As She Left It

by Catriona McPherson

  So she took the key outside, tried to fit it into the lock on the outhouse door, wiggling it and shoving it, bending down to look through and see what the problem was. The lock was bunged up with something. She stepped to the side and peered in at the high window, amazed that she was tall enough; this window had been far above her head anytime she’d wanted to see out of it when she was a kid.

  She had no more luck this time, tall as she might be. The window was completely covered with a layer of fine grey dust. She rubbed, but it was all on the inside, turning the glass milky, showing only her own reflection back to her. The window still opened, but the way it worked—the top half dropping inwards until, about twenty degrees from upright, it hit a metal bracket that stopped it going any farther—meant that she couldn’t see a thing even with it as wide as it would go. She rattled the handle one more time then took the key back into the house with her and hung it up, only realising when it took three goes to get it on the hook that her hand was shaking. She breathed in and out, shrinking that feeling down like she’d learned to, twisting it hard, making it so small and so tight that soon it was gone as if it had never been there at all.

  Then she locked the back door, went through and locked the front, went upstairs, and dragged her single mattress downstairs into the living room, the coolest room in the house, and lay on it with a cushion off the couch for a pillow and her jacket over her shoulders for a cover.

  But some things just won’t shrink. Try as she might, Margaret’s voice was booming in her head. You were sent to me, Opal. Deafening her. It’s a sign. She turned over on her other side and shut her eyes. She hadn’t been sent anywhere. Her little thread wasn’t twined to Craig’s, not at all.

  Then a new thought washed through her with a shudder, like from swallowing aspirin. She rolled onto her back and opened her eyes. What if there was only one thread? And it had dragged little Craig away all these years ago and everything that had happened to her had only happened so she would catch hold of the other end and follow it home? And what if little Craig was still hanging on there somewhere?

  She sat up. Margaret was right. This was all about Craig. It wasn’t Opal’s story at all. Those strange soft feelings inside her? She knew what they were now. She knew what to do.

  She was going to find Craig Southgate. Or at least find out what had happened to him. Find his body if that was all there was left of him. That’s what she was here for and all the rest of it meant nothing.

  Now she felt sleep pulling her. As she drifted down into it, she could see the pink face and wisps of red hair, four ice-white little teeth in a row along the bottom and three along the top. She could feel his hot, fat hand clutching a fistful of her tee-shirt as she tried to balance him on one skinny hip. And once fully asleep, she followed him up and down the aisles of the Co-op, never finding him, calling his name—except it wasn’t his name she was calling and it wasn’t Craig she was looking for. It was only a dream.

  SEVEN

  “Fffffsssh,” said the woman at Tesco’s information desk. “Bad time of year to be looking for a job, love, if I’m honest. All the students have been in last week in front of you.”

  “I’m not a student, though,” Opal said.

  “That’s a start, right enough,” said the woman, twinkling.

  “And I’m not looking for a summer job,” said Opal. “I’m looking for a real job. I don’t mind what shifts I do, I’ve no kids or owt, and I’ve got five years of experience.”

  “With Tesco?” the woman asked.

  “The Whitby Co-op,” Opal said.

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “The Co-op or Whitby?” said Opal. “Well, it’s the same answer. My mum’s from Leeds—I grew up here. And she took ill in last winter, and I had to give up my job and move back to look after her.”

  “So no kids, but you do have a dependant?”

  Opal took a big breath before she answered. “Oh yeah, no. She died. Eight weeks ago.”

  “Eeh!” the woman said, pressing her hand to her chest. Opal noticed her name badge for the first time—Charlotte. “She died?” Opal’s kept her eyes wide open, thinking that would make them stay dry, but they filled up with tears just the same, brimming and spilling in one second flat. She gulped, turned away, and only turned back when the woman pulled gently on her arm.

  “Sorry!” Opal said.

  “Eeh, love.”

  “I’m sorry,” Opal said. “I’m fine, really. I wouldn’t do this at work, I promise.” She could feel a flush starting to spread over her neck. She was going to blow this if she couldn’t stop crying, but the tears were pulsing out her now, hot and prickly, and everything swam together: her mother and little Craig and Charlotte printed there like some kind of sign. “God, I’m so sorry. I just saw your name, that’s all.”

  “Oh, little love,” said the woman, putting her hand over her chest and hiding the badge. “Was that your mum’s name?”

  “No,” said Opal. Why hadn’t she said yes? Why couldn’t she stop crying? People were looking now. Two girls in uniforms standing flirting with the security guard in the doorway broke off and turned to stare at her. Even Charlotte was frowning. “I’m an only child,” she said, at last thinking of something sensible. “But I had a little sister, and she died and …”

  “She was called Charlotte,” said Charlotte. Opal nodded and, because she was concentrating on imagining a fake little sister and there was no reason that would make her cry, at last the tears started to slow down until, with a huge sigh, she managed to stop them.

  “Here,” Charlotte said. “Here’s a form. You go up to the canteen and get yourself a cup of tea. Mind and put sugar in and get yourself a bun. And in ten minutes, on my break, I’ll come up and go over it with you.” She patted Opal’s hand. “You’ve had a right bad of time of it, haven’t you? But let’s see what we can do.”

  And despite the time of year and the flood of students, despite the crying in front of everyone and having her hair in three plaits because she’d forgotten her straighteners when she moved back home, Opal was as sure as she could be when she left the form behind—with promises from Charlotte to take it up to the office and give it to HR when her shift was over—that she would soon be working again. Yes, she had said to nearly all the questions on the form—experience, flexibility, cash handling. Except where she said no—sick days, criminal convictions, allergies. She was sure enough to take a hundred pounds out of the machine at the front door and get the bus out to Ikea. She wasn’t going to spend another night on a mattress on the floor. Not her, not anymore.

  But when she totted it up—the flat-pack bed, the mattress, quilt, pillows, and a change of covers for it—a hundred pounds wasn’t nearly enough. She would need to choose what to keep of Nicola’s stuff and what to buy of her own, but the thought of moving the nest to a new bed or spreading fresh new things over that sagging old box base gave Opal a sick feeling inside, like when a lift takes all of you up except your stomach. And standing in the Sunday afternoon scrum, the smell of the hotdogs, the wreckage of burst open packing, the rumble and hiss of a hundred families arguing, all the bright certainty from Tesco was gone and this place seemed as broken and hopeless as Mote Street with its bin bags. Opal didn’t want to sleep in a bed from here.

  Back in the city again, she headed for the big charity shop that sold furniture at the far end of North Lane. Of course it would be closed on a Sunday, but she could look and come back in the morning. She had seen a couch in there once—green leather with a back that was the same height all the way round, a fat roll studded with buttons—and anywhere that had that couch would have a good bed too, she was sure of it. Except when she was halfway along the street and could start to focus on the stuff in the window, it wasn’t like that green couch at all; it was just tired and flimsy and exactly the kind of furniture lives go wrong on, exactly the ratty old tables people sit around worrying about their little boys who’ve wandered away and not come back again. And when she got
even closer she could see a single bed the very same—the exact same!—as her single bed in her bedsit in the shared house, a bed she’d lain and ached on, cried her heart out on, dragged herself to and from on endless shuffling bathroom trips in her dressing gown. She turned her head to look at the other side of the street and walked on past without stopping.

  Only now she was lost, or almost lost—more than she thought she could get in the middle of Leeds, anyway—and her feet were throbbing from the heat and from walking so far in her rope-soled shoes that she could only keep on by curling her toes up and down again with every stride. So when she saw an open doorway and heard music from a radio inside, all she thought of was asking directions. It wasn’t until she was picking her way to a counter that she noticed what kind of shop it was.

  “Help you?” said a man. He was winding a rope into a coil around his forearm, breathing hard. Opal heard a toilet flush somewhere in the background.

  “Hope so,” she said. “I think I’m lost.”

  “Where were you headed?” the man said. He was dressed like some kind of nutty professor—a bow tie and one of those knitted things with no sleeves and all the wavy stripes, brown shoes as shiny as conkers.

  “Well,” said Opal, “I’ve been at Ikea, and I’m going to Meanwood.”

  “Blimey,” said the man with a laugh. He finished winding the rope and put it down. “What are you doing down here then? And what were you doing in Ikea?”

  “I thought we’d agreed not to use that word,” said another man, appearing from the back shop, pulling up his zip. This one was wearing paint-splattered overalls, but he talked like the boss. “Flippin’ Ikea,” he said. “If everyone buys their overpriced junk, who’ll buy ours?”

  “I was looking for a bed,” said Opal.

  “Tah-dah!” said the first man, spreading his arms wide and finishing off with a flourish of his wrists and a flick of his fingers.

  “Yeah, right,” Opal said, looking around at the burnished wood and smoky velvet upholstery everywhere. This was a proper antique shop—no prices on anything and everything gleaming in the light from the gold and crystal chandeliers.

  “Unless …” said the scruffy man, stroking his chin and arching one eyebrow. The dapper man behind the counter scowled, and Opal thought he blushed a little.

  “Unless what?” she said.

  “What do you think of this?” said the toilet man, beckoning her. “Come through the back and have a look, sweetheart.”

  Opal hesitated for a moment, but she was pretty sure they were a couple, these two, and that they wouldn’t be taking her through the back to tie her up with that blue rope and have their wicked way. She edged round a table piled high with china and followed him.

  In the back corridor, he switched on a bare light bulb and nodded at something stacked up against the wall. Opal waited for the bulb to heat up and then snorted.

  “Yeah, right,” she said again. It was a bed, sure enough, or all the bits to make one anyway. The headboard and footboard leaned against the wall and the side-rail things lay on the floor. And it was magnificent: it was made of some dark wood, halfway between red and black, like the oxblood shoe polish they used to always have in the shoe cleaning box for some reason, even though neither Nicola, Sandy, nor Opal (or anyone else she knew) ever had oxblood shoes. The headboard, almost as tall as she was, had a mop of heavy carving along the top—feathers and blobs and things that looked like pennants snapping in a breeze—and the footboard had studs shaped like chrysanthemums and roses. All four corner posts were fluted and had bulges and skinny bits and looked like posh park railings on the top, or like the plumes you saw on horses at a parade.

  “Well?” said the scruffy man.

  “Wow,” said Opal. “How much is that then?”

  “Hundred quid,” said the man.

  Opal turned to stare at him. “Get out.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t you tell? Have another look.”

  “Bog off, Tony,” shouted the first man from the front shop. Tony put his hand up in front of his mouth and laughed—tee-hee-hee—shaking his shoulders. Opal turned back to look at the bed again.

  “Is it fake?” He shook his head. “Stolen?” He mimed outrage, and Opal grinned. “Um … woodworm?”

  “A touch,” Tony said. He took a pencil torch out of his back overall pocket and shone it at one of the side bars, showing Opal a tiny round hole there. “Signs of historical infestation,” he said. “But they’ve long gone.”

  “Will they come back?” Opal said.

  “They’re not salmon, sweetheart,” Tony said, in a way that told Opal he had been asked that silly question a hundred times before and had delivered the same clever answer to everyone.

  “I give up then,” she said.

  “Quitter,” said Tony. “You can only have it if you can guess why it’s so cheap. Come on: it’s staring you in the face.”

  But Opal only shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know anything about antiques. But it’s really lovely. I would pay more than a hundred pounds if I had it, honest I would.”

  “Don’t be so rotten, Tony,” said the man’s voice from the front again.

  “But I want to keep it!” Tony said. “It’ll be fun. Like a game. Guess the … We could call it: Guess the … like one of those, you know.”

  “Dolly’s birthday,” Opal said.

  “Exactly,” said Tony. “Number of beans in the jar. In the window.”

  “Bog off and die!” The other man was hissing now, and Opal started to make her way to the front of the shop.

  “Good luck with it,” she said. “I’ll come back if I have a brainwave,” then she let herself out and was walking away when she realised that she hadn’t asked them directions. She turned back just as Tony was coming out of the open doorway.

  “Yoo-hoo,” he said, waving. “You can have it. You don’t need to guess.”

  Opal jogged back. “Really?”

  “I might have to share it with you,” Tony said. “I’m in the right doghouse.”

  She followed him back inside again. The other man was sitting on a chair that looked a lot like a throne, his arms folded and his legs crossed, one foot jiggling, making his bow tie quiver. He looked close to tears.

  “Does it have a mattress?” Opal said.

  “It’s in the van,” said Tony, “but you seriously don’t want to see it.”

  “That’s not what’s wrong with it, is it? No mattress?”

  Tony grinned again and then, shooting a quick look at his partner, he frowned and shushed her.

  “It was a crowded room,” the man in the throne said. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

  “It is safe, isn’t it?” Opal said. “I mean it seems like a right bargain, but if I’m going to get … I don’t know … poisoned or something as I sleep—”

  “Poisoned?” said Tony.

  “Or something. Squashed?”

  “Yes, of course it’s safe. It’s just not something we want in the shop, is it dear?” He smiled at his partner. “Billy went to an auction all by his own little self. I usually go too.”

  “I didn’t have time to have a proper look,” Billy said.

  “Because you got lost,” Tony said.

  “I’ll take the mattress too,” Opal said hurriedly, thinking that Tony was one of those people who didn’t get how annoying they were being, even when the person they were annoying was nearly in tears.

  “Sight unseen?” said Tony. Opal nodded, thinking that no mattress could possibly have had a harder life than Nicola’s, then she took her wallet out and handed over a hundred pounds in crisp twenties. “Do you deliver?” she said. “It’s only Meanwood.”

  “Go on then,” said Tony, pocketing the twenties. “Since you’re a cash buyer. I’ll bring it round for you tonight.”

  Billy recovered then, snapping upright in his throne.

  “You dare,” he said. “You just bloody dare
deliver the damn thing tonight. Where’s your sore back now that couldn’t even sit in the passenger seat and navigate?”

  “Never mind,” Opal said quickly. “One of my neighbors has got a van.”

  EIGHT

  She was hoping for Mr. Kendal, of course, when she knocked at No. 1 (he was the only one of the Boys who ever drove the van), but when the door opened, Fishbo was standing there. He squinted into the low sun, and his eyes flashed an unmistakable look of pure panic. Then he put a hand up like a visor, and his faced cleared.

  “Baby Girl!” he said. He stepped forward and folded Opal into an embrace, quite crushing considering the bony twigs that his arms were and the grating feel of his shoulder joints, as though all the muscle and gristle—never mind fat—had wasted away.

  “Mr. Fish,” said Opal. “It’s lovely to see you. Who did you think it was then? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “You’re no ghost,” said Fishbo, holding her at arm’s length and beaming. Opal could see his teeth slipping, and he clamped his lips down over them and worked them back into place with his tongue. “Now come in and visit with me, girl. Tell me where in the world you’ve been. Lighting out that way! Leaving us all!” Opal followed him inside, dragging her feet a bit. She had a lot to do and when Fishbo got enthusiastic, he would start serving drinks and cooking funny food and then he’d get his trumpet out, and it would be hours before you could escape without offending him.

  Except she quickly realized that those days were gone. Fishbo went into the living room—these big houses on the corners had a hall behind the front door and a room to either side—and sat down by putting his hands on his knees and letting himself fall into the chair, groaning.

  “I went to live with my dad,” she said, sitting opposite him.

  “Well, ain’t that nice?” said Fishbo, although his face clouded briefly. Then he grinned that enormous grin again. “What about your old granddad?”