‘My Dad moving out,’ Michelle said at once.
‘That was OK for me,’ Roxanne said. ‘I was expecting it anyway, when my Dad went to live in England. That’s where he was born and he was always like, away, working there. The worst bit was when he was home, then they was always fighting.’
‘My Dad hit my Mam once,’ Michelle volunteered. ‘Don’t tell nobody, right?’ She looked as if she wished she had not said it. ‘It was years and years ago, I was just a little kid. I hid under my bed I was that scared.’
‘Did he hurt her?’ Amy asked. ‘There’s this women’s refuge in Dingwall, for battered wives.’
‘I wouldn’t let any guy beat me up,’ Eilidh announced. ‘No way.’
‘My Mam never either. He only done it once so you don’t need to say it like that.’ Michelle turned her back on Eilidh. ‘She had a black eye, though,’ she added, after a moment. ‘She wouldn’t go down the street for ages and I had to get the milk in and that. I had to go to the shop. I was only six.’
‘Women can’t help it, it’s the man’s fault,’ Eilidh offered.
This sounded pretty bad to Kate, as bad as having your mother go crazy. Not that Susan was crazy, or not often. Still, she wasn’t going to tell them. What was the worst thing that had happened to her? She could say my mother’s left me, disappeared. Nobody knows where she is. Saying it would undo the other things she had told them about her mother, and she wanted to cling to those. Lies lead to more lies, that was the trouble with them. The rough edge of her fear caught at her like a ragnail.
She realised the others were all talking about their mothers.
‘The first time, right, my Mum brought her boyfriend here,’ Roxanne was saying, ‘the first time he stayed over. Don’t tell nobody this, OK? I’m in bed, right, and the two of them, they’re having a drink and watching telly, then they go to bed in her room, next to mine. I knew they were in there. And then they’re doing it, right, I can hear them, what a bloody racket! So you know what I did? I bang on the wall, really hard, and I yell ‘Shut up!’ They went totally silent.’
They all collapsed, laughing helplessly.
‘God, the embarrassment – what did they say when they saw you, did you see them in the morning?’
‘I got up before them. I just went to school. When I come home he’s out, and she goes, ‘‘Had a good day, what would you like for your tea?’’ Stuff like that, like, trying to get round me.’
‘He move in after that?’
‘Soon. He’s not bothered now if I bang. He just bangs back. Du’n’t care.’
‘Oh my God.’ Michelle raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘I hope my mother’s not doing it with Carl. He’s gross, my God. Disgusting.’
‘They’re old, I don’t know why they want to do it anyway,’ Eilidh said, ripping open a packet of crisps. ‘Anybody want one?’
‘I don’t like pickled onion. Any salt and vinegar?’
‘Really old people do it as well,’ Michelle said. ‘I seen this programme on telly about it. Like, I mean, pensioners. Gross.’
Kate sat back on the sofa, joining in the laughter, but uneasily. What was the worst thing that could happen to you?
‘The worst thing ever,’ Amy said as they gathered cosily again, ‘was when I thought I’d – you know – caught on. I was late, I was in a right panic. But it was OK, I wasn’t.’
‘You thought you were pregnant?’
‘Yeah, I did. I was in a state.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Was that when you were going out with Kieron?’
‘Might have been.’ Amy got up, smug.
Kate’s heart was beating fast. What was the worst thing that could happen to you?
‘We only done it the once,’ Amy pointed out as she sprang open a can of coke. ‘Would’ve been really bad luck, eh?’
‘Remember that girl, Annabel, that left in the middle of fourth year, right before the exams? She was pregnant. I saw her in the High Street, she was huge. Then I think they moved away, I never saw her after that.’ Michelle turned to face Kate. ‘She came up from England, like you. She was posh as well.’
‘I’m not posh!’ Kate laughed, reddening.
‘Posher’n’us at any rate,’ Eilidh muttered.
‘That’s not difficult, eh?’ Michelle shoved her, laughing. Kate said nothing, keeping apart. But then, leaders were always apart.
She was much more at ease here though, than in Frances’s house, trying to be whatever it was Aunt Frances expected: a grateful niece, a forlorn motherless girl, something like that, with Andrew ignoring her, muttering about ‘watching herself’. None of his business who she went about with. It was cosy here, it felt safe, to bed down at midnight in Roxanne’s room on quilts and sleeping bags, squashed together, talking half the night.
She woke at five, Eilidh’s elbow poking into her side, Michelle’s long hair spread over her arm, tickling. Across her feet Roxanne’s mother’s cat lolled, digging his claws in if she tried to move. Her mind was as clear as if in sleep all the rubbish had been washed away, and she had only one thought left.
She was late, that was all. She was always late. They hadn’t even done it properly. He’d been so mad at her – you’ve been leading me on, slag. She shuddered every time she thought of him saying that, saw again the way he zipped up his trousers with difficulty over his swollen penis. Men were so ugly. Were they all like that, their balls hairy, the skin purplish?
It must be all right. It wasn’t all right then, the way he never spoke to her afterwards, though he spoke about her all right. ‘We could go to Scotland,’ she had said to Alec. ‘Go and see my real family. They don’t hate me.’
Alec, surprised and pleased, said, ‘yes, why not, why not for Christ’s sake?’ He had thought she was upset about Susan, but she had not had time to get upset about that yet. It was Dave Prentice who’d made her feel so terrible.
‘I wouldn’t let any guy beat me up!’ Michelle had declared. But she did not know anything, none of them did, none of them had any idea how somebody else could make you feel like rubbish. Cockteaser, fucking cockteaser, that’s what she is.
She had panicked, pushing him away, saying she didn’t want to, please, not now, please stop. Her mother had said once ‘Make the first time special.’ It was the only advice she had ever given Kate on the subject. At the last minute, during the last minute, she had panicked, not wanting this to be her first time, Dave Prentice to be the first guy. At first he’d begged, please please, just let me, please, but when she eventually managed to shove him off, he got angry.
Afterwards, she told herself it had not really been her first time, in someone’s mother’s spare room, at a party with people being sick all over the place, a window smashed, some guy crazy on ecstasy, so that a neighbour seeing him in the garden had called an ambulance.
It couldn’t have done any damage. She was just late, she was always late. She shut her eyes and tried to think of other things. What? What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you?
Just last night Frances had said to her, as they cleared away the supper dishes, ‘I looked after you when you were a baby, but you won’t remember that.’
Kate stopped, drying cloth in hand, surprised. ‘What?’
‘When you stayed with us, you and your mother.’
‘Oh, yeah, so we did.’ Kate flushed, thinking of her mother’s version of this story, which would not be Frances’s.
‘Your mother was working and I was at home. She got relief work at one of the hospitals in Newcastle. We had two cats then. Mimi’s one of them, still going strong, and there was a black one, Hector, but he died. They were still young and playful when you arrived and you loved watching them. You didn’t speak, not a word, but one day Mimi jumped up on the window sill in front of you. You were on the floor with some toys, and she leapt up waving her tail. You put your hands up – right up, like this – and shouted ‘Oossy!’ For pussy, you know.’ Frances let her hands fall, smiling. �
��And you laughed,’ she added. ‘It was lovely.’
Kate smiled back, embarrassed. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘Oh well, you were only fifteen, sixteen months.’
‘How long did we stay with you?’
‘Nearly a year. Then, after your second birthday … you left.’ Frances looked straight at her. ‘You and your mother. And Alec.’ Startled, Kate looked back. She wasn’t going to start about that, was she? But Frances said only, ‘Don’t worry, it’s so long ago I don’t think about it now. It hurt at the time of course.’
‘I was staying with you at Christmas?’
‘Yes, for one Christmas.’
‘You had a tree, didn’t you, and lots of decorations?’
‘We always did, when the boys were little. Now we just put up the tree.’
Kate thought hard until the half forgotten images rose again. ‘Did you have a snowman made of sort of frilly paper, hanging up?’
‘Yes, in the living-room doorway. He got torn, that snowman, I had to throw him out after a few years. He had a black top hat the way they do in picture books.’
‘I remember,’ Kate said.
Huddled in her sleeping bag, borrowed from Andrew and smelling cheesy, she closed her eyes and pictured herself lifted in someone’s arms, reaching for the snowman and touching his paper stomach, so that he swayed a little. She had wanted to say something to Frances that would exonerate her mother, and she also wanted to show she remembered living there. Now it was as if Frances had opened a door that could easily stay ajar between them. She was trying hard, Kate admitted. Suppose her mother came back now. Would Frances speak to her? Kate could not imagine it, but neither could she imagine her aunt being spiteful and cold. She had thought there must be something bad about Frances for Alec to leave, for her mother to go with him, but there was not. She wasn’t very easy to get to know but Kate wanted Frances to like her. How could that happen though, without betraying her mother?
A weight shifted in Kate’s chest like a pain waiting to happen. She shivered, trying to turn on her side and get comfortable and sleepy again. Maybe the worst thing had not happened yet. You couldn’t know the awful things lined up in the future, looming.
4
‘I thought I might come up for a couple of days.’
It was Alec, interrupting mealtime preparations as usual. Why was he not busy, for goodness sake, in a restaurant of all places?
‘Could you leave it till Easter? I’m run off my feet just now.’
‘Busy time for me, the holidays. No, I’d rather come this weekend, if possible.’
‘I’ve got Gill this weekend.’
‘I won’t land on you – is there a good B&B in Dingwall?’
Ring the Tourist Information Centre, she wanted to retort, but did not. ‘Well, I suppose if you’re not staying here …’
‘I need to see Kate.’
‘Are you taking her home?’
He hesitated, which meant no. ‘How is she?’
‘Fine. So you’re not taking her home?’
‘If she’s settled it would be best not to disrupt things. I thought I could reassure her.’
‘About what, exactly?’
Alec was vague, slipping as usual from her grasp. This time, however, what she felt was relief that he was leaving Kate with them. He had taken her away before with no warning. The teenage Kate, lank and sulky, was nothing like the rosy cheerful infant Frances had looked after so long ago, but her presence had touched a wound she had thought healed over.
‘It’s a long time ago,’ she had told Kate. ‘I don’t mind any more.’
She did mind. However little she allowed herself to think of it she still had a vivid memory of that dark February morning when Susan, instead of sleeping late as she usually did on her day off, got up at eight. Dressing Katy she said, ‘I’m taking her to Aberdeen to see Mum and Dad. I’ve got three days off, then it’s the weekend. I’m on nights next week, so it’ll give us a good break.’ She smiled at Frances. ‘You too, eh?’
‘A bit sudden isn’t it? Katy’s no bother,’ Frances said. Hearing her name, Frances’s voice, the child ran towards her. Only last week, they’d had a tea party for her second birthday with cakes and candles and three other toddlers, children of Frances’s friends. Susan had been working so Frances had done it all. Andrew was home from nursery at lunch-time and Jack out of school at three o’clock, so they had joined in, raising the pitch of excitement much too high, the little ones shrieking in delight as the boys showed off, inventing dangerous games.
Susan packed up with remarkable thoroughness for someone who had only just decided to go away. Perhaps she was actually thinking of moving back to Aberdeen, and this was the first step. It would be a relief if she did. Frances longed for her house, and her marriage, to be clear of Susan. She and Alec got on well, that was not the trouble. They liked the same television programmes and music and they both liked to drink. That was where the trouble lay. Too much money, and time, in Frances’s view, was spent on drinking.
If Susan left, things would settle down and Alec would turn more of his attention to the boys again and to Frances herself. Had it not been for Katy, she would have asked Susan to leave months ago.
She watched Susan pack up with mixed feelings, but drove her willingly to the station, Katy wide awake and chatty in the child-seat.
‘Just drop us off, no point in your waiting,’ Susan said, as she got herself and Katy onto the pavement, She put up the buggy then hauled her bags out of the boot.
‘I’ll find a parking space, then come and give you a hand – ’
‘Don’t bother. I’m fine.’
She headed off, laden but confident, the lone parent struggling bravely, through the station entrance. Frances watched her go, her bell of shoulder length hair brightly fair in contrast to her dark jacket, jeans and boots. Frances’s heart jolted at the sight of the tiny figure in the push-chair, sitting still, overawed by the vastness and echoing sounds of the station concourse.
The last of Susan.
Not, as it had turned out, the last of Kate. This time, Frances did not intend to miss her so much when she went away.
Susan had not been going to Aberdeen and Alec had not gone to work. They had met and gone away together. Alec had almost nothing with him, so perhaps he had still been swithering. How had Susan persuaded him? Frances did not let herself speculate about that.
It had not been the last of Alec either. He came back to collect clothes and other belongings, and make financial arrangements for them all. It seemed he had the offer of a job with a branch of his company in Leeds. They would live in Leeds together and Susan would get a part-time job nursing.
‘And Katy?’ Frances asked, her voice trembling.
‘We’ll get a childminder.’
‘A childminder!’
She almost said, leave her with me. Of course that was impossible. She was a single mother with no income of her own. She was going to have to survive, and make sure her boys did too. That was enough to cope with. Sometimes she wondered if Alec might have stayed if she had given him the slightest opportunity, if she had pleaded with him. But she had turned her back on him in disbelief and contempt. Later, she understood that she had been in a state of deep shock and in that state she had focused painfully on the loss of the child. Not her own miscarried baby, but Katy. She missed with a profound physical ache the weight and warmth of her in her arms, her presence in the house. With Susan and Alec at work, or as she now realised, in the pub together, Jack at school and Andrew at nursery, she had spent many hours of many days alone with Katy.
Eventually she came to terms with the loss, knowing she must. What choice had she? Lying awake one night next to Andrew who’d had a nightmare and was restlessly taking up most of the double bed, she reached this stark conclusion. Dry eyed, she waited for daylight. I won’t cry any more, she decided. What was the point?
It was a pity her parents couldn’t be so pragmatic. Her father’s
anger against Alec and Susan blazed as far as Northumberland and gave her no peace. In the end, she gave in to his demands and moved to Aberdeen, partly to reassure him she had survived, partly to make it easier to go back to work and become independent of Alec. It had been the right thing to do, even if she had not done it for the best reasons. In taking care of their grandsons, her parents had to keep silent about Susan at last. Frances sometimes thought as she accommodated her life to suit them, taking responsibility for the future on her own shoulders, her life would have been easier if she had been alone.
The coming weekend, with both Alec and Gillian in the house, filled Frances with gloom. There was parents’ night to get through and two children in the school had been put on the ‘at risk’ register, so there was a meeting with Social Workers tomorrow. She had more on her mind than family, she thought, frustrated.
In the evening she spoke to her parents on the telephone. Still no-one had told them about Susan, but Frances felt this could not go on much longer. Her mother said, when she told her Gillian was coming for the weekend, ‘That’s nice she’ll be there for Katy’s birthday. You’ve still got her staying with you?’
‘Birthday?’
‘She’s fifteen on Sunday.’ Grace kept a birthday book; she was always on time with her cards and presents and attached more importance to this than either Frances or Gillian could bear, having other things on their minds.
‘Sunday! Right, I’ll have to get her something on Saturday, there’s no time before then. But I’ll have Gill and Alec on Saturday. What a nuisance. What do girls want at that age – clothes?’
‘You’ve such a busy life,’ her mother said reproachfully. ‘It’s very hard on you to be landed with Katy as well. What on earth is Susan thinking of? Don’t say anything to your father but I thought I might try and speak to Susan. What do you think?’
Frances heard the pleading note in Grace’s voice. She wanted Frances to give her blessing.
‘It’s up to you. It always has been. Nothing to do with me. Except – ’ She hesitated.
‘Is Susan all right? There’s something, I know that, what with Alec turning up out of the blue.’
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