by Jane Renshaw
For a long time neither of them spoke. Then she heard herself say:
‘Are you and Fiona...’
‘There is no me and Fiona.’
‘But if things had been different –’
‘Well, and if they were... who’s to say we’d be any happier?’ He suddenly smiled at her, and looked back down the burn to where the vole had been, as if that was the issue satisfactorily dealt with.
It was one of his most appealing qualities – this impression that he was completely at peace with himself; completely content. But how could he be content that the woman he loved, and who loved him, was trapped in a life with another man? She went through the motions of her marriage for the sake of that other man and her children, and he went from one superficial relationship to the next, and she came to dinner and he made her a malted drink, and when they had to exchange chaste social kisses at the door they could hardly bear to touch each other.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What’re your plans?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go back to Edinburgh – look for another curatorship.’
‘Why don’t you stay on here while you’re looking? We can fix you up with broadband at the Mains.’ He picked a piece of bark off the willow. ‘Or the Parks. If you wanted to stay there.’
How could he suggest that? After all that had happened, how could he think she’d want to stay at the Parks?
They started back down the burn, and he talked of practicalities – of what to do about Suzanne’s life in Glasgow; her property and belongings, and the money she’d inherited from Ina.
From the long grass at their feet a pheasant erupted, birring up and away and making Helen’s heart thump.
‘I think I’d like to go there. To see where she lived.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Oh – no. You don’t have to do that.’
‘I’d like to.’
They’d carried on walking, and Helen had found her eyes drawn, every few steps, to the Parks, still and quiet across the fields. And into her head had come an image of an old woman, setting a pail down on the cobbled yard at Altmore, and stretching her back, and looking up at Craig Dearg. Jessie Mitchell and her ridiculous pride.
But maybe it hadn’t been about pride. Maybe those words on Jessie’s gate hadn’t been about that at all. Maybe they’d just been an acknowledgement that home, no matter what, is home. That life is life.
She’d let her gaze rest on the Parks, and its so-familiar huddle of buildings, and the laburnum tree, and breathed into her lungs the pine-scented air running cool off the hill.
And May the Lord be Thankit.
74
Hector was here, she supposed, to talk about the Parks. He’d said he’d come over sometime today, that he’d call her, but they’d had to take the phone out of the wall at the Mains, and she’d been out all afternoon without her mobile.
She quickened her pace, down through the plantation, out onto the drove road, into the air that hung here under the edge of the forest, smelling of the morning’s rain and pine resin and the field, the stirks and their sharn and the sweet grass.
The late afternoon sun striped the track with light and shade. From one of the dark stripes someone moved into the sun – Damian, loping down the track away from her, stretching up a hand to high-five the beech leaves over his head.
And out of nowhere a rush of anger went through her. He’d nearly died at the hands of a psychopath. In the kirkyard was the body of the girl who’d loved him more than his own mother ever had – who’d probably saved both their lives. And here he was. Full of the joys.
‘Well,’ she called. ‘You seem to have made a miraculous recovery.’
He swung round; called back ‘Hello,’ as if nothing in the world could be as wonderful as this, as being on the drove road under Craig Dearg and meeting Helen Clack on it. He came back up the track towards her at a limping jog.
His hair had been cropped in a crewcut, and there was a shaved patch with a line of stitches in it, but apart from that she could see no ill effects of his ordeal – although perhaps the hair cut had been sufficiently traumatic.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there yesterday. Hector wouldn’t let me.’
The funeral. Press and sightseers all along the road; police hustling the mourners into the kirkyard. The police had put out a series of statements to the effect that Robin Beattie’s remains had been identified, and two people ‘possibly connected to his disappearance’ – Suzanne Clack and a man known as Moir Sandison or James Johnstone – had died in circumstances that were ‘the subject of ongoing inquiries’.
Suzanne and Rob and Moir’s faces were all over the papers; the TV news.
A minister had been seconded from another parish to take the service. He’d kept going on about the mercy of God, seeming to have decided to say as little as possible about Suzanne herself, as if he’d already decided she’d done something terrible. But Mum and Lionel had been on one side of her, and Uncle Jim on the other; Hector in the pew behind, with Fiona and Steve, and Fish, and Norrie and his brother Craig and their wives.
Damian wasn’t smiling any more.
Oh God. How could she grudge him it, his youth, his joy in a beautiful summer’s day?
‘I should think not,’ she said. And: ‘I like the new look.’
The grin was back. ‘Anna says I look like a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and a ned.’
His gorgeousness, as he must be very well aware, was undiminished; emphasised, even, by the crewcut’s severity.
‘All you need is a bolt through your neck.’
‘Ha, yes! But what about you? Hector said you just had some cuts and bruises, but cuts and bruises can be a bugger.’
She lifted a hand to her forehead, to the little scab that had formed there. It itched, like a spot she’d been picking at. ‘No, there’s just this – just a pin-prick really. How are you feeling? Should you be up here on your own?’
‘Famous last words, but I feel perfectly okay, thanks.’ He bent to pull a fistful of long grass to hold out to the stirks lined up along the dyke. A shaggy brown head pushed forward, and with surprising delicacy a thick pale tongue accepted the offering.
They carried on down the track. There was no need, she found, to moderate her pace for him.
He said, ‘I wanted to say – I wanted to thank you, for what you did. For coming back.’
She stopped. ‘How could I not?’ And now she was gulping tears. ‘You didn’t hide. You couldn’t –’
He shook his head, and looked beyond her, as if hoping to find someone who could deal with the hysterical female. But finding no one, he took her arm, and made her sit down on the mossy bank under one of the beech trees.
She blinked; swallowed. ‘How much do you remember? Do you remember seeing Suzanne?’
He examined the ground before sitting down beside her. ‘No. I don’t remember much.’
‘Suzanne didn’t mean – she only wanted her life back.’
In the deep shade, after the sun, it was hard to see the expression in his eyes. ‘Which she thought she’d get if she could extract a false confession before your “suicide”, so that she could be “cleared”?’ He picked up a twig and stabbed its end into the moss.
‘She didn’t want me to die. That was Moir. She just wanted the... confession.’
‘Surely they must have realised it would never stand up, whether they killed you or not?’ His tone was light, conversational, but she wished she could see his eyes.
She shrugged. ‘The police certainly seem to have dismissed it out of hand. Well, naturally. I mean, Hector and Norrie colluding with me to dispose of Rob...’
He stabbed another twig into the moss next to the first one. ‘Yep, the idea of Hector involved in any sort of skulduggery is just so ludicrous.’
‘You can’t actually believe – that Hector had anything to do with it?’
‘He would hardly have exhumed the body if he had. And he does
have an alibi. Of a sort.’
‘And if he hadn’t had an “alibi of a sort” – if he hadn’t exhumed the body – you’re saying you could believe Hector capable of – what?’
He stood. ‘Who knows what anyone’s capable of, given the right – or the wrong – circumstances? Are you okay?’
She got to her feet. ‘I don’t know how you can think that Hector –’
She started to go past him, but he touched her arm. ‘Of course I don’t really think he had anything to do with what happened to Rob Beattie.’
Had she imagined the emphasis on he?
‘Where is Hector?’
‘Levelling the ground for the flagstones. Where the concrete used to be.’
They found him swinging a pick in the shallow trench at the front door, a spade and spirit level propped against the wall nearby, the long rectangle of ground marked out with pegs and green string. The knees of his trousers were earthy.
‘Here she is,’ said Damian, stepping into the trench.
Hector set down the pick and came towards them, wiping his hands together. ‘Thought I’d make a start.’
‘Thank you. This all looks – very professional.’
‘It’s the spirit level,’ said Damian. ‘Prominently displayed, makes anyone look half competent.’
‘Yes; you’ll note that it’s suspiciously clean.’ Hector looked at his brother. ‘Why don’t you go inside and get a drink, and sit down? If that’s all right with you, Helen?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Damian.
‘Humour me then.’ Hector caught the boy against his side, and Damian protested: ‘Okay, okay,’ but he didn’t pull away. He submitted to having a hand passed over his shorn head in a brisk caress, and said, ‘Shall I get us all drinks?’
‘No. Just go and sit down. We’ll be in in a minute.’
When Damian had disappeared into the house, Helen said, ‘Is he all right?’
‘Pretty much.’ She expected him to leave it at that, but then he added: ‘Gets a bit tired still. Sleeping a lot. Nodded off into a plate of shepherd’s pie the other night. But they say there should be no permanent effects – of the concussion, at any rate. I’m not so sure about the long-term consequences of inhaling Mrs MacIver’s mince.’
They walked away from the house, over the grass to the gooseberry and currant bushes against the back wall. He talked about his ideas for splitting the land between the Parks and the Mains, as it used to be; about Andrew Begg, two years out of agricultural college and desperate for a farm. His proposal was that Uncle Jim and Helen should take the Parks, and Andrew Begg and his wife and baby move into the Mains.
‘I think it could work. He’s full of ideas and energy, but short on experience – Jim could keep him right, and he could help out at the Parks when needed. I’m sure you could come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement – in fact, aren’t you related to the Beggs?’
‘I think Andrew Begg and I share great-great-grandparents or something. The last time I saw him must have been Diane’s wedding – years ago. I seem to remember him lying on the floor screaming and drumming his heels.’
Hector laughed. ‘Well, he’s improved a bit since then.’
‘But would we ever get Uncle Jim out of the Mains?’
‘That’s the beauty of it – he’d still be able to take a proprietorial interest in the place.’
‘Oh God, that poor couple.’
‘Obviously he’d drive them demented.’ He plucked a gooseberry from the bush. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up above the elbows. There was a smear of earth down one muscular forearm. ‘Maybe it’s a rotten idea. Maybe you don’t want to live here at all.’
‘I do want to.’ How could she ever have thought otherwise? All the years she’d been away – they had been years, years and years, of nothing. Of marking time. As if she’d imposed a sentence on herself, a withdrawal of the things she needed most: this place, these people. Her own home, and her ain folk.
And in some way she didn’t understand, the horror of Suzanne’s return, of her death, had ended it. Her sentence. Her exile.
Hector was grinning at her, chewing the gooseberry.
Home.
‘Would you consider selling,’ she said, ‘rather than renting? Selling us the Parks?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘If you like.’
‘We’d have to have an independent valuation done – we’d have to pay you the full market value.’ With her money from the bank, and what Uncle Jim had saved, and Suzanne’s money, which would come to him now, there’d be enough. ‘If Uncle Jim wants to do it.’
‘You talk to Jim, and we can go from there. There are various agri-environmental options, under the Scottish Rural Development Programme, that might be worth looking into. It would make sense to cut back on the agricultural side, free you up for your consultancy stuff – if you’re still thinking of pursuing that?’
She nodded. ‘I started on my backlog of emails this morning. There’s one from a colleague in Switzerland, asking if I’d be interested in collaborating in this project he’s setting up – a kind of pan-European database.’
‘Aha. In demand already.’ And as they started back towards the house: ‘You haven’t heard anything more from the police about Sandison? About who he actually was?’
‘They’re going to analyse his DNA, see if there’s a match in the police database. But...’ She shrugged. ‘What does it matter? I don’t care who he was.’
The trees behind them were casting dappled shadows on the grass, reaching towards the house, towards the trench in front of it.
‘There were marks,’ he said, ‘on Suzanne’s body. Bruises. Burns. According to the post mortem.’
Oh God.
‘I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘It’s all right. It’s not like it’s any great surprise.’ She took a breath. ‘I know it’s a cliché, about children needing boundaries, but I think Suzanne... she was desperate for someone to give her boundaries, and that’s what they did. Rob. Moir.’
They were standing on the edge of the trench. Poking out of the dark soil was the end of an old clay pipe, smoked by some Victorian farmer or labourer, and broken, and thrown away. It looked like a tiny bone.
He said, ‘Seems rather an extreme reaction to being spoilt as a child.’
‘Suzanne was nothing if not extreme.’ She turned to look at him. ‘In the tabloids – I suppose, legally, they can’t say anything yet about what happened, so they’re dredging up all this nonsense about her – they’re almost making it sound like she was a psychopath too. Like she was – damaged. Not right.’
He held her gaze. And as she turned away, he said, ‘Helen. I know how you felt about her. We don’t choose the people we love. But sometimes they just aren’t worth the heartache. Your uncle knows that. You’re going to have to accept it too.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll never accept that.’
◆◆◆
When they’d gone, when she’d rinsed the three glasses at the sink, she climbed the stairs, pulling herself up by the banisters like an old wifie. Suzanne, climbing these stairs for the last time – what had been in her mind? Had she just sent a message to Hector? Had she been frantic about Damian? Had she decided to save Helen too, if she could?
Or had her thoughts been quite different?
At the top of the stairs she crossed the landing to the box bedroom.
The bed had gone. Just a bare room with a white-painted floor. She walked to the window and put her hand on the frame.
Suzanne had been trying to buy time, when she’d told Moir the window was painted shut. To buy time, until Hector could get here. And then, when that didn’t work, she’d said: I don’t want to kill her. Hadn’t she?
But in the other room: You wanted me dead.
She closed her eyes. How could Suzanne have believed that? All those years; every time she touched the scar at her neck, every time a memory came –
&n
bsp; ‘I didn’t,’ she said aloud.
I didn’t want you dead. I didn’t want to hurt you.
It had been instinctive. It had been self defence.
Had it?
Of course! She’d been fighting for her life.
Had she?
When she’d lashed out at Suzanne – had she been defending herself? Had she only been trying to stop them hurting her? Had she not meant Suzanne any harm?
Or had something inside her finally broken free, a wild raging, a terrible and wonderful violence?
She walked back out onto the landing and across it to her old room.
This too had been stripped of furnishings – no sign of the chair she’d been tied to, or the bed, or anything at all. Just a bare room. The press cupboard in the wall in the corner where she’d kept her school textbooks. The little cast-iron fireplace. The hook on the back of the door where a cream polyester dress once hung.
She crossed to the window, and put both her hands on the sill, and let her eyes rest on the familiar view down the track to the Mains. Just the same: the byre end, the laburnum tree with a chaffinch in it, the stony track. The verges a riot of straggly growth, brambles arching over the dyke. Three teuchits in the Low Park. A crow on a gatepost. A glimpse of the burn, silver light dancing. And if she stayed here long enough, would she see them, the ghosts of two little girls, running hand in hand to the bridge?
Author’s Note
Phew! Thank you for reading all the way to the end! I hope you enjoyed Helen’s story and getting to know Pitfourie and the people who live there. I’m now working on the second book in the series, Bad Company, in which undercover cop Claire Castleford comes to work at the House of Pitfourie as cook/housekeeper – an assignment fraught with difficulties and potential dangers, not least because Claire’s cooking skills are limited to ready meals and toast.
Bad Company should be available by the end of the year. In the meantime, if you would like to know what happened when Helen, Hector and Damian took a trip to Glasgow, you can download a free (long!) short story, What They Found, here: