‘Come up,’ Ivy said. ‘Come away up. I’m so sorry.’
But I couldn’t move. I could barely hear her soothing words and Martine’s echo of them, like a lullaby. It was Laura who got through the shock and reached me.
‘Fucking hell,’ she said. ‘No wonder she said it’s “private”.’
I clambered to my feet, trying to untuck the end of the trackie-bum rope from my waistband to unwind it, but I stopped before my numb, fumbling fingers had got even half of it free. ‘But the thing is I can definitely see light,’ I said. ‘I can see daylight.’
‘Tash, you can’t crawl over a corpse,’ Laura said.
Could I? To get out of here? To get them out of here?
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I can tie a rope round its legs – his legs. I think it’s a man’s shoe – and drag him out here out of the way.’
‘Do you ever pray?’ Ivy said.
‘I just started again,’ I said. ‘Two minutes ago. I’m not going to stop you, that’s for damn sure.’
‘Do you want a hand?’ Martine said. ‘Do you want me to come down and help you.’
I opened my mouth to say no, but found myself crying. ‘Yes. Oh my God, yes I really, really do.’
And after all the business with the rope and the abseiling, Martine just lowered herself off the edge of the drain above and put her feet into my hands as I reached up then slithered down the rest of the way. We hugged, fierce enough to creak, for a long moment. Then Martine stepped back and literally spat on her hands. I could see them glisten.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Who’s going in to tie the rope to him and who’s staying out here?’
‘I’m going.’
I was back at the shoe in a second or two, prising apart the twist in the trackie-bum rope and clamping it over the ankle, trying not to think about skin and tendons, about overcooked ends of turkey drumsticks, about how easily bones, supposedly knitted together, could break apart. I knew if I had to come back in here over and over again and pull him out piece by piece I would lose my mind.
‘Give it a tug,’ I shouted back, then ‘Whoa!’ as the shoe started to move towards me. I wriggled out and put my hands on the rope beside Martine’s.
‘It is a man,’ I said. ‘An old man, I think. He’s got brogues on.’
‘Here goes,’ Martine said.
It was quiet. I had expected bumping and scraping, but he came out with only a whisper of sound but with a bulging engulfing roll of stench that made Martine retch and made me cry again.
‘Oh God,’ Ivy said, above us. ‘I was hoping you were wrong.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Right then. Let’s get the rope off him and get along to that light, eh?’
Marine had stopped spitting into the tiny pile of bile and vomit she had made but she was still on her hands and knees. ‘Look,’ she said, nodding along the pipe. There’s another one.’
There were three. The man in brogues and a woman in a skirt and jumper that I had to drag out by a wrist because I couldn’t bear to reach over her sharp ribs and the mess of the cavity under them to reach her foot. Then there was a second woman, with bare feet, in a nightdress that rode up as we hauled her out. The three of them filled the bottom of the shaft even with me piling them up, folding their bones over and tucking them under. There was always something sliding and crunching, no matter how hard I tried.
I was sobbing helplessly now. Up above, Ivy was still praying and Laura had joined her. Martine was breathing in long ragged heaves, as she kicked at the bones to clear space for us to crouch down, but she hadn’t been sick again.
When the naked one, with her nightie round her neck, was finally well clear of the pipe, we could both see it, round and empty, and that tantalizing dazzle of light at the end. It looked so close.
‘Who’s first?’ Martine said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You go if you like.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off the light. It sparkled like drops of water. It was drops of water. I was looking at a stream of clear twinkling water. I bent my head and gasped as I caught a whiff of it too. Then I plunged into the neck of the pipe, shouting at the top of my lungs. ‘Aisling! Renny! Aisling! Renny! Help! Help! Help me!’
At the other end I started to cough and there was no way to stand, no clear shaft here to climb up, just a bend in the pipe to the grating above. I didn’t care. I rolled on to my back and laughed as I choked, staring up at Renny’s face staring down, the bleach bottle still tilted in her hand.
POSTSCRIPT
They owned the doctor’s house and lived there with their three daughters; quiet, ordered, comfortable lives. The little place next door, the doctor’s ballroom, was a charming Wendy house for their girls, Kate, Gail and Myra.
The trouble started when they signed it over, one Christmas, as a special present: a two-bedroomed fairytale to share between three. Kate wanted to keep it just the way it had always been; Gail wanted to make it a home and live there; Myra wanted to sell her share and move away.
Myra died on the twenty-fifth of January, sedated into deep unconsciousness and then slit open with a short blade, from her right wrist to her right elbow. Gail ‘died’ days later.
‘Cotard’s delusion,’ the medical expert said, on the first of the reports, when they moved back to the studio from the outside broadcast, from the reporter standing solemnly at the end of Loch Road where the tape was stretched over as, behind him, the techs in their blue suits carrying bagged items out of the fairytale cottage and into their vans.
No one knew what Cotard’s delusion was then, not even Martine. Everyone knows now, now that there’s been such a famous case of it, such a notorious crime.
‘A belief that one has died,’ I’d said, reading it off my phone. ‘Gail instead of Myra. She coped with her grief by deciding she had died and her baby sister was still living.’
Ty shook his head. He was off-duty and sitting beside me in the hospital waiting room, holding my hand. ‘And then the other one ups and thinks if Gail can decide she’s dead instead of Myra, why not make another switch and get her back again?’
‘The other one.’ I nodded, staring at the hospital corridor floor. Everyone thought she was the minion, the Igor. Everyone thought Gail with her nets and her knife was running the show, when really she was grieving, treasuring the knife that took her baby sister away like she treasured the pictures of her family in their little case. ‘I’m not denying that Gail’s ill,’ I said to Ty, ‘but Kate is absolutely off-the-charts insane.’
‘You think?’ Ty said. ‘She must have killed the mum within days, else why was the sister not buried? And then she killed the dad. And when that didn’t work she started looking around for better fake sisters.’
‘So I’m going to go with “Yes, I think”,’ I said.
‘Not me,’ said Ty. ‘They don’t reckon Myra was suicide.’
‘How does the body count rising make Kate saner?’
‘Because – under the cone, right? I’d lose my job – but Myra had been to a lawyer to see about getting her share out of the house. So … no, I don’t think Kate’s insane at all. I think she’s greedy and selfish and – don’t laugh – evil.’
‘Evil,’ I said. I thought I’d enjoy having a source of inside gen, while the fiscal and the CID started to piece it all together. But now, after only three days, I was beginning to wish I didn’t have to hear it, didn’t have to know, didn’t have to think about the difference between evil and madness.
‘What a bloody stupid thing to do,’ Ty said. ‘Forking over a glorified gang hut for your three daughters to fight about, when one of them’s a psychopath.’
‘Families,’ I said. ‘Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they thought they were all dead normal. Like everyone does.’ I really wanted to stop thinking about it. I knew I’d have to face it sometime – madness and badness and greed – but not today.
‘Here they come,’ Ty said. Martine was walking, with a bandage on her head, and Laura was on her feet too – �
��chockful of monster antibiotics and fresh from the renal clinic’ as she’d put it – but a nurse was pushing Ivy in a wheelchair. The others hadn’t realized she’d been eating so little, giving them so much. They doled their daily rations out in so many tiny servings, she’d managed to hide what she was up to.
‘Who’s driving?’ the nurse said.
‘Me,’ said Ty standing up.
‘Well, I’ll hand them over, officer,’ said the nurse, making him roll his eyes and getting the first giggle out of me since I’d laughed up at Renny days ago.
‘And you’re going to the hotel,’ I said to the three of them. ‘No arguments. Ty’s dropping you off and then leaving you to it, right?’ Ty nodded. ‘I’ll stay if you need me, or go if you’d rather.’
‘Even Ty can stay,’ Martine said. ‘You, definitely.’
‘Because he was coming to rescue us!’ Laura said. ‘I was right.’
‘You were,’ Ty said. ‘I was. Once Cyber found the report about April – Hazel, actually – and found out the lonely-hearts scam was based in Hephaw, it was only a matter of time. It could have been days though. Even with Aisling and Renny phoning every hour and Adim chipping in. And if they’d stopped feeding you again after Tash got locked in …’ He shook the thought off. ‘Nah, this is your hero. This one here.’ He rubbed my arm with his knuckle.
‘No way,’ I said. ‘The plan was hatched. I was just the grunt. Worker bee, that’s me.’ I turned to the others. ‘It’s not on a clifftop but it’s dead nice and it’s dead close. Suite for Ivy, big bath for Laura, best view for you, Martine. They know it’s us and they’re determined to keep the press away.’
We came back for Ivy’s anniversary in February, and in March for Martine, in May for Laura and then again in May for the day when I ran from my dad and found them.
Every time, we ate and drank and bathed but mostly what we did at the hotel was talk. We talked a bit about the sisters. Gail was recovering slowly in a nice place in Perthshire; because she had rolled a bottle of Septra over the floor and saved a life that way. Kate was in a locked ward she wasn’t likely to leave anytime soon. We talked about Idris and Jaden who stayed imaginary, and about Ivy’s real widower who didn’t know why she called him ‘Cocoa’. We even talked about the time in the cellar. We managed to laugh. And of course we talked about the survivor centre, nearly ready for its grand opening, at number 1a Loch Road, Hephaw. Nice and handy, halfway between the two cities, where all the people are. We talked about the girls – and boys – who’d come there. About the translators and counsellors and the lawyers who’d work there. About the good that would be done there. Sometimes I talked about the other ones too, the ones I dreamed about. The ones I was too late to help. The ones whose names I’d never know.
The only thing we don’t talk about, on the hotel weekends, is work. Morrigan Movers – formerly BG Solutions – doesn’t need discussion. We changed the name but we stayed put. Yes, I’m still here, but not – this time – because it’s handy. I’m here because I’ve tried the sparkling granite and the wild water of the North Sea now. I’ve seen the soft southwest and the rolling border country and this is where I want to be. Where rare orchids grow on the steep scree of a shale bing as if to say ‘life’s tough but we’re tougher’. Where I never have to worry about people finding out, because everyone knows. Where I can forget Big Garry saying he came from nothing and agree with my granny that he and I were both lucky to come from this.
He squandered it. But I’m not going to. Morrigan Movers survived the scandal that followed so close on the heels of all the great publicity my so-called heroics had brought. Oh yes, there was a scandal. I never meant to let them get away. Garry and Lynne and Bazz. I always meant to report him once I had the business off him, once the drivers’ jobs were safe and the firm was working well under my leadership. All that guff about retiring to the sun was just to get him to sign.
He swore blind he had come to Hephaw to hand the business over and turn himself in. But he didn’t have any paperwork on him and he hadn’t been in touch with his lawyer. He swore on his mother’s life that he hadn’t known about the business behind the business at BG Europe, that he’d got out as soon as he found out, that he kept it quiet to protect jobs. Yes, he stole my true story and spun it into lies to cover him.
It didn’t work. The flaw in Big Garry’s innocent act was how I’d been missing for months and he’d never tried to find me, never reported it. He could hardly admit he knew Bazz was tracking me, since he’d sworn on his own mother’s life that Bazz was working alone, that Big Garry himself had been shocked to find out what Bazz was doing. So there he was: no way to hide how much he didn’t care about girls who never came home.
He went quietly in handcuffs to his jail cell, the court, his prison cell and his endless appeals, throwing Bazz under fleets of buses. I avoided the papers while the case worked through and I try not to think about him these days. I channel my granny. Since he lied on her life, she’s done with him. She hasn’t got a sentimental bone in her wiry wee body.
As for my mum, she managed to keep out of it, didn’t get arrested, wasn’t convicted. But she lost her house and her car and her cushy life. I honestly think having to live in my auntie’s spare room in the loft conversion and visit her husband in prison is punishment enough. Especially since she goes on the bus like the other wives and none of them speak to her. I can feel myself softening sometimes so I try not to think about her either.
I don’t have to try hard not to think about Bazz in Bali. Oh yes of course Bazz got away. Scum floats, Ty says, and tells me to forget all of them.
Which I do, mostly, although Big Garry crosses my mind whenever something he always did one way gets changed and gets better. Slicker, more efficient, fairer, more flexible.
Laura’s unlike any operations manager I’ve ever encountered before. And Martine on logistics is unstoppable. Ivy’s happy enough running the payroll for a living, and running the book club, the charity wing and GirlsatWork for fun. They’ve saved me – by balancing me. Everyone thought I was probably in the trafficking up to my neck but got away with it. But the same everyone all agree that Ivy, Martine and Laura are pure as the driven snow, beyond reproach. If those three trust me, maybe I’m not so bad – I think that’s how it goes. And I can’t blame anyone who doesn’t trust me, not really. Because when people ask why I didn’t stash the evidence in a deposit box or leave it with a lawyer, I have to tell them the truth. If I’d done that, I might have crapped out. Stuffing photocopies in my locker and the student files and the bin full of papers in the Cancer Express meant that sooner or later I’d have to deal with them, before my luck ran out and somebody found them. ‘So, you might have let him get away with it all?’ Renny said, when I tried to explain it one time. ‘Shut up,’ said Aisling. ‘She didn’t. Get off her case, eh?’ But she gave me a hell of a look.
All four of us still get a lot of looks. At work and everywhere else, and a few questions from people too clueless to know better. But the three of them, at least on their good days, are all OK pretty much, after four months, and three months and a week when she nearly died.
I was only there overnight and it’s me that’s still seeing the doc, writing letters and not sending them. Writing this. ‘It wasn’t one night,’ Dr Norman tells me. ‘It was five months and one night.’
They do have their bad days, the three of them. But on days when Martine wants to hit her head against a wall, when Laura wants to wrap herself in a blanket and shake, when Ivy locks her office door and puts the light out, they’ve got each other and they’ve all got me.
When it’s really bad we’ve got the hotel, whichever hotel someone’s found this time. We’ll never give up hoping for one with a tower and a sea view, a kitchen and a fireplace. There’s never going to be a day when it’s over.
There’s never going to be a day when any of it’s over.
There’s always going to be a girl reading a sticker inside a toilet door at a motor
way services and nicking a phone to call the number. There’s always going to be a girl getting out of the house because they thought they’d broken her spirit and they stopped making sure she was locked in there. There’s always going to be a girl rolling out of the car when it slows at the lights and getting away before they can catch her, picking the right door to knock on, finding kindness behind it. There’s always going to be a girl. And I’m in time for some of them. Knowing that and keeping on is as close as I’ll get to an ending.
FACTS AND FICTIONS
The general geography of Fraserburgh, Lockerbie, and Ayr are as depicted here, but none of the people, buildings or organizations I’ve written about are drawn from life. It wouldn’t take a super-sleuth to work out which West Lothian town Hephaw is based on, and there is a house quite like 1a Loch Road there, but the Doctor’s Ballroom, Adim’s, Hollywood Nails, the Dodds and the sisters are absolutely imaginary.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank: Lisa Moylett, Zoë Apostolides and Elena Langtry at CMM Literary Agency; Kate Lyall Grant, Rachel Slatter, Natasha Bell, Penny Isaac, Jem Butcher, and all at Severn House; my friends and family in the UK and the US who helped me through the three or four drafts I was expecting and then the rest of the eventual eleven drafts it took; and the people of Scotland’s central belt, whose necessary toughness and well-disguised cheer grow more and more precious to me the older I get and the longer I spend far too far away. I miss youse and this is a love letter, eh.
And thanks, Neil. It must have felt like a hundred and eleven drafts to you.
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