The Thin Place

by C D Major

  Fraser looked over his shoulder at her from the sink and frowned. ‘Of course . . . And the scan was good.’

  Ava bit her lip. ‘It was.’

  The furrow in Fraser’s brow deepened. ‘So why would you think the baby might not be alright?’

  Ava fiddled with the button on her shirt. ‘I don’t. I guess. It’s just . . . I wish I knew a bit more. I asked Mum about her family history and it went down like a sack of shit.’

  ‘Well, you know your mum . . .’ Fraser turned off the tap and moved back to the table. ‘A closed book. You always say so.’

  She nodded glumly. Mum was bubbly and charismatic, the beating heart of their small family, the sun around whom they all orbited – but notoriously private. ‘I just wish she’d been a bit more reassuring.’

  ‘I’m sure she would have told you stuff if it would affect a baby,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘That’s what Pippa said.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’ He leaned back on two legs of his chair – something he’d probably tell his teenagers off for in his class. ‘Great minds . . .’

  Ava wanted to laugh but she couldn’t shake the image of her mother’s pinched face. ‘I never push her on it, though, and now I’m having my own child it would be quite nice to understand a bit more, you know?’

  Fraser rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Well, go easy. I taught a kid last year who was taken into care. He hated talking about his family – practically lamped anyone who tried. It’s hard if something grim has happened. From the tiny things she’s told me in the past, it sounds like her dad was pretty violent . . .’

  Ava’s heart lurched. ‘Violent? When did she tell you that?’

  Fraser’s voice dropped low. ‘After Mum died.’ His mum had died almost three years before, the anniversary just a couple of months away. An aggressive breast cancer had spread quickly to her brain. ‘We were talking about some things. It came up.’

  ‘I didn’t know that – how could I not know that?’ Ava tried to swallow down a stab of envy. Her mum rarely opened up, and she had told Fraser that.

  ‘Maybe she found it easier to tell me because I’m not family, as such.’

  Ava could barely look at Fraser now. Not family. It stung a little more these days.

  Chapter 8

  AVA

  Sunglasses on, scurrying into the building under a milky blue sky, Ava tried to keep down her decaf coffee and toast. In the newsroom, the morning team were watching the rehearsal on monitors. There was a low hubbub of voices as she strode past them. Ava glanced up, noting Claudia’s glossy lipstick and her blow-dried blonde hair. She should find her after the programme and tell her too, although she would have to swear her to secrecy; she didn’t want everyone at work to know just yet.

  The newsroom was busy, a bank of monitors on hot desks, heads bent over work, a balcony running above their heads, more people moving about. Over at the sports desk a couple of colleagues were hunched around a computer, a laugh from one of them, a slap on the back. Beyond them, another journalist entered the editing suite, balancing a mug on top of a folder of papers, a pen in her teeth. In the corner of the room, a bearded intern, new last week, stood at the water cooler next to a tall stranger with a yellow visitor’s badge on his lapel. He smiled across at Ava as she caught his eye.

  It was a moment before she realised her mobile was vibrating in her bag. She searched inside, smiling at the banana that Fraser must have popped in, always concerned that she was too busy for breakfast, particularly now she was pregnant. Pulling out her mobile, she frowned at the name: DAD. Dad never really called her. They swapped the odd text message, but it was always MUM or HOME that cropped up – Dad in the background, annoying her mum: ‘I’m trying to talk, John!’ Ava’s hand hovered over the phone for a moment before she answered.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Ava. Good. I thought it might be too early. Your mother’s gone out for milk . . .’

  The noise of the newsroom seemed to fade. Why had he waited for Mum to go out? ‘No. Actually, I’m late for work if anything.’ Her laugh sounded strained.

  ‘It’s about last night . . . the questions you had. I was sorry about the reaction. I think your mum was caught off guard.’

  ‘That’s OK. I know she’s private.’ Ava’s grip on the phone tightened.

  ‘She is.’

  Ava sank into her swivel chair, a black one she’d ordered last year to help support her lower back. It was as if the moment she hit thirty-seven she suddenly noticed more things aching. ‘She always has been.’ Ava felt the breath suspended in her body as he continued.

  ‘I always respected the fact that she didn’t want to talk about things, but maybe I should have tried harder . . .’ His sigh when it came was weary and made Ava’s heart ache.

  ‘It’s OK, Dad. We don’t need to talk about this . . .’

  ‘No. It was fair to ask. Your mum might not have been close to her family, or her adopted parents, but it’s only natural – wanting to know a bit more now you’re going to be a mum.’

  ‘Fraser said her dad was violent,’ Ava blurted suddenly, encountering silence at the other end. ‘Dad?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think he was a nice man, no. Liked a drink.’

  ‘What else do you know?’ She realised as she heard her voice, high and fast, that she thirsted for knowledge.

  ‘Not a great deal. When I met her, she didn’t want to talk about it. Told me he had died . . . that her adopted mum and her didn’t speak . . . no siblings, no idea where her birth parents were and she didn’t care either . . .’

  Ava listened. Some details she had known: she only had uncles and aunts on her dad’s side; she knew her mum had been adopted as a baby; she knew her mum avoided her eyes on the few occasions she had asked her anything more about her past.

  ‘Your mum has always wanted to live in the present.’

  ‘The past’s the past,’ Ava intoned – a line that her mum often came out with if Ava ever asked for an old photograph or a story from Mum’s childhood. ‘But it obviously still affects her.’ Ava didn’t want to sound churlish, but nor did she want to just give up as she had always done in the past.

  ‘Perhaps. But that’s what she wants. I just phoned because I wanted you to know that she would never conceal anything that would harm her girls. We both love you a great deal . . . both of you.’

  Her dad’s voice was low and Ava felt warmth rushing to her cheeks. Dad wasn’t the gushy sort. ‘We know you do.’

  ‘Aye. Good. Well, that was it. And your mum will be back shortly so . . .’

  Ava nodded despite him not being able to see her. ‘Thanks for ringing, Dad. I appreciate it.’ She knew it would have taken some courage on her dad’s part. She doubted her mum would have liked it much. She sat back in her chair, absorbing the things he’d said. Why had she prodded something that she had grown up knowing was taboo? Dad was right: her mum didn’t owe it to anyone to tell her sorry tale. People dealt with things in different ways. She had covered enough harrowing stories – victims of domestic crimes who had hidden the truth for years, some who never spoke of them.

  She was meant to be researching but she couldn’t settle to anything, scrolling down over a list of possible stories to develop. She found herself breaking off to search baby websites on her phone, wondering about what kind of mum she’d be. Glancing up, she saw Neil, one of the cameramen, looking down into the newsroom from the balcony overhead. On catching her eye, he looked quickly away, pushing back his long dark hair, stumbling a moment before moving out of sight.

  Ava was still looking up when Claudia appeared in front of her, her studio make-up more orange than tan in the harsh strip lights, the magenta-pink lipstick making her teeth sparkle.

  ‘Morning.’ She smiled, pulling up the chair opposite and dropping into it with a theatrical sigh.

  ‘How did the programme go?’

  Claudia waved a dismissive hand. ‘All fine. We interviewed the wife
of a man who has badly injured himself quad biking so not the most upbeat way to start the day.’

  ‘How grim.’

  ‘It really was.’ Claudia rotated in the chair. ‘Where are you headed to today?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ Ava said, finally opening her computer. ‘Research day.’

  ‘Slacker.’

  ‘Ha. You can talk. You’re off now for the day.’

  ‘Ava . . .’ Claudia leaned forward, her voice dropping seriously. ‘I have an appointment.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ava’s eyebrows raised.

  ‘With a nail technician, but still . . .’ Claudia laughed and stood up. In her powder-blue dress she looked every inch the face of breakfast news. ‘Can you escape for lunch later?’

  ‘Probably. Actually, there was something I wanted to tell you.’

  Claudia immediately sat back down. ‘What? What is it? Gossip?’

  Ava started laughing. ‘Oh my God, wait till lunch.’

  ‘You’re pregnant!’ Claudia guessed.

  Ava couldn’t disguise the startled expression quick enough.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Claudia covered her mouth, her oyster-shell nails impeccable from where Ava was sitting.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone else,’ Ava warned, leaning forward and whispering. ‘We had the twelve-week scan yesterday.’

  Claudia’s hand still covered her mouth; her smile was wide as she lowered it. ‘Oh my God. Amazing. And I won’t,’ she added hastily.

  Ava felt a thrill at sharing the news. It was a relief after so many weeks of carrying the secret around the newsroom. ‘Not even Daniel.’ Ava arched an eyebrow.

  Daniel was one of the camera operators on the breakfast show, tall, swarthy and divorced.

  ‘Why would I tell Daniel?’ Claudia stopped rotating, crossed and then re-crossed her legs as Ava appraised her. ‘Ha ha! OK, fine. I won’t.’ She got up and smoothed her honey-blonde hair at the temple before glancing down. ‘I can’t believe you know about Daniel,’ she whispered, then glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’s only been a couple of weeks. Don’t tell anyone else about that and I’ll keep your secret, too, Preggo.’

  They linked fingers as if they were still twelve and Claudia turned back, flashing a last amused look. ‘I’ll text you about lunch. And, Ava . . .’ She lowered her voice again, her mischievous blue eyes for once serious. ‘You’re going to be a great mum.’

  Ava couldn’t help the smile that split her face, watching her friend sashay away.

  God, she hoped she was right.

  Her thoughts returned to her own mum, her own childhood. Family had been everything, Mum right at the heart of it: bundling them into the car in pyjamas for road trips, exploring every part of Scotland; playing endless games with them – jigsaws, chase, stuck-in-the-mud, bat and ball; the beach, even in winter, screaming along wet sand; hot chocolate in flasks; scooping them up and spinning them round. Her mum had always had a magnetism, an energy. It drew Ava’s friends to their house, the laughter around a crowded table. Her mum was cool. How would she measure up?

  She noted the time on the computer and realised she really must try to do some work. Focus, Ava. Her eyes roved over the stories, the places on the list. One place suddenly nudged at her memories, the phone call from her dad returning in a rush: Dumbarton, a memory that jarred, that seemed part of the other side of her mother, the side she didn’t like revealed. They had travelled there. Ava must have only been five or six, waiting in a car as her mother stood at the entrance to a churchyard, a small crowd dressed in black standing in a semi-circle in the distance. Her mother loitering, glancing back at her and Pippa in the back seat of the car, tears streaking her face. Ava wanting to go to her and undoing her seat belt but the car door was locked. Her mother turned and moved quickly back to the car, wiping at her face. What had made Ava remember this?

  She looked up Dumbarton, a place she had driven past a hundred times, halfway between Glasgow and Loch Lomond. As she clicked on the links in her research file, the newsroom faded around her as she finally lost herself to work. She had saved the story a year or so ago, something that had piqued her curiosity, the place less than twenty miles out of Glasgow. One of the links led her to a local blog, large purple text on a pea-green background; blurred photos accompanied the posts, news articles from fifteen years before. A bridge, built at the end of the nineteenth century, which had a macabre reputation. As many as five hundred dogs had leaped to their deaths from it into the gorge below. The Dog Suicide Bridge.

  If she could persuade a producer it was worth covering, Ava would have an excuse to explore the nearby town. As she stared at one of the photos on the blog, the same feeling she’d had a year ago came back to her: a burning instinct to hunt down a story.

  Chapter 9

  CONSTANCE

  I’m feeling heavy in my body today, head sunk into my pillow as I watch the rain blur the windows. Mother has a small clock on a chain and she has started to teach me about minutes and hours which are shown by big and small hands and I think I watched the rain for a thousand minutes.

  My porridge is on a tray on the floor by my bed, sticking to the sides of the bowl, turning grey. I only had two small spoonfuls, as yesterday I was very sick in my mouth and my tummy still aches. Mother told me she had to go into town and normally I ask her if I can come, even though I shouldn’t be near other people because of the germs, but today I didn’t ask because my legs and arms are tired and my mouth tastes all horrible, like rotting vegetables.

  When I sit up, my head feels all strange, as if I am on a boat on the sea, and I put my hand on the cold, white wall, tiny flakes falling from it, until everything feels normal again. It has stopped raining and the sun has come out all pale, making the drops shine like on the ring Mother wears.

  The windows have lots of diamond shapes in the glass made with black lines, so the outside looks all broken up and pointy. From my bed, I can see the green bushes and lots of sky. If I pull the chair over to the window, though, and stand on it, I can see one corner of the bridge. I like to stay there and watch for the people. Some days no one comes, but other days, especially if the sky is blue and the sun turns the stone bridge a pale grey, there are a few.

  Mother has told me not to move the chair so I always drag it back to its place so she doesn’t know, even though I am not sure why being near the window would make me sicker.

  My legs shake for a moment as I stand, the wood scratchy on my bare feet. A noise like a gasp makes me sit straight back down but I think it is the house and not Mother. Sometimes it feels like the house spies on me for her. Crossing the room, pulling on the chair, which makes a loud squeak as I drag it, makes me feel strange again and I have to sit down for a lot of big-hand minutes.

  Carefully, I step onto the chair, the strawlike seat tickling my skin. My eyes are right next to the window, hands on the white windowsill as I stare out. I almost fall backwards because there is a boy right there on the bridge! I can see his head popping up above the grey stone, his arm pointing at something. He is young – younger even than me. He is not as thin as me, though, and his skin looks a bit different too – pinkish, the same as one of the stripes on the tiles in the hallway.

  He is leaning forward, looking over the edge, and for a moment I press my palm to the glass, worried he will lean too far and topple. He needs to be careful: Mother has told me it is a long drop down to lots of rocks. On quiet days, I can hear the water splash over them and once, when I was in the garden when I was about as small as the boy, it was really loud, like it was in my head and not under the bridge at all.

  The boy is calling to someone over his shoulder but I look and look and can’t see anyone, so they must be standing farther along the bridge out of sight, or it is like when I talk to Rabbit and there is no one really there. My mouth hurts where I chew my lip, worrying about the little boy.

  This boy has something in his hand, but when I move even nearer the window my breath makes the diamonds go all steamy and I can’t see out. When
I look again, the boy has bent his right arm back and I see what he is holding. He is going to throw it over the bridge onto the rocky bit below. It is a stick and I see his mouth open as his arm moves quickly and his hand lets the stick go so it spins in the air and drops out of sight. He is looking down again and I wonder what it looks like as it hits the rocks below. Did it break? Did it float away?

  I am wondering so hard, I miss the boy stepping down out of sight, so it is just the blank stone wall of the bridge again, his head and arms gone. I wish I had watched him longer because it might be ages, maybe a few circles of the small hand, before another person comes along. I press my nose to the glass and pray for more people. I stare at the bridge and the steps until my eyes ache, but no one else comes.

  Chapter 10

  AVA

  Ava felt guilty as she looked in the rear-view mirror at an innocent, contented Gus, no doubt imagining himself off on one of the trips she and Fraser sometimes took him on. Would they be romping up a hillside or burrowing on the forest floor?

  Her mum had been quieter than normal when Ava had gone to pick him up, her gaze focused somewhere to the right, her words mumbled. They had hardly spoken in the last few weeks, her mum out at endless book clubs or watercolour classes or hikes. Ava felt punished for probing into things she knew she shouldn’t. All the things she had planned to say died on her lips as Gus trotted out to greet her. It was awkward, her mum thrusting the lead at her before Ava could hug her goodbye and she could have kicked herself for stirring things up. She had memories of such silences when she and Pippa were younger; they had learned what caused them and were able to avoid them.

  Neil was meeting her there, when he finished filming something at Celtic Park, and she was glad to have the car to herself and her thoughts. When she crossed the Erskine Bridge, she never failed to admire the soaring steel pylons, remembering Fraser telling her that the bridge had been the longest of its kind when it had first been built. He had been on holiday for a week now, already getting fidgety, and she’d promised him they’d make plans that evening. Fraser wanted to take a trip and to sort out the flat while he had the time off.