“Fine, of course, nothing to worry about. I just need to chat something through with you. I’ll come round later.”
Nothing to worry about? Really? “Wait—can we meet at the pub? It would be good to get out of the house.” The house I just got back into. The house I’ve just discovered I can’t stay in alone. I thought I could, but I was wrong.
“The Quaich? Yes, okay, fine. Six o’clock?”
“See you then.”
Six o’clock. I just have to survive the Manse until six o’clock.
* * *
* * *
• • •
The Quaich.
I dither over whether I should walk there or take the car—it’s not at all far, but the car would restrict me to one drink, and in my current far-from-balanced state, perhaps even one drink is too many. But in the end I leave early and decide to walk without analyzing the reason for that decision, admiring the play of the light on the heather, searching out the winking river at the bottom of the glen and feeling the chill breeze gradually win out over the diminishing strength of the evening sunlight. If I go back to London, I think, I should make sure I don’t work with Jonathan. And then I think, what is there for me in London now that I’ve cleaved myself from Jonathan? What is there for me here once Carrie’s play is over? What is there to tie me to any place at all?
Despite the fact that I’m a good fifteen minutes early, Ben is already seated at a table when I get there, nursing a pint with half an eye on the door whilst he chats to the waitress. A different waitress tonight, but one no less smitten with him. “Ailsa,” he calls, climbing out of his chair, and I lift a hand and head over. He must have showered after work: his hair is damp and there’s a strong smell of his aftershave when he kisses me on the cheek. He’s exactly the relaxed, at-ease character I first met, except he’s not, quite. Something is off. I try to figure out what as he asks me what I want to drink. There’s a tightness around his eyes, perhaps, and I find an answering tightness developing in my chest. Nothing to worry about. I knew that was rubbish.
“So what is it you wanted to talk about?” I ask as lightly as I can when I have a glass of wine in front of me.
“Best wait for Fiona and Jamie,” he says easily. “Save me having to say things twice.” So, Jamie too. Earlier it was only Fiona. “Oh, here they are.”
I glance up to find them both crossing toward us. They pause to give a drinks order to the waitress and then I’m enveloped in the ensuing hellos. Jamie kisses me on the cheek and, after a slight hesitation, Fiona does the same; I have to bend my head to facilitate it. Ben gets a hug, though. I sense that’s more natural for her. She’s dressed in jeans and a light fleece, a thoroughly no-effort attire, but she has mascara on. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her wearing makeup before. It suits her.
“Callum’s missing you already,” she says with a smile. “He doesnae think you should be on your own.”
I don’t think I should be alone, either. Not in the Manse, which is why I won’t be staying there. But if I say that, there will be twenty minutes of discussion before Ben tells me why I’m here. “Bless, I miss him too.”
“Is the alarm set up now?” Jamie asks. “Ah, thank you,” he says to the waitress who has just delivered the drinks. “Does it go straight to the police?”
I nod. “Yep. I’m terrified I’m going to set it off by accident and look like a moron.” A thought strikes me. “God, I’d better text Carrie the code, otherwise she might set it off.” I grab my phone.
“Aye, you’d definitely look like a moron if it goes off the very first day,” says Fiona.
It’s small talk, this. They are filling the gap, waiting for Ben to start. A small silence falls, and we all look at Ben, who looks round the table at each of us then clears his throat. “Okay. So.” He turns to me. “Ailsa. There’s something we need to tell you.” His gaze drops to the table. “It’s . . . it’s not an easy thing. Just please try to hear us out.”
I look around the table at the three of them. Jamie tries for a reassuring smile. Fiona looks like she’s simply watching. “I . . . Okay.”
“When Jamie and Fiona were little, sometimes they’d play up the river. You know, where the waterfalls are?”
“I haven’t been there. Didn’t you tell me the river path is unsafe at the moment?”
Ben nods. “It is. In summer you can usually get up to the waterfalls quite easily, though. You used to be able to get a lot farther, but there were landslides after a storm one year, and the path has been officially closed, right from the bottom, ever since. Any of us would have got our arses tanned for playing there, which I guess was part of the appeal. Fi and Jamie went there a lot. They would even climb the rocks and head up way past the falls.” Why is Ben relating this story when it’s about Jamie and Fiona?
As if Jamie can hear my thoughts, he takes up the tale. “We found something. It didnae mean anything to us; we were too wee, I suppose. It became part of our game.” He stops.
“What?” I prompt. “What did you find?”
“We found a skeleton,” Jamie says.
I stare round the table wordlessly. Jamie and Ben are leaning in, shiningly earnest. Fiona is sitting back, her mascara-rimmed eyes still watching. “A skeleton,” I say quietly. A skeleton. My father, and not my father. Schrödinger’s cat, again.
Jamie nods. “There had been a storm when we found it. I dinnae ken if some of the earth covering it had been washed away. Anyway, it must have been there for years; it was just bones.”
A skeleton. By the falls. Where my father thought there might have been a memorial. I can imagine him now, perhaps home early from his trip, taking advantage of some free time to do a little research on foot. There’s a heft to the image that scares me. It won’t budge easily. Somehow, my journalistic training kicks in. “Were there clothes? Shoes? Anything?”
Jamie shakes his head.
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
Jamie shakes his head. “We would have had to admit we were up there. We were only kids. We couldnae grasp that it was more important than a skelping.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven, maybe?” He looks at Fiona, but she shrugs. “Around that. We hid them in a sort of mini cave; it was part of our game.”
“Jesus, what kind of game do you play with a skeleton?”
“We were pirates. Or sometimes Jacobites,” Jamie says. Fiona is frowning slightly, but he carries on. “Ben followed us up there one time. That’s how he found out, but we swore him to secrecy.”
“I wanted to tell,” Ben explains. “I thought we ought to tell the police, but Fiona convinced me not to. She made me promise.” He glances at Fiona with a slight smile. “I swear to God, I was scared of your father for years. You went mental when I wanted to tell. You had me thinking you’d be skinned alive.”
Jamie’s mouth twists. “Aye, well, he’s far more mellow with Callum than he ever was with us.”
“So you think . . .” I find I’m rubbing the bridge of my nose. “What, you think this was my father?”
“We didn’t. Not at first. Everybody thought your dad ran off with the diamonds.” Ben shrugs. “And we had no idea how old the bones were. They actually could have been from the Jacobite era for all we knew; no clothes remaining suggests really old. When we got older, we did start to wonder . . . I thought about going to the police, but I’d promised these two I wouldn’t, and they didn’t want to, and anyway the longer we left it, the harder it seemed . . . I don’t know, it all seemed very abstract. And then you arrived and it wasn’t so abstract anymore.” He looks at the table. “Ever since you got here, I’ve been wondering. It’s all I’ve been able to think about.” The misery in his face is entirely genuine. Ben has failed himself. He’s fallen short of his capitalized Ideals.
“I don’t . . .” I shake my head.
“The point is
this,” Ben says. “After the bones started turning up in your house, I went to the cave.” He grimaces. “Bloody lethal getting there; they’re right to have closed the path. I was only there that one time, but the cave was just as I remembered it—a bit harder to climb up to now I’ve got a lot more bulk to haul, but otherwise the same. Only it was empty. The bones were gone. And then I went to see Jamie, to find out when he last saw them; no point in asking Fi.” He directs a small smile at her to show no offense intended. “And he said . . .” He stops and looks at Jamie, who obligingly fills the gap.
“I was up there three weeks ago—nearly killed myself getting there, mind. But the bones were still there.”
All three of them wait for me to speak, though that’s not exactly a change of pace for Fiona. I can’t think what to say.
Ben fills the silence. “I don’t know whether they’re your father’s bones, but I think—we think that someone has taken them and is using them to terrorize you. We’re going to go to the police tomorrow and explain. But we wanted to tell you first.” He looks like a man who has finally got something off his chest. “I’m so sorry that we didn’t do it before.”
I take a sip of my wine. I still don’t know what to say. Suddenly Fiona speaks, as if she’s finally woken up. “It’s your father,” she says quietly. “It’s always been your father.”
“What?” Ben is staring at her, grabbing her shoulder. “Are you sure?” he asks shakily. “You’ve never said so before.”
“I’m saying it now,” she says to him, with an odd dignity. “It’s her father. She ought to know.”
“How do you know?” The words are mine, but I don’t recognize the voice.
Fiona turns to me. “You know how I know.”
“Fiona,” says Jamie warningly.
“She’s going to find out sooner or later. Sooner, I think. Maybe tomorrow.” She turns her hazel eyes on me, bluntly sympathetic. “He died, Ailsa, all those years ago. I’m so sorry.”
I leave.
* * *
• • •
Ben catches me when I’m maybe a third of the way home, stomping along the roadside. He slows his BMW to a walking pace with the window wound down. “Ailsa,” he calls. “Please, get in. I’ll give you a lift home.”
“I’m happy walking.” Happy. That’s a joke, the universe’s bad joke, and I’m the butt of it.
“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
“Believe me, I really don’t want to.”
“It’s raining.”
“I daresay I’ll survive.” I walk on, pulling my coat tightly closed around my neck. What was originally a few meager drops of rain is rapidly becoming a very heavy shower. It’s still light—it’s not even seven o’clock—but the rain clouds are making it feel like dusk. Ben’s headlights are on, painting the raindrops they can reach with a silver light.
“Come on, Ailsa, jump in. You’re getting soaked.”
He brings the car to a stop the moment I turn to face him. “Do you have any idea how completely fucked-up the lot of you are? Who on earth plays with a skeleton? At seven years old?” I have a vision of the three of them as children—Ben, Fiona and Jamie—sitting cross-legged in a circle around a toy tea set in a cave, with a grinning skeleton sitting upright as the fourth member of the gang.
“Believe me, I get it,” he says earnestly. “I only saw it the once, and that was enough.” Then he adds, wretchedly, “But I promised.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. It’s not even him I’m upset at. Or maybe I am. Maybe I’m upset at absolutely everyone right now. I open the car door and get in. I’m probably soaking his luxury seats, but I really couldn’t care less. To be fair to him, he doesn’t seem to care either.
He drives in silence for a moment, sneaking nervous glances at me. It’s too murky to see clearly across to the other side of the valley. The mountains that I know are there are an ominous dark shadow, crouching like a giant beast ready to pounce. “You know what Fi said . . .” he starts hesitantly. “About it being . . .”
“Yes. What kind of person would say something like that? Without a shred of evidence?” Except I know why she would say it—and I know she believes it. I hate that one of my splintered selves believes it too.
“The thing is . . . The thing is, she’s always right.”
“Is this another piece of crap like time folding at the Manse?” My delivery is brutal. My filter has gone; it’s been blown sky-high by the roiling fury within me. I can’t even begin to describe how completely I want to wash my hands of Ben, Fiona, Jamie, the Manse, everything, everything, everything. I wish for the rain to wash me clean and clear and pure again, but it doesn’t seem to be that type of rain.
“Look,” he says patiently, but stubbornly. “The Manse is . . . whatever. The Manse is the Manse. But I can tell you, you’re just shooting the messenger. Fi is right. She’s always right. You can believe it or not, as you like. But if you choose not to, then you’re just ignoring the evidence. You’ve seen it yourself. We all have. Everyone round here knows it, whether they acknowledge it or not. She might not have a bloody clue what time it is or when things happened, but if she tells you something, she’s right.” He glances at me. I’m thinking of a drunken Fiona outside the Quaich: A Fi fact. Incontrovertible. I’m thinking of Piotr and the accident in front of him; I’m thinking of Callum’s football score. Callum. I will miss him, I think, and something twists in my chest, but we have to leave. I’ll tell Carrie; I’ll convince her to leave too. I should have left weeks ago. I should never have come back here in the first place.
Ben goes on after a moment. “So I wanted to say . . . I’m sorry. I should have gone to the police all those years ago. I know I should have. It would have made a difference in your life for you to know.”
That’s too big a topic to try to pick at right now. “You said you promised.” We’re already turning into the drive of the Manse. He parks in front, only meters from where he found the fox, with the engine still running, then looks at me, waiting for my question. “Why? Why didn’t they want to go to the police?”
“They were scared of getting into trouble with Glen. I mean, really scared. He was pretty tough on them.” He shrugs. “Parenting was different then: nobody was afraid to spank their kids; the school still used the belt—do you remember?” I do remember. I remember our collective fear of it as pupils. I don’t know if I ever actually saw it, but in my head it was a broad thick strip of brown leather. I remember the horror that the thought of it elicited in me—and the burning outrage. “Jamie was a wee shite. He hadn’t learned to play the system like he does, so he was on the receiving end of some harsh discipline. And Fi had her own problems, but none of them had been diagnosed then, so sometimes she just seemed willfully difficult.” He looks forward through the windscreen with a shrug of his shoulders. The wipers are working in a steady continuous sweep, but they can’t quite keep up with the deluge. The raindrops that I can see falling through the silver light of the headlamps are fleetingly sharp then they blur and bleed. “Cause and effect was especially confusing for her back then, before she figured out coping mechanisms. Can you imagine having your arse tanned but not being able to work out why? It must have been terrifying.” He shakes himself and turns back to me. “Anyway. On top of that, I just don’t think they were as scared of the damn thing as I was. Both of their mothers had died; maybe they thought about death differently to most kids. They still do—certainly Fi does.”
There’s nothing I can think of to say to that.
“Anyway,” he says again. “Thanks for at least hearing me out. And I really am sorry.” The hand farthest from me is on the steering wheel, in the twelve o’clock position. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing to do with the lot of us ever again.”
“It’s not . . . That’s not . . . I was never planning to stay anyway. And I’m not going to stay her
e tonight. When Carrie gets back we’ll be leaving.”
“Does Carrie know that yet?” he asks neutrally.
Instantly I realize he knows about Carrie and Jamie. Has everybody known? Has everybody been talking about it? I ignore his question. “We can stay in the Quaich or a Travelodge or something tonight. Then she can get organized to stay in Edinburgh for the rest of her play.”
“If you say so.” His tone is still neutral, pacifying. He glances at the Manse, a touch uneasily. I didn’t leave a light on, and in the gloom, it’s an indistinct dark mass, an enormous crouching shadow. “I’m glad you’re not going to be sleeping in it again, though.”
“Have I lost my buyer?” My anger has entirely dissipated, I realize, at least where he’s concerned. We’re talking like we ordinarily do.
He shakes his head. “I still love it. It’s Marmite, this house: you either love it or hate it, I think. I meant that I’m glad you won’t be sleeping in it. All of this weird stuff revolves around you.”
“That’s encouraging, seeing as I’ll be taking my own self with me.”
He does at least crack a smile. “You and the Manse then.”
“Yes.” Me and the Manse. The Manse and me. Ben is hesitating. I sigh. “Come on, spit it out.”
“Fi is worried.” I bristle slightly, and he sees it but carries on regardless. “When I ask her, she says that it’s going to be okay in the end, but . . . she’s worried, I can tell. So—I don’t know. Be careful, I suppose.”
I climb out of the car, wondering exactly what okay in the end means for Fiona. It’s alarmingly nonspecific. Okay for whom, and when is the end?
My father is taking tea. He’s spruced up in a dark blue suit, complete with pocket handkerchief and matching tie, that perfectly sets off the white of his bones, so white that his fingers are virtually indistinct from the fine bone china of the cup in his hand. The cave he’s in is dark and musty; it surely won’t be doing his suit any good. He’s grinning, but I can’t tell if he’s happy. Skeletons always grin.
The Missing Years Page 28
