by Caro Ramsay
The cop looks up to the sky, chuckling at the dark rolling clouds. ‘Well, good luck with that one. There’s no end to this rain, you know.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Eric waves and attempts a U-turn. The Land Rover takes a few goes at it, back and forth as the turning circle is so poor. We drive off in silence. He’s a man of few words at the best of times.
I like that about Eric. Even when Sophie and I were kids and he was in his late teens he kept himself to himself. He was born in the house next door to ours and stayed there after his mum died, even after his wife left him. Eric is nothing like his mother: he is large and lumbering; she was small and powerful, a nippy wee bird of a woman. Eric worshipped her. He was a mummy’s boy. He wouldn’t have survived if he wasn’t. Once she died he tried being married, but it didn’t last long, and once his wife Magda had scarpered he started spending more time at the croft and neglecting the house in Eaglesham. Rod casually mentions the state of the house next door every time they meet as he believes it will eventually affect the resale value of ours, and in Rod’s eyes that is a hanging offence. I used to think that was strange for an architect, letting a house go to ruin, but Eric is also an artist. He is great at designing buildings and rubbish at maintaining them. I understand that. I like diagnosing illness in patients, I like the puzzle, but anything beyond that is tedious.
Once we’re on the straight road I feel Eric relax. Sophie would want me to make small talk, so I have a go. I need to think about it so I turn in my seat to rearrange some boxes of groceries that have worked free from their restraining straps and are rattling against each other.
‘So you were up at the croft?’ I try as an opener.
‘Yes.’ He adjusts the sound on the CD. It is something Gaelic-y, a soulful fiddle with a breathy female vocal drifting above the engine noise, ghostly music on a night for long-lost souls.
It makes me think of Magda, the beautiful woman who ran off with another man and caused a scandal. Sophie might have nicked her hairstyle but as people they were miles apart. Soph was full of life and laughter whereas Magda was silent and aloof. But they have both gone. Maybe that’s why Eric has shown such empathy in the last few months. I am only here because Rod and Eric had a chat over the garden fence about getting me away from all this stress. It was obvious to both of them that I was not well, not coping, not sleeping. Even before Soph went missing, I was losing concentration at uni and my running was becoming obsessive. They were worried about me, having witnessed Grant’s slow mental decline, and were scared the same thing was happening to me. They should have been worried about Sophie.
In April Eric had said his boss was looking for someone to spend the summer at his new house at Ardno with his wife. Someone responsible and young. When Rod spoke to me about it, my first instinct had been to laugh. Why would I want to babysit a spoiled bitch of a woman old enough to be my mother? Then he said that she lived in the middle of nowhere and I thought – why not? It was a great excuse to stay out of the house until Sophie came back. And I could do some real running.
Eric changes gear and watches the road ahead intently. The deer are moving down from the hills, he explains, driven down by the rain. He seems happy chatting to me in a way he never was talking to Sophie. Maybe because she spent her life teasing him in that way pretty women can. When Magda left, Sophie said that she was probably stuck in the attic somewhere, tied to the bedstead, screaming in the night to get free. I’m not sure she was joking. Mum’s only comment to that was that she was surprised the marriage had lasted so long, Eric being about as attractive as old slippers. Magda was a shock to the neighbours with her generous curves, her white-blonde hair, scarves and long gypsy skirts. She would saunter past, hips swaying, with a nod, never a word, as if she knew she was too good for us. But when Magda left, legging it to London with some builder bloke, she broke Eric’s heart.
Two days after Eric had talked to Rod, I had a brief interview with Alex Parnell at the Eaglesham Arms. Parnell was either a self-made man or a cowboy builder, depending what paper you read. He might have owned property worth six million but the broad Glaswegian in his voice was still detectable. Good nutrition and an iron will to succeed in life had got him where he was today, yet his thick neck and broad shoulders showed he was only two generations away from the Glasgow docks; he wouldn’t be past sticking one on you if you crossed him. His fringe reminded me of Hitler but he looked much younger than his fifty-three years. Like Eric, he was a man of few words. He looked at me, my black sweatshirt, my Rohan trousers, my trail boots, my small rucksack slung over my shoulder. Five eight, about ten stone, acne, different. I could see him calculating. He offered me the job there and then but gave me no idea of what I was supposed to do except a casual mention of a new wife who was lonely, a young son, Charlie, and a house in the middle of nowhere.
That meeting was the start of the chain of events that got me here, being bounced around in a Land Rover at one in the morning in a remote glen, because a woman had fallen from the sky.
‘How is Charlie?’ asks Eric, his own attempt at small talk.
‘He’s a bright wee kid. He would benefit from going to nursery, being with kids his own …’
‘Alex will not allow that.’
‘True,’ I say. ‘But he is illogical.’
‘And you are “best practice” at logic.’ He laughs. ‘Was it bad, the accident?’ He changes gear.
‘It was not good. She died.’ I know I can sound callous, Soph has warned me about it. ‘It was so weird; that guy was stopped at the light and she just fell on to his windscreen.’
He snorts with incredulity.
‘No, really. She died from an internal haemorrhage. No way back from injuries like that.’
‘And they have no idea where she came from? Can’t be from round here. Was she flung out a car or something?’ Another noisy gear change.
‘Not that I recall, and I would.’ My eyes sweep over the barren landscape; I’m thinking out loud. ‘If they threw her out a car they must have known this place well. She fell to her death, in the middle of nowhere, naked. She was brought here and abandoned all right.’
He nods, conceding my point. ‘You make sure you tell that to the police tomorrow.’
‘I did recognize her though.’ I say the words into airspace; it still seems unreal.
‘That would be bizarre.’ He takes his eyes off the road for a minute and looks at me. He is pale and red-headed, bald at the top. The unruly curls round the side dance as he moves his head.
‘I am sure she’s a woman who went missing before Sophie did.’
He is dismissive. ‘Really?’
I nod.
‘Maybe in your circumstances – with Sophie and everything – you might see things that are not quite there.’
I stay silent and look out the window.
‘What I mean is, when Magda left I thought I saw her everywhere – a mere turn of a head or a glimpse of a figure. Yet every time I took a closer look, there was no resemblance at all.’
‘She was very pretty; the wee lassie across the road thought Magda was a princess.’
Eric smiles, recalling that story. Magda was a rare exotic creature in Eaglesham, which was probably the reason she legged it. ‘What I mean is, I think some small antenna of the brain is always on the lookout. It becomes more sensitive, it sees what it wants to see.’
‘That was Lorna Lennox,’ I say. ‘I never forget a face and I was holding her head in my hands.’
‘And she died in your arms.’ He changes gear again, the engine growling at the effort. Eric has not shaved, his cheeks are black hollows in his face.
He opens his mouth to say something, hesitating slightly. ‘I was going to ask if there was any word. About Sophie?’
‘Various sightings that all lead nowhere, so Mum gets pissed, Rod sobers her up. But then my brother would drive anybody to drink.’
‘Their way of coping. But if the police still think that Sophie left of her own free will,
then you might be better to accept it. Maybe she drove to the reservoir to meet somebody and left. She was an exotic creature too. Maybe, like Magda, she just wanted a life that she wouldn’t get if she stayed. That’s the hardest thing to accept. I mean, Sophie can’t have just disappeared; that’s too difficult to do in a city. There’d be a trace. Or a body.’ He ducks his head slightly and looks up to the hills. ‘But it’s easy to disappear here.’ He turned the CD up slightly, having said all he had to say.
I sit back in my uncomfortable seat and look out the window, admiring a view that I tend to miss as I am driving. We are following the road across the glen heading south before we turn west. I can see the flashing lights on the other side. The landscape above the incident site is a steep slope and there is no road up there that I know of. When the Rest is blocked the detour takes an hour. So the logical question is – where did Lorna come from?
The glen between is a dark abyss, the sky overhead is dense, cold and threatening. It could be another country, another lifetime. A different lifetime to the velvet warmth of the Goblin Market. Even the weather has agreed that the world is a darker place today. When Sophie said she had to go away, she promised to come back. She held my arms and stared me straight in the eye. ‘I’ll be back, midnight, right here at Goblin Market. Last Thursday in May. You remember that.’ Like I would forget. She had that same fear in her eyes the day she told me Dad was dead, a feral fear. As if the real world had intruded on her perfect one.
Last Thursday was the last Thursday in May.
She didn’t make it.
The house is hidden from the loch road by a long, high beech hedge. The roll of the hills and the tall trees suggest there should be some great Gothic mansion behind the eight-feet high wrought-iron gates, but in reality there is a modern white concrete box with glass panels the full height of the west side making the most of the view of Loch Fyne at the front, and views of the bens of Argyll National Park at the back. This road is single track and dangerous for a few miles round the loch before it meets the main road out to Dunoon and the ferry, or a long drive round the head of Loch Long to get to Glasgow. It is breathtakingly beautiful and deathly quiet. The silence is glorious.
But the house does not fit the landscape, and Mary and Charlie don’t fit the house. It is not a home. There are early Peter Howson originals: stark images of religion and violence. There are classic marble statues. The furniture is minimalist and the house itself was designed with blunt concrete edges on all stairs and shelves. The only soft feature is the smooth curves of the single porthole window. It is all Alex. Everything shouts money and an interior designer’s taste; there is nothing personal about it at all.
Mary doesn’t care for it. She once picked me up outside Mum’s house, and she sat in the car entranced by the kids playing on their bikes in the street as two neighbours chatted in their front garden, one with a white wine, one with a coffee. She was fascinated by humdrum life in a rural Glasgow suburb.
When I first arrived here, I thought the woman who opened the door was the outgoing nanny. I had heard lock after lock being opened behind the glass panels, then she and I stood in awkward silence, staring at each other. I was uglier than she expected. She was as young as I had expected. She was slim and pretty, raven black hair pulled into an elastic band; a few wisps had come loose and fallen down over her face. But her huge blue eyes regarded me with all the warmth of anti-freeze. The hall behind her was a huge space, as if she had opened the door in a cathedral – a vast, empty interior in pure white plaster. Soulless marble statues hung around, as if waiting for the door to open far enough to let them out. The arches of the ceiling went high into the roof space, stretching the whole height of the house. On the wall was a series of multi-coloured glass pipes, as if that was art. It was like a Hollywood film set.
Mary was icily polite, nervous, a little shaky even as she tried to welcome me. Then a shock of unruly brown hair appeared between her ankles followed by a jam-covered face. There was no need for a DNA test to confirm who his dad was. The child pulled back to hide behind her Ugg boots then asked who I was, pointing at me. He was as unfriendly as his mother.
‘I’m Elvie.’
‘I’m Charlie. You have a strange face. Are you a monkey?’
Mary was about to admonish him for being cheeky but I answered, ‘Well, I can swing from trees and I eat bananas.’
He sniffs. ‘Are you here to sort me out?’
‘I’m here to tell you that sniffing like that is bad for you.’
‘Good luck with that,’ laughed Mary, and even then I sensed that she did not have a lot to laugh about. Charlie offered me a Kinder Egg penguin as some kind of key to the kingdom. Mary gestured that I go into the front room where there were white sofas, a designer coffee table and a strong smell of money. I hesitated at the door, eyeing the Chinese rug, then I pointed at my trek shoes.
‘I spend most of my time in the kitchen,’ she said as we both stood at the doorway, looking at the big room, the huge window with the trees and the loch and the mountains beyond. It seemed a very wild world out there.
‘Kitchen then?’ I suggested.
Mary was the young mother of a hyperactive four-year-old stuck miles from nowhere. We gelled quickly and soon found common ground. She was keen to tell me that she had walked away from uni too. I mentioned I was going back, she said I was lucky. She had been doing English literature. I told her about Sophie’s love of Christina Rossetti and she actually got excited. Her old life came back to her like a train.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Sure.’
‘What is your actual name?’
‘Elvira. If the second kid had been a boy he’d have been Elvis, so I took the hit so that my brother could be called Grant.’
She suppressed a giggle.
We also liked silence. We could walk down the road to the loch to sit on stones, saying nothing but perfectly happy in each other’s company. I began to sleep, began to rest. I began to eat. The running became joyful, not punishing. The stress decreased, the adrenaline rush in my veins less frequent.
I realize, as the majestic house rolls past, that I have been better since I came here.
The crunch of another bad gear change breaks my train of thought and I register that Eric has been talking to me. ‘Pardon?’
‘I said, it’s an impressive house, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ My radar had a moment to tune in this time. He had designed the house and I should be complimentary. ‘It’s a work of art. Where is your croft from here?’
‘Building site, you mean. It’s miles back, way back down the Rest, past Succoth and up the other side, the Loch Lomond side.’
He drives carefully up the narrow lane. The gates of the Ardno house are big and forbidding, but all I see are the strange shadows, and their secrets.
I notice that Eric has the same keypad to open the electric gates as me. His is much more worn than mine, but his code is different. So not only does the gate computer note ‘when’ but also ‘who’, such is the security needed for a millionaire’s wife.
He does not pull up at the front of the house but drives round to the entrance to my flat, which sits above the formal dining room. I can make all the noise I want doing my exercises because the dining room is never used. The headlights flash on the western perimeter wall that still bears the scars of the last storm; it looks like a gap-toothed smile. The builders haven’t been for days, and the last time I saw them they were too busy talking to Mary about building Charlie a tree house to be bothered fixing the wall. I notice that the Shogun is not here.
Eric sees me looking. ‘Mary is at the flat in Glasgow with Alex.’ He pulls the Land Rover to a halt but keeps the engine running as his fingers drum on the dashboard. ‘Do you need any help?’ he mutters.
‘No, I can manage on my own, thanks.’ A few spots of rain start to dot the windscreen.
He looks at the sky, a look of concentration on his face. ‘If you need to c
hat, in the next few days? I mean, Mary will be in Glasgow a lot. Call me if you need anything. I mean, after tonight. Not that … Well, you won’t, will you … What about a bit of dinner, Loch Fyne? I might even show you round the croft.’
It’s quite a speech for him. I nod and thank him.
I go up the stairs and press the buttons for the entry code to my flat, dumping my stuff in the hall before I turn to wave goodbye to Eric. He’s been watching me, making sure that I got in OK. He waves back and I close the door before picking my bag up and nipping upstairs to my kitchen. Before I unpack I press the button on the instant water heater and put some fresh coffee into a cafetière. Five minutes later I’m sitting on the outside step, high up over the garden with a soft blanket draped round my shoulders, sipping a mild Colombian blend and letting myself get wet in the summer rain. I think back on the day and the previous night, wondering what other Goblins are shadow-dancing in the garden, what else is going to happen before I can make sense of it. Everything is unreliable. Dad died, Grant blamed himself. If I’m honest, I blame Grant too. Did that stress spark my illness? Do I blame Grant for that as well? Grant certainly blames us for the mild knee problem which has become the root of all the evil in his universe. My mum gets lost in a bottle and Rod and I pick up the pieces.
Where does that leave me?
I should be here sitting with nothing on my mind at all, except my missing sister and what she might be going through. And what the woman who fell from the sky had already been through.
At moments like this I yearn for the times when I had things to think about apart from Sophie. If that makes me selfish then so be it. Tomorrow will start a whole new round of interviews and I must stay one step ahead. Maybe if I’d said something earlier, maybe if I’d told them the truth straight away – that Sophie had gone of her own accord – if I had not kept Sophie’s secret, then she might be back here with us now. But I didn’t have a crystal ball. I sat for hours at the Goblin Market, on the log by the lily pond, from midnight right until the dawn, waiting for her before I gave up and drove here.
