Fault Lines

by Doug Johnstone

Halima stared at her. ‘Did you have to lie to the police as well, yeah?’

  Surtsey frowned for a second before remembering. ‘Shit, Hal, sorry. How did it go?’

  ‘Thanks for asking.’

  ‘Christ, don’t, I’ve had a crazy day. I forgot for a moment.’

  ‘It’s fine, I was just sweating in the police station lying for you, for reasons I don’t understand, while you sat here playing happy families with your new buddy.’

  ‘They interviewed you at the station?’

  Halima’s face softened. ‘It was easier for me to go there on my way home, that’s all.’ Her wine glass was empty already so she refilled.

  ‘How was it?’

  Halima sipped. ‘It was actually OK. They phoned me at the office after you did, I said I’d pop in. They took a statement. I said we were alone together at home that night, like we agreed. Said we just sat watching comedy and drinking. Which, like you said, is true.’

  ‘Thanks, I really owe you.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Halima went to the doorway of the kitchen and looked up the stairs, checking to see if Donna was coming. ‘I still don’t understand why you can’t tell them where you really were.’

  ‘I told you I panicked,’ Surtsey said. ‘They were a pair of misogynist pricks. They thought I was a slut because I had two men on the go, I didn’t want to add a third.’

  Halima narrowed her eyes. ‘Is that really it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s nothing else you want to tell me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We’re best friends, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I said I had you covered and I do. But if there’s something else you want to tell me about this whole mess, now’s the time.’

  Footfall on the stairs, the squeak of a hand sliding down the banister.

  ‘I best be going,’ Donna said as she came into the kitchen. She hovered at the doorway looking at her wine glass, hardly touched on the table. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

  Surtsey got up, smiling. ‘Thanks for today, Donna, I mean it.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘What happened today?’ Halima said.

  ‘Donna helped me take Mum to the Inch.’

  ‘I was really just doing my job,’ Donna said.

  Surtsey began to walk her out. ‘It was more than that, and you know it.’

  Donna was at the door now. She looked back to the kitchen.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Halima.’

  Halima raised her glass. ‘Cheers.’

  Surtsey opened the door. Donna touched her arm, gave a little rub. ‘You’re being amazing for your mum.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You really are,’ Donna said. ‘I wish I’d been as good a daughter as you.’

  ‘Enough,’ Surtsey said, not unkindly. ‘Are you working tomorrow?’

  Donna nodded. ‘Early shift.’

  ‘I’ll pop in, not sure what time.’

  ‘Bye, Surtsey.’ Donna’s hand was still on her arm.

  ‘Bye.’

  She watched Donna go down the path and through the gate, sodium lamplight making her dark hair glow. The way she walked wasn’t confident, a self-consciousness about her body as she loped along the prom. She looked back and waved, and Surtsey was glad she’d stayed at the doorway to return the gesture.

  She closed the door and went back to the kitchen where Halima was pouring the wine from Donna’s glass into her own.

  ‘Nursey seems nice.’

  ‘If you’re pissed off with me, fine,’ Surtsey said. ‘But don’t take it out on her.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Halima said, heading upstairs. She dug out her hash pipe. ‘I’m off for a bath.’

  Surtsey went back to the kitchen and picked up her drink. She sipped it and looked out the back window at the boatshed. She heard the bath running upstairs and the bathroom door closing, music playing through the floor. After a moment the doorbell rang.

  Surtsey headed for the door sipping her wine.

  She opened it and her eyes widened. Alice stood there, hair a mess, eyes puffy, a raincoat over a summer dress. Cowering behind her legs were her daughters. Gracie was wide-eyed, staring at her mum, while the younger one, Belle, looked sleepy and confused.

  ‘Shit,’ Surtsey said. ‘Alice.’

  Alice’s head was shaking, as if she was disagreeing with herself. ‘Why did you come to my fucking house this morning?’

  Surtsey’s eyes shot to Gracie, who had her hand over her mouth. She was holding her little sister’s hand with the other, and gave her a worried glance.

  Surtsey smelled booze on Alice’s breath.

  ‘I know all about you,’ Alice said, pointing. Her weight shifted, her hand wavering.

  ‘Did you drive here drunk?’ Surtsey said. ‘With the girls in the car?’

  Alice narrowed her eyes and focussed. ‘Fuck you.’

  Surtsey stepped forward and put an arm out towards her. Alice threw a hand wide and smacked the wine glass out of her hand. It smashed against the doorframe, showering them in shards, leaving Surtsey holding the stem and a ragged, curved star of glass. She noticed that the girls had bare feet.

  ‘Careful,’ she said to them. ‘Step back.’

  Alice put an arm around Gracie. ‘Don’t tell them what to do. They’re nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Then why did you bring them?’ Surtsey said.

  ‘Because I have no one to look after them. My husband is dead. I have no one else.’

  Surtsey wanted to reach out but she kept still. The girls were both nervous now, Belle woken into focus by the breaking glass.

  ‘Why don’t you let me phone you a taxi,’ Surtsey said.

  Alice shook her head for a long time as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  ‘I think you did it,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You killed Tom.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Surtsey said.

  ‘I spoke to the police,’ Alice said. ‘Told them what I know. Told them to look into you. They said you had an alibi, that you were here at home. Do you think I’m stupid? They might believe that shit but I know you had something to do with Tom on the Inch. I just know it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alice,’ Surtsey said. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘If the police won’t investigate you, I will, I’ll find some evidence.’

  Surtsey thought about the phone in her pocket. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not going to leave this,’ Alice said. Her nose was running, voice trembling. ‘I’m going to make you pay.’

  ‘Mum,’ Gracie said. ‘Please.’

  ‘It’s OK, darling,’ Alice said. ‘I’m just talking to this…’

  She couldn’t find the right word.

  Surtsey looked at the cowering girls, thought about Tom.

  ‘You should leave,’ she said, the broken glass still in her hand. ‘Please don’t drive in this state.’

  Alice shook her head, teeth tight. She pushed her thumbs into her fists, squeezing, barely containing her rage.

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Think of the girls,’ Surtsey said.

  Alice looked like she’d been punched. ‘I think of them every second of every day. Everything I do, every fucking thing, is for them. And now I have to do it alone. You have no idea what that’s like. I hope you do, some day, I hope you have everything taken away from you.’

  Surtsey thought of her mum up the road, of Tom on the black sand.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Alice spoke softly. ‘I’m going to destroy you like you’ve destroyed me.’

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’

  ‘It is, believe me.’

  ‘Please leave.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry.’ Alice released her fists and stretched her fingers. ‘You’re going to be sorry you ever set eyes on my husband.’

  She grabbed the girls by the
shoulders and turned them away, then strode down the path, the girls scrambling after her into the night.

  25

  Too much grass, red wine and guilt. Surtsey lay on her bed and tried to focus. She looked at her bedside lamp but it kept drifting across her vision, trailing floaters. She closed her eyes and saw Tom, the gentle collapse of his skull. She imagined lifting a rock and making that dent, destroying the structure of his face. She knew the power of the earth, the weight of stone. She understood that. How thin the layer of each person was, just hair, skin, sinew, muscle, bone. When the barrier between you and the outside world was broken and your insides were spilling out onto the sand you became part of the world. You returned to the earth, finally home, your atoms mixing with the universe again, interconnected in a way you could never be whilst alive.

  Shit, that grass was strong. She was thirsty.

  She blinked heavily, then eased herself up like an old woman. Put her hands in front of her like a mummy from an old movie, touched the wall then the door, then went to the bathroom and filled a glass with water. The feel of it in her throat was electrifying. She drank and refilled then wobbled back to her room and thumped the pint glass on the bedside table, fell back onto the bed.

  She tried to look at the poster of the Inch on her wall. Steam billowing into the sky from the blue-green water, lava flow glowing, throbbing against the black rock, a shard of lightning connecting the earth to the sky. She thought of something she’d seen in a documentary. When a bolt of lightning strikes from above, all these little tracers spark up from dozens of points across the land in the first few microseconds, each of them desperate to connect with the motherbolt. They raise their ionised hands to heaven waiting for the rapture, hoping to be the chosen one, to be connected and lifted to the sky.

  She heard a ping and looked around the room.

  She felt a charge move through her like she was one of those streamers reaching out to the lightning, waiting for the bolt.

  She pulled Tom’s phone out of her pocket and looked at the screen:

  Do you feel guilty?

  She blinked. Blinked again. Started typing slowly:

  I’ve done nothing wrong.

  The phone felt hot in her hand as if it was faulty. It pinged:

  That’s not what the police think.

  She dropped it on the bed and stared at it. Picked it up and typed:

  I’m going to tell the police about you. Give them this phone.

  For a second she imagined again that it was the Inch itself sending the messages. The island knew her innermost fears and secrets, knew her inside out, saw everything she did there. She slapped herself in the face trying to clear her mind.

  She stared again at the messages, the letters drifting in her stoned vision, left to right like she’d been on a roundabout.

  The phone pinged again.

  She closed her eyes, needed a moment before reading. She concentrated on her lungs expanding and contracting, interacting with the atmosphere at a microscopic level.

  Opened her eyes:

  No you won’t. They wouldn’t believe you anyway.

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said.

  Her voice didn’t sound convincing.

  Ping:

  Returning to the crime scene wasn’t smart.

  Surtsey rubbed at the skin beneath her eyes. Pushed at the sockets until her focus blurred. Felt tears come.

  She looked around the room then touched the screen, slow, fingers clumsy:

  Who are you?

  Send.

  She sat looking at the screen waiting for an answer, but no answer came.

  26

  She was an ancient god made of stone, held captive in the core of the earth. Slowly the magma melted her chains until she broke free, swimming in the molten rock, upwards towards the surface, faster and faster, the pressure around her lessening until she burst into water then open air, fists held high, lava and rock and steam surrounding her as she soared into the atmosphere and gazed down on the planet from space, marvelling that only minutes before it had been her prison.

  A ringing.

  She bumped out of sleep, head in a fug, the raw rasp of grass sticking in her throat and mouth.

  Phone. It was a ring not a ping, a call not a message.

  She clambered for Tom’s phone, pulled it from under the pillow. Nothing. She stared at it, the ringing still in her ears.

  Not Tom’s phone. Hers.

  She found it on the floor next to the bed.

  St Columba’s.

  They never usually called. In fact, she couldn’t think of a time they’d ever called her.

  Her stomach slumped and her skin prickled.

  She didn’t answer straight away.

  Six rings, seven.

  Ten.

  She pressed the button.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, is this Ms Mackenzie?’

  The formality confirmed it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Deborah Steel, the registered nurse at St Columba’s Hospice. I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry but your mother Louise passed away in the night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Like she couldn’t say anything else, like she was stuck on ‘yes’ for the rest of her life.

  ‘It was peaceful,’ the nurse said. ‘In her sleep. I’m so sorry.’

  Surtsey looked at the poster on her wall, lightning delivering hundreds of amps, shooting life into the Inch. She thought about yesterday with her mum, touching the sand, breathing the air.

  ‘Is there someone there with you?’ the nurse said.

  Surtsey had forgotten the nurse was still there and jumped at the sound of her voice. She thought about the question, looked at her bedroom door. Halima down the hall, if she wasn’t up and out already. Iona too. Shit.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. It seemed easiest. Just go along with all this, follow protocol. Deliver her lines as best she could, hope that everyone was convinced she was still human, still breathing.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you a couple of questions, Ms Mackenzie.’

  ‘Surtsey.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘It’s my name.’

  ‘Surtsey, yes. Is it OK if I ask you a few things?’

  ‘Sure.’ Surtsey took the phone away from her ear for a second and stared at it. The little smudged area at the top of the screen where her ear had been pressed. The red button to end the call. She put it on speaker to feel less intimate, less connected.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I have some questions first. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Surtsey tried to remember the nurse’s name but it was already gone.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she said.

  A pause while Surtsey stared at the screen.

  ‘As I said, your mother passed away peacefully in the night.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What did she die of?’

  ‘Surtsey, Louise had terminal cancer. You know that.’

  ‘Yes, but what specifically killed her?’

  ‘The cancer killed her.’

  ‘I was with her yesterday. She was fine.’ Surtsey pictured her mum on the boat, spray in her hair and wind whipping around them both.

  ‘That’s often the case in my experience,’ the nurse said. ‘Clients frequently perk up before the end.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I understand it’s hard to accept,’ the nurse said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I can accept it,’ Surtsey said. ‘It’s just…’

  Silence.

  Eventually Surtsey spoke, as much to herself as into the phone. ‘Couldn’t you have kept her alive a little longer?’

  ‘It was her time,’ the nurse said.

  ‘How do you know it was peaceful?’ Surtsey said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said she died peacefully in h
er sleep. How do you know? How do you know she wasn’t writhing in agony for hours while your staff were pissing around on Facebook or reading Hello magazine?’

  ‘She was asleep,’ the nurse said, ‘and she didn’t wake up. And anyway, she had a DNR order in her paperwork.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do Not Resuscitate. We discussed it when she first came. She didn’t mention it to you?’

  She had done, Surtsey remembered, but it seemed so far away, a theoretical discussion with no relevance to her mum actually fucking dying.

  The nurse spoke again. ‘So even if someone had been with her, we couldn’t have done anything. Legally, I mean.’

  ‘Did you see her yesterday?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You personally, did you see my mum yesterday?’

  Surtsey heard a sigh down the phone. What must it be like to give people this information all day long? To be the one who steps into people’s lives and gives them the worst news imaginable? The harbinger of death, a real-life grim reaper.

  ‘I spoke to Louise at teatime,’ the nurse said.

  ‘And did she seem to you, as a professional, like someone about to die?’

  ‘It’s not like that. You never know.’

  ‘So what’s the point of all the nursing training, if you can’t tell when someone is going to die?’

  Here eyes were wet with tears, dripping onto the phone screen. She didn’t wipe them away, worried she might end the call by accident, end this final connection with her mum. If they could just keep talking, maybe Louise wasn’t really dead. A clerical error, someone typed the wrong name into the computer, it happened all the time.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I do have to ask a couple of questions,’ the nurse said. Diplomatic, unprovokable. What must that be like?

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Firstly, did your mother have an end-of-life plan?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A plan for what to do when this happens. We have no note of one in our records. Normally if a client has one we would have a copy.’

  Client. Louise Mackenzie, aged forty-six, just another fucking client. But then how else would you deal with it if you had to do it every day? All these dead and dying weren’t your relatives, or you would go insane with grief and stress.