When Will There Be Good News?

by Kate Atkinson

  “This is where you live?” Inspector Monroe said, peering through the windscreen at Ms. MacDonald’s house.

  “Yes,” Reggie said. “My mother’s not here at the moment.” One lie, one truth. They canceled each other out and left the world unchanged. It seemed so much simpler not to go into any kind of detail whatsoever.

  Inspector Monroe had at least listened to her, even if she clearly didn’t believe her, but if Reggie had added, “And in an entirely unrelated incident, two men trashed my flat and threatened to kill me this morning, and oh, yeah, they gave me a copy of the Iliad, at that point Inspector Monroe would probably have made a swift exit from Starbucks. She didn’t really look like a policewoman, beneath her winter coat she was dressed in jeans and a soft sweater, the same off-duty clothes as Dr. Hunter. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail that it wasn’t quite long enough for, and she had to keep tucking a wayward strand behind her ear. “I’m still growing it,” she said. “I had it cut really short, but it didn’t suit me.” Mum used to say that women had drastic haircuts at the end of unsuccessful relationships. Mum’s friends were always appearing with shorn heads, but Reggie’s mother knew her hair was an asset to be valued. She was so besotted with Gary, though, that she might have cut her hair if he had asked her to. She would have done just about anything to keep Gary, although a lot of his attraction was simply that he wasn’t the Man-Who-Came-Before-Him. Imagine if he’d said to Mum, “I’d love to see you with short hair, Jackie.” It was difficult to put words into Gary’s mouth, he was so tongue-tied. (“You’re very articulate, Reggie,” Dr. Hunter had said to her once, which she had taken as a great compliment. “Oh, she’s a talker, our Reggie,” Mum used to say.) And then Mum might have gone to her hairdresser (Philip — “camp but married,” according to Mum) and said, “Cut it all off, Philip, it’s time for a change,” and Philip would have given her a nice short bob, just below her ears or, even safer, an urchin cut like Kylie after the cancer and — ta-daa — Mum would at this moment be stirring a pan of mince in the kitchen in Gorgie and looking forward to EastEnders.

  Reggie wondered if Inspector Monroe had ever suffered a broken heart. She didn’t look the type somehow.

  Sadie had been a bit of a problem, but in the end Inspector Monroe had put her in the backseat of her car (along with the burdensome Topshop bag), from where the dog had watched them walk away along George Street with such intensity that she might have been trying to burn them onto her retinas. Inspector Monroe didn’t seem like a pet sort of person, but then she said, “I had a cat,” as if it had meant something.

  Reggie was grateful for the muffin, she was ravenous — apart from Mr. Hussain’s tic tacs and the Mars bar (hardly a balanced diet), she hadn’t eaten all day, the morning’s toast having been ejected before it was digested. She wanted to concentrate on eating the muffin, so she got the words out quickly — the car, the phone, the piece of moss-green blanket, the shoes, the suit, the whole unlikely not-being-thereness of Dr. Hunter, as if aliens had descended and whisked her away. She made a point of not mentioning alien abduction to Inspector Monroe.

  When Reggie reached the end of her story, Inspector Monroe yawned and said, “Excuse me. I’m very tired, I was up all night.”

  “At the train crash?” Reggie guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “Me too,” Reggie said.

  “Really?” Inspector Monroe gave her a doubtful look as if she were considering putting her in the fantasizing psycho box after all.

  “I gave a man CPR,” Reggie said, climbing deeper into the box. “I tried to save his life.” The lid of the box banged shut.

  This was the first time she had mentioned the man to anyone. She had carried him around all day like a secret, and it felt good to get it out of her head and into the world, even though, once spoken, the idea seemed unlikely. The events of last night already seemed more unreal by the hour; then she remembered looking at the body of Ms. MacDonald this morning and the events of last night seemed less unreal.

  “Oh?” Inspector Monroe said. Reggie might as well have played the alien abduction card, because Inspector Monroe couldn’t have looked more skeptical if she’d tried.

  “How did you get that bruise?” she had said, peering closely at Reggie’s forehead.

  Reggie tugged her fringe down and said, “It’s nothing, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Sure that’s all it was?”

  She looked concerned. Reggie knew what she was thinking, domestic violence, et cetera. She wasn’t thinking, slipped and fell in a shower when threatened by two idiots.

  “Sweartogod,” Reggie said.

  She could have told Inspector Monroe about Ginger and Blondie but it wasn’t going to help find Dr. Hunter (and fantasizing psycho, et cetera). And anyway, perhaps their threats were real (“Don’t go to the police about this wee visit or, guess what?”). What if they were watching her? What if they had seen her in Starbucks drinking coffee with a detective chief inspector, not even a humble uniformed constable. They would never believe it wasn’t about them. It was only when Reggie said, “Just here, please,” at Ms. MacDonald’s front door that Inspector Monroe said, “Oh, I see, it was right on your doorstep,” as if she finally might believe that Reggie was not lying about the train crash.

  “Well, nearly,” Reggie said.

  “Right, then,” Inspector Monroe said, “best be getting off, things to do, you know.”

  “Tell me about it,” Reggie said.

  She waved good-bye to Inspector Monroe, who was frowning, not waving, when she drove away.

  Reggie pushed the reluctant sash of the bedroom window as far up as it would go to welcome in some fresh air. There were men working under arc lights on the track, accompanied by the constant clatter and whine of the heavy machinery. A huge crane was lifting a carriage from the track. The carriage swung in the air like a toy. A massive bone-white moon was rising in the sky, shining indifferently on the unnatural scene below.

  It was too noisy to sleep in the neglected back bedroom, even with the window closed, and there was no way that Reggie would contemplate sleeping in Ms. MacDonald’s own bedroom at the front, awash with the stale scents of dirty laundry and half-used medicines.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror on the dressing table. The bruise on her forehead was turning black.

  Sadie had spent the last hour tracking the ghostly scent of Banjo around the house but now was flopped miserably in the living room. Reggie supposed that when someone went away, it must seem to their pets that they’d simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Here one minute, gone the next. Dr. Hunter said Sadie was lucky because she didn’t know that she was going to die one day, but Reggie said she wanted to know when she was going to die because then she could avoid it. No one could avoid death, of course, but you could avoid a premature death at the hands of idiots. (“Not always,” Dr. Hunter said.)

  After foraging in Ms. MacDonald’s bare cupboards Reggie came up with half a packet of stale Ritz Crackers but struck gold when she discovered the Cash ’n’ Carry–sized stash of Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers that Ms. MacDonald kept for her supper. She shared the Ritz Crackers with Sadie and ate a caramel wafer.

  Would Chief Inspector Monroe really look for Dr. Hunter? It seemed doubtful somehow. Why had she come to Dr. Hunter’s house on Tuesday? “Oh, something and nothing,” she said. “To do with a patient.” She was a good liar, but then, so was Reggie. It took one to know one.

  Something and nothing. This and that. Here and there. People certainly were very evasive around Reggie.

  Reggie decided to sleep on the sofa. Sadie jumped into an armchair and turned round and round until she was satisfied with it and then settled down with a huge sigh as if she were getting rid of the day from her body. The sofa Reggie was sleeping on still bore the faint imprint of Banjo’s body, but there was a kind of comfort in that. It had been an unbelievably difficult day. Hard times, indeed.

  Sometime in the
night, Sadie left the chair and joined Reggie on the sofa. Reggie supposed she needed comfort too. She put her arm round the dog and listened to the strong heartbeat in her big chest. The dog didn’t smell of anything much but dog. It had never occurred to Reggie before, but usually Sadie smelled of Dr. Hunter’s perfume. Dr. Hunter must spend quite a lot of time hugging Sadie for that to happen. If Dr. Hunter were okay she would have phoned, if not to speak to Reggie, then to Sadie (“Hello, puppy, how’s my gorgeous girl?”).

  Where was Dr. Hunter? Elle revient. What if she didn’t?

  Why had Dr. Hunter stepped out of her shoes and walked out of her life? There were so many questions and no answers. Someone had to hunt for Dr. Hunter. Ha.

  Ad Lucem

  Jackson felt a pang of something very like loneliness. He wanted someone he knew to know he was here. Josie, for example. (Any wife in a storm.) No, not Josie (“Now what have you done, Jackson?”). Julia, perhaps. She would be sympathetic (“Oh, sweetie”), but probably not in a way that would make him feel better.

  “What time is it?”

  “Six o’clock,” Nurse Fuzzy said. (“My name’s actually Marian.”)

  “In the morning?”

  “No.”

  “In the evening?”

  “Yes.”

  He had to check, just in case there was another time of day where six o’clock could park. Everything else had been turned upside down, why not time itself? “Can I have the phone?”

  “No. You will rest if it kills you,” the nurse said. She was Irish. That figured, she sounded like his mother. “If it’s your wife you’re worried about, then I’m sure we’ll manage to get in touch with her tomorrow. There’s always a lot of confusion in the wake of an accident, so there is.”

  “I know. I used to be a policeman,” Jackson said.

  “Did you now? Then you’ll do what you’re told and go back to sleep.”

  He wondered when the gratitude would kick in. The “I almost died but I’ve been given a second chance” thing. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to feel after a near-death experience? A sudden falling-away of fear, a resolution to make the most of every day from now on. A new Jackson to step out of the hull of the old one and be reborn into the rest of his life. He didn’t feel any of that. He felt sore and tired.

  “Are you going to stand there and glare at me until I fall asleep?”

  “Yes,” Nurse Fuzzy said. Nurse Marian Fuzzy.

  He was woken by something brushing his cheek, a butterfly wing, or a kiss. More likely a kiss than a butterfly wing.

  “Hello, stranger,” a familiar voice said.

  “Fuzzy,” he mumbled.

  He opened his eyes and she was there. Of course. He had a moment of supernatural clarity. He was with the wrong woman. He had been going the wrong way. This was the right way. The right woman.

  “Hello, you,” he said. He had been mute for decades and now suddenly he’d been given a voice. “I was thinking about you,” Jackson said. “I just didn’t know it.”

  Her eyes were black pools of exhaustion. She was prettier than he remembered. She put a finger on his lips and said, “Shh. You had me at fuzzy.” She laughed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her laugh before.

  Everything suddenly shifted into place.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Fiat Lux

  Thank God there was no one sitting at the dining-room table when she came in. There was a note from Patrick instead, propped up against an arrangement of hothouse lilies that hadn’t been there this morning. She hated lilies. She was sure their perfume had been specially bred to disguise the smell of rotting flesh, that was why they always pitched up at funerals. Eating at Lazio’s before-hand, Patrick’s note said. Come and join us if you get in on time. “Beforehand”— before what?

  The idea of more eating and drinking with Bridget and Tim was enough to make Louise vomit. And anyway she had eaten already. She had gone from the hospital to a drive-thru McDonald’s and picked up Happy Meals for the Needlers. The kids didn’t get to go to burger joints anymore, too public. They had eaten round the TV, watching the DVD of Shrek the Third. Louise had picked at some fries. She hadn’t been able to eat meat in days, couldn’t stomach the idea of putting dead flesh inside her live flesh.

  “Happy Meal,” Alison said with her thin-lipped smile, not a smile at all. “Not had many of them.”

  Don’t you have a home to go to?” Alison said halfway through the movie.

  “Well . . . ,” Louise said. Which she could see wasn’t really the right answer.

  She realized that she had left Decker’s driving license at the hospital. She had meant to bring it away with her. It had felt like evidence, but she couldn’t think of what exactly.

  Of course she had forgotten the license, she had forgotten everything. She had forgotten herself for a moment.

  She had flashed her warrant card and got onto the wards. Access all areas. They would have to tear that warrant card out of her hands when she left the police force. Then she had walked through wards full of train crash survivors until she found him.

  He wasn’t dead, although he looked all broken up. An Australian doctor she spoke to said it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Louise stroked the back of his hand, there was a black bruise where the IV went in. The doctor said he had been “out for the count” (a medical term, apparently) but was okay now.

  She stayed and watched over him for a while.

  When she stood up to leave, she had bent down and kissed him on the cheek and he opened his eyes as if he’d been waiting for her. “Hello, stranger,” she said and he said, “I love you,” and she felt completely disorientated, as if she had been burled around in an eightsome reel and then let go and flung across the dance floor. She was trying to compose the right response to this declaration of his feelings when the Irish nurse swooped back in and said, “He won’t stop asking for his wife, you wouldn’t have any idea how to get hold of her, would you, Chief Inspector?” and the spell was broken.

  When Reggie had showed her the postcard of Bruges and said, “I don’t know whether he’s alive or dead,” her heart had done the kind of flip-flop of fear with which it would have greeted bad news about Archie. And right in that microsecond of the misbeat, the thought had come to her that she wouldn’t have reacted that way if it had been Patrick. She had made a terrible mistake, hadn’t she? She had married the wrong man. No, no, she had married the right man, it was just that she was the wrong woman.

  “We’ve only just identified him,” the nurse said. “We thought he was called Andrew Decker.”

  “Who?”

  She found Sandy Mathieson covering the night shift. “Swapped so I could go to the wee one’s football.”

  “Decker’s driving license turned up at the scene of the train crash. So presumably he’s in the area, I don’t see how else it could have got there. Get someone to put out an All Ports Alert for him.”

  “Of all the gin joints in all the towns, et cetera, seems too much of a coincidence,” Sandy said. “You think he was coming to find Joanna Hunter? Finish the job he started thirty years ago? Surely that only happens in TV crime shows, not real life?”

  “Well, if he did, he’s out of luck,” Louise said. “She’s down in England. I think. I hope.” Because if she wasn’t, then, where was she? “Taken,” the girl said. What if the girl was right? What if something had happened to Joanna Hunter? Something bad. Again. No, the girl’s paranoia had got under her skin. Joanna Hunter was with her elderly, sick aunt. End of story.

  “McLellen left stuff for you on your desk,” Sandy said. “Copies of documentation from what’s-his-name.”

  “Neil Hunter?”

  “Think so.”

  She checked her phone messages after she’d read the note. “On our way to the theater now,” Patrick’s recorded voice informed her. So that was the “beforehand.” She was sure her husband’s affable Irish tones would be very soothing if you were about to be cut open by him on t
he operating table. My husband. The words were stones in her mouth, a noun and an adjective that belonged to someone else, not Louise. She was continually astonished at the ease with which Patrick said my wife. He’d had years of practice, of course. How did the other wife feel? The one shut in a wooden box beneath the earth in the Grange Cemetery. Fifteen years on she’d be a skeleton. Her car crash had been on Christmas Eve, the Mistletoe Bride.

  He’s been asking for his wife. Not only had Jackson managed to get his identity muddled with a psycho killer, the bastard had got married as well.

  “We’ll have a drink in the bar first,” Patrick’s message continued. “If you haven’t turned up by the time we go in, I’ll leave your ticket at the box office. See you soon, don’t work too hard, love you.” The theater? No one had mentioned the theater. Had they? Perhaps they had discussed it this morning at breakfast after she turned off her brain when Tim was giving out his tips on how to graft roses (“Make use of the whole blade of the knife, a poor cut always results in a poor graft.”).

  She checked her watch, nine thirty. Far too late for the theater now. Anyway, he didn’t say which theater — the Lyceum? The King’s? Obviously she was supposed to know. She checked the second message, sent on the heels of the first, “Afterwards we’re going to Bennet’s Bar, join us there if you can.” Beforehand, afterwards, he sure was eager for her to join him. Bennet’s Bar probably meant they had gone to the King’s. She could make it if she tried.