by Caro Ramsay
The path was a bit spooky, within a mile of all that luxury up at the house but so secluded. Down here anything could happen and you were on your own. If I hid here, nobody would ever find me.
Nobody ever did.
On that first excursion, I did come across the old gnarled tree with the huge branches that grew out over the water, the wide twisted trunk itself sprouting from a raised part of the bank. I might even have sat on it and worked my way out over the water. I found some rope attached to a high branch, thinking what a good swing that would make, one push and you would be flying over the water, only a little momentum needed to bring you back safely onto the bank and dry land.
Now I know that was the Melvick hanging tree.
I had no real idea what I was doing there, being nosey, maybe thinking about stealing something, patting the ponies, curiosity about where my dad worked. Or was I just really lonely. Did instinct tell me that Megan didn’t have any friends either?
Who needed friends when they had money?
I had been listening to Gran who, although she never talks to me, is a terrible gossip. The reasons for Megan being on her own so much? It started with a rumour from Mrs Thompson in the dairy who said that the Melvicks had forgotten to put Megan’s name down at the same school that Melissa and her mum had gone to. There was another rumour that they had remembered that Megan wasn’t bright enough to pass the entrance exam. Another rumour was that there was something wrong with her, like she wasn’t all there in the head, and what a shame that with all their money they couldn’t do anything for their kids. The village liked this last theory as it meant, despite appearances, the Melvicks did not have it all. And that rumour gained some truth when Melissa went doolally.
Oh yes, Megan was very much the lonely girl, the little chubby one, a second-rate version of her beautiful sister in those days. Megan didn’t give a shit, couldn’t hear, couldn’t care. Seemingly, she used to chatter like a chimp, then something happened and she went deaf and then quiet. But Gran said that was a nasty rumour to cover up the nastier fact that Megan had always been deaf and her parents were too busy to notice, and the succession of nannies didn’t think to mention it.
Shame on them.
I couldn’t stop myself, crawling around the woods at the far end of the Melvick estate, thinking about the way Snottery Campbell had beaten up Megan. There was one thing I had a great instinct for. Trouble.
Megan’s problem was she didn’t react. If she had, Snottery Campbell would have got some satisfaction from her reaction, but there was nothing. She had walked on, her head up in silent defiance. So she got thumped and I got taken away in a police car for putting an end to it.
Then I was invited down here.
And now here I was uninvited.
From my vantage point I looked round and fell in love for the first time. At the end of the drive, beyond the gates was a pond and a boathouse, weeping willows over the still and reeded water, it was like a painting. How lucky was she to live in the house with that at the bottom of the garden. I had never seen anything so beautiful, I didn’t know why I was so excited, but the time I looked back to the drive my heart gave a little jump. I climbed up on the fence as high as I could go, determined to drink in every last minute of that view and I think I might have made myself a strange little promise that day. That I would never ever let Megan out of my sight again.
I had made my way back down to the boundary fence and waited. I had nothing to do, I could wait all day if I needed to.
But ten minutes later, I saw the Land Rover coming slowly down the drive. It drove past me, right past me. I was in the trees, watching like an assassin. Megan was sitting in the back, alone, then she turned her head. I don’t know how she could have seen me but I got the sense she knew she was being watched. I wasn’t bothered who was driving, I didn’t really have any interest in that but I was curious to know where they were going. What way would they turn – left towards Sandbank and the ferry, so they were heading to the city maybe?
I slid through the gates before they shut after the vehicle exited, keeping close to the side of the wall. I took out my phone, looked at the time, then jogged down to the bus stop with a new idea of how I might spend my day: spying on Megan.
The first bus stopped, and took me back to Hunter’s Quay. He was one of the drivers that I knew – he liked to be on the school run so he could chat up the senior girls – so he stopped to let me on, and I stood right beside him, chatting and rolling my eyes at him. Men are such arseholes.
At the ferry, I sat near the traffic barrier not wanting to go into the waiting room until I knew there was a point in getting a ticket. The Land Rover was not in the traffic queue but the incoming passenger ferry was still doing its manoeuvre out in the bay. Where had they gone? We didn’t see the family around the village much, only when they were at the fete or at the church but never in the chemist buying deodorant.
So I waited, watching the ferry dock; everybody does, no matter how many times you see it; left a bit, right a bit … Then I saw them, on foot, waiting in the queue.
I too joined the line.
And waited. At least the rain had eased off.
I didn’t know where they went once on the ferry. There was no sign of them up at the cafe or in the lounge with the old ladies and the day trippers. I carried on my search and found them eventually. Beth was with Megan out on the deck. Megan looking rather unwell as she holds onto the barrier, suffering from sea sickness. That never bothered me, but all the money in the world wasn’t going to turn that face from green back to its normal tawny olive tone.
So what now? I didn’t have a plan, the danger of being a spur of the moment kind of person. Shadow them, like a spy? People were streaming off the boat, Megan still looking unwell, a bit green round the gills. They then set off towards the station slowly, maybe for the Glasgow bound train.
I jogged along sometimes right behind them, sometimes on the opposite side of the road, paying detective, then watched them buy a ticket, paying with a credit card. I bought my ticket with the grubby fiver I’d nicked from Gran.
And I was on the train, going through the quiet carriages, sitting on the same side as them but about five seats away. I’m sure Megan’s eye flickered up and saw me, then turned away. Probably a quick flash of recognition – somebody that she knew but nobody worth acknowledging, although I had been in their bloody front room just a few days before.
But I had her in my sights. They sat in silence as it would be difficult to talk to Megan over the noise of the Scotrail train soundtrack, all that rumbling and clanking would have meant Beth raising her voice. I could hear nothing, so I guess they didn’t speak for the entire journey.
They didn’t get off until the train terminated in Glasgow and I am already on the other side of the barrier when they emerge.
FOUR
Megan
I suppose it was natural that memories should come flooding back. I had not slept in my room for over three years, and now the house was talking to me. I recalled the chill of its words, the sense of death and tragedy that pervaded these beautiful walls. I paused at the front door thinking how many times I had run in and out here, after a dog, after my sister, after Papa. Always trying to keep up. The house was quiet. Deborah would be tied to the sink in the kitchen, I had no idea where Heather was, or Dad. Or my mother. I knew exactly where Melissa was.
Melissa who had come down this hall on her wedding day like the Queen of Sheba, so full of expectation, of certainty of the life that lay ahead of her.
Sorry.
Sorry?
What for?
When did it all go wrong? Was it the day of Melissa’s wedding? Melissa? Had the guilt eaten away at her? Her health had certainly declined since then, a five-year slow spiral downward.
I have never seen anybody as beautiful as my sister on that day. It all came together for her when she walked down these stairs under the proud eye of Agatha Emmaline. Dad, looking very handsome in his mor
ning suit, was waiting for her right where I was standing now. Carla and I were outside, as we were going down to the church first. Carla was staring at Melissa, I have never seen anybody’s mouth actually fall open before but hers did. I wasn’t so taken aback; I was fed up hearing about the dress, this dress, that dress, the dress that nearly was, the perfect dress that got away.
I had no idea what she would have looked like in the perfect one but this one, well this one made Dad cry when he first caught sight of her, as she rounded the half landing under Agatha, the sunlight behind her making her veil glow like a halo.
Melissa held a simple bouquet with flowers from the garden that matched the ones Carla and I had in our hair. The long veil was the one Mum got married to my dad in, and the one that my granddad had married my grandmother in all the way back to Agatha. The dress though, was incredible. A soft silk with a loose neckline that gathered in soft folds. A tight, seeded pearl, structured waist showed off her curves in a way that managed to be both sexy and discreet, and Melissa could pull that look off very well. The bottom of the dress was a flowing mass of white silk. The movement made the sheer wings of the skirt billow out behind her, it seemed as though her feet never touched the ground.
She looked like an angel.
Which she probably was now.
I could see it so clearly, Melissa, with her huge sense of drama, pausing right at the top of the stairs, just long enough to draw the eye. Dad gave her a tearful nod, and she continued her descent, her head bowed slightly because it looked suitably demure and chaste, knowing that we were all looking at her anyway. Her dark hair was neatly pinned at the back of her head, the veil falling from the French pleat like a comet. Two spiralling curls fell to either side of her cheeks, framing her face, stopping just short of her ears and the diamonds that hung there had been picked up from the bank earlier that week.
But what a palaver it all was. My dad, in a rare moment of candour, said how quickly Napoleon could mass an army and march it across Europe, so why was this bloody wedding taking forever? I didn’t hear him say it, I lip-read that he said it. Sometimes he was so used to me not hearing that he forgot and spoke his mind.
I think he was as fed up with the wedding as everybody else by then. Mum and Melissa going off to Glasgow for The Dress every weekend for about a year. And once to Edinburgh, twice to London, and then Melissa and her friends had gone off to New York for a quick look round Kleinfields as she had seen it on the telly. And that was just The Dress. We had to go through the same rigmarole with the flowers and the food and the wine and the band and the bridesmaids and the flower girls and the …
I wonder how quickly Napoleon got married.
In the end Melissa had decided on one of the first dresses she had seen in a couture boutique in Glasgow but by the time she decided on it, it had been sold. She went mental. I went to bed early. Dad made one of his biannual outings to the pub. I lay in bed and vowed that I’d never get married. I couldn’t hear my sister’s screeching, of course, but I could feel it on the back of my neck. The pipistrelles didn’t come out that night, it was too noisy.
But in the end, as Melissa stood on the stairs, she was the picture of perfection. It was easy to like Melissa as long as you didn’t know her.
She had insisted our dresses were Royal Tea-green, covered with seed pearls and Grecian folded necklines. We were told to wear our hair scraped up in braids that wound round our heads so as I walked down the aisle behind her, everybody would see my hearing aids. I had protested but Melissa wouldn’t change her mind. I looked at Mum for support; she shrugged in sympathy but uttered that it was just for this once and it was your sister’s wedding.
At that moment I could have happily killed both of them.
If, at that time, Melissa was aware of anything going on between Jago and I, she showed no sign of it. She said nothing at the reception. In fact, she said very little to me all day so maybe she did know, but was so much in demand, so much the centre of attention, that she decided to let it go.
‘For now.’
Melissa never forgot a slight.
Funny that I don’t really remember Melissa being around me during the meal or the dancing. I wasn’t really aware of her, not the way I was aware of Jago and the way I knew he was aware of me.
Just before the wedding, he had said, the way men do, that this would be the end of it. That is what he said, when we were both lying in the Curlew on the Benbrae. Five minutes later he was talking about the flat in Cambridge and how often they were coming up to stay with my parents, and was I going to be staying at the house or going away to university. He said it kind of hopefully, as if it wasn’t really the end of it.
Shagging him had only been a bet between Carla and I. He really was a grade A arsehole.
The thought of him brought me back to the here and now, and unconsciously, I was walking the path of the wedding car down the Long Drive, thinking about that day. After the meal, I remember Jago making a show of trying to get me to dance to the jazz band. It looked as though he was helping me, and holding on to me as if the deaf can’t dance because we don’t hear music. The audience, and there was an audience, smiled. The groom looking after the bride’s little sister. Over my shoulder I saw Carla, her fist making wanking gestures. My snort of laughter was misinterpreted by Jago as a sign of joy. He always thought everything was about him.
I walked past the lawn where the marquee had stood for the wedding. Jago must have seen me go into the house, and he followed me up to my bedroom. I was fixing my hair, and adjusting the folds in the neckline of my dress, tightening the flowers. No doubt I took my hearing aids out to give my ears a rest. But as I saw him in the mirror, he didn’t make me jump when he came up behind me.
It was only a bet, but I got my thirty quid off Carla.
Half an hour later he was back down on the step, dancing around with the best of them, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, filling glasses. He had that drunkenness that upper-class men do so well, when they have sex with their teddy bears, or bridesmaids, or fall off balconies in ski resorts, all in good spirits.
I look up to my bedroom window. I had been watching him from there, from behind that same curtain. My bedroom has French doors that open out onto the stone terrace that runs the length of the building. It does make us feel like the Royal family, waving down at the little people, those who have warmer houses than ours, bigger TV screens and faster Wi-Fi. But on the day of the wedding, I was in there looking at Jago, at my dad in his backless waistcoat, at Mum on the temporary dance floor surrounded by the village children doing the hokey cokey. Now I remember the kids waving; I had looked across to see what they were waving at. Melissa standing in her beautiful white gown, alone at her own wedding, staring up at the window, staring right at me. Looking at me like she wanted to kill me.
Looking back, I think she knew.
But on her death bed, she had said sorry.
For what?
The mosaic at the Benbrae bears witness that somebody died a tortured death, burned alive, surrounded by water. There are men in Kilaird today bearing the scars of the fire, brave men who waded into the water to try and help. My mum screaming, my dad on the bank, his arms outstretched. The air full of smoke and the stench of burned flesh, the endless, endless noise of a human being burned alive.
Such was my sister’s wedding day.
Carla
It doesn’t take me long to find them. Megan and her mother are acting like spies themselves, standing in the huge concourse of the station, under Victorian glass. Beth looks at her watch and gesticulates so even I can understand it from behind my hiding place of the newspaper stand at John Menzies. They are deciding on a time to meet back underneath the clock.
Megan leaves to walk onto Renfield Street. Beth watches her go, a studied look of concern on her face. I don’t think I have ever seen that look in my mum’s eyes. I watch Beth for a few moments, debating whether to go after Megan just to make sure she is OK, a vulnerable child
in this big noisy world, but she merely checks the time, comes to a decision and then walks away to the taxi rank. When I get to the exit at Renfield Street Megan is nowhere to be seen. She had been swallowed by the crowd and vanished into the network of back alleys, shopping malls and department stores that make up any modern city centre no matter where in the world.
She’s gone.
I jog across the road and stand up on the bin at the bus stop with some woman shouting at me in Russian, thinking I’m jumping the queue. I tell her to bugger off. She’s fearful of the slightly mad look I’ve been told I have in my eyes and backs down.
I spend the next hour or so wandering round T K Maxx, buying myself a mega expensive iced coffee in Starbucks where I pay for one ginger biscuit and nick another two. The stookie is off my arm now but I’m out of practice with my style of shoplifting. I sit at the window watching the big city go by. It makes me think that everybody has something or someone, whereas I am here with nothing but a few quid nicked from my gran.
People going about their business, I’m not even allowed in school.
I wonder where mum is.
After that I go into Frasers, the easiest place to shoplift cosmetics. With my little weasely face, I look about eight. My pockmarked skin looks awful. Junky pallor like my mum. I look at their make-up, checking stuff. I have a few bits and bobs of course, black eyeliner and bright orange lipstick that goes with my blue hair and thousand-mile stare. Melissa doesn’t wear make-up like that. I’m sure she wears tons of it but it would all be soft-toned and natural looking, classy.