The Day She Died: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  “Czesc?” she said.

  I punched the air. “Ros?”

  “Masz jakies wiadomosci o mojej siostrze?”

  “This is Jessie Constable, I’m a friend of Gus King and I—”

  “You?” she said. “What is it you want from me?”

  “Eva?” I said. “Oh, shit! You phoned back?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said “You called me.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said. “When did you phone? Did you leave a message? Did you talk to Gus? Did he tell you Ros phoned?”

  “What? Why did you not tell me this earlier when I spoke to you?”

  “No, no, no.” God, as soon as I talked to this woman it was instant confusion. I don’t know whether it was her or me, but I had more luck talking to Kazek with the sound effects and the miming.

  “Ros phoned after I called you today,” I said. “What time did you call here?”

  “I called the number Kazek gave me yesterday and I left a message. I do not know what you are asking me.”

  “I’ll work it out and get back,” I said. I hung up the phone, desperate to get it out of my hands, like it was a wasp that had just stung me. If she had phoned yesterday and her number was the one in the memory, then how did Ros talk to Gus today? I thought it through very calmly and of course it wasn’t that difficult. In less than a minute I knew.

  There must be another mobile somewhere. There had to be. Gus had stamped on his, Becky had taken hers with her—she’d used it to call Gus, call his voice-mail anyway. But somewhere in this house, there must a phone that Ros had called to tell him she was okay.

  It wasn’t in his coat pocket. And it wasn’t in his trouser pocket. (I’d put my hands in his pockets when we were standing looking down at the kids in their beds; there was only some change in there.) I looked in the hallstand drawer, with the gloves and spare keys. There was a charger but no phone. Nothing in the sideboard drawers in the living room. Nothing in the kitchen junk drawer. Nothing in the top drawer of Gus’s dresser in the bedroom or in his bedside cabinet either. In Becky’s bedside cabinet—this was the first time I’d opened it; I’d just been putting my glass of water on the top and ignoring the drawer and cupboard bit—there was a lot of photos. Ros and the kids, Ros and Becky and the kids, just the kids (where was Gus?). And a diary. It sat there in my hand like a grenade with the pin out. I poked a finger in and nudged the pages open. I can’t stand this anymore, it said at the top of the page. Life doesn’t feel worth—

  I snapped it closed. I wasn’t going to read any more than I had to, but I wished I had read it days ago. He was right to be satisfied, not to want the Fiscal making a song and dance of it. Even her writing was screwed up smaller than an ant with cramp. Tiny, tiny little writing—nothing like the scrawl she’d left in the suicide note, once she’d given up and decided to let it all go.

  Where else could I check?

  There was a basket in the back porch, where stuff got put that came out of pockets before the clothes went in the machine. That was a likely spot for a mobile to end up. I let myself out the back door, tipped the basket towards the light, picked out a few purple ponies whose pink manes and tails were hiding everything and … bingo! A phone.

  With no charge. I tipped the basket again and threw it back in.

  And that’s when I saw the thing I’d missed before.

  I reached in and pulled it out, feeling it stretch and then snap and sting my hand as it the end of it came free.

  Ja jestem Droga, Prawda i Zycie, it read. Polish. It was broken, the rough ends of the rubber pale and crumbling, like it had been ripped off. I turned it over in my hands. It had to be Ros’s. Not as good as a phone with a number in it, but … if I knew what charity this was, maybe it would give me some clues. Like if I wore an RSPB one, people might find out I’d worked in the shop and then they could ask my old workmates and find out my mother lived in Sanquhar and go and ask her for my number. Or something. Worth a try. I took my mobile out and phoned the flat. Would he answer? He was being careful, letting the machine get it, but he picked up when heard me say, “Kazek, it’s Jessie.”

  “Jessie-Pleasie,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Face hurts from grinning,” I said. “Listen.” And I read the words on the bracelet to him.

  “Ya yestem droga pravda ee zeekie,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. A soft cry like he’d turned and seen a sunset. He said the words back to me, pronouncing them better. “How, Jessie?” he said. “What?”

  “What does it mean?” I asked him. What were the chances he’d be able to put it into English, over the phone, without miming?

  “Is Bible,” he said. “I am path and truth.”

  “I am the way, the truth, and the life?” I said.

  “You read Polish Bible, Jessie-Pleasie?”

  “It’s a … oh, shit,” I said. “It’s a rubber bangle, Kazek. Arm, right? Hand? Charity?” There was silence. “Listen.” I held the bracelet up to the phone and snapped the rubber.

  “Opaska!” he said. “Bransoletka-cegielka? Brad Pitt. Save fish. Save planet.”

  “Yes!” I said. “We’re getting better at this. It was Ros’s.”

  “No,” he said. “No way, Jessie-Pleasie. Not Bible. Not Ros. Ja jestem Droga, Prawda i Zycie? Was Wojtek.”

  “It can’t be,” I said.

  “Police give?”

  I turned the bracelet round in my hand again. The crumbling rubber on the broken ends, like it had been snatched off. Like in a struggle. Then I whipped my head up as a noise came over the turf, from the track, a hollow scraping, rumbling sound. It was Gus dragging the wheelies.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said to Kazek. “Go to sleep, let Jesus keep.” Fuck sake, I was quoting my mother.

  I shoved the bracelet in my pocket and slipped inside again. I didn’t want to see Gus right now. I needed to get my head straight. It wasn’t Wojtek’s bracelet, couldn’t be. It had to be Ros’s. Maybe her mum sent it, and she snorted and gave it to Ruby, who wouldn’t understand the words. And Ruby used it for a catapult and burst it, and Becky left it in the basket when she washed Ruby’s jeans. There was a simple explanation for everything, really. Gus was a good man. And I was going to prove it. I was going to tell him the worst thing anyone could hear and he was going to love me anyway. And then I’d tell him I’d love him even if he told me the worst thing he could tell me. And he would. And it wouldn’t really be bad, like my worst stuff wasn’t either. He would explain it all. He would make sense of everything.

  I heard him nudging the wheelie into its space on the porch and coming in the door.

  “I love your kids,” I said to him, when he came into the living room.

  “Me too,” he said laughing. “Have they been up, running about, being lovable like?”

  “No, I’m just saying. I love kids and I’m sick of keeping away from them. I need to speak to you.”

  He held up a finger to tell me to wait, went out into the hall, and came back without his coat. He dropped down into his armchair and started unlacing his boots.

  “I thought I should steer clear cos I’d never be able to cope if something happened. And you have to cope. If there’s little kids around. You just absolutely have to. Because if you don’t, then everyone’s stuffed, aren’t they?”

  He sat waiting for me to go on, holding both ends of his laces tight, making me think of a cartoon of a bird pulling a worm I’d seen in a book when I was wee and hated.

  “Something happened. More than I’ve told you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “About my granny’s quilt.”

  He said it again. “I know.”

  “But I want to trust you,” I said. “I’m going to tell you. Even though it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. Unless you want to go first and tell me?”


  He went back to his boots again then, finished taking them off, set them at the fireside to dry out—he must have been on the beach—and rubbed his socks together.

  “I’m all ears, Jess,” he said.

  “Please, please, please call me Jessie,” I said. “My mother calls me Jess. I can’t stand thinking about my mother when I’m here with you.”

  “So tell me the rest of the story just one time,” he said, “and you never have to think about her again.”

  Like he knew it was my mother all along and not my granny at all. Like he knew already what I was going to say.

  The rest of the story. Where was I starting from? What had I said before? I pulled the stuffing out of the quilt and my mother tied me down. I’d told him it was in my room at home, but he’d seen through that. He knew it was my granny’s house. And he knew I couldn’t turn my face, but he didn’t know why. Could I tell him? I could try.

  “My mother was going to some … jamboree,” I began. Gus laughed and I joined him. Where had that expression sprung from? Oh, yes, Kazek had said it to Ros’s sister on the phone. What a weird English word for him to know. Or maybe it was the same in Polish, like polka. But why was he talking about it anyway? “Yeah, sorry,” I said. “My mother was off to a jamboree. All weekend. But Friday was my granny’s whist night. So my mum bedded me down and my granny came in to check me before she went to bed.”

  I remember the door opening, the look of the flowery landing wallpaper in the lamplight and Granny’s head, done up in rollers and shining with cream, coming slowly round the door. I squeezed my eyes shut. So ashamed for her to see me tied up like a dog in a yard. Suffer the little children, my mother had said to me and, a child is known by its doings. As well as the line about the rod and the spoiling, of course. She just loved that one.

  “She’d carped on and on at me about the quilt—showing her up, how she had to sit through a lecture from Granny about how children were children and you couldn’t knock it out of them, shouldn’t even try. She was so angry. I couldn’t bear that I’d made her so angry. I couldn’t stand the thought of Granny seeing what a bad girl I was that my mum had to tie me.”

  “Wait a minute,” Gus said. “This isn’t the night you pulled the stuffing out?”

  “No, this was after. My mum tied me up so I wouldn’t do it again.”

  “Was your gran still angry with you?”

  “No, I was telling the truth when I said she thought it was funny. But she didn’t think it was funny when she saw me tied.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything. She just made this noise.”

  She had walked over to my bed and bent down low to kiss me. Then she froze and slowly she pulled back the covers, showing my wrists and the ropes. She made a whistling, whooping noise and turned away. Couldn’t she bear me in her sight? Then she made a noise that was like a dragon in a cave, a horrible roaring, choking sound. Was this the wrath that my mum was always warning me I would bring raining down?

  “I heard a crash and I opened my eyes. Granny was lying on the floor, rolling from side to side. And she was in brown puddle. Probably not brown, but it was dark in there. She’d thrown up. God, her hair and her shiny face with the face cream. And she was clutching at herself and making this noise.”

  That noise.

  “It was like a kind of gobbling,” I told Gus. He was right forward in his chair, right on the edge, holding his knees, staring at me with his mouth hanging open. “Wet and choked and just the most horrible thing I’d ever heard. I didn’t understand what I’d done.”

  “What you’d done?”

  “I know, I know, I know now,” I said. “But I didn’t know that night.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I turned and faced the other way. Even though there was a feather end sticking in me. I kept facing the wall. And eventually she was quiet. She passed out. That’s what I know now, grownup me. Little me thought she’d fallen asleep.”

  And I fell asleep too, the way kids do. I slept until her crying woke me. Her sobbing and the way she was calling my name. Jess, help Granny. Help Granny, there’s a good girl. Dehhh, hehhh Gannnn, goohh guuhhh. But I wasn’t a good girl. I was a bad girl and my mother had tied me up, so I couldn’t help Granny like a good girl would do.

  “She wet herself,” I told him. “And she shit herself. There’s nothing dignified about dying, you know.”

  “She—fuck sake, Jessie. She died? When you were tied up and couldn’t—”

  “Eventually. It got light and I was hungry. Then I wet myself too. And I slept and so did she, then it was dark again and she was moving, thrashing about, and her head knocked against the floor and, God, the smell. The smell of the pair of us in there.”

  When it got light again and I looked at her, it wasn’t Granny anymore. It was this purple thing. Lying there, crusted and twisted. I didn’t understand. I heard her talking to me a lot after that, but I know now I was dreaming. Or hallucinating.

  “I was there another night and day after the day she died. One more and it would have been me too. But my mother came back and found me.”

  Only that was a memory I wasn’t going to touch with a ten-foot pole. I wrapped it up, shrank it down, and threw it out to sea. So far out that it went over the horizon and hit the setting sun and it hissed as it shrivelled and disappeared.

  “And so that’s why I thought to myself I should stay away from kids because I can’t handle feathers, and you’ve to handle things with little kids because they can’t cope on their own.”

  Gus had put his head down in his hands and now he rubbed his face hard, but he hadn’t rubbed away all the tears when he looked up again.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You were five and you were tied to your bed. How could you cope with that? How could anyone?”

  “I know,” I said. “It makes no sense at all. Sometimes things just don’t.” Like Wojtek’s bracelet in Becky’s junk basket. But I wasn’t going to think about that now.

  “Is that really really really what happened?” he said.

  “Gus,” I said, “don’t even. It took me twenty years to get that night straight. Twenty years to sort out what was what.”

  “How come? It sounds pretty clear to me. Hellish, like, but clear. And it’s no bloody wonder you can’t forgive your mother, by the way.”

  I said nothing. I didn’t want to milk the sympathy. I didn’t want him to know that for twenty years and counting my beloved mother hadn’t managed to forgive me.

  Twenty

  Wednesday, 12 October

  Which is why I ended up phoning her the next day. I only ever phone my mother when I’m dead angry and dead clear and there’s no chance she’ll gaslight me. As to why I phone her, I’m just keeping the lines open, just in case the day ever comes. And, she’s my mum. Caroline with the couch told me about these baby monkeys that get taken away from their mothers and put in a cage with a fur-covered box. It’s pretty useless, hard and hollow and that, but it’s all they know. And the thing is, if you take it away from them, they pine for it. Even if you take it away and replace it with an actual female monkey who cuddles them back, they pine for the fur-covered box cos it’s what they know. So I don’t beat myself up anymore about phoning my mum sometimes. I’m a monkey.

  “Jess,” she said when she answered. I wasn’t holding my breath to hear what followed, not really. “Long time, no hear.”

  “Things must be bad, Mum, if you’ve had to put your phone to incoming calls only.” Two sentences—one each—and we were fighting. I took a deep breath and tried again. “How’s Allan and Penny?”

  “Fine, as you’d know if you ever called them.”

  “Oh, they’re feeling the pinch too, are they? Can’t afford to call me?”

  “Penny’s busy with the children,” said M
um. “It’s all right for you.”

  “Yeah, lucky me. Okay, now you ask me a question and before you know, it’ll be a conversation.”

  “Any man among you who bridleth not his tongue,” said my mother.

  “James, Chapter 1, I forget the verse,” I said. “I’m rusty.”

  “Well, I suppose you’ve no call for it, in your everyday life,” she said. “Just pick a saint and light a candle.”

  “Actually, Mother, what I do is sort clothes and wash them and help people who really need them to choose what’s best and try not to make them feel too crap for being there. What have you done for anyone except yourself lately?”

  “My prayer group—”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Well, it was lovely to catch up, as always.”

  “That’s it?” She almost shrieked it. “Not a word for months—”

  “From either one of us,” I said. “Not until I phoned you.”

  “I shouldn’t have to phone you,” she said. “I’m your mother.”

  “How often do you phone Allan?” I said.

  “Penny’s busy with the little ones,” she said again. “That’s different.”

  “If I was busy with kids, would you phone me?” I asked.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve disgraced yourself on top of everything,” she said. “I’m not stepping in, Jess, if the social workers take it off you. I can’t start all that at my age.”

  “You are unbelievable,” I said. “No, I haven’t disgraced myself. I’m still single and childless and living alone in my thirties. Is that what you want to hear? Is that what you want for me?”

  “Well, that’s a mercy,” she said. “But don’t try to make me feel guilty because you set your face against everyone. I didn’t train you to turn people away. I’ve done my best to help you make friends. If you were part of a community … ”

  “I’m not joining the church, Mother. I don’t believe any of it. Why don’t you join a mosque first and tell me how it’s done when you don’t actually buy a single word?”