by Jane Renshaw
‘Uncle Jim, that’s ridiculous. A place can still be homely without being...’ She waved a hand wordlessly.
Uncle Jim looked smug. ‘That’s what he said.’ He got up and rummaged in the bits of paper piled on the dresser, and came back with a leaflet. ‘Said I should get my act together if I want the Council keeping their nebs out. Wifie from the Council left this two, three weeks since.’
It was a leaflet about sheltered housing.
‘I told her she needna come back.’ He chuckled. ‘Laird says what I need is a gate across the track end: Mains of Clova – And May the Lord Be Thankit!’
She smiled.
‘You winna remember Jessie Mitchell.’
‘I remember Dad talking about her.’
Jessie Mitchell had been a cousin of her great-grandfather. She’d lost her husband and brother in the First World War, and her two children to a childhood illness – scarlet fever? But she’d insisted on living on alone at Altmore, scraping by on what she made when her beasts went to market. She’d put up a locked gate at the end of the track, with that written on it: Altmore. And May the Lord Be Thankit. ‘Aye, Jessie,’ Dad would always say at the end of any story about her, shaking his head with a smile.
‘Altmore’ said Uncle Jim. ‘Nothing but a ruckle o’ stanes now.’
‘Yes, well, and the Mains will be going the same way if you’re not careful. This house is getting cleaned whether you like it or not.’ She filled the mug, dropped in a tea bag and fished it out with her fingernails. She sat down at the table opposite him, and he held out the packet of custard creams with a placatory look. She took one and dunked it in the tea. Maybe that would sterilise it. Fly sat up, eyes on the biscuit. ‘We’ll need to go into Town for cleaning things.’
Uncle Jim’s little eyes blinked at her. Then: ‘There’s all that at the Parks.’
‘But we can’t use Pitfourie Estate things.’
‘The Laird said I was to help myself. To that, and the fruit. The blackcurrants when they’re ripe, and the whitecurrants, and the gooseberries.’
‘The bushes are still there?’ A row of prickly bushes against the back wall of the garden, heavy with sharp fruit that she and Suzanne would stuff their faces with when it was still hard, forgetting the griping stomachs of the year before.
‘And your ma’s roses.’
Well, they could get the stuff, and she could blitz the bathroom and kitchen at least. Then talk to Fish, talk to Lorna... And go. Back to Edinburgh. Tonight.
As she came downstairs after brushing her teeth, Uncle Jim appeared from the kitchen. ‘Are you riggit?’
‘All set.’ It was perfectly safe, after all, to go up to the Parks with Uncle Jim and the dogs. In broad daylight.
A sudden jangling noise had her heart jumping in her chest, even as she realised it was only the doorbell. She missed a step and had to clutch at the banister. Fly gave a piercing yelp, and he and Ben threw themselves at the front door. Uncle Jim grabbed Fly, chucked him bodily into the dining room and slammed the door. He pointed a finger back at the kitchen, and Ben, with a token yip, slunk back in there.
He opened the door.
Mr Beattie was standing in the yard, some distance from the door, his bouffant grey hair lifting in the breeze. His eyes scanned the area around Uncle Jim’s legs before he moved forward. ‘Helen,’ he said, with the little droop of the mouth that had always reminded her, for some reason, of Rob. It was a look that said You don’t deserve it, you know, but Jesus and I still love you. ‘I wonder if I could have a word?’
Uncle Jim, without offering even a greeting, made for the kitchen.
‘Um – would you like to come in?’
Would the front room be a possibility? She hadn’t looked in there yet, but surely it couldn’t be worse than the kitchen.
He had a folded sheet of paper in his hand, blindingly white in the glare of the sun. ‘I won’t, thank you.’ He unfolded the paper and held it out to her.
It was a print-out of an email.
Dear Mr and Mrs Beattie
I know it’s too late now, but I need to tell you that Rob didn’t kill Suzanne. I lied. I made it all up.
I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.
I’m so sorry.
Helen Clack
She thrust it back at him, her hearth thumping. ‘I didn’t write this.’
He didn’t reach out for it, he just carried on looking at her with that sad-dog expression.
She knew her face was beetroot.
‘I didn’t write it!’ The paper trembled in her hand. ‘How could I? “Moir Sandison” took my laptop along with everything else, and there’s no computer here.’ She agitated the piece of paper in the space between them, as if he was a dog she was trying to interest in a toy.
He finally took it from her. ‘One can send emails these days, I understand, from mobile phones.’
‘Not mine.’ Because her new phone was the cheapest, most basic one you could get. ‘I did not send this.’
‘So who do you suppose did?’
‘Well obviously he must have. Moir. Rob.’
‘Helen.’ His jowls drooped even further. ‘I’m going to have to take this to the police.’
‘I was about to suggest the same thing.’ She took a breath. ‘The police have spoken to you about Moir Sandison, haven’t they?’
‘They have.’
She didn’t say anything more. She just looked at him.
He sighed. ‘They showed us the photographs…. Helen, that man is not Rob.’ He dropped his voice suddenly, as he used to in sermons. ‘Is what it says here true? Was it an invention, what you said about Rob attacking you and Suzanne? A deliberate lie?’
‘Of course not!’
This time it was Mr Beattie who kept silent.
She shook her head. ‘In the face of all the evidence – you surely can’t still think he’s innocent? If he didn’t attack me, if he didn’t kill Suzanne – why did he take off like he did? Why didn’t he stay to prove his innocence – and help with the search?’
‘Perhaps he was unable to come forward because he himself was by that time no longer… alive.’ The last word was no more than a breath.
‘I’m sorry. It must all be very hard for you. But – he did it. He did.’
‘And what evidence is there of that, Helen?’
‘I was there!’ She reached behind her for the edge of the door. ‘Excuse me. I have to –’ She stepped back into the hall and shut the door between them.
42
As she stepped into the dim end room of the steading the old smells hit her: slightly mouldy packed earth, old wood, creosote and oil. Soothing her jangled nerves. Amazingly, Dad’s tools were still hanging from their nails on the wall. The big graip and the little graip, and the mallet and the hammer, and all the others. She touched the scarred end of the mallet.
Moir must have sent that email. So Moir must know. He must know that she’d lied about remembering the attack.
But she’d never told a living soul.
Was it possible that Rob really had been innocent, and had disappeared for some other reason than that he’d killed Suzanne? And now he was back, to wreak his revenge on Helen for falsely accusing him?
But it was Rob who’d attacked her. It had been his hand, grabbing her out of the dark. She might not be able to remember consciously, but deep down she knew. Yes, she’d made up the details; yes, she’d probably got some of those wrong...
And the only person who could know that was the attacker himself.
Rob Beattie.
‘Aye,’ breathed Uncle Jim. She’d half forgotten he was there. ‘What we need’ll be in the house, most likely.’
They crossed the yard, hot and bright in the sun, the dogs bounding ahead to scatter a group of spurgies from the dust. A crow cawed.
And the happy chemicals were back, and despite it all she was grinning like a feelie. Uncle Jim got the key from his pocket and unlocked the door, and stood back, s
miling, and she took the doorknob in her hand and turned it.
Even the smell was the same. An indefinable smell that had to do, maybe, with the air off Craig Dearg, filtering through the fabric of the house, the Victorian plaster and tongue-and-groove linings and sooty old chimneys.
Home.
The table and chairs in the kitchen were different. Well, of course they were. Theirs had been 1970s pine, orangey and unconvincing, whereas these chairs looked like real Victorian ones, and the table with its scrubbed top and painted legs had probably come from some expensive interiors shop. Lorna’s, maybe.
She walked through the house, still with her feelie’s smile. She touched the mantelpiece in the sitting room, and the shelves in the pantry, and the pitted glaze of the old Belfast sink.
Home.
She found a scrubbing brush and a wooden trug of cleaning products under the sink, and a mop and dustpan and brushes, and some unopened packets of cloths, in the cupboard in the pantry. As they loaded it all into the cab of Uncle Jim’s pick-up he shook his head, as if at the folly of a world in which such things existed.
Back at the Mains, they found Fiona sitting on an upturned plastic crate in the shade of the steading wall. She stood as Helen and Uncle Jim got out of the pick-up. Uncle Jim raised the mop in greeting and headed for the back door.
‘It’s hot to be humphing all that about, isn’t it?’ She had a stainless steel water bottle in one hand.
‘I feel fine.’ Helen dumped the cleaning stuff down. ‘Well, a bit pathetic and snuffly, but other than that, more or less back to normal.’
Fiona handed her the bottle – she must have been staring at it longingly.
‘I don’t want to give you germs.’
‘I think I’m immune to most things by now. Go on, have a swig.’
Helen swigged. ‘Thanks. Oh, that’s lovely.’
‘Have some more. You’ve to keep hydrated.’ And as Helen drank: ‘I’ve brought some more supplies. And Fish. And the girlies. Steve’s had to go with a patient to hospital, so I’m on child-minding duty. And talk of the devil – or devils in this case...’
Running towards them were three children. In the lead was Cat, a mini-Fiona, hair flying, thin legs scissoring, arms flung out to the sides, laughing and squealing as Ruth aimed a stream of water at her from a fluorescent-yellow pump-action water pistol. Ruth was smaller and darker and plumper, hair tied back from a face that would have been chocolate-box sweet if her mouth hadn’t been wide open and shouting: ‘Die!’
Little Lizzie brought up the rear, all dark curls and trembling lower lip.
‘Mum, tell her to stop it!’ squealed Cat, grabbing onto Fiona and using her as a human shield.
‘Ruth!’ bellowed Fiona, making Helen jump out of her skin and spill water on the ground.
Ruth skidded to a halt, the water pistol dripping in her hand as she looked consideringly at Helen. Fiona disengaged herself from Cat and hurried across the yard to where Lizzie was running towards them, tears spilling over, a wailed Mummeee! preceding her.
Helen smiled at the two older girls. ‘Hello. I’m Helen. You must be Cat, and you must be Ruth?’
Cat nodded. ‘Hello.’
Ruth said nothing.
Helen tried, ‘I hope I’m not in the firing line.’
Ruth grinned, and shouldered her weapon.
‘Ruth,’ said Cat. ‘Don’t you dare.’ And to Helen: ‘She’s a problem child. Her behaviour’s “challenging”.’
The barrel of the gun swung round, and Cat squealed again, and ran down the slope of the yard and across the track, Ruth in pursuit. Helen laughed.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fiona, coming back with her youngest child in her arms. ‘Mayhem.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘Just feeling left out as usual. Although why she’d want to join in that beats me.’ She nodded to where Cat and Ruth were wrestling with the water pistol. ‘Come and talk to Fish and then we’ll get out of your hair... Where’s your Uncle Fish, Lizzie? Did he go inside?’
In the scullery, Fiona set Lizzie down on the kist and, squatting in front of her, began to use a tissue on her face. ‘Are you going to say “Hello” to Helen?’
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Lizzie. That’s a lovely badge.’ On her pink sweatshirt she had a badge with a cartoon face on it. ‘Who’s that?’
Lizzie pulled it out from her chest towards Helen as far as the sweatshirt material would allow. ‘Ariel.’
‘The Little Mermaid,’ said Fiona. ‘She’s a very girlie girl, this one. Thank goodness. Ruth’s made me appreciate gender stereotyping. Lizzie’s been brainwashed, haven’t you, Pettie, with princesses and ponies and all things sugar and spice?’ And as Lizzie smiled at her mother uncertainly: ‘You love the Little Mermaid, don’t you?’
Lizzie nodded. ‘Sometimes she’s naughty,’ she told Helen. ‘Doesn’t listen.’
Behind them, a shadow fell across the doorway. Helen whipped round.
A man in a bright white polo shirt, with thinning hair slicked back from a high brow, stood looking at her.
This was really Fish? This suave man with the cool smile and the polite kiss on the cheek? He smelt of something expensive, and the watch he wore on one tanned wrist was probably a Rolex or something; but as he listened to her thanking him for taking the time to come and see her, she noticed that his mouth hung very slightly open.
‘Of course I’ll do anything I can to help,’ he said, but perfunctorily, as if she was someone he had to deal with in the line of duty but didn’t much care for. Well, why should he want to put himself out for her, when she hadn’t been in touch with any of them for over a decade?
‘Thank you,’ she said again.
‘What I suggest is that you come over to Fi and Steve’s, maybe later today or tomorrow – I’m guessing you don’t have internet access here?’
‘What do you reckon?’ Fiona giggled.
‘We can take a look at the account you had with the bank, the terms and conditions and so on. I know someone in the legal department at the Bank of Scotland – you’re not with them, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, these things are pretty standard across the industry. I’ll email him the details, ask him to take a look. And if the bank –’
‘I need a pee,’ said Lizzie.
‘Oh, okay, lovie.’ Fiona took her hand. ‘Is it all right if we use the bathroom?’
No. No no no. ‘Of course.’
She supposed Fiona must have seen it before – but oh God. That lovely little girl, having to use that loo... having to wash her peachy-soft little hands at that sink...
When they’d gone, she got straight down to blitzing the bathroom. The physical exertion had her coughing and her nose running, but the mindless activity felt good. And when she’d finished, she ran a bath in the newly white tub and lay back to admire her work.
Frank was snowy-white after a good soak in handwashing liquid in the sink. The porcelain of the sink and toilet gleamed. The vinyl on the floor was several shades lighter green than it had been, although the marks from the floorboards underneath had resisted all her efforts, as had the black mould in the grout between the tiles around the bath. And she didn’t want to think about how many silverfish might be squirming around under the vinyl, moving more troops up to the front line along the skirting board and at the base of the loo, where she’d gone Rambo with the Dettol skoosher.
The vinyl would have to come up. Here, and in the kitchen.
No time now, but tomorrow she’d rip it up (so Uncle Jim would be forced to buy new stuff) and get into all the nooks and crannies. Blitz the kitchen, see Lorna, and go.
She dressed in a fresh top and skirt and set off in Stan, the sheet of paper with Fiona’s directions angled towards her on the passenger seat. They lived in Ardie, a tiny hamlet in the shadow of Tom na Creiche. All the way there she kept checking in her mirror, but the only two vehicles she encountered were going the other way.
The house was an old manse, with a beautiful, flower-filled garden, screened from the road by a line of oaks and sycamores. And actual roses round the door. Well, the door of one of the outbuildings.
Fiona brought her laptop outside to a table under a tree, and while she and Helen sipped iced elderflower cordial Fish took down all the relevant details of the joint account, and the recent transactions, and phone numbers and email addresses of people at the bank.
Steve still hadn’t returned by the time she left, refusing Fiona’s offer of dinner but accepting, gratefully, a Tupperware container of tuna pasta.
She and Uncle Jim ate it at the kitchen table, Helen drinking water from Hector’s mug, Uncle Jim glugging whisky.
When they’d finished, Helen washed up while Uncle Jim sat back with his drink. ‘You’re a good lass.’
Helen made a face into the sink. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you before.’
‘I didna think you’d just be awful keen to come back. But now you’re here –nae as bad as all that, eh?’
She smiled over her shoulder at him. ‘No.’
‘But you’ve money troubles, until the Doctor’s brother can mend them. Why don’t you stay until you’ve seen to it? It’d be good to have another pair of hands about the place. I could pay you a wage – not much, mind, but a fair wage. You can handle the beasts, and a tractor.’
She turned to lean back against the sink, wiping her hands on her skirt. Tears were prickling at the back of her nose. ‘I’d love to stay, but if I’m going to sort things out, I really need to be in Edinburgh.’
‘Well, well. But you’ve a beddie here as long as you want it.’
‘Thank you. But – I need to see Lorna, and then I have to go.’
He didn’t argue with her. But as she turned back to the sink, he said, ‘It was a hell of a thing she did to you. Suzanne.’
‘You mean the letters.’
‘She could be a coorse bitch of a quine, that one.’
When she was little she used to secretly think that maybe Uncle Jim liked her best – he never tutted at her like he did at Suzanne. He never told her she was coorse.
She left the dishes; dropped into the seat opposite him; shook her head.