Exile

by Denise Mina

  ‘Are you two living together, then?’ asked Maureen, taking two scratched Barbie dinner plates down from the cupboard to sit the paper parcels on.

  ‘Kind of. He lives with his folks but he spends a lot of time over here.’

  ‘Have ye given him his own key?’

  Leslie glowered at her. She had always sworn she would never give a man a key to her house because she saw what happened to the women in the shelter. It was a routine trap. The women met a nice man, fell for him and he gradually insinuated himself into their homes. They gave him a key for convenience and when he beat them the only practical solution was for the woman to run away and leave him with the house.

  ‘Nah,’ she said, unwrapping her supper and arranging the paper over the edge of the plate. ‘Mrs Gallagher across the landing lets him in.’ She blushed and got two Barbie glasses out of the cupboard, unscrewed the lid of the ginger and meticulously poured them a glass each as Maureen watched.

  ‘You gave him a key, didn’t ye?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leslie, slamming the bottle down on the side. ‘I gave him a key. Happy?’

  Maureen grinned at her. ‘I don’t make up your fucking crazy rules, Leslie, don’t get pissed off with me.’

  ‘Well, what are you having a go at me for?’

  ‘Leslie,’ said Maureen, teasing her, ‘you’re having a go at yourself.’

  Leslie huffed at her dinner. ‘I don’t know. You give out all this advice for years and then when it happens to you, I don’t know, I just feel so out of control around him.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Maureen, unwrapping her parcel, ‘I know.’ Leslie looked out of the window and crossed her arms. She looked terrified. ‘Sometimes,’ her voice had dropped and she could hardly bring herself to say it, ‘I make his dinner for him coming home.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Maureen, ‘that’s a very bad sign. You’ll be dead in a month.’

  ‘Is it a bad sign?’ said Leslie anxiously.

  Maureen saw she wasn’t joking. ‘You’ve just fallen for someone. Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘But I don’t feel like myself.’

  ‘That’s what falling in love is. You lose control and you don’t feel like yourself. It’s supposed to be nice. Isn’t it nice?’

  ‘Did you feel this way about Douglas?’

  Maureen picked out the brownest chips from her dinner, the withered twice-fried ones that tasted of caramel, and thought about it. She couldn’t remember the relationship very well, all the softness and the fond good times were lost in the violent end, but she supposed she must have felt that way, and her behaviour must have been just as confusing to Leslie. Douglas was married and old and a bit predatory. When she thought about it she could see how angry it must have made Leslie and she began to soften towards Cammy but then she remembered that Leslie hadn’t liked Douglas and had never been even passingly pleasant to him. ‘I suppose I did,’ she said, picking up her plate and glass and wrapping her pinkie around the neck of the sauce bottle. ‘My supper’s getting cold.’

  Out on the veranda they climbed over the dead pot plants and sat on stained deckchairs, resting their plates on their knees and eating with their fingers. Small clouds of fragrant steam rose as they each broke into the battered fish, filling the veranda with the tantalizing smell of vinegar.

  The veranda looked out on to a wide stretch of wasteland.

  Children from the scheme gathered there; the older ones stood talking to each other, watching over their younger siblings as they took turns at riding someone’s mountain bike over and around the hillocks and splashing through the muddy puddles. Leslie was right about Frattelli’s suppers. The fish was fresh and firm and the chips were crunchy.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ asked Leslie, sinking her teeth through crisp batter to the soft and subtle fish. ‘Lovely,’ said Maureen.

  The light was failing. The burnished yellow sky was smeared with streaks of orange and thin cloud. Heavy black rainclouds conspired on the horizon. Maureen sat back and sighed at her dinner. ‘God, I don’t know if I can eat all this.’

  ‘You’d better or you won’t get your Chomp bar.’ Maureen smiled out at the muddy hillocks and the big sky.

  ‘Ye left that cheese salad the other night as well,’ said Leslie quietly. ‘Are ye eating?’

  Maureen’s eating habits were always a good measure of her mental state. She could never swallow properly when she got upset because her throat closed up. When she had had her breakdown she lost three stone and had had to be fed soft food in hospital. ‘I’m eating fine,’ she said. ‘How ye feeling, though?’

  Maureen took out her cigarettes. ‘Sad. I feel very sad. I’m not angry or upset or anything, just very sad.’

  ‘Maybe you’re grieving for Douglas.’

  ‘I feel as if I’m grieving for everything.’ She held out the packet to Leslie. ‘I keep fucking crying. I can’t control it and it always happens at awkward moments like in the middle of a fight or in a shop or something.’

  Leslie took a fag from her and set her plate down on the floor, pulling up the collar of her biker’s jacket to keep her warm. ‘If it’s grief that’s good,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s healing and grief isn’t infinite.’

  ‘Feels infinite.’

  Downstairs a rogue child sprinted across the ground, jumped on the mountain bike and cycled away from the waiting crowd, pedalling fast over the far hills. The angry mob of small kids ran after him, shouting at him and calling to their brothers and sisters to get him. The older children looked on, their arms folded, and did nothing.

  ‘Hey,’ said Maureen, sitting up, ‘that wee bastard’s just stolen the bike.’

  ‘It’s his bike,’ said Leslie. ‘He got it for Christmas. The tiny team keep taking it from round the back of his house. He has to steal it back at night.’

  Maureen sat back. ‘Have ye got that Polaroid of Ann’s on ye?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Leslie, and pulled it out of her inside pocket. Maureen looked at it in the light from the kitchen window. ‘Look,’ she said, and pointed to the wee boy’s hand, ‘see the Christmas card he’s holding? Could that be the card she got in the post?’

  ‘I dunno, it’s bigger than the envelope.’

  ‘He’s only a wee boy, though. Maybe it looks big in his hand?’

  Leslie squinted at it, flicking her ash on the floor. ‘Yeah, still bigger and it’s got cotton wool on the front. Ann’s card felt smooth and thin, it wasn’t spongy. It was square.’

  ‘How square?’

  She was explaining that the letter was only about as square as the Polaroid and weighed about the same as the Polaroid when she stopped and stared at it. ‘Hmm,’ said Maureen. ‘What could it have been?’ Leslie smiled faintly and looked at the picture. ‘But why would someone send her a photo of one boy?’ said Maureen.

  ‘Maybe he was her favourite?’ said Leslie.

  ‘Shut your eyes and feel it again.’

  Leslie did and felt sure it was the right size. ‘And it felt slippy inside,’ she said. ‘Like a glossy card.’

  ‘So it could have been this?’

  ‘Could have been.’

  Maureen pointed down to her plate. ‘I’ve eaten enough to get a Chomp, though?’

  Leslie looked at it carefully. ‘Oh,’ she said grudgingly, ‘okay,’ and handed her one from her pocket.

  They sat chewing their toffee bars, smoking and watching the black stormclouds steal across the sky and swallow the sunset. The children below began to disperse and they could hear rain approaching in the distance. Maureen thought about what Liam had said, that she shouldn’t spoil things for Leslie. ‘Are you happy with Cammy?’ she asked, watching the horizon.

  Leslie looked at her. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I am.’

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said in the Grove,’ said Maureen quietly. ‘I’m a bit
wrapped up in myself just now. I do want ye to be happy, Leslie, you’re the nicest person I know.’ The words were hardly out of her mouth when her eyes over flowed. She slapped her forehead impatiently and looked at Leslie. ‘See?’ she said, pointing at her wet eyes. ‘They’re fucking doing it again.’

  But Leslie was crying too, watching a heavy wall of rain wash across the dirty yard. ‘I got a fright in Millport,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘Mauri, I got a fright and I was disappointed in myself because I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t do it.’

  Maureen leaned over and touched Leslie’s cheek, lifting the little fat tears with her fingertips. ‘Auch, wee hen,’ she said softly, ‘I think Jimmy’s the same. I don’t think he could either.’

  They sat together for a while, sniffing, their heads inclined together, sniffing and thinking.

  ‘I understand how ye felt at the time,’ said Maureen quietly. ‘Right now I want to pack up and fuck off and never come back here.’

  ‘Really?’ Leslie looked at her. ‘I always think you’re fearless.’

  Maureen shook her head. ‘Just want to get the fuck out, away from Winnie and Una. My flat doesn’t even feel comfortable any more.’

  Leslie had never imagined either of them moving away. She’d always assumed they’d have their kids together, be single mums together, rubbing along and managing somehow. ‘What would running away solve, though?’ she said. ‘Don’t know, but I can’t just keep on fighting everyone all the time, can I? That’s no life for anyone.’

  ‘You’re not fighting everyone all the time.’ Maureen sighed into her chest and looked up. ‘Feels as if I am.’

  ‘Ye can’t just stop fighting and walk away. You’re not the sort of person who can just opt not to give a shit just because you live somewhere else. D’ye think what ye did to him in Millport affected ye?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Maureen shrugged. ‘I suppose. Violence corrupts.’

  ‘Does it, though?’

  ‘It has to. Ye have to lose empathy before ye can deliberately hurt someone, don’t ye? Or else ye’d feel it yourself and ye couldn’t do it.’

  Leslie thought about it and hesitated before she spoke.

  ‘Does it need to corrupt? Can’t ye lose empathy selectively?’

  Maureen snorted. ‘And just attack the bad guys?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘In theory, maybe. Those distinctions are hard close up.

  Maybe if you’ve got a solid theoretical basis for sorting out the good guys from the bad it’s easy, but distinctions always blur close up, don’t they?’ She sighed and took a draw. ‘It corrupts ye. Blood will have blood.’

  ‘Yeah, close-ups are tricky,’ said Leslie, looking at her lap. ‘I’ve been talking like a psycho for years and I can’t even slap a wean’s hand. I’ve been telling women at the shelter not to give their keys out and then I meet someone and within two months I’m asking him to take it.’

  Maureen wanted to let the doubts about Cammy lie and fester but she couldn’t. ‘I’m not very taken with Cammy but I think he’s quite safe.’

  Leslie sat forward and stared at her intently, the warm kitchen light reflecting off her leather collar. ‘Do ye?’ she said.

  Maureen nodded.

  ‘How can ye tell?’ asked Leslie, and waited anxiously for a reply.

  Maureen stared at her. ‘Do you honestly not know whether he’d hit ye?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t know how to tell them apart, the ones that will and the ones that won’t.’

  ‘Then what the fuck are ye doing letting him into your house?’

  Leslie shook her head and looked away. The rain was falling hard, pattering on to the veranda and wetting the toes of their shoes. They could see the water sheets wafting across the wasteground. The few remaining children huddled in dry close mouths waiting for it to finish.

  Leslie leaned heavily on her knees, letting her head hang as she took a draw. ‘D’ye remember when they were looking for the Yorkshire Ripper?’ she said. ‘One of the things that held them back was so many women suspected their partners and reported them and they had to investigate every one of them. I thought that was ridiculous at the time.’

  Maureen patted her hand. ‘I don’t think Cammy’s the Yorkshire Ripper, Leslie.’

  ‘I know. But ye think ye know things about yourself, think ye have principles, and then things happen and ye find out ye weren’t who ye thought ye were at all.’

  ‘That’s just growing up.’

  ‘Well, it’s scary.’ Leslie sat back and exhaled a grey cloud. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  20

  Malki the Alki

  Night came quickly and dark clouds continued to roll in from the north. The pavement glistened black smeared with orange from the street-lights. Leslie walked the bike down the gravel alleyway at the side of the house and chained it to the railings, taking care to tuck it in the shadows, out of view from the street. Maureen left her to it, wandering out into the empty road. Rain fell hard, bouncing off the pavement, and she was glad of her big coat. She stood and looked up and down the street, trying to imagine how Ann would have felt standing here, fresh to the shelter with a bruised, bony body and four absent children, looking for somewhere to drink.

  It was a broad road, wide enough for two carriages to pass each other comfortably, and long-established trees grew out of the generous pavement. Maureen pulled up her collar and looked at the detached Victorian house behind her. It was built from huge blocks of red sandstone and stood three storeys high with a coy attic for the servants’ rooms. The neighbouring houses were equally imposing, set back from the road by small gravel forecourts and low walls. It was obvious to the most casual observer that the shelter was poorer than the others. There were no cars outside, the narrow front garden was overgrown and lights shone from every window in the house. Leslie came out of the shadows and walked across the road to Maureen. They looked up at the shelter, listening as a radio blared through a frosted bathroom window. The DJ whinnied and played a thumpthump dance record.

  ‘We’ve ruined that house, haven’t we?’ said Leslie.

  ‘We haven’t done anything that couldn’t be fixed,’ said Maureen, looking down the road. ‘Did Ann know this area before she came to stay here?’

  ‘No,’ said Leslie. ‘She needed to be told where to get the bus into town.’

  ‘Okay.’ Maureen nodded. ‘She probably just followed the biggest road, then?’

  Leslie shrugged. A hundred yards further up a yellow-lit junction glistened like a jewel in the inky darkness. They walked slowly towards it, passing big houses with expensive cars parked outside. The curtains were open in one house and an elegantly greying couple were sitting on an oversized white leather settee, watching a large television. Their slim teenage daughter came into the room and moved her mouth at them. She looked pissed off. Her blonde hair reached down beyond her waist, so thick and wavy and young it would have made an old man cry. The mother said something and the young blonde slapped her thigh petulantly with her fist and left the room in a huff. They looked warm and satisfied and Maureen wished she were the girl, a cherished member of a comfortable family, with parents steady enough to kick against. ‘Nice life,’ she said, wiping the rain from her forehead.

  ‘Aye,’ said Leslie. ‘The girl’s learning to drive. I see her going up and down the road at three miles an hour in the Merc.’

  ‘She’s learning to drive in a Merc?’ Leslie nodded.

  ‘God.’ Maureen looked back to the warmth and lack of want, covetous and wondering. ‘Nice life.’ Cars and lorries hurtled across the bright junction. They stopped and looked and Leslie pointed to the right. They walked down a few hundred yards and came to a row of white pub lights glistening through the rain. It was a freestanding house, broader and older than the shelter, whitewashed, with an illumin
ated plastic sign in garish red and gold. Flower-boxes of plastic greenery lined the inside of the windows. A Jeep and a Jag were parked in the forecourt. ‘No way she drank there,’ said Maureen. ‘She couldn’t have seen it from the junction and, anyway, it’s a brewery pub and they’re always pricy. She wouldn’t have enough money for a lot of drinks and I can’t imagine anyone else buying for her.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Leslie. ‘It’s handy, though.’

  ‘If you were covered in bruises and feeling like a good bevy, would you go in there?’

  Leslie looked at the pub façade. ‘No,’ she said. They retraced their steps to the junction and walked to the left this time. They could just make out a dingy shopfront further on. It was a pub called the Lismore, ill-lit and set up against the road without a gable sign. ‘There,’ said Maureen, and walked towards it. The Lismore was pleasant inside. The varnish on the floor had been worn away from years of shuffling punters; a strip of worn and softened wood led around the bar like the suggested route in a department store. More striking was the absence of music; the only sounds were the undulating murmur of voices and the chink of glasses being washed behind the bar. A lone table of elderly men huddled over their half-and-halfs, chatting to each other. The barman smiled automatically as they came in and put down the glass he was polishing. ‘Good evening, ladies. What can I get ye?’

  ‘Two whiskies, please,’ said Maureen, brushing the rain from her hair.

  They pulled up two bar stools and looked around the room as the barman relieved the whisky optic of its contents. He put the drinks in front of them, sliding a fresh beer mat under each glass and pulling an ashtray over for them.