‘Well, I’d love Friday last thing,’ I said, ‘but I’m guessing that’s a busy time of the week for you, so how are you fixed on Wednesday afternoons?’
‘We could squeeze you in,’ said Renny. ‘Wednesday morning would be even better.’
‘Lunchtime?’ I said. ‘How about every Wednesday at one o’clock and I’ll rotate, hands, feet, back and brows?’
Both the girls perked up at the sniff of such regular business and I found myself hoping Hollywood Nails wasn’t on its uppers.
‘Can I ask though,’ I said. ‘Can you really do massage? And the rest of it?’
‘How?’ said Aisling.
‘With your nails, I mean.’
‘God, listen to Granny!’ Renny said, flushing under her green make-up. ‘Next you’ll be asking if we paid good money for our ripped jeans!’
Aisling laughed and took up the theme. ‘What are those tattoos going to look like when you’re an old woman, though?’
‘Any more piercings and you’ll start leaking!’ Renny said.
‘Aye, aye, aye,’ I said. ‘Jeez, you’re worse than Adim.’
‘Adim asks us if we’re warm enough!’ Renny said. ‘How old are you anyway?’ She had stopped laughing and was giving me a hard stare.
I couldn’t have said how old this pair were. They had puppy fat still but the drag-queen make-up aged them. ‘Thirty,’ I said. I felt eighty.
‘Huh,’ said Renny. ‘We thought you were young and just didn’t bother. You’re lucky to be wearing so well. If your skincare regime’s anything like your make-up and nail regime you should look like Mother Teresa by rights.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Right well, put me down for Wednesday lunchtime and you can decide what’s the biggest emergency. OK? Tash Dodd.’
Again both the girls broke out into spurts of laughter.
‘Tash Dodd?’
‘Oh, you poor cow!’
‘Tash Dodd! It sounds like … like …’
‘Baked Spud,’ said Renny, screaming with laughter at her own wit and making Aisling choke.
‘How, what’s your name that’s so glamorous?’ I said, knowing I sounded huffy.
That sobered them both. ‘Hollywood,’ Renny said. ‘Duh.’
‘Well, I’m away now,’ I said. ‘I might go to the health club, see if they’ve got a resident masseuse. So I might be down to two Wednesdays in four. And if you need a cup of sugar anytime … I’m sure Adim’ll sell it to you.’
‘Sarky bitch,’ said Renny with a smile. ‘We’re going to be besties, “Tash Dodd”.’
‘And the masseur at the gym is a handsy wee creep – always was – and he only went into massage because it means you can’t stop him.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘You were at school with him, yeah?’
I didn’t drive to the gym, though. I just moved my hire car on to the side street with the open parking. A hire car! As if Bazz could hack the police computer to find my own one – this was pure paranoia, like the burner and the dongle and the cash. (He wouldn’t, anyway. Not my dad. Would he?)
I was outside the front garden gate of the fairytale cottage. It was even more unreal-looking from here, with a garden full of apple trees, just moving from pale pink blossom to the softest little yellow-green leaves. And it had a round bay window with a turret on top. It was so out of place that it unnerved me. I had chosen Hephaw to hide in for its anonymity. Stupidly – but I wasn’t going to beat myself up – even this tiny pocket of noticeable character, this one pretty house, diluted my perfect bolt-hole. I shrugged the thought off myself, as I made my way down to the mouth of the main street and my own front door. I’d chosen well. Hephaw was a grey town where nothing happened. It was perfect for me.
SEVENTEEN
‘To … the … time I farted on a first date,’ Laura said. She was trying to get a game of I’d Go Back started. But Ivy said nothing and Martine couldn’t think of a single sweet, or funny, or outrageous example. ‘Marty? Got anything?’
‘No,’ she said. But inside she started listing. I’d go back to before Kate brought those chairs. She couldn’t stand the feel of the thick plastic against her skin and the squeaking shredded her last nerve. So now she was alone on the pile of cardboard, looking over at Laura on one and Ivy, sitting on another with her feet on the third, the one that should be Martine’s if she could bear to touch it.
They were both worried about the state of Ivy’s legs. Her ankles had been swollen for weeks but they were dark red and shiny now and when she took her shoes off the marks lasted for hours.
‘Keep them above your heart,’ Laura told her. ‘Skootch right down. You’d be best to lie on the floor and put your legs on the seat really.’
Ivy wriggled down and Martine had to dig her nails into her thighs not to scream at the screech of the plastic. I’d go back, she told herself, to crying on the school bus, getting stood up, getting sacked for no reason and them daring her to question it.
I’d go back to the worst time of my whole life, she thought, to those endless days of raw early grief. She’d learned then why raw was just the right word. She felt flayed, as though she’d been scrubbed of the top layer of her skin. The wind was too cold and the lightest breeze would set her shivering. The sun baked her even in its springtime weakness. Her clothes irritated her, cotton scraping and wool like barbs, so that she checked every night for blood as she undressed. If she’d had a father, she remembered thinking, lying in the dark one night in the long bleak trough of time after the funeral was past, the cards taken down, the flowers wilted. If she’d had a father, she wouldn’t have felt this way. This couldn’t be how human beings were meant to feel when an old woman died. The trouble was she wasn’t properly formed. She should have had a father and a real mother. That was the reason she was floored by the death of her gran.
But she also remembered telling this to a Samaritan one night down the phone. It was early hours, with the sky changing colour and sleep as far off as ever. She explained it to the woman with the kind voice, about how she stayed at her mum’s as long as she could, hoping to hear something, asking all the right questions, then she’d go back to her gran for rest and clean clothes. But she’d never heard his name. And so when her gran died, she wasn’t a fully formed person rolling with the blows like she should be. Instead, she was flattened by it. Flayed by it. She felt as if she walked around under a personal spotlight, exposed. Or as if she had a sword sticking out of her chest through her clothes, a sword that no one mentioned and no one looked at, until their silence and averted eyes made her think she was going to scream.
‘It’s only natural,’ the Samaritan said.
‘No,’ said Martine. ‘It’s because of my dad. If I had my dad I wouldn’t be in this state.’
‘The pain you’re in,’ the Samaritan said, ‘is the bill you pay for the love you got.’
Martine repeated the words, like a little tune played with two fingers on a toy piano. But they didn’t make any more sense for all her going over them.
‘If I’d ever had a father—’ she began again. The Samaritan interrupted her. She told Martine all about grief counselling and support groups. She advised a trip to the doctor, as if that could help, and suggested a new hobby and some exercise out in the fresh air.
‘I thought you’d just listen,’ Martine said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to just listen?’
The woman had the grace to laugh. An awkward little laugh. ‘Within reason,’ she said. ‘But if you were hitting yourself over the head with a frying pan, I’d tell you stop.’
Martine thanked her, said she’d think it over and hung up. She was smiling. She saw herself in the mirror opposite her bed, smiling at a stranger on the phone who wouldn’t even listen to her.
After that, she waited it out, because everyone said time healed all ills. They were right. When a year had passed, her skin got all its layers back and she could walk along a street and stay as anonymous as a hippo in Dumfries could ever be, no spotlight
shining on her, no sword sticking out of her and no endless crawling questions about why everyone she passed pretended they couldn’t see it.
But it wasn’t time that did it; it was podcasts. It was puzzles playing in her ear, teaching her that anything she could make sense out of she could cope with. Anything understandable was bearable. It was the senseless that was terrifying.
Martine let her head fall forward. Believing she’d work this out was the only thing keeping her sane now. She shouldn’t mind whatever the other two used to help them. Even if Laura’s fantasies about someone coming made Martine want to scream and Ivy’s death wish made every day harder.
‘I’d go back,’ she said out loud, ‘to cross-country in PE.’
‘I’m glad you said that,’ Ivy piped up, ‘because I’ve been thinking.’ She paused as if to get their attention, as if there was anything else vying for it. Martine dug her nails into her thighs again. ‘We should all exercise,’ Ivy said. ‘We can see well enough. We should be walking twenty minutes several times a day. Fast enough to get puffed out.’
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Martine said.
‘Yes,’ said Ivy. ‘I realized I shouldn’t be letting the two of you rule the roost.’ She paused and then said, ‘Mother knows best.’ Another pause. ‘Just kidding. But if we let ourselves seize up we won’t be able to take that chance when it comes. If it comes. If Laura’s right and someone opens the door. Or if you’re right and we work out something that helps us. Somehow.’
Even more shame flooded Martine, like it hadn’t since she was a child, out with her drunk mum, people seeing. Ivy was trying so hard to be kind. ‘The thought of working up a sweat though,’ she said. ‘I could cry.’
‘I honestly don’t think we could smell worse,’ said Ivy. ‘If we sweated it might even push some of the stale sweat off us. Dislodge it, you know? Like a Turkish bath.’
‘I suppose we’ve got flannels now,’ Martine said. ‘Better than those slimy wet wipes. More of a scrub.’
‘I want a green pot-scourer,’ Ivy said. ‘Or some wire wool. And a pumice stone.’
‘I want a loofah mitt and a bottle of Dove,’ said Martine.
‘And an Uzi,’ said Ivy. ‘For next time Gail comes down. Shoot the lock off the door and then take her kneecaps out.’
Martine couldn’t help laughing and hoped it didn’t sound scathing. The chances of Ivy knowing what an Uzi actually was were exactly nil. ‘You really have changed your tune,’ she said.
‘But ricocheting bullets would be a terrible idea down here,’ Ivy said. ‘A crossbow would be safer, actually.’
‘Kind of hard to blow out a door lock with it,’ Martine said.
Laura said nothing.
‘So a crossbow for Gail’s kneecaps and a machete for the door?’ said Martine.
‘And a green pot-scourer,’ Ivy said.
Still Laura was silent. And it made the other two wind down into silence too. The rhythm was set for three. Whether they were laughing or crying, when they were plotting escape and revenge, when they were planning their television appearances, they were a trio. Without Laura, they ran dry.
‘What’s up?’ Martine said at last.
‘The chairs,’ said Laura. ‘It never occurred to me till right now.’
‘What about them?’ said Martine. ‘Apart from making my teeth squeak.’
‘They can’t have had three inflatable chairs lying around, can they? Kate must have bought them.’
‘Right,’ said Ivy. ‘And she’s buying an airbed right now if she was listening yesterday and the gods are smiling.’
‘So why didn’t they just bring chairs down from the house?’
‘Because dead people don’t need furniture?’ said Martine.
‘I thought it was maybe because they were lighter to carry,’ Laura went on. ‘But I don’t think so. I reckon she doesn’t want to be seen,’ Laura said. ‘Everything she brings in to us is in bags, like someone might see her running up and down with our meals or a blanket and get thinking.’ Martine watched as Laura screwed her face up. ‘I’m trying to remember what was over the garden walls. I wasn’t concentrating. I was thinking about roses and freaking out because I thought I saw a ghost. And feeling stupid for getting the day wrong. What’s actually there?’
‘I was unconscious,’ Ivy said.
Martine remembered scuttling away in a crouch, as if there was anywhere to hide in the wooden shelves over the stone floor. Then a blank. ‘It’s just the back of the shops,’ she said. ‘Flats, maybe?’
‘Whatever it is,’ Laura said, ‘I reckon someone’s watching.’
‘They’re not watching very carefully if they didn’t see her move your car,’ Martine said. ‘Or mine.’ They had agreed that Kate must have shifted the cars round into the old carriage house or whatever it was, at the end of the long garden.
‘If they’re watching out the back windows,’ Laura said, ‘from the flats above the shops, all they would have seen is Kate coming out into the garden through that door after the cars were hidden. But they can see everything that goes on at the kitchen door and the steps and the door into here, can’t they? So we can send a sign. And then they’ll come.’ Martine managed not to howl. It wasn’t fair to get their hopes up like that and then just say the same old thing. If she could keep it in, Laura could too.
‘And I know what sign to send,’ Ivy said. Martine raised her head. If both of them started it, she would lose her mind. ‘Next time Igor comes in,’ Ivy went on, grimly, ‘we should keep her. Think about it! If there’s a nosy neighbour who watches them come and go, and one day – today, if I’ve got anything to do with it – Kate comes and doesn’t go … Well then. What would you do?’
‘I’d watch and see what Caspar did,’ Laura said.
‘Exactly,’ said Ivy. ‘How long would she hang about before she came in after her. Or would she go away? Even if she did, she’d have to come back. And then we keep her too.’
‘And the nosy neighbour sees that and calls the cops?’ Laura said.
‘Exactly.’
‘But that’s two of them against three of us,’ said Martine. ‘Unless … Do you think Kate would come over to our side? If she was in here with us?’
‘No,’ said Ivy. ‘But I’m planning to deal with Kate when it’s three against one. Does anyone have a problem with that?’
Her voice was hard enough to make Martine shiver. ‘Deal with?’ she said.
‘Tie her up,’ said Ivy. ‘Think of it that way if it helps.’
Martine stared at her. ‘I was joking before,’ she said. ‘But you have changed.’
‘Finally,’ Ivy said. ‘It took me long enough. And I chickened out once. But yes, I have.’
‘Hang on, though,’ Laura said. ‘If we’ve got both of them down here with us …’
‘No food,’ said Ivy. ‘I know. So maybe it can’t be this afternoon. Maybe we need to do a bit of stockpiling in advance. Cut our rations and save some.’
‘Would Caspar ever come though?’ Laura said. ‘Would she get her hands dirty?’
My turn, thought Martine. They’ve both had theirs. ‘I don’t think that much dependence can all go one way.’
‘Oh great! Dr Freud’s back,’ said Laura.
‘Sacks,’ Martine said. ‘I wish you would help me remember, instead of undermi—’
‘You’re right,’ Ivy said. ‘Shoosh, Laura. She’s right. We need to send a sign, like you said. And we need to understand them, like she said. And we need to be prepared – like I said – to do what needs to be done.’
‘To “tie Kate up”?’ Laura offered.
Ivy smiled. Beamed. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Tie her up good and tight.’
Martine wondered how Kate could miss it on Ivy’s face, later that day when she came in with their food.
‘Airbed,’ Kate said, putting a black bag on the floor with a thick slapping sound.
‘Just like dead people use?’ said Laura.
�
�And more,’ Kate said, almost as if she hadn’t heard. She had though, Martine thought. She was shaking her head, slow as a charmed snake. Her new way of pretending they weren’t really here. Or she wasn’t. Her new way of pretending it wasn’t actually happening, this nightmare she had helped into being. ‘Sweatshirts and trousers,’ she said. ‘Fleece.’
Laura was closest and she lunged towards the bag and lifted out a jumble of grey and black clothes, throwing them up in the air as if she was playing in autumn leaves, as if she was turning hay in the sunshine.
‘Hal-LEE-lujah,’ she said. As she stood, she grabbed the hem of her dress and pulled it over her head. Standing in her bra and pants, she screwed the dress up in her hands and threw it towards Kate, who stepped aside sharply. ‘You can bin that,’ she said. Then she plucked a sweatshirt from the pile and pulled it on. She put on a pair of socks, hopping around on one leg and the other, then took a set of bottoms and tied them round her waist, like a wrestler’s belt.
Kate was staring at her. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘You seem different.’
Martine could almost pity her, caught between Gail and them, waiting just as much up there as they were down here. Then Kate turned and shot Martine a look that could shrivel someone much stronger and less exhausted. Martine looked away. ‘There!’ Kate said. ‘You too. What is it?’
‘What do you think it is?’ Ivy said. She was standing too now, creaking and staggering a bit. Martine thought she was right about the exercise. Ivy was tearing off her cardigan and unbuttoning her blouse. Underneath she had on a bra, solid and massive, the sort Martine didn’t know they made any more. The flesh of her stomach below it and above her waistband was marshmallow soft and the colour of porridge, with little tags of skin, here and there, like pulled stitches in an old jumper. ‘We’ve got a bed and clean clothes!’ Ivy said. She was wriggling out of her skirt now, shucking it off and booting it over to where Laura’s dress lay crumpled on the floor.
Martine hugged her knees into her chest. ‘They’re getting stir-crazy,’ she said. Kate drilled her with another stare. ‘We all are. You can’t be surprised.’
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