by Denise Mina
‘I dunno.’
‘Well, I dunno either.’ He looked at her. ‘I didn't do it, Maureen.’
‘I’m not saying you did. I didn’t for a minute mean that it was you, Liam, I didn’t mean that.’
‘Did ye not like the bridie?’ The waitress was at her side with a portion of ice cream and a coffee. She put them on the table and lifted Maureen’s dinner plate.
‘I’m just not hungry,’ said Maureen quietly. She slid a spoonful of ice cream and raspberry sauce into her mouth, rolling it under her tongue, letting it dissolve slightly before swallowing.
Liam took the teaspoon from her coffee and started eating her ice cream. ‘So you were at your work when it happened?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, frowning at her ice cream. ‘Someone phoned work yesterday. Liz thought it was Douglas but it might not have been. She told him I wasn’t in and I wouldn’t be in all day.’ ‘So?’
‘He phoned three times. Same guy.’
‘It probably was Douglas,’ said Liam.
‘No,I don't know if it was. They were phoning from a phone box and he should have been at work. I don’t think he’d have called back when she said I was out. Wouldn’t want to seem too eager.’
Liam stole another spoon of ice cream. She pushed it towards him ‘You have it. I don’t want it.’
The sugar and caffeine were finding their way into Maureen’s system. The shaky feeling evaporated like a hangover after a whisky and she felt relatively calm. She sipped her coffee. It was bitter and hot. She took out her cigarettes and lit one.
‘Do you think you’re being set up?’ asked Liam.
‘Maybe. I don’t know what the cupboard thing means yet. If I could find out what was wrong with the cupboard ...’
‘Stop trying to find things out, pet. Leave it to the police,’ said Liam, without a hint of irony. ‘They’ll sort it out.’ ‘I’m just . . . I’m thinking.’
‘Keep out of it. You don’t want to get involved in this.’
‘I’m already involved.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get more involved, Mauri. Don’t meddle.’ ‘I was only thinking.’
‘Leave it, Maureen.’
‘There’s no harm in thinking about it.’ Liam was exasperated. ‘Look, some scary fucker cut Douglas’s throat when he was helpless and tied to a fucking chair. Nice people don’t do that. These are unpleasant, dangerous people. This isn’t Taggart. Bad things happen to the good guys.’
‘Bad things happen on Taggart.’
‘Maureen,’ he said, ‘there are very nasty people in the world. You’re not like them, you’re not fit for them. You’ve no idea what people are capable of doing to each other, no idea.’
‘But how are they going to catch the right person?’
‘Do you think that’s what the police are about? Catching the right person?’ He ruffled her hair ‘You’re not fit for these people, Mauri. Just stand back and shut up and you’ll be all right.’
* On the way back to Benny’s Maureen stopped at the cash point and took out the last twenty quid from her account. If the bank withdrew her £100 overdraft facility before the end of the month she wouldn’t be able to pay her meagre mortgage.
She waited until Benny had gone to bed before she lay down on the settee and did the breathing exercises she had learned in the Northern. They were supposed to help her sleep but each time she started to relax images and phrases from the day flashed in her mind, startling her awake.
6
Winnie
Liz was revelling in the drama of it all. The moustachioed policeman had been to the office and questioned her, asking her to sign a statement to the effect that Maureen had not left the office for any longer than five minutes during the previous day. The walk to the house took ten. Maureen had been in the toilet for fifteen minutes but Audrey had spoken to her. Liz said wasn’t it lucky Audrey was a chain smoker.
Maureen looked up a couple of times during the day and caught Liz staring at her with undisguised awe. She asked three times about going to the police station. Maureen didn’t want to talk about it. She had woken up on Benny’s settee with trembling hands, a throbbing headache and a terrible sense that the worst of it wasn’t over. It felt like her night terrors. She wanted to be at work, pretending it was a normal day, but Liz was desperate to be part of the show.
‘I think friends should trust each other,’ she said, over lunch.
‘I need a piss,’ said Maureen, excusing herself as only a lady could.
Mr Scobie seemed more traumatized about it than either of them. When Maureen went off to hide in the toilet during the morning she saw him walking towards her down the corridor. He looked panic-stricken and ducked into a cloakroom to avoid running into her. She thought about going after him, just for badness’ sake, but decided against it.
In the afternoon he shuffled nervously into the ticket office, keeping his back close to the wall, and handed them their wages. Maureen had a tax rebate in hers and the brown envelope held £150 in tens and twenties. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your trouble, dear,’ said Mr Scobie. ‘Thank you, Mr Scobie.’
‘Will you be taking any more days off?’ His voice cracked mid-sentence. ‘Or can I leave the shifts as they are?’
‘You can leave them as they are.’
‘Fine.’
He scuttled back out. Liz sniggered when she was sure he was out of earshot.
Winnie phoned late in the afternoon. ‘Please come and see me,’ she said. ‘Please do. Just to make me feel better because I’m worried about you.’
Maureen agreed to come over after work.
‘Now, promise me, you won’t get a bus or anything, just get into a taxi and come here and I’ll pay it at the other end.’
‘You don’t need to do that. I can pay it.’
‘I insist,’ said Winnie. She sounded stone-cold sober.
Maureen didn’t want to go. Sober Winnie was almost as much work as Very Drunk Winnie and Very Drunk Winnie was a lot of work. She was angry and vindictive, shouting carefully personalized abuse at whoever happened to be in front of her, casting up any failure or humiliation, however petty, always going straight for the jugular. It was her special talent, she could find anyone’s tender spot within minutes. Sober Winnie was an emotional leech, demanding affection and reassurance, bullying them with her limitless neediness, crying piteously when she didn’t get her own way. She shit-stirred between the children, rumour-mongering and passing on distorted comments. When anyone tried to stand up to her she cast herself as the victim and rallied the other children to her support, causing schisms. Liam said she had a rota written up somewhere and victimized the children in turn. It had worked better when they were younger: Maureen and Liam only pretended to buy into it all now, faking shock at Una’s unkind comments about Maggie, pretending to care when Marie said Maureen would never recover from the hospital. But Una still played along fully and if Maureen didn’t go and see Winnie today then, as sure as a fight at a wedding, she’d get a worried phone call from Una tomorrow, asking her why she was avoiding Mum, what had Mum done, couldn’t Maureen see she was upsetting her.
There was a time when Very Drunk Winnie was the best of a bad choice for Maureen: it was a straight fight and she could take it because Winnie didn’t know anything about her. She had been careful never to discuss the things that mattered to her in front of the family, Liam excepted. She told her friends that she didn’t have a phone and wouldn’t let boyfriends come to the house. She lied about where she was going at night, she even lied about her O grade subjects. So when Winnie went for Maureen’s jugular she was slagging her about fictitious habits, friends and events. What happened between them in hospital had changed all that. Now Winnie had more to cast up to Maureen than the rest of them.
Winnie behaved strangely during the hospital visits. She brought an en
dless succession of inappropriate presents like earrings and makeup and fashion magazines. She monologued about the neighbourhood gossip, who had died, what was on telly last night. She wouldn’t acknowledge the fact that they were in a psychiatric hospital or talk to the staff. But Maureen was bananas at the time and lots of things seemed strange. Leslie had read up on familial reactions to abuse disclosure and said that it was normal for the non-abusing parent to feel incredibly guilty, maybe that’s what was wrong with Winnie.
Maureen didn’t have a lot of time to think about it: the memories of the forgotten years were coming back thick and fast, through dreams, in flashbacks, over cups of tea with other patients. She became a compulsive confider. Looking at the fading bouquets of flowers on the wallpaper above the bedstead, counting and counting and counting until it was finished.
Standing in the bath waiting to get out and Michael, her father, leaning over with the towel and looking her in the eye. The door was shut behind him.
Himself sitting on the bed afterwards, crying, Maureen patting his hand to comfort him as the pee stung her legs. His hand was as big as her face.
At the caravan in St Andrews, the sea lapping over her black gutties. The rest of them were on the beach, out of sight, behind the rock, and Michael was coming after her. She scrabbled over the rocks on all fours, trying to get away, trying to look as if she wasn’t running, scratching her knees on the jagged granite.
The panic when he saw the blood dribbling down her skinny legs. He’d slapped her on the side of the head and, lifting her by her upper arm, put her into the cupboard, locking it and taking the key with him. She could smell the blood as she sat in the dark cupboard and she knew what it was. She hoped she would die before he came back. It was his fingernail that had cut her, it was his nail.
Winnie crowbarring the cupboard door open and pulling Maureen out by her ankle. Marie standing behind her, twelve years old and already crying without making a noise, silent because she knew no one was listening.
She tried to piece it all together but some elements of the story were confusing: she couldn’t remember when Michael left them or why certain smells prompted panic attacks or whether any of the other children had showed signs of abuse. Dr Paton suggested asking Winnie but Maureen didn’t feel comfortable about it. Dr Paton said they might ask her under controlled conditions, perhaps they could organize a joint session with her.
Winnie came to it sober and apparently quite willing. The three of them gathered in the cosy office in the Portakabin in the hospital grounds, sitting in big armchairs and sipping tea. Dr Paton said Maureen had something to ask her mother, there were some problematic details about the facts surrounding the abuse and would Winnie be willing to help?
Winnie smiled and listened to Maureen’s first question: she remembered Winnie getting her out of the cupboard and she remembered Marie being there but was Michael in the house at the time? Winnie said she didn’t know, she couldn’t help there. Maureen asked about Michael, when did he leave? Winnie didn’t know about that either. Dr Paton asked her why she didn’t know and Winnie started crying and saying that she’d done her best. Maureen rubbed her back and told her it was all right, they all knew she had done her best. She was a good mum.
Winnie got up and stormed off to the toilet and came back with the greasy-nothing smell of vodka on her breath.
She told them that Maureen had been misinformed by her sister; Una remembered properly now and would come and talk to them if they wanted. Winnie said it had never happened and then she lost the script, shouting at Maureen and the doctor when they tried to speak, interrupting them with irrelevant details and crying when nothing else worked.
Maureen had always been strange, she always made up stories. Mickey had never touched Maureen, he didn't even like her. He was a very passionate man and he had been devoted to Winnie. She cried again and said that she still loved Maureen and what had she done to make Maureen stop loving her?
Maureen was numb. ‘I love you, Mum,’ she said vacantly and rubbed Winnie’s back, ‘I do love you.’
The effect on Maureen was marked. An iota of doubt grew into a possible truth. The memories seemed so tangible and the emotions attached to them were so intense, overwhelming, like a searing physical pain. If Maureen was misremembering, she was as mad as a fucking dog.
She felt more ashamed of herself than she ever had before. She would have killed herself but for the effect it might have on Leslie and Pauline, her pal from the OT classes. She had put everyone to all this trouble over a bullshit story.
She couldn’t talk about it. Her meetings with Dr Paton dissolved into hour-long sessions of staring at the floor, hot fat tears rolling down her immobile face. The doctor tried to get her to talk but couldn’t. They both knew it was because of Winnie. The doctor sat next to Maureen and held her hand, dabbing her face dry with a tissue. She began to lose weight again. Her release time was revised and moved back a month.
Leslie knew something was very wrong. She kept asking about it but Maureen couldn’t say it out loud. Finally, after two weeks of needling her with questions, Leslie got Maureen to tell her what had happened. She was furious. She roared up to Winnie’s house on her bike and parked it on George’s lovely lawn. She stomped into the kitchen where Winnie was eating lunch with Una and told her that if she denied the abuse again, even in her prayers, Leslie would personally kick her cunting teeth in. Winnie went off Leslie after that.
Leslie made Maureen draw up a list of facts corroborating the abuse and brought her books with first-hand accounts by other survivors, telling how their families had reacted when they told. It seemed that physical damage, DNA tests, even a criminal conviction could be ignored if the family didn’t want to believe and Winnie did not want to believe.
On the day Maureen finally left the hospital Dr Paton took her to one side. ‘I want you to know that there is no doubt in my mind that it happened,’ she said. ‘And, on a strictly non-professional level, I think that your mother is a self-serving bastard.’
Maureen and Winnie never talked about it again, but because of Leslie’s visit Winnie knew where Maureen’s Achilles’ heel was and there was always the possibility that she would bring it up when she was viciously drunk.
Maureen cheerioed Liz and left work with a knot in her stomach and a drag in her step. She would have given anything to be on her way out to get drunk with Leslie instead of going to do battle with Winnie.
The family had moved to the house when George and Winnie first got married. It was on a small council scheme with modest two-storey concrete box houses. In front of the house was a tiny token lawn, meticulously cared for by George, and in front of that a broad pavement leading down the quiet street where the small children played together until their tea was ready. It was a nice scheme, peopled by good-living poor families who were ambitious for their children. The neighbours knew Winnie was a drunk and the O’Donnell kids were pitied for it.
She hadn’t intended to let Winnie pay – she meant to pay herself and let the taxi go before going into the house – but Winnie was watching at the window and ran out of the house when she saw the taxi pull up. She shoved a tenner in the driver’s window. ‘Take it off that,’ she said. ‘Hiya,’ said Maureen, trying to sound cheerful. Winnie looked terribly hung over. She put her hand to Maureen’s face. ‘Hello, honey,’ she said, looking as if she might cry.
Maureen followed her into the house. Winnie and George were of a generation who believed in the value and longevity of man-made fabrics. The house was furnished with brown and yellow carpets, and curtains and furnishings that had survived from the seventies.
George was asleep on the settee in the dark living room; the silent television flickered in the corner. George drank as much and as often as Winnie but he was a dear, melancholic drunk whose greatest handicaps were falling asleep at odd moments and a propensity to recite sentimental poetry about Ireland.
Maureen could feel the heat from the cooker before she got through the kitchen door. ‘I’ve been baking all day,’ said Winnie. With a great flourish she opened the oven and pulled out a loaf tin. She cut a thick slice of hot gingerbread, buttered it and gave it to Maureen along with a cup of coffee.
The gingerbread tasted exactly the same as McCall’s, a famous bakery in Rutherglen – they always overdid the cinnamon. But it was a kind lie, designed to make Maureen feel cared for. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said. ‘It's lovely.’
Winnie sat next to her, clutching an opaque mug with a dark glaze on the inside. Maureen tried surreptitiously sniffing the air to work out what Winnie was drinking It wasn't coffee anyway. Winnie wasn’t exhaling after each sip so it wasn’t a spirit. It might be wine. Her tongue wasn’t red. White wine. She had drunk just enough to get morose but not enough to be aggressive. About two cups. Maureen guessed that she had at least half an hour before Winnie started to get difficult.
Winnie sat next to her at the table and offered Maureen her old room back. ‘You could stay for as long as you want,’ she said.
When Maureen said she'd be fine at Benny’s house, Winnie asked her if he was in the phone book. ‘Yeah,’ she said, before she had time to think about it. She was cursing her own stupidity as Winnie tried to give her some money. ‘I’m fine, Mum, really, I don’t need anything.’
‘I’ve got some cheese in the fridge, I got it from the wholesalers, it’s from the Orkneys.’
‘I don't want any cheese, Mum, thanks.’
‘I’ll cut you a block to take home.’ She stood up and opened the fridge door, heaving the six-pound block of orange Cheddar onto the work top. ‘I don't want any cheese, Mum, thanks.’ Winnie ignored her, opened the cutlery drawer, pulled out a long bread-knife, and began slicing a one-pound lump from the block. She paused, slumping over the cheese.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’
‘I worry about you,’ said Winnie, turning back to Maureen. She was on the verge of tears. ‘I worry about you so much.’
