I opened the door and ushered her in. “Stay here until I get back, okay? Give me your phone till I put my number in. If anyone comes, call me. Anyone. Okay?”

  I made my way to the staff kitchen, sure I would find someone there who could beep Lars. As luck would have it, I found Lars himself. Him, Belle, Hinny, Surraya, and Yvonne all turned solemn eyes on me as I came in.

  “How much did you tell them?” I said.

  “Well, you know … the watch,” Lars said. “Shoot me.”

  “Did anyone else go to look at it?” I said. There were frowns all round. “Because this is so insane I’m having a hard time believing it’s happening.”

  “He’s your boy and you love him,” Belle said. “At least Dr. Ferris didn’t turn him in. He’ll get off with a warning.”

  I blinked. “Oh God,” I said. “That would be bad enough, Belle. I think whatever’s really going on is worse by a mile. Lars, can you come with me back to Sylvie’s room?”

  “I was going to insist,” Lars said.

  It wasn’t until we were halfway there I realised he was coming to guard them from me not help me guard them.

  Julia was already sitting hitched onto Sylvie’s bed with her arm around Sylvie’s head like a … What I thought of was a roll-bar. For protection against whatever incoming blows I had brought with me.

  “I don’t really know where to start,” I said. “So just promise me you’ll keep quiet and let me get through it all? That means you, Julia,” I added.

  She nodded but she was looking at Sylvie and Sylvie was looking back at her, sliding out of focus but then returning.

  “There’s good news and there’s bad news. But most of all, there’s answers. Okay?” She nodded. “Good news first. That’s your sister.”

  I don’t know what I expected, but what I got—as well as a “Jesus! Seriously?” from Lars—was just Julia nodding her head slowly as she dotted little looks at Sylvie’s hair and eyes and lips and hands, like the way a little animal touches down its nose when it’s picking up scents from the ground.

  “Sissy,” she said. “Yes, I remember. I really do.”

  “You remember her?” said Lars.

  But it didn’t seem strange to me. Angel remembered what happened when he was three. He knew there was someone missing from our family. That trip of a lifetime? Six months in Australia, just the three of us, and the dolly he wouldn’t let go of? I had lost count of the number of nights he woke up clawing his way out of his little bed, rushing about the strange hotel rooms, opening cupboards and bathroom doors, searching. I had lost count and then I had taken the memory and buried it down, down deep, like you would bury a battered corpse and build a house on top and plant a tree and let the leaves fall and rot until …

  “But there’s bad news too.”

  “She killed him,” said Julia. “Sylvia killed him.”

  “She did,” I agreed.

  “Your dad?” said Lars. “Dr. F reckons he’s golfing, you know.”

  “Garran Swain is golfing,” I said. “Ralph Boswell is dead.”

  “She hurt his middle,” said Julia.

  “I think it was his head,” Lars said softly. “The post-mortem report.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Julia said. “His head bashed in so bad a bit of his glasses was embedded in his skull. I know. I do own a smartphone, you know. But she ‘hurt his middle.’ So, you know, I say he had it coming. She should have bitten ‘his middle’ off.”

  “Jesus,” said Lars again and his voice was as thick as a burp, his throat open as his bile rose, father of those three beautiful girls.

  “So … ” Julia said, still gazing at Sylvie. “Just to make sure I’ve got this straight. My mother made out he’d left and hid his body. And she sold the Ferrises this place at a knock-down price and in return they kept Sylvie here instead of her going to trial and then to jail? Is that how it goes?”

  “That’s about the size of it,” I said.

  “And she buried him at Dundrennan Abbey,” Julia said. “Where he rested in peace until the floods came.”

  “She tried to disguise him,” I said. “Cheap watch, cheap belt. No one would think that guy in the Asda jeans was Ralph Boswell, would they?”

  “It was definitely Mum who did that bit?” said Julia, looking up at me.

  “Definitely,” I said. “Sylvie couldn’t have managed it when she was fifteen. She was too young to drive and far too small to manhandle a man’s body. Dig a grave. Your mum did it. To protect her.”

  Julia looked down at Sylvie’s blank face. “How did you get that?” she asked her. “The bitch wouldn’t spit on me if I was burning.” There were tears in her eyes as she looked up again. “Are you definitely sure Sylvie didn’t do it all? They say you get strong when you’re scared. Adrenalin and all that. And I was nicking Mum’s car when I was fifteen.”

  “Yes, but Sylvie doesn’t actually know where he was buried. She thought she did, but she guessed wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” Julia said. “How the hell do you know what Sylvie thinks?”

  “She’s been drawing it,” I said. “If you ask her to draw a house and a tree and a person she draws … ” I rummaged a pen out of my bag and dashed off the few lines, then showed it to Julia.

  Lars cleared his throat. “It’s even more certain than that, actually. He wasn’t buried at the Abbey the whole time. He was actually somewhere else first. He’s been moved. A few years ago, while Sylvie was in here.”

  “How do they know?” I said, turning to him.

  “The soil,” said Lars. “Well, not soil. What do they call it? Humus. P
lant matter. Clinging around him.”

  “Was it like a pine tree or a fir tree or something?” I said.

  “Aw man, what did Boney say?” said Lars. “Cupressus something. Cupressus semper … Sounded more like a school motto than a tree to me.”

  Julia pulled her arm free and squirmed her way up the bed to lean against the bed head. She gathered Sylvie to her and held her tight with both arms. “Cupressus Sempervivens,” she said. “It’s a kind of juniper. Stinks like a skunk.”

  “She buried him there until he was unrecognisable,” I said, speaking more to myself than anything.

  “Then she dug him up,” said Julia, taking over, “gave him some trinkets he wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole, and shifted him to a public place.” Her words were harsh but the tears were falling. “My dad’s dead. And my mum’s going to prison for whatever the hell you call what she did. And my poor sister’s obviously never getting out of the loony bin, is she?” She gave a helpless sob. “I had to meddle, didn’t I? I had to kick it all up and now I’ve got no one.”

  “You’ve got answers,” said Lars.

  She nodded. “Yep,” she said. “Good point. I got what I said I wanted.” She dropped a kiss on Sylvie’s head and lifted her face with a strand of Sylvie’s thistledown hair still stuck to her lip. “I’ve got the cold hard truth. Wonderful. I always knew something was … ”

  “Missing?” I said, thinking of Angelo.

  “Hidden,” said Julia. “Not anymore. Lucky me. I’ve got all the answers now.” She gathered Sylvie to her again and rocked her.

  Lars, who was so used to letting people feel like shit, just stood there. But inside me a volcano was rumbling and my breath was coming quicker and quicker. She was speaking to me: “Mmhhmmmm.”

  “Bullshit!” I said. Sylvie twitched, reacting to the harsh sound. “That’s not the cold hard truth. That’s just a different story.”

  It had to be coincidence but, as Julia looked up, Sylvie looked at me too. I saw for the first time that they really were sisters.

  “Your sister killed your dad and then just happened to turn catatonic?” I said. I was pacing. I thought it was stagey when Dr. Ferris did it, but I couldn’t contain the bulge and burst of all the ideas going off inside me. “That seems a bit convenient, doesn’t it? Not to mention that fact that she’s suddenly a bit less catatonic all of a sudden just exactly as the bones come to the surface again. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Doesn’t it strike you as pretty odd too that Dr. Ferris would suddenly employ a fucked-up beautician, whose PVG comes through miraculously quickly and who gets to look after Sylvie overnight? And—most of all—doesn’t it seem a bit odd that your mother would let you come here, Julia?”

  Julia searched my face and then Lars’s. “Well, after all the bedwetting and fire setting she had to put me somewhere, but … yes, actually.”

  I screwed my face up, trying to think, still marching up and down the little stretch of carpet, not caring how it looked. It was helping. And she was helping too. “Mmmhhhmmm,” she said. I nodded. She was right. It made no sense. If Mona Swain loved her older daughter so much that she covered up a murder and kept her safe and quiet at Howell Hall instead of in prison, she would want her younger daughter well away. You keep your children safe. Like we did with Angel. Safe from the pain of it, safe from the memories.

  “Well,” said Lars. “Sylvie’s been all right here for all these years. It maybe seemed like the best place for you.”

  But Julia had caught the fire that was in me. She wasn’t going to settle for another story. She shook the comfort away and stared hard at Sylvie, thinking. “Now, of all times,” she said. “I mean, if my mother knew the jig was up, the bones washing to the surface, the story bound to break … Except—ohhh.” She rubbed her head and now she screwed her eyes up too. “The time’s wrong. I was in here before the police found the body, wasn’t I?”

  “How long would you say you’d been trying to get in here?” I asked her.

  Julia stuck out her bottom lip and puffed a breath up her face. “Couple of years?” she said. “When my dad left—Garran, I mean—I went snooping. I thought he was in here. I found receipts, you know.”

  “It doesn’t fit,” I said. “Mona and Sylvie make sense. But you don’t, Julia. And I sure as hell don’t. And Angelo’s phone and the watch … ” I had ground down into silence when my phone rang. Marco again.

  “What?” I said.

  “Ali, this is getting ridiculous,” he said. “I left work early like you said, I came home like you said, and the wee toerag’s not in.”

  “What?” I said. I spoke so sharply that Sylvie jerked out of her drift and whimpered. Julia pulled her closer and glared at me. “What do you mean, not in? Where is he?”

  “He’s out on a bloody date,” Marco said. “Left every towel in the house soaking wet on the bathroom floor, used all the hot water, and borrowed my aftershave. See, this is typical you, Als. You buy all his crap, thinking he was broken-hearted and now she’s clicked her fingers again and he’s off.”

  “Again?” I said.

  “It’s the same lassie from last time! He was never going to go outside again and he was finished with school after the way she treated him. Then she phones him up and he’s away back for more.”

  “The girl who stood him up in front of all her friends and laughed at him?” I said. Lars and Julia were watching my end of the conversation, avidity in their eyes. “Do you know where they are? Go and get him home and spit in her Coke while you’re at it! What’s wrong with you?”

  “Ocht now,” Marco said. “She’s not a bad lassie. She’s got some class. Good family and all that. Bloody stupid name, but that’s not her fault.”

  As he spoke, I felt a grating and grinding somewhere deep inside me as wheels that were stuck began to turn and slabs of meaning heaved themselves until they hung over cold black holes and slid home.

  “Dido,” I said, my voice parched.

  “That’s her,” said Marco.

  “That bitch!” said Julia.

  “Where are they?” I asked Marco. My voice had dried out even more, to a croak.

  “Och, Als. They’re fine,” he said. “They’ll be at the pictures or sitting in a café. Or they’ll park up somewhere with the seats flat. Nothing we didn’t do.”

  “Find him and get him away from her,” I rasped at him.

  “Ali,” Marco said. “Don’t upset yourself. Come on!”

  How many times a day did he tell me to come on? How many times in the last week? How many times in the six months I was il—

  I caught myself. I could almost feel myself reaching for the thought as it formed, taking it by its neck and squeezing it until it hung grey and limp in my hand. I wasn’t ill; I was mourning. Or at least, I was trying to.

  “Do what I’m asking, Marco,” I said. “For once, just listen to me, eh?”

  “That could be awkward,” Marco said. “I don’t want to cause trouble. Not when things are finally looking up for us.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “You think her mum’s going to sack me because my son won’t go out with her daughter?”

  Marco said nothing and into his silence came memories. His face when he was on the phone, her sharp look when I said his name, the call log on our landline. A great big sack of understanding came swinging in like a sandbag and socked me in my guts. I hung up without another word.

  “Lars,” I said. “The Ferrises’s other business.”

  “Eh?” said Lars. “What about it? You mean Springview House …

  or wait. You mean her family business?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” I said. “The builder’s yard. T&C, right?”

  “What about it?”

  I swallowed vomit, leaving a bitter blackness in the back of my mouth. “Nothing,” I said. “Julia? How well do you
know Dido Ferris? Do you know where she hangs out? Where she’d be likely to go if she was out for a laugh one night?”

  Julia shrugged. “Why?”

  “Because she’s the missing link and she’s got my son.”

  She had bewitched him, picked him up in her car, goaded him to photograph the hand and its watch at the Abbey. She had stolen his phone and used it to call the police. She stole the watch. Then, when she was done with him, she had tossed him aside and broken him. And she’d laughed about it—or at least talked about it—with her mum. Whatever it was she wanted with him now, I had to stop it happening.

  “Lars,” I said, “I have no idea what’s going on, but either I need your keys back or I need you to come with me. And I need you to phone your pal and ask him what make and model of car stopped at my door the night the bones were found. Somebody’ll have written it down. They were all still at the crime scene when Dido came and Angelo jumped out his window to meet her.”

  “I can tell you that,” said Julia. “Roughly. It’s like a red Mini or a pink Jeep or some stupid chick car like that. But are you really both going to go shooting off? What about us?”

  And then all of us jumped, even Sylvie, at the sound of a voice from the half-open door.

  Twenty-three

  “I’ll take care of you both,” said Dr. F. He looked as if he’d been running, his chest heaving up and down and his face shining.

  “Nice ambiguity!” Julia said. “Could you get any creepier? And are you wearing a white coat to look like Dr. Frankenstein, by the way? Just for a bit of extra—”

  “I’m wearing a white coat because … ” His voice trailed away. “Comfort blanket, I suppose you’d say,” he said at last with an unhappy laugh. “The SCCE are just off the phone. Today’s the day. Two inspectors are on their way from Glasgow as we speak.”

  “They won’t be here till God knows when,” said Lars with a glance at his watch.

  “It’s part of the plan,” said Dr. F. “They start at the fag end of the day shift. The manager I just spoke to said they get the most accurate picture of true protocols and procedures at that time of day.”