The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘We’ll alert our colleagues in other forces to the possibility. But at this stage –’

  ‘Are the Grampian police going to interview his family? See if he’s been in touch with any of them?’ Another shiver went down her. She squeezed her arms against her ribs.

  ‘I imagine they’ll be speaking to the family.’

  ‘You imagine. You still don’t believe that he’s Rob Beattie.’ With her arms still crossed under her chest, she moved out into the corridor. Where it opened into the lobby at the end there was a fat woman in leggings bent over, laughing, and a policeman holding her elbow and turning to say something to another policeman.

  ‘It’s a possibility we’re exploring.’

  ‘Right.’

  She started to walk down the corridor, towards the lobby and the laughing woman. The sound of the laughing was right inside Helen’s head, fusing with the pulsing, unbearably loud at the peak of each of the pulses.

  ‘Helen, we don’t have a contact number for you. Can you –’

  ‘I’m staying at a B&B.’ She pulled her new phone from her bag, switched it on and pushed it at him. ‘You can reach me on this number.’

  He took a notebook from his jacket pocket, and a pen, and started to write it down. ‘Right. Thanks. You don’t think you’d be better staying with a friend? Someone who could...’ He shrugged, smiled at her, handed back the phone. ‘Support you through this?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Have you thought about –’

  ‘I need a copy of the writing. And the photos that were on my phone.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Have you been in touch with Victim Support? They can –’

  ‘I’ll wait in the lobby if that’s okay.’

  He blinked at her.

  ‘While you get me the copies of the photos and the writing.’ She needed to sit down again. She didn’t have time to be nice. ‘Or do I have to do it through my solicitor? Because I really don’t think you want a solicitor involved in this, do you?’

  36

  She parked opposite the wide space of the Green and wound down her window. Fresh air. She wished she was able to smell it. She breathed in and out through her mouth, sinking back in the seat, feeling the tightness and shivering ease. Like someone had put soothing hands on her shoulders, her stomach.

  She reached for the bottle of Fanta in the driver’s door. They’d kept her going on the nightmare drive north – bottles of sweet fizzy drinks. She couldn’t get enough of them.

  Probably she shouldn’t be driving.

  She’d had to stop five or six times because she just couldn’t stay upright in the seat any longer. She’d been sick twice, once into some spiky shrubs behind a garage outside Brechin, and once into the verge on the Slug Road. She’d had to just stop the car and get out, even though there was a bend behind and she supposed it was dangerous.

  She couldn’t even remember the other places she’d stopped, and glogged down a couple more aspirin, wound her seat as horizontal as it would go and closed her eyes. Tried to tell herself she’d be fine after a rest and a sleep.

  But she hadn’t been able to sleep. Not properly. Her head hadn’t stopped throbbing, and cars and lorries wouldn’t stop whizzing across the backs of her eyelids.

  A girl in skinny jeans was crossing the grass, phone clamped to ear, completely ignoring the dog on the other end of the bright red lead. She could have been anywhere, in some grotty city park, on a street in an inner city slum. At that age you never really saw the place you lived in. It was just there.

  Aboyne, to this girl, would be just ‘the Town.’

  Nothing special.

  In Edinburgh, when someone spoke about ‘going into Town’, they meant of course into the city centre, but into her mind’s eye always leapt a picture of Aboyne, the picture she was looking at now: the Green, the expanse of grass with its backdrop of trees and big Victorian houses, and behind them the hills of Birsemore and Craigendinnie, mist lying low over the dark green of the conifers. And the Huntly Arms Hotel, and the carpark between it and the road, where Dad had always left the car while they did the shopping.

  And then they’d drive back through the Town and onto the Tarland Road.

  Across the Green, under the trees by the gates, a man was standing facing her.

  She squinted through the windscreen, the pulsing back in her head, in her eyes. He was too far away to make out any features – but he was the right height, the right build – and the way he was standing staring –

  He turned and started walking towards the gates, and she let out her breath and closed her eyes.

  How could that be Moir? How could he know where she was, unless he’d been following her all this time? How could he have followed her – to the police station, to the B&B, all round Edinburgh? All the way up here?

  He wouldn’t have needed to. He’d know where she was going.

  So he hung around the Green on the off chance she’d stop by?

  She fastened her seatbelt and started the engine. She drove slowly to the junction with the A93, scanning the area around the gates, the pavement, the grass, the car park, but there was no sign of the man.

  Was she going to react like this every time she saw someone who looked vaguely like Moir?

  She pulled out from the junction.

  And there, on the other side of the road, was the bus stop – the one where she and Suzanne used to leave their bikes. They’d cycle all the way from home and chain their bikes to the metal pole of the bus stop, and get the bus into Aberdeen, with the limitless possibilities of £25 spending money each. A top from Dorothy Perkins, a magazine and a sandwich from John Menzies. And still money left over for a necklace or a pair of fluffy socks from Woolworth’s.

  And returning with their booty, they’d think nothing of the eight-mile slog back up the road.

  Whenever she heard or read the words ‘bus stop’ it was this one she thought of, and the long road stretching back through the trees towards Ballater, and watching for the bus to appear at the end of it. And the wall – it was still there, still exactly as it was – where they used to sit and kick their heels against the loose mortar.

  She smiled, and turned right at the crossroads.

  She could actually feel the tension leaving her. Her arms weren’t aching like they had been. Her foot on the accelerator wasn’t shaking. Her brain wasn’t jumping around all over the place.

  Why had she been so afraid, all these years, of coming back?

  This was the place that had been imprinted on her brain from when she was a baby. This was the landscape her mind would always move in, no matter where her body was.

  And so of course it made her happy to be here.

  Because what her eyes were seeing was matching up with the pictures hard-wired into her brain – as if her eyes had been searching and searching all this time for a match, and now finally here it was, and her neurons were firing off endorphins or whatever. Dopamine. Happy chemicals.

  To say Yes yes yes this is right.

  This is the right town, the right bus stop, the right hills with the cloud shadows moving over their heathery tops.

  The right road home.

  ◆◆◆

  She turned off the Tarland Road and snaked down through Postie’s Woodie, past the thirty limit and the sign in black and white: Kirkton of Glass. There was Miss Duff’s house, just the same, except the row of pine trees behind the orchard were huge. Last time she’d seen them they’d been Christmas tree size.

  And now into Kirkton, and already here was the shoppie, and opposite it the turn-off to the Estate Office; and ‘Damask and Delft’, just like on the website, except there was an old-fashioned pram outside with a big teddy bear in it.

  From here she could see the road carrying on past the playground and over the bridge, and past the manse and the kirk, and off again into the trees.

  When she was a little girl, Kirkton had been the centre of her u
niverse. But it was just a tiny village on the most minor of B roads. Thirty or so houses, a primary school and a church, the Pitfourie Estate Office and a couple of shops.

  Lorna’s shop.

  And the happy chemicals were gone, and her head was pounding worse than ever. What was she going to say? ‘Hi Lorna! Could you just look at these photos and tell me if this is Rob? And is this his writing? You and your parents aren’t secretly in touch with him, by any chance? You’ll never believe it, but I think I was engaged to be married to him!’

  She accelerated past the school and over the bridge.

  Don’t think about it.

  His face, his hands touching her –

  Her hands touching him.

  Past the manse where the Beatties still lived, and the kirk. And here was the turn left, up the brae.

  The road home.

  She wanted to take the turn: over Worm Hill and onto the track, past the Mains – home, and Dad saying, ‘Well, Hel’nie,’ and getting between clean sheets and closing her eyes, and Mum putting a cloth on her forehead.

  She kept straight on, past the farm track to Unthank, on into the trees. On to the gates of the House of Pitfourie.

  She nudged Stan into the semicircle of road in front of them.

  What if Hector found her here?

  What if he was to appear now, driving out or in?

  She pulled off her seatbelt and swung her legs out; walked to where the wall was lowest, just by the gates; leant on it. There was long grass on the other side, and those little white flowers she could never remember the name of.

  A stream of orange sick, watery and acrid, came spilling out of her mouth and over the flowers. She waited for it to stop, her hands gripping the granite on the top of the wall.

  Back in the car she reached for the Fanta, and gagged again as the sweet liquid filled her mouth, but she managed to swallow it down. She blew her streaming nose and turned the key in the ignition.

  The gates were different.

  Well, they were the same gates, but they used to be rusty, and multicoloured where the paint was flaking off to show all the layers underneath. Now they gleamed glossy black. And the East Lodge, which had had streaks of green damp down the wall by the door where the guttering was dodgy, and a saggy roof, and rotten windows – the stonework was clean, the roof straight, the windows trim and neat. There were sweet peas on wigwam things in the garden.

  Could this be where Irina and Damian lived?

  She couldn’t imagine Irina putting up with dodgy guttering or a saggy roof. Or rusty gates that she’d be able to see from the little dormer windows upstairs.

  She nudged Stan forwards so she could see round the back of the lodge, where there was a short driveway leading to the garage set into the trees: Victorian, with carved bargeboards along the lines of the gable, and a little arched window above the double doors.

  The bargeboards didn’t have gaps in them now. The doors weren’t orra at the bottom where the wood was crumbling away. The whole garage had been painted a sludgy brown that was probably a heritage colour.

  She revved the engine as she yanked Stan around and back onto the road. But when she reached the turn-off up Worm Hill, instead of going straight on she indicated right and accelerated up the incline. At the top of the hill she stopped. There was the Big Stone. And if she looked out across the fields – there was the Lang Park, and the plantation, and the low brown bulk of Craig Dearg.

  Just the same.

  She carried on down the other side.

  There were the same old signs at the track end: two rectangles of wood, faded silvery grey, with the letters stamped in black into them: ‘Mains of Clova’ and under it ‘Parks of Clova’.

  She turned onto the track. It was difficult to judge the turn because everything was sliding to one side. The sky wasn’t blue any more, it was pulsing pink and orange and grey. There were grey splodges over everything, getting bigger, joining together.

  She slammed on the brakes.

  If Moir really was Rob – if that really had been him on the Green – he could have driven ahead –

  No. Why would he? If Moir was Rob, he’d had months to do whatever he wanted to her. Why wait until now?

  Because it had been fun.

  To take everything she had, and watch her suffer.

  And then watch her suffer some more.

  She pressed her foot to the accelerator, sending Stan bumping down the track and up into the yard at the Mains. Through the splodges she registered the changes – the weeds growing along the foot of the steading, the cracks in the concrete, the peeling paint on the windows – but suddenly nothing mattered except lying down.

  She cranked her seat back.

  Was she going to faint? What would happen if she did?

  She closed her eyes.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying there when she heard a click at her ear, and cool air swept over her, and a rough voice said, ‘Hel’nie.’

  She opened her eyes.

  The splodges had gone. An old man with tiny eyes and a big purple nose was bending over her. His lips were purple too.

  ‘Hel’nie,’ he said again.

  ‘Uncle Jim –’

  She lunged out of the car and felt his hand on her arm, his grip surprisingly strong. She pulled away and tottered across the yard to the high weeds at the end of the steading. She leant over and opened her mouth, and out streamed more orange cowk.

  He hadn’t followed her.

  When it was over she walked carefully back. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got some kind of bug. I just need to lie back down in the car,’ and he was holding her arm again and saying, ‘Come on in to a beddie,’ and then she was inside and up the stairs, and Uncle Jim was opening the door to her old room, the room next to Suzanne’s where she used to sleep when she stayed over, and she was tugging off her shoes, and slipping between cool sheets, familiar pink Camberwick under her fingers. Closing her eyes.

  And opening them again. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry – for just turning up like this.’ She had to tell him about Rob. Moir.

  But not just now.

  He was closing the curtains across the bright rectangle of the window. ‘Na na,’ was all he said.

  She closed her eyes, and heard his steps cross the floor to the bed, pause, continue; and the door open and shut.

  Even with her blocked nose she could smell something not quite right. Fooshty.

  Auntie Ina’s sheets had always smelt of too much washing powder. Helen used to worry in case she made a mess in the pristine perfection of this room. It was twice as big as her little room at home, and had a grown-up dressing table, and a boxroom off it with a big empty wardrobe for her clothes, and a double bed that she could roll over on four times without falling off the edge.

  She opened her eyes.

  In the dim light she could see the dressing table in exactly the same position as it had always been, against the opposite wall, and above it the only decoration in the room – a framed print of a ship, sails billowing.

  On the bedside cabinet was a sweetie. A mint humbug.

  When Uncle Jim used to find her crying in a corner of the shed or the steading or the byre, hiding her tears from Suzanne, he’d say, ‘Eh, me,’ and put his hand in his pocket and bring out a mint humbug: his cure for all ills, from a dollie’s broken head to a little girl’s broken heart. Sharp and salty and sweet.

  She’d be sick if she tried to eat it. She put it under her pillow – in case he came back and saw it and thought she hadn’t wanted it – and rolled onto her side, and knew nothing more until a voice said: ‘Helen?’

  A woman’s voice, low and pleasant.

  She opened her eyes.

  37

  Fiona Kerr was standing at the window. She’d pulled back the curtains. The light was far too bright.

  Helen put a hand to her lips to check for crusts of sick.

  ‘Hello!’ Fiona smiled, as if her whole day had been leading up to this wonderful mome
nt. ‘Feeling a bit rotten?’

  The photo on the website didn’t, of course, do her justice. To get the full Fiona effect you had to see her in the flesh. You had to feel the joie de vivre – and it really was something you felt physically, whether you wanted to or not. It sounded so corny in English – the joy of being alive. But that was what she glowed with; that was what she gave you, diluted, to feel for yourself, like a passive smoker getting a little hit of nicotine.

  Helen swallowed, and Fiona took a glass from a tray that had appeared on the bedside table. There was condensation on its sides – ice clinking. Helen propped herself up and took the glass and sipped. It was cool, delicious. ‘Fiona – thank you. Are you – I’m sorry, but this is all... a bit surreal –’

  ‘Your uncle called. Asked me to pop over and have a look at you.’ Her hair was caught back in the sunglasses perched on her head. She reached up to adjust them. ‘I’m a GP with the Aboyne practice now.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when he said you were back.’ Her smile widened. ‘We’ve all so wanted to know how you were getting on. For the past – how many years is it, anyway? Oh gosh, I don’t want to think.’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Sixteen?’ A little silence. Fiona fichered with one of the buttons on her shirt. It was a plain white cotton shirt, tailored at the waist, setting off the creamy skin at neck and cleavage. ‘Well, but it’s wonderful to have you back. But not feeling too good? Your uncle said you’ve been sick?’

  She nodded. ‘I think I picked up a bug on the train. Coming back from visiting Mum. A couple of days ago.’

  ‘Okay, let’s run through your symptoms. Have you been sick more than once?’

  Helen nodded. ‘I just feel generally yuch. Headachy, dizzy. Feeling sick. Being sick. I just want to lie down the whole time, and never get up again.’