Everything She Forgot

by Lisa Ballantyne

  “You look good.” He placed the baseball cap on her head and led her to the wing mirror so that she could look at herself.

  “I look like a boy.”

  “You look cool.”

  “I look like a boy.”

  “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  The streets were busy and he held her wrist as they navigated people on the pavement. She stopped and dug her heels in and pulled against him until he released her.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t like getting my wrist held.”

  “It’s busy. You could get lost.”

  She had her hands pushed into her anorak pockets and was glaring up at him, fixing him with her good eye. The pavement was dirty with litter, and the street smelled of car exhaust. The sharp scent of vinegar and the sweet smell of potato wafted from a chip shop across the street, and George felt hunger again cramp his stomach.

  She pushed past him, hands still in her pockets, so that she seemed to shimmy as she walked. He didn’t want to argue, so he let her walk a pace in front of him, tugging at her jacket when he needed her to turn a corner. At the main road, George took a pinch of her jacket and tried to take her across when the traffic had stopped.

  “No,” she said, scowling at him again. “You can’t just walk across. You have to wait for the green man.” She reached up to press the pedestrian button.

  George sighed deeply and put his hands in his pockets, then found that she slid her hand through his arm as they waited, as she had when he took her from school.

  “If you’d gone when I said, we’d be across by now.”

  “But it’s not allowed,” she said, pressing her lips together as she looked up at him.

  Across the road there were shops and department stores and she was distracted by a busker with a guitar, cymbals between his knees and a drum on his back, singing out of tune, and then by a street vendor selling small battery-powered dogs that yelped and wagged their tails. She crouched down to look at them, pointing and smiling up at George. He asked her if she wanted one, but she shook her head. When they left the toys, she continued to walk slowly, her head turned by Goths with flowing purple skirts, an old man asking for spare change, and a sheik with a long black beard.

  “Have you ever been to a big city before?” he asked her.

  “I’ve been to Inverness.”

  “I told you I’d take you on an adventure.”

  “Where are we now?”

  “We’re in Newcastle. I’ve not been here before, either.”

  “Why did we come, then?”

  “We’re just passing through.”

  THEY ATE AT a café off Northumberland Street, in a booth in the back corner. George and Moll both had fish and chips with tomato sauce and vinegar. The waitress was Italian, wearing a pink apron and a lipsticked smile.

  “Can I get you boys anything else?” she said, wiping their table with a dirty cloth.

  Moll’s eyes opened wide when she heard, but her mouth was still full of chips, and George was grateful.

  “Just the bill.”

  “Just the bill?” she said, her accent blended with Geordie.

  “The little man doesn’t want some ice cream?”

  “OK,” said George, “the bill and … strawberry ice cream,” so pleased that Moll had passed for a boy.

  “Chocolate,” Moll corrected him.

  “He’ll have a chocolate ice cream, then,” said George, nodding.

  “SHE will have an ice cream,” Moll said, almost shouting. “I’m a girl, not a boy, even though you want me to be.”

  The waitress smiled and nodded, pulling crumbs to the edge of the table with her cloth.

  George gave the waitress one of his special smiles, but as soon as her back was turned he placed a ten-pound note on the table.

  “Get up right now,” he hissed at Moll. “You just blew your chance of a chocolate ice cream.”

  Moll got up with him, but he didn’t touch her until they were outside the restaurant. As soon as they were around the corner, George lifted her into his arms. He felt her pulling against him and broke into a run. The movement and his own urgency meant that she couried into him and he held her close, but as soon as he stopped running and they neared the street where the car was parked, Moll began to fight him.

  “Let me down,” she said, and he felt her kicking him, her small fists pushing back against his chest. Her face was once more full of the anger and fear he had seen when he tried to drag her to the car in Thurso.

  He could feel his heart beating and sweat on his upper lip. Not for the first time he wondered how it was all going to end. At the entrance to the multistory parking garage, he set her down. She pulled away from him, and leaned against one of the metallic, graffitied walls—her arms folded and her chin down. Despite the large brim of her cap, George could tell that she was glaring at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, squatting down in front of her. “We had to get out of there. I didn’t mean to grab you like that. Come on—let’s go back to the car.”

  He got up and took a couple of steps from her, and found that she followed, arms still folded and chin down. There were one or two people walking to their cars, and so George walked slightly in front of her, not daring to speak in case she made a fuss. He kept her just in sight and returned to the car, unlocking her door first and holding it open for her.

  He was still learning about her, and did not yet know how to behave around her. He remembered how she had allowed him to rock her to sleep the night before, and thought that if he were to win her trust he would have to woo her. Confrontation only seemed to harden her to him, and he could understand why.

  He stood, waiting beside the open door, watching her dark face and folded arms and the crisscross steps she made, willing her to come to him. To his great relief she got inside the car, but awkwardly, refusing to unfold her arms.

  He got into the driver’s seat, put the key in the ignition, then turned to her, both hands pressed between his knees.

  “I’ll get you another ice cream when we get to the hotel,” he tried.

  “I don’t want any ice cream. I want to go home.” She wasn’t looking at him, but rather speaking down into her folded arms.

  George ran his hands through his hair. Bribery wasn’t working and he didn’t want to frighten her again. His only option was to talk to her, although he didn’t know if she would understand. He took her cap off, so that he could see her face properly. He saw that she was on the verge of crying again. She was turned away from him, her arms still folded, looking out of the window with her lower lip quivering.

  He took a deep breath, wondering how to phrase what he wanted to say. She seemed so little suddenly, and her vulnerability made him feel wretched. He decided it was no time to be serious.

  “Are you in the cream puff?” he said, grinning and poking her gently in the side. He had spent his whole life teasing girls, it seemed. It was what he knew best.

  She elbowed his hand away from her.

  “You are too, admit it. You’re in the cream puff.”

  “I am not in the cream puff,” she said, frowning at him, her mouth pinched and her voice haughty. It reminded him of the night he proposed to Kathleen in Glasgow Green and her mother’s coldness toward him. He took heart from the fact that Moll’s eyes were no longer threatening tears and that her piqued anger seemed to have stopped her lip quivering.

  “Do you know what the cream puff means?”

  “Yes,” she said, still frowning.

  “What’s it mean then?”

  “In a huff, but I’m not.”

  “Who told you about the cream puff?”

  “My mummy,” she said, lips wet, swallowing.

  George smiled, remembering Kathleen riled. “Your mum’s a good one for the cream puff too, believe me, I remember.”

  George poked her again, on her right side, just below her rib cage, leaning down to whisper into her neck, knowing that his words and breath
would tickle. “You’re in the huff, admit it. You’re in the cream puff.”

  She twisted away from him, touching her neck and smiling, but quickly correcting herself.

  “Am not,” she said, facing him, her chin forward and the gap in her teeth showing.

  “Are sot!”

  “Not!”

  “Sot!”

  “Not, not, not.”

  “Sot, sot, sot.”

  He tweaked her side again, and she smiled but then turned around in her seat and knelt, facing him, so that they were eye to eye. He knew that the game was over. She was sitting back on her heels in the front seat, and he noticed that, like him, she not only had long legs but a long back too. He faced her, letting his chin drop a little so that he had to look up at her. In a bar, that worked with girls: they seemed to like his submission.

  “I want to go home now,” she said.

  “I can’t take you back just yet.”

  Her face darkened again, her good eye considering him and the corners of her mouth turned down. He had broken one of the most basic rules. He had left school at fourteen but he had watched smarter men than him fail with women. Positivity was the first rule of flirtation. Can’t, won’t, never, no were words not to be uttered in the early stages.

  He pressed his palms together, as if in prayer.

  “Listen to me,” he said, very gently. “I know you want to go home, and I said I’d let you go when it’s time, didn’t I?”

  “When will it be time?”

  “Soon,” and then, “I promise …”

  “But when?”

  “Soon.”

  George put two hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead at the bare concrete walls of the parking garage, wondering how to negotiate this with her—or how to distract her.

  “I’m as good as my word,” he told her.

  She folded herself back down into her seat, so that she was facing straight ahead, her long limbs tucked underneath her. She rubbed her eyes.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, and she turned to him, her eyes quizzical or confused, and he wondered if she had heard or understood him, but he did not have the courage to ask her again.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “We’ve got another drive ahead—couple of hours or so before we stop. Let’s play a game. A car game.”

  He hadn’t expected it to be this easy, but she turned to him, the gap in her teeth showing, and nodded her head eagerly.

  “What game?”

  George placed two hands on the steering wheel. Suddenly he couldn’t remember any games—or none that could help him now. He remembered playing football in the street with his socks at his ankles and his nose running; he remembered conkers and marbles and the games the girls played: elastics and peever and complicated hand-clapping games. His sister had tried to teach him once, asking him to hold up his palms while she sang and slapped the rhythm, but he had forgotten even the song.

  “Let’s play I spy,” she said, clasping her hands together.

  George winced and let his head fall back against the headrest, but before he could say a word in protest, she had begun.

  “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with … G.”

  “George,” he said hopefully, grateful that it was a letter he was familiar with.

  “No, that’s too easy,” she said. “I never say easy ones.”

  The Irn-Bru bottle was empty on the floor by her feet and so George pointed at it. “Juice.”

  She turned to him, frowning and with her lips pressed together. “That begins with a J, not a G. Don’t you know the difference?”

  George turned on the engine and rolled out of the parking garage.

  He lit a cigarette as he waited for the barrier to rise. They had played at his suggestion and so couldn’t complain, but he just wanted the game to end.

  “Put your seat belt on,” he said, hearing the sharpness in his voice.

  CHAPTER 19

  Tam Driscoll

  Sunday, October 6, 1985

  IT WAS THE KIND OF PLACE THAT TAM IMAGINED WHEN HE thought of all the atrocities the McLaughlins had committed. He sat alone on a chair in the middle of the empty warehouse by the Clyde. He wasn’t tied down, but he had been told to sit and wait, and so he did, a pain in his bladder because he needed to urinate, his mouth dry and his throat tight.

  He worked for them because he needed the money, and no matter how hard he tried not to know what they did, he knew all too well.

  His father had been a miner, spending his daylight hours underground, fighting against gas and coal dust, cramped in a cage with other men. He had died of black lung before Tam’s daughter was born. Tam had never been down the pits, but working for the McLaughlins felt, psychologically, how he imagined his father felt every day at work. He was trapped, filthy dirty by association, and endangering his own life.

  It was only a few minutes before Peter and Richard came into the room, Richard walking in front and Peter hanging back, one hand in his pocket and another cupped around a cigarette. Peter’s silence made Tam most nervous.

  IT HAD BEEN nearly three o’clock on Sunday afternoon when Richard had called and asked Tam to come to the garage. With George gone, Tam had felt sick at the thought of being asked to come in when normal business was closed. He wasn’t sure what he would be asked to do.

  When he arrived at the garage, Richard had indicated a white van and asked Tam to get inside.

  Tam had wondered about making a run for it, but knew that was futile. He forced himself to look Richard in the eye and ask, in as deep a voice as he could manage, “Why?”

  “There’s a car needing to be seen to … Peter told me to come and get you.”

  “It can’t be brought here? We have the ramp and all the tools.”

  “No,” said Peter, his face devoid of emotion, “it can’t.”

  Tam had nodded, fear making his arms so heavy as to feel paralyzed. When he tried to get into the front of the van, Richard had opened the back door and asked him to get in there.

  “We don’t want anyone to see you, do we?”

  Alone in the back of the van, beside tools that Tam imagined were used for other purposes, he wondered if the McLaughlins had a car from a crime scene that needed cleaning. George had done that for them, but now he was gone.

  George had always cleaned the cars at the garage. Tam had a deeper worry: that it was not simply a dirty job that awaited him at his destination. He had no idea where they were going, but he sensed from the movement of the van that they were headed southwest of the city. His wife had been concerned when he was called into work on a Sunday, but he had made light of it, for her sake. He had told her that there was a car that urgently needed to be fixed. He didn’t want her to worry about him.

  They had arrived at a warehouse. The perimeter walls were stacked with oil drums and old machinery, and Tam could not be sure but he thought he could smell the black, oily water of the Clyde. He looked around for a car that might need fixing, but saw only Peter’s black Ford Escort by the warehouse doors. Richard had led Tam inside to a cavernous space with a single chair in the middle. It looked like the setting for an urban existentialist play.

  “Take a seat,” Richard had said, and left, and so Tam had walked to the center of the warehouse, and sat down on the chair.

  OCTOBER, BUT IT had been a warm day with sunshine. The metal walls of the building had absorbed the heat so that the room felt muggy and airless. There was no sound apart from the metal sheets of the warehouse walls creaking and shifting in the breeze.

  Peter and Richard entered together, but Richard spoke first, while Peter finished his cigarette.

  “We heard that you might know something that we want to know,” he began, one hand in his pocket and one foot resting on top of a plastic packing crate.

  “What would that be?” said Tam, feeling the hot itch of sweat break at his hairline.

  “That’s what we hope you’ll tell us.”

  There was a deep rel
axation in the younger McLaughlin’s limbs, which seemed so unnatural that Tam was suddenly shot with terror. Richard’s eyes were fixed on Tam, his mouth loose so that he seemed half asleep or drugged. Tam decided immediately that if he did know something the brothers wanted to know, then he would tell them. He nodded, quickly, feeling the tension in his jaw and his neck as he waited for more information.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you and my baby brother were pretty pally, were you not?”

  “We went for the odd pint, that was all.”

  “Nah, I could tell George liked you, and when Georgie likes someone, he talks. He’s always been the same.”

  “What do you mean? What is it you need to know? If I know anything, I’m happy to help.” Tam was taciturn at best, and he knew that his sudden willingness to talk only communicated his fear.

  “Good,” said Peter, his voice so quiet that Tam could barely hear him. “Good, good. You see …” Peter undid the button of his jacket and put one hand in his pocket. “We think that George has something that doesn’t belong to him—something precious—which doesn’t belong to us either, but it does belong to somebody we know, and that somebody wants it back very, very much.”

  When Tam opened his mouth to speak, it was so dry that it made a sound like a boot leaving mud. His eyes felt hot, and his T-shirt was damp underneath his boiler suit. He wiped a hand across his mouth, remembering George unbuttoning his shirt in the Portland Arms to show him his tattoo.

  “Now, you understand, this person thought that the precious item was gone forever, but has now realized that it’s only missing, and can therefore … be returned. It’s this matter we want help with. Richard tells me even the press know you know something. Journalist turns up at the garage to talk to you yesterday. To you … asking you where George is.”

  Tam managed a smile, licked his lips, and began to speak. All his breath was in his throat and he knew he sounded terrified, but he continued as best he could.

  “You understand George and I are not friends, but you’re right he can talk, and the last time we were out for a pint he told me he was leaving.”