A Gingerbread House

by Catriona McPherson

You could tell a lot from a voice, of course. The almost forgotten Myra with her ‘hook up’ and that strutting bit with her car keys and her ‘brass monkeys’ – Ivy thought of both with scorn now. Kate had not a trace of a local accent, none of the sayings or sounds Mother had dinned out of Ivy as a child. You’re not a tattie farmer, she’d say. So don’t speak like one. Potato, Ivy would breathe, too quietly for Mother to hear. Hypocrite.

  She turned over again, flipping her pillow to the cool side. Kate was a lady. She had the nerve of a lady, not the worries of someone like Ivy, never saying boo. There was that moment as they were leaving the pub. One of the men at the bar had happened to turn and see them sliding out from the banquette. It was nearly closing time and they were probably all half-drunk, getting that way men get. Certainly this one saw the chance of some fun.

  ‘At bloody last!’ he said, nudging his friend and jerking his head at the two women. ‘You getting a room?’

  Ivy said nothing and Kate only frowned.

  ‘Been sitting there holding hands and pinching cheeks for two hours.’ Now four or five men had turned and were grinning.

  ‘Get your mind out of the gutter!’ Kate said. The size of her, but she spoke up clear and steady. ‘This is my sister.’

  ‘You’re so …’ Ivy said, when they were outside. The wind stung, whipping her hair across her hot cheeks.

  ‘Coarse,’ said Kate. ‘Uncouth. I know.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Ivy. ‘Grand.’

  Kate’s kisses, pecked one on each side as she reached up on her tiptoes, kept tingling all the way home. And, as Ivy washed her face, she smiled again. ‘Get your mind out the gutter!’ she said to her reflection in the mirror. She would say that, in just that voice, the next time a teenager said a foul thing to her face or behind her back. If there was trouble on the train down to Hephaw, for instance, when she went to meet her twin. Her twin! Or rather, the other triplet, as they’d decided. Her sisters! Her sisters were sitting rows behind her, in a darkened room watching as someone – who was that? – on a podium pulled mangled creatures from a trap. They were right there behind her, but she couldn’t turn her head, and didn’t know why. She scrolled through a phone for pictures and couldn’t find any.

  Ivy tossed around in her narrow bed, twisting the sheets, and making soft moans in the back of her throat with no one to hear.

  FOUR

  I was sitting in my van on Fraserburgh High Street, skipping through my music for something I wasn’t sick of, checking the time far too often, telling myself it wasn’t cold enough to start the engine, even though my hands were wooden and I knew they’d sting later when they warmed through again. I braced my feet as the van rocked in the biting wind. Straight off the North Sea it was. ‘Straight from the Baltic’ Big Garry always said, no matter how many times I told him to look at a map. I found myself smiling at the memory and then felt a jolt – one that was growing familiar – as reality hit me. He was two people in my mind now: the people smuggler that I was going to bring down; and the man in my memory with his sayings and his ways.

  A yawn racked me and, when it passed, left me shivering. ‘Oh, give it up, Tash,’ I said. I often spoke to myself, usually in just this scornful cajoling tone, undercutting whatever I’d decided, convincing myself I was wrong about some little thing or other. Not the big thing, funnily enough; I was dead sure about that.

  I put my foot on the clutch and turned the key, trying not to hear the struggle of the engine coming to life from a cold start. Two women who’d just left the pub together turned round and gave the van a wary look.

  My interview was set for midnight and I’d even remembered to pretend to find that strange. ‘Don’t worry,’ the guy had said when I’d queried it, laughing through his nose. ‘That’s normal in this line of work. The switch from back to night shift’s the only dead time in the day. We always do interviews then. ’Sides from owt else, it flushes out the time-wasters, if you get my drift.’

  ‘Right,’ I had said. ‘Yes, I suppose so. If someone won’t stop up till all hours to get the job they won’t stop up till all hours to do it.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ the guy had said, sounding disappointed I’d worked it out and stolen away the chance for him to explain it to me. ‘Only it’s not a job. You did know that, right? It’s a partnership.’

  I checked my watch again. If I drove slowly and went through the streets instead of out to the bypass I’d be in nice time. Meaning ten minutes early. Five minutes to brush my hair and gather my nerve, five minutes ahead knocking on the door. Perfect.

  I slowed in case the two women wanted to cross the road and get out of the wind, but they were standing in the pool of yellow from the lamppost, hugging each other. They were local, probably, born and bred in this merciless granite town, well used to that freezing gale off the North Sea. They might be daughters of trawlermen, granddaughters of gutting women, totally impervious. Or maybe it was a date and the cold didn’t matter. They were dressed too different to be friends on a night out – one as plain as pudding in warm boots and a quilted coat and one in high heels with a sparkly scarf – and they were made too different to be sisters. A blind date, I reckoned. Was a kissless hug a bad end to a blind date or a good sign for the next one? I wouldn’t know. I’d never had to go online for a fella or wait for one of my pals to press-gang someone.

  Not that I’m pretty. Bazz won that lottery, a perfect mix of Dad’s Scottish thing of black hair, black brows, black lashes and pale blue eyes and Mum’s English thing of golden skin and rosy cheeks like a peach. Bazz was a blue-eyed peach and everyone he met believed that all the good stuff went deeper than his dimples. I got Big Garry’s white skin and solid middle, Little Lynne’s sharp nose and cankles. But they’d made me wear braces and do ballet so I had straight teeth and an even straighter back and I knew men looked: I could feel their eyes on me.

  There’s more humiliating things than being chosen for your looks anyway. My family was known in Grangemouth. Known to have money, that is. And money without class is the perfect mixture to snag the interest of absolutely everyone. At least it struck me that way. The Bo’ness Road poshos had been whisked away to boarding school at twelve, but they came home for Christmas and hung around in their rugby shirts, assuming I’d be grateful for the attention. There was a pool at my house, heated, and a cinema room. Even as they laughed at how naff it was, they made sure to bring a pair of trunks and ask what films were on offer.

  The Kerse Road boys – Kerseholes, they called themselves – as down-to-earth as the Dodds and none of the cash? Well, they had a go too. They knew my granny still lived in her four-in-a-block on Wallace Street. They knew Big Garry Dodd had started where they still were and they reckoned sidling up to me was one way to follow him all the way to where he was now.

  When I took the Saturday job in the front office – that was my dad over the back; no hand-outs for his girl! – the boys who looked up to him came round like dogs to deer shit, hanging over the desk, even pretending to need packing boxes, pretending they didn’t know they weren’t free. So the girls who came round were nearly welcome, just as a contrast, even though I knew girls weren’t my cup of tea. I didn’t understand what vibe I was sending out. Maybe no more than how I treated the boys – poshos and yobbos – with the same disdain and so the girls reckoned they might as well have a go. I’d found friends that way, but no lovers.

  I was glad of it now. No strings, no ties. It made it that much easier to do what I was doing. What I was starting to do, with this first step, easing in at Icarus Overland. If I was really going to go through with my plan and not just call the cops on a burner then throw it into the sea. But that would bring down an empire, destroy a life’s work, collapse the coalface. I didn’t want to do quite as much as that.

  I was well out into the suburbs now, the winter night not quite so bitter away from the sea, so my hands were a bit warmer and sat relaxed on the wheel, my foot steady on the pedal. I knew I was a good driver.
How could I not be? But it still sometimes unsettled me to realize I had zoned out, following the satnav as if the voice had gone straight from my ears to my hands and missed my brain completely. Paying attention again, I thought suburbs was the wrong word for these streets of light industrial and remnants of retail, just the odd house stranded amongst the plumbing supplies, logistics software, and electronic components. Outskirts, that was the word I was after. BG had been born – the one van and a pre-fab – in the outskirts of Grangemouth, on a patch of weedy tarmac between the bonded store and a timber merchant, and every BG centre was still in the outskirts of somewhere. I was a connoisseur of burger vans and doughnut stands, from the years of working wherever I was needed. I knew which DIY stores sold crisps and Coke at the check-out and which car dealerships couldn’t care less who helped themselves to the coffee. I had given up asking my dad to put in snack machines. Costs to the bone, cash in the bank. That was Big Garry’s way.

  I glimpsed the sign for Icarus Overland: an outsize plastic board hooked on the chain-link at the far end of a cul-de-sac. Down To Earth Delivery, it said. Grudgingly, I admitted that was clever and wondered how much they’d had to cough up to a branding firm for it. Then I was swinging in at the open security gate and heading for the boxy little office to one side of the warehouse, swerving the men on the loading dock and the growling, idling vans, their exhausts still belching as they warmed for the night shift. They were half-and-half fleet and privates, thank God. If Icarus was maxed out and already letting drivers use their own vans, they wouldn’t blink at me doing the same. And if I used my own van I’d need much less checking.

  The office door was glass and a harsh blue light shone out on to the tarmac. I could see someone stand up from behind a desk and come to meet me. Trouble. If he could tell my van wasn’t one of the usuals, if he was that sharp, I might have to abandon this attempt and try again. Another name, another phone, another Gmail account. I’d been driving for hours and my shoulders slumped at the thought of it.

  But the man I’d seen moving was slouched in the doorway now, with his phone tucked into his neck as he lit a fag with a match he scraped on the harling. He wasn’t even looking at me. I had slowed, parked and jumped down before he turned my way. When he did, he gave me no more than a lazy once-over.

  I walked right up to the foot of the metal steps and gave him a smile I hoped was bright enough without being a challenge to him.

  ‘I’ll have to go, doll,’ he said. ‘Customer.’

  Doll. He was a Glasgow man! I felt my breath pick up and wondered if I should turn and walk before he got a better look at me. I had come all this way up to Fraserburgh to get away from anyone who’d know Big Garry and might, at some function or other, have met me. Glasgow was far too close to home. But I managed to get a decent squint at the guy in the light, while he finished up the goodbyes and stowed his phone back in its holster, and I was pretty sure I’d never seen him before. I tried to slow my breath again. He’d definitely never worked at BG anyway. I knew the face of every guy who’d ever passed through there.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, climbing two of the steps and then sticking my hand out. ‘A customer. I’m here for an interview? I spoke to the day-shift manager, I think.’

  He lifted one eyebrow and turned his head to the side as if he was running through all the possibilities of a girl working for him. I pretended I hadn’t noticed and climbed up another step. ‘Nate Dewar.’ He rubbed his hand on the bum of his trousers before he shook mine.

  ‘Jamie Morton,’ he said. Then: ‘Nate?’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I never thought. Short for Natalie, not Nathan. You were expecting a man, weren’t you?’

  ‘Twenty-first century, sweetheart,’ he said, no irony intended, I was sure. ‘Come in and let’s have a chat. That your van, is it?’

  I was cheering inside but I kept my voice calm as I answered. ‘Three years old, just passed its first MOT, zero excess, refrigeration unit already installed.’

  ‘Is it now?’

  ‘And I’ve got the inspection report for it. I’ve been driving seven years, no points, and I don’t drink.’

  ‘No use offering you a wee whisky to keep out the cold then, eh?’ The floor of the office bounced as he crossed it and the filing cabinets lined up against the back wall slammed against each other like cymbals. He threw himself into the big padded chair behind his desk and immediately put both feet up on top of the paperwork that littered the top. ‘Just kidding,’ he said. ‘But how about a cup of tea?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘You go ahead.’

  He had a fancy black carry-out cup beside his laptop and he flipped the stopper and took a swig of it. ‘Coffee and butter,’ he said. ‘Half a litre a day. I’ve lost two stone, carb-free since last Christmas.’ Then he did that thing of nearly crossing his arms but, instead of threading his fingers through to rest his hand, he kept it behind his other arm to bunch both sets of biceps forward.

  ‘Good for you,’ I said. ‘To be honest, that’s the only thing about a driving job – gig – that’s putting me off. Trucker’s butt.’

  His eyes flicked to my hips and back up again.

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Here’s my stuff. Application form. DBS check. That report on the chill unit. I’ve got plenty experience for multi-drop but only casual, seasonal.’

  ‘And what’s got you interested in medical delivery?’ he said.

  ‘Sick of handing people crap they don’t need and know they shouldn’t have bought,’ I said. ‘I want to do something worthwhile.’

  ‘And why was it casual seasonal?’ he said. ‘What were you doing the rest of the time? Here! You weren’t actually doing time, were you?’ Then he said ‘heh-heh’, to show he was joking.

  ‘College,’ I said. ‘Bloody waste of money.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Film.’ This was no time for pride. I welcomed the pity, even the hoot of laughter, since it might get me in the door.

  ‘And you don’t mean plastics engineering, I’ll bet,’ he said. I had been laughing along with him and my smile didn’t dim but it took more work to keep it on my face as the thought that he was no fool struck me again. ‘But what makes you want to be a driver at all?’ he said, when he’d recovered from his joke. ‘Girl like you, no offence, you could be on a reception desk somewhere. Bringing in punters.’

  ‘Drivers get better money,’ I said, then held up my crossed fingers. ‘I hope.’

  ‘They do,’ Morton said. ‘If they’re willing to work hard, and work quick. You decide if it’s worth your while to make this profitable. It’s completely up to you, though. Lost and late items, if you don’t bother to keep up? Well, that’s going to cost you. Your choice. But I will say, you’re joining a good team. We’ve got some of the best delivered rates in the whole of the country.’

  I left a pause as if I was mulling over his words. ‘Do you all know each other then? The different companies.’

  He hooked a look as if he didn’t understand me.

  ‘Otherwise, how do you know your rates are better?’ Morton sliced a glance away to one side. It might have been the side that people looked to when they were lying. But it might just as easily be the side where they searched for genuine information, to retrieve it. I could never remember. ‘Or is there a league table?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Morton said. ‘But it’s complicated. And confidential. Management-level access only.’ He was a fool after all, I thought. There was no such thing and if there was it would be public.

  I puffed out a sigh and raised my eyebrows. ‘Rather you than me, pal,’ I said. ‘Film diploma, remember?’

  He was smiling again. ‘Have you got any questions yourself?’ he said.

  I nodded. It was part of the game to have questions. I knew that from sitting in on interviews at BG. Minimum wage and minimum perks but everyone pretended that the drain clump of beer belly and bad breath trying to snag the job really just wanted flexible hours and the chance to use hi
s own initiative. If any of them had ever asked what the overtime rate was and how the boss felt about hangover sickies, I’d have started him at a premium for honesty.

  ‘I have got a few questions, as it happens,’ I said to Morton, and saw him crinkle up his eyes and lift one side of his mouth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He’d be wondering what crap I’d manage to dredge up.

  ‘I know I’d be delivering from the pharmaceutical suppliers—’

  ‘Sometimes Aberdeen RI,’ he cut in.

  ‘But I’d be based here, right?’

  ‘Your tracer’s based here. You’ve got your deposit for the tracer with you, I hope? Expensive bit of kit. And you’ll be fuelling up here. Yes. Why?’

  ‘Are there showers?’ I said. ‘Changing facilities?’

  ‘Just lockers,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to stand up with a flannel if you come straight from Zumba.’

  I gave him the laugh he was waiting for. ‘And the lockers? Are they just for the shift or can I iron a load of polos and leave them there for the week?’

  ‘Your locker’s yours for the duration,’ Morton said. ‘And then some.’

  Bingo! My heart leapt but I managed to frown and quirk my head as if I didn’t understand.

  ‘Worker privacy laws,’ he said. ‘Nae such thing as a master key, unless we want our arses sued off us. Over the pond, you know, they spot-test for drugs and booze, spot-search every damn locker whenever they feel like it. Different story here. Folk have retired and left all their clobber, taken the only key with them, and here’s me terrified to break the lock and bin it in case heid-the-ba’ pops up with an inventory.’

  ‘Bit mad,’ I said, cheering inside. The lockers at BG were always stuffed with leftover crap for months while HR made ‘all reasonable efforts’ to contact the ex-employee and shake the key out of him. I’d counted on it being the same at Icarus. I didn’t know what I’d have done otherwise.

  ‘Bit pointless,’ Morton said, nodding at his laptop. ‘That’s where everyone keeps their dirt these days. Not wrapped in brown paper.’ I glanced at the back of his monitor and hoped my face showed nothing. He cleared his throat and hurried on. ‘Any other questions?’