The Day She Died: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  “Okay,” I said. “Kit off. In you pop.” They stared at me, four big brown eyes the colour of treacle toffees, but before I could ask them again, there was a soft knock on the kitchen door.

  They turned and looked out of the bathroom window, cracked at the top to let the steam curl out. It had to be Becky. If her keys were in her car at the bottom of the drop on that godforsaken road, that must be her knocking, really mouselike, embarrassed now by taking off that way.

  “Wait here,” I said to the kids. Then, flashing on the wee one trying to climb into the bath and banging his head, I changed my mind. “Let’s go and see who it is, eh? I bet it’s a nice surprise.” I took their hands and led them to the kitchen. I opened the door and got ready to start explaining. It wasn’t Becky. Thank God for the chain, because it was a stranger—a young guy, dressed rough, a good couple of days from a wash or shave. He rushed right up and put his face to the crack.

  “Jess,” he hissed. “Wait. Jess. Sorry.” His lips looked cracked and sore and his eyes were wild, darting back and forward.

  “Do I know you?” I could tell that the kids had moved back at the sound of his voice.

  “Jess,” he whispered. “Hello.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jess, hello.” He looked over his shoulder, then he pressed himself even closer in to the door like he was trying to wriggle through the gap. “I need speak, Jess?” he breathed. Yes, he meant. Foreign accent. And he was talking in a foreign language now. The same phrase over and over again. Jaroslawa? Jaroslawa? I looked behind me at the kids. He went back to English again. “I see he is gone. Becky is gone? Jess? You alone?”

  “I’m not alone,” I said. (Stranger At Your Door 101.) “Gus is right here. And Becky … ”

  One of the children had come up and was tugging at my jeans. Ruby.

  “Missus?” she said. “Lady?”

  “Jess,” he said. “Becky, please? My name is Kazek. Kazek, jess? You open?” He snaked his hand around the edge of the door towards the chain. “He is gone.”

  “Wait a minute, Ruby,” I said, without looking.

  “Friend, Kazek,” he said. He had his fingers on the edge of the door, holding on hard. “Where is gone? Jaroslawa? You tell Kazek.”

  “Missus, Missus,” Ruby said, tugging harder.

  “He’s not gone, pal,” I said. “He’s right here.” Then I called over my shoulder. “Gus? Can you come here a minute?” The stranger shifted, wondering, and as soon as I saw him loosen his grip a bit on the door, I booted it, dead hard. He let go. I slammed it shut and turned the lock. What the hell was that about? I could hear his feet on the path as he scurried away.

  “Missus?” Ruby said again. “Dillon’s crying, by the way.” And right enough, he was. Standing with his head against his high chair, big silent tears running down his face. Stupid, useless evil bitch.

  “Baby boy,” I said. “What a rubbish night you’re having.”

  “Who was that man?” Ruby demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I told her, hunkering down beside Dillon and stroking his back. “Don’t worry. He’s gone now. Come on and get in your bath and get nice and clean for Mummy, eh?”

  The bubbles cheered them both up. I’d put in far too much and the foam was stiff and crackling, up to their skinny little shoulders and wisping off when they blew at it. When I was sure they were safe—Ruby telling me cross her heart and pull her pigtails that Mummy left them in the bath together all the time—I went to pick up broken glass and mop milk in the living room, peel fried banana off of furry cushions. Everything back on track again. Until I thought about the bath getting cold and the question of pyjamas and all the blood left my head and I sat down hard, shaking.

  It took me three big breaths to get up again, get into the hall, and put my hand on the door of the other bedroom. I gripped it until the sweat nearly popped it out of my grasp, but I couldn’t turn it. Just … no. I couldn’t make myself push down and open that door. No way.

  I stumbled back to the kitchen again and saw my salvation. There was one of those old wooden pulleys with the cast-iron ends and the rope round a cleat, kids’ clothes draped over it, including a Mulan nightie and snuggle socks. I stretched up and snatched them down. Dillon could go back in the same PJs again with a fresh nappy out of the packet in the bathroom.

  And they could tuck up on the couch, one at each end with a blanket, put the film back on. They’d love that.

  And so they did. Nearly as much as they loved not getting their teeth brushed and the bowl of M&Ms I gave each of them as I bedded them down and tucked the throw round them.

  “D’you want to pick up where you left off or go back to the start?” But they were glazed-over already. I clicked and tiptoed away and was sitting in the kitchen, dishes done, worktops wiped, when I heard a car rumbling up the track and stopping.

  I was ready for Becky, praying for Gus—and Gus it was. With the same two cops again, all solemn and pale. I took the chain off the back door, undid the deadlock, and they filed in.

  “D’you want a cup of tea?” Gus said. He leaned against the sink and rubbed his face with both his hands.

  “We’ll need to be getting along, Mr. King.” The woman copper turned to me. “You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway.

  “I can’t,” I said. “In fact, I was wondering if you would give me a lift back as far as Castle Douglas if you’re going that way.” She gave me the chewing gum stuck to the shoe look again, and I bit my tongue.

  “So, Mr. King,” said the other one, all business, no time for this mooning around. “Someone will call round tomorrow to take your statement and in the meantime, you’ve got my card and it’s got my direct line. There’s a voice-mail on that. So … have a dram and get some rest.” He nodded to me, put his hat on, and left. The woman gave Gus one of those syrupy looks, head on one side, frowning and smiling together, and followed.

  Looked like I was springing for a taxi then. But I’d give it a few minutes. He needed a bit of a shoulder, it looked like to me.

  “Pretty grim, was it?” I asked him.

  “Feels like a dream,” said Gus. He came and sat down. For a minute I thought he was going to put his hand out for mine.

  “Did you look through a window or were you right in the room?” I said. “What a horrible thing to have to do either way. No news at this end, by the way.”

  “News?” he said. “What do you mean?” He’d gone very still and suddenly the house seemed extra quiet, the night outside extra dark.

  “No word from Becky,” I said. “Someone did come round, but I didn’t let him in.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Gus.

  “I worked it out,” I told him. “Not long after you left. I would have called if I’d known your number and your phone wasn’t smashed.” I was babbling. “I could have called the cops, I suppose, and got patched through. But what with the kids and then this guy turned up.”

  “Worked what out?” he said, cutting right through my voice, his so loud in the tiny kitchen I thought I could hear it booming back off the walls.

  “That it wasn’t Becky,” I said. “It couldn’t be.”

  “Jess, what are you talking about?” he said. “What guy? It was Becky. It is Becky. My wife’s dead. She’s gone. She did it.” He put his hands round his shoulders and started rocking, not back and forward but side-to-side. I’d never seen anyone do that before; it looked like Stevie Wonder’s sit-down dancing.

  I didn’t mean to be cold, looking at him instead of going to comfort him, but I just couldn’t get my head to take it in.

  “Was she—” I began. He moaned very softly. “This woman,” I said. “Was she really messed up? Her face? She was, right? Gus, it might have been her car and I know about the note, but it can’t have been Becky.”

  “Why are you doing this?�
�� he said. “What’s wrong with you?” His voice had risen, and I flashed back to that day with the cakes, how scared I’d been, how fast I’d backed away.

  “You’re upset,” I said. “Of course you are. But listen: you were talking to Becky on the phone at quarter-past five. What time did this woman die?”

  “Three o’clock,” said Gus. “Give or take, they said. But it’s Becky. Her face was fine. It was a message. I told you that before.”

  “What?” It was like he had changed midstream but without changing his tone, like I’d flipped over the telly channel and found the same actor in a different role.

  “I told you in the car, didn’t I?” He was looking at me very closely now and I thought that if he started swaying his head from side to side, he’d be expecting me to start swaying too. “It was voice-mail,” he went on. “Becky sent me a voice-mail message. I was listening to it when you saw me.” I said nothing. He hadn’t been listening, he’d been talking. I’d heard him. It’s not forever, he’d said. And: It’ll stop again. I heard him talking to her, walking up and down the aisles of the food hall. And he hadn’t said anything to me in the car.

  “Sounds crazy, eh?” he said. I nodded. “She left a lot of messages. Long ones. I got in the habit of talking back to them. Kept me sane when she was … ”

  “Right,” I said. I hadn’t known my shoulders were hunched until I dropped them. “That makes sense then. You didn’t tell me though, you know. In the car.”

  “I thought I did.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I was sure he hadn’t, and then it struck me what I was doing: I was arguing with him. Arguing, for God’s sake. At a time like this. What was wrong with me?

  “I’m so, so sorry, Gus,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what to say.” I knew what I couldn’t say; I couldn’t segue straight to call me a taxi. “Have you eaten anything?” I asked him instead.

  “I’d puke.”

  “Or how about that dram?”

  “I’d definitely puke,” he said. “I just want to go through and kiss the kids and then … if you didn’t mind, I’d really love to just sit for a bit. Sit by the fire.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Call someone. I’ll get out of your way.”

  “I meant with you. Talk, maybe.”

  And again, I could hardly say no. “Except the kids are tucked up on the couch,” I said. “Sorry. I let them doze off with Toy Story.”

  “Best thing,” he said. “Good thinking. I’ll lift them through now. Once they’re off, they’re like sacks of spuds—you could roll them along the beach and they’d never know.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “Now, you’re talking,” said Gus, pausing in the door. “A good cup of tea. Milk and two sugars.” Not a drinker then. Just got that red skin from being Scottish, poor bastard.

  I stood at the sink a long while with the kettle under the tap before I turned it on, staring at my reflection in the dark window. It all made sense. She phoned him a lot, he spoke back to her messages, he thought he’d told me, he hadn’t. I made a mistake, he got confused, we sorted it out. It all made perfect sense. Tied up tight. So why did I feel like every time I turned my back on it, a bit of it slithered free again? I shook my head.

  Crazy night. It was up to me to be the together one.

  I gave the fireplace a good look, waiting for him to come back, once the tea was made, and if it had been coal and firelighters, I’d have got a good blaze going to cheer things up—no fireplace at all is fine, but cold ash is like death in your living room, even at the best of times. Here, though, there was a basket of twigs and a basket of logs and no box of Zip in sight, so I just swept up the worst of the spilled ash with the wee broom from the brass set and sat down.

  It was the first thing Gus did when he came through anyway, on auto. He knelt, screwed up paper, dumped a load of sticks on top, three logs balanced together like a teepee, set a match to it, and sat back into his armchair to lift his tea. There was a curl of smoke, a snap, and the flames started to flicker.

  “Scouts?” I said.

  He smiled, took a long draught of his tea, sat back with his head against the chair cover.

  “Been doing it every day since I was twelve,” he said. “Getting sticks up the track, sawing lengths, splitting them, stacking them, lighting them, raking the ashes, spreading them under the rhubarb. Drove Becky nuts. She wanted a gas heating system. I wish … ”

  “Twelve?” I said.

  “I grew up here. Teenage years anyway. It’s my grandpa’s house. He left it to me. I thought it would be perfect for the kids, but Becky missed the town. I wish … ” he said again.

  “So your Grandpa brought you up, did he?” Normally the kind of subject that’s best avoided but compared with Becky, I took it.

  “Divorce,” he said. “Dad took off. Me and my mum and my brother came to stay with Dave. She met a new guy, moved in with him, took my brother. I stayed here. Moved out when we got married. Came back after he died.” He looked around himself at the fire brasses, the pipe rack on the mantelpiece, the print of highland cattle standing in a loch above it. That explained the walnut veneer and the Bakelite handles.

  “You called your grandpa Dave?” I said, like I was competing against my personal best for dumb stuff to come out with.

  “He was a dude,” said Gus. “Not what you’d think. He totally got my work. Supported me.”

  “What do you do?” I said, hoping he wasn’t a strip-o-gram or a bailiff or something.

  “I’m a sculptor,” he said. I must have looked surprised. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You just seem dead … normal. Sorry.”

  “I only wear my lavender smock and my velvet tammy when I’m in the studio,” he said.

  “Right,” I said, letting him laugh at me.

  “And Ruby and Dillon are really called—” he broke off, couldn’t think what to say.

  “Iolanthe and … ”

  “Tarquin!” he said. “Becky wanted to call him Porter.” I raised my eyebrows. “Her maiden name.” He finished his tea and set the cup down. “What am I going to tell him?”

  I thought it over. “Same as Ruby,” I said. “Even if he doesn’t really get it. You need to tell them straight and answer all their questions. There’s books … ”

  He was nodding, but his bottom lip had started to tremble. A tear fell, then another and then, for the first time, he really started to cry. Great big painful sobs. I went over, sat on the arm of his chair, and rubbed his back hard with the flat of my hand.

  The flames were dying down by the time he stopped. Gulping and coughing, he sat up, leaned back, and let his head fall against the chair mat again. We were pressed close down our two sides.

  “If there’s anything at all I can do,” I said. That useless thing folk say.

  “There is,” he told me. “You can stay.”

  Shit! What was I going to say now? Oh sorry, I didn’t mean it?

  “Please, Jess,” he said. “It would mean a lot to me.”

  I could hardly answer, try again with something smaller. “Of course,” I went for. “I can bunk down on the couch.”

  “No,” he said. “I couldn’t ask you to do that. I put Ruby in my bed. You can have hers.”

  I was on my feet before I knew it.

  “I can’t!” I said. “I mean, I’m fine on the couch, honest. In case she wakes up and wants to go back to her own room.”

  “You’re kidding!” he said. “She’d never sleep in her own bed if she had her way.” He peered at me. “What’s wrong, Jess?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing. And even if there was, think I’d bother you about it now? Look, I really should get a taxi. I’ll call you tomorrow if you give me your number, but I really should go.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” h
e said. “Jesus, you’re shaking. What’s got you this scared, eh?”

  Seven

  Which is how come I wound up telling my troubles to a guy I’d just met, who’d hours before ID’d his wife’s body after she’d killed herself after years of depression, which makes me the biggest spoilt selfish evil bitch that ever drew in breath to whine with.

  “Take your time,” he said.

  “You really don’t need me dumping my crap—”

  “I’m asking what’s scaring you,” he said. “Throw me a bone and tell me, eh?”

  So I focussed on a spot in the distance and after two deep breaths, I said it very calmly.

  “Feathers.” It took ten weeks of counselling (well, seven years of counselling and then the ten weeks that worked) to learn to do that without gagging.

  He tried not to look surprised, but he failed.

  “Pteronophobia,” I said. “I’m sorry. I know it’s nuts. I know it’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “Pteronophobia,” Gus said slowly, trying it out in his mouth. “Is that why you wanted to stay in the kitchen? When we got here?”

  All the breath left my body like someone had punched my guts. Never before, not once, had anyone ever done anything except laugh or tell me they preferred foam pillows too.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pillows, duvets, cushions. Those big Ikea couches you get. None of the worst stuff is ever in the kitchen.”

  “Is this place okay?” he said, twisting in his seat to look around. “I’ve never even thought about it.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” I said, “because you’re not insane. This place is fine. I wasn’t too keen on the Playmobil knights. Plumes, you know. And I checked that there wasn’t carving on the sideboard.”

  “God, that must seem sick to you. Carving … them … onto furniture.”

  “Just a bit,” I said, still reeling.

  “But listen. Ruby’s duvet’s micro-whatsit, like ours, and her pillow’s foam. You’ll be fine.”

  “Has she got a Barbie?” I said. “Fairy costume? Anything like that?”