by C D Major
Hamish returns, summoned I think by Miss Kae, who leaves me food on trays. The flowers picked from the estate dry out quickly next to the untouched plate. White-knuckled and silent, I want to tell him about his son. He visits that night but I cry out when he enters me and he leaves soon after. Curling up in a ball under the bedclothes, my whole body quivers. I have failed. I am being punished. I have let down my husband, unable to provide him with the one thing he wants.
It is only two days later when I accompany him to a house on the Borders. A large estate, the owner a newly appointed lord, is welcoming in the new decade. My face is pale and washed out, hair dull. The made-to-measure dress is loose, disguised by safety pins at the waist. Hamish doesn’t tell me I look beautiful today.
The party is loud, sparkling with the chandeliers overhead, the candles in brackets, polished floor. Everybody greets Hamish, resplendent in his family tartan that accentuates his brooding looks. There are squawks from a plumage of women in rainbow colours, headdresses, flapper skirts, bright lipsticks that leave marks on my husband’s cheeks, gossip and laughter and drink and high spirits. I know none of the dances; Hamish never taught me them after all.
The hostess, Mrs Palmer, is a beautiful, willowy woman twenty-four years younger than her red-nosed husband. With a severe bobbed haircut and catlike eyes, she purrs around Hamish, pressing another cocktail into his hands.
‘She makes the best sidecars in Scotland,’ he tells another man.
‘Have you known her a while?’ I ask.
He doesn’t meet my eyes as he says, ‘Forever.’ He asks her to join him in the Dashing White Sergeant.
I escape to the downstairs bathroom just as another woman pushes inside with a friend. Shockingly, she pulls up her dress and lowers herself onto the seat. I just about get outside the door when his name stops me in my tracks, one hand on the frame.
‘That was his wife.’
‘Christ, he’s shameless.’
‘Drab little thing.’
‘Still. He is a rogue.’
‘He picked her up at the Savoy.’
‘Cecilia doesn’t seem to mind.’
‘Well, she’s married too. She can hardly protest.’
No one notices me as I sit in the library next door. The band plays on in the distance. The wooden shutters in the library are pushed back, so the full moon is the only witness to the tears tracking my cheeks.
When we leave, Hamish bids farewell to our bulbous host, his pretty young wife just behind him. She has the lightest laugh. My feet and hands are numb with cold, scarf and hat forgotten. I step into the waiting car feeling more miserable in this new year than I have ever felt before.
‘You must look forward, old girl,’ Hamish slurs, slumped against the leather. ‘A new year . . .’
He lies with me the whole night. I don’t sleep. I see bloodied bathrooms. I see bright-lipsticked Cecilia. The next morning, he tries to make another baby.
He is gone by midday.
Chapter 26
AVA
Her parents’ small garden was bursting with life, neat borders in a range of pastel colours, lush grass cut in regimented strips. They were all standing around the gas barbecue as Ava’s dad, in a navy and white striped apron, prodded at pieces of sizzling meat.
Fraser and Liam flanked him, all with bottles of beer to hand, smoke billowing around them as they talked.
Pippa was inside changing Tommy, who had announced in a delighted voice that he had done ‘a stinker’.
‘Come on, John! Surely the meat’s done!’ Her mum bustled out with a tray of potato salad and cutlery. Pippa appeared with a pile of plates, hot dog buns balanced on top. Tommy wielded a bottle of ketchup. Ava immediately offered to help.
‘You stay there,’ Pippa said, ‘you’re pregnant.’
Ava sipped at her elderflower cordial and sat back. Gus moved beneath the table, his springy curls tickling her legs as he passed. ‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice uncertain.
Her dad started transferring the charred meat to a white ceramic tray. Soon they were all sitting in the wooden chairs, calling to be passed things. A high chair was dragged out and wiped down for Tommy.
‘Cheers!’ Dad raised his bottle to them all, smiling around, his face tanned, his apron still on. ‘So . . .’ Her dad looked at her, sitting next to Fraser. ‘Have you two been making plans for the new arrival?’ He picked up some tongs and served up chicken thighs, legs, sausages and burgers.
Ava clenched her jaw as she recalled the frosty exchange with Fraser a few nights before. He had been quiet around the flat ever since. The office looked lovely, a creamy yellow, the fresh paint smell making her feel guilty every time she passed.
‘She spends all her time at or obsessing about a haunted house at the moment.’ Fraser tried to sound cheery but his body was stiff in the chair next to her.
‘Fraser!’ Ava swallowed her mouthful of potato salad and turned in her chair towards him.
‘You do!’ he protested, something sad in his profile. ‘But I painted the nursery,’ he added brightly, trying to raise a smile at her dad.
‘But your piece went out on that house,’ her mum said. ‘Why are you still going there?’
Ava hadn’t realised they had watched it. They never normally commented on her reports these days; the excitement of a daughter on television had long gone.
‘It was very interesting, love,’ her dad put in. ‘Bit gruesome, but still . . .’ He coughed.
Ava bit her lip, aware of Fraser’s brooding silence beside her. ‘I don’t spend all my time there.’ She felt ganged-up on. ‘It’s just . . .’ Her mum looked watchful, stroking Gus’s head as he sat next to her. Fraser sipped at his beer. Ava felt heat creep into her cheeks. How could she explain her continued interest in Overtoun, her fascination with the feel of the place, the hidden meanings?
Liam sat opposite, biting into a hot dog, ketchup splurting out of one end onto his plate. ‘Do you remember at school when you, Paul and Jenna did a Ouija board?’
‘We didn’t!’ Ava turned to Liam, always amazed by his detailed recall from their schooldays. They hadn’t moved in the same circles; it had been a big group and they’d only shared a couple of classes.
‘You did. It was at Ben’s party and you guys wouldn’t let anyone in the room.’
‘I don’t remember that. I’m sure we wouldn’t have.’ A vague memory of her giggling over a glass and some cut-up letters suddenly came to mind. ‘Well . . . maybe we did . . .’
‘Liam and his mates never dared speak to you.’ Pippa laughed, taking a sip of her wine. ‘Too cool for school, wasn’t she, Liam?’
‘Well, that was twenty years ago.’ Ava tried to ignore the edge in her sister’s voice. ‘And Liam and I talk alright now.’ She smiled across at him.
Liam shifted in his seat and a blush crept up from the collar of his shirt, clashing with his orange-red hair.
‘Alright, alright.’ Her dad clapped his hands. ‘No more ghosts . . .’
Pippa looked at her. ‘Is that the weird bridge with the dogs?’
‘I don’t like talk like this,’ their mum said. Her hand had stilled in Gus’s springy curls.
Ava felt ridiculous. As if she was eighteen and not thirty-eight. Tommy squealed from the high chair that barely contained him these days and forced everyone’s eyes away from her. Pippa cut up a sausage for him, looking around at everyone else. Ava shifted in her chair, her hips aching today. Fraser was biting his lip, guilty perhaps that Ava looked so chastised.
Ava’s mum moved around the table. ‘Fraser, I made the sauce you love.’ She beamed as she put a gravy boat in front of him.
Fraser smiled and took it. Only Ava noticed the slight tension in his shoulders. Liam had a somewhat sour expression as Fraser passed it to him. Perhaps he didn’t like her mum’s sauce.
‘And how are you both enjoying the holidays?’ her dad said, turning to the other side of the table. ‘Liam? You still writing that dissertation?�
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Liam nodded. His mouth was full and there was ketchup on his chin.
Pippa rested a hand on Liam’s forearm. ‘He’s almost finished. I’m really proud of him.’
‘How about you, Fraser? Preparing for the new school year?’
Only Ava seemed to notice the light dim in Pippa’s eyes as their dad’s focus shifted to Fraser. Despite being the academic in the family, a professor no less, Liam never quite got the same attention. It didn’t help that none of them could ever understand a word when he discussed his research.
‘Results were alright but we have a few kids needing help with clearing. A boy in care has scraped enough to go into sixth form, which is great. So we’ve been looking at suitable A levels for him.’
‘Sounds rewarding.’
Ava stared down at her plate. She hadn’t heard about this boy. A wave of shame washed over her. She really did need to pay more attention. Suddenly, before she could add something, Gus had jumped onto the grass out of the reach of her mum, who had been feeding him a sausage.
Moving quickly across the lawn, he began barking furiously at the hedge that ran along the back wall of the garden. Behind it was a disused path between the garden and those of the houses opposite. It was deserted and crawling with clinging weeds and brambles. Ava grew perturbed as she watched him, his insistent bark totally drowning out all other sounds.
‘Must be something.’ Her dad twisted around in surprise. ‘A bird perhaps?’ He reached out to Gus. ‘Come on, boy.’ He beckoned, but Gus stayed planted to the spot, silent now. There was a rustle – a large animal? A fox or a badger? ‘It’s not like him,’ her dad said. ‘Come on, boy.’ As Gus started barking again, her dad moved across and scooped him up. ‘Hush, the neighbours won’t be impressed.’ He took Gus into the conservatory, Gus twisting in his arms like a big angry baby.
The rest of lunch passed in a steady stream of safe conversation: the neighbours’ skip, which still hadn’t moved; house prices and whether Liam and Pippa should sell; the garden – Dad was disappointed with his tomato crop this year.
Ava picked up the plates from the table, wanting to be inside for a moment. Gus had settled now, stretched out in his sheepskin bed as if nothing had happened. She stared at him as she passed. He didn’t even bother to open an eye. What had he heard? Why did everything these days make her jumpy? She ran the taps in the kitchen.
‘I’ll do that,’ Pippa said, bustling in. ‘You dry.’
Ava shrugged and stepped back.
‘All OK?’ Pippa asked, her voice low.
‘Fine.’ Ava picked up the tea towel draped over the handle of the oven. As children, Pippa had always preferred washing to drying; they’d spend endless hours shoulder to shoulder as they cleared dinner. They moved into this familiar stance now.
‘Seems like you and Fraser are a bit . . .’ Pippa looked around and then back at the crockery in the sink. She handed Ava a dripping plate.
Ava circled the plate with the tea towel. ‘We’re fine.’
‘Well, if you want to meet and talk, I’m around tomorrow.’
‘I can’t.’ Ava was glad of an excuse. ‘I’m filming.’
‘On a Sunday?’
‘Don’t you start.’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Pippa protested.
Ava took a breath. ‘I want to go back to that bridge. One of the camera guys is going to bring a drone. There’s a story there, Pippa. I heard . . .’ Ava bit her lip, the desire to tell someone who might understand overwhelming her. ‘I heard a baby cry. After I filmed before. A baby who’ – she couldn’t help her body convulsing at the memory – ‘wasn’t there. And I felt . . .’ She stopped, knowing she sounded confused, trying to condense everything into a neat description. It felt impossible. ‘I felt . . . I feel like the bridge, the house, they’re . . . alive. It’s like they need someone to reveal their secrets – lance the boil.’ As she put it all in these words, she realised the truth in them.
Pippa shifted nervously, an awkward sound emerging. ‘That’s . . .’
‘There was a woman.’ Ava was unable to stop now she’d begun. ‘She had a child. I don’t know what happened but I’m frightened, Pippa. Frightened of the place. Of the power it has. I’m frightened for that baby I heard.’
Pippa’s eyes were round; she swallowed slowly.
‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Both sisters jumped as Tommy raced in, a plastic car in one hand, his dinosaur hat askew. Their mum followed, a big, dirty china bowl in one hand, drawing up as she saw her daughters at the sink. ‘What are you two looking so secretive about?’ She straightened Tommy’s hat.
‘Nothing,’ Pippa said quickly.
Ava looked away.
‘Ava was telling me about work, weren’t you, Ava?’ Pippa said, a nod of encouragement.
‘I was.’
Their mum sighed. ‘We’re proud of you, Ava, but I’m not sure work should be your focus right now.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, if you hadn’t noticed . . .’ She indicated Ava’s growing stomach through the T-shirt she was wearing. ‘You’re pregnant.’
‘I know,’ Ava said slowly, ‘but I also have other things going on in my life.’
Their mother glanced at Pippa. Since Pippa had had Tommy, it was sometimes as if they had a secret mum code, making Ava feel like an outsider.
‘Well, poor Fraser . . .’ Mum continued. ‘It sounds like you’ve barely seen him these last few weeks.’
Ava threw up her hands in the air. ‘My God! How is this anyone’s business?’
Both her sister and mum bristled and Tommy scrambled to his mum’s leg. An awkward silence followed in which there were only distant sounds and the tick of the kitchen clock.
‘There’s no need to shout,’ Mum said, lifting her chin.
Ava curled her hands into fists. ‘I’m just fed up with being made to feel guilty about doing my job.’
‘I don’t understand you sometimes, Ava,’ her mum said.
‘Oh my God, you’re one to talk!’ The words had tumbled out before she could stop them.
‘Ava . . .’ Pippa warned.
Ava spun around to her sister. ‘So you understand Mum, do you?’
‘I . . .’ Pippa’s face crumpled, panic blooming in her eyes.
Quiet for once, Tommy stared up at them all like a referee in a tennis match.
‘How can I be a mum when I don’t even know my own?’ Ava felt blood pumping to her head.
The bowl her mum was holding slipped from her grip, smashing onto the floor, glass spinning in every direction. Pippa cried out, whisking Tommy from the floor.
Ava’s mum looked up at her. ‘Now look what you made me do.’
Chapter 27
AVA
Neil met her in the car park, stuttering an apology for being late, unable to meet her eye.
‘You’re not late. I was early, I . . .’
She had raced out of the flat, the atmosphere stilted since the barbecue, a quiet goodbye to Fraser, not confident enough to put her arms around him. They were both practically falling off the opposite edges of their bed at the moment.
‘I thought we could start along the path beneath the bridge,’ she said, ‘see if we can get some shots from there?’
‘OK.’ Neil hoisted a dirty brown rucksack onto his back.
They walked past the house, cutting across the shadows that sliced the ground, their cars parked next to the field on the right. Ava bit her lip as they approached the bridge and glanced across at Neil, whose face in the shade was still, jaw rigid. Did he feel the same strange sense of foreboding as they neared the stones at each end, as if a gloom hung over the whole scene? As she turned back to the house, she quailed for a moment – an outline behind the glass. Movement. She realised it was Keven, watching them from the first floor. Ava lifted her hand and he returned the wave before disappearing into the murk of the house.
They plunged down the pathway that ran along the river, leavi
ng the bridge behind them. Ava felt more confident with someone else by her side, as if the place had less power when she wasn’t alone. The land tilted down, dappled sunshine in the dirt, chittering in the bushes as the ground levelled out. They stopped by a shady bank on their left, almost totally black with shadows. The water flowed past, steering around stones, weeds trailing in the water like long green hair stuck to the slippery rocks. It was so much colder here. Ava drew her arms around herself, her baby jiggling inside her. As damp seeped into her nostrils, she cleared her throat, nerves jangling as she looked back at the bridge, its archways soaring behind them, the stone turrets lost to the trees that bent over the path.
‘How about here?’ she said.
Neil started as if her voice had been too loud for the moment. He gave her a nervous nod and reached for his rucksack, his own eyes swivelling backwards to the bridge.
‘It’s creepy, isn’t it?’ Ava said.
Neil fumbled with the zip of the bag, drawing out a camera. ‘I can’t help thinking about them falling.’
Ava licked her lips. ‘Why do you think they do it?’
Neil held the camera to his chest. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘My mum was angry with me for bringing her dog.’ Ava flinched as she talked about her mum, remembering the disastrous end to the barbecue: her abrupt departure, her dad’s puzzled look as he appeared around the side gate to see Fraser and her leaving in the car. She rarely argued with her mum, but she had also kept quiet over the years and now she’d realised she needed more. She needed to understand.
‘He did nearly jump,’ Neil said, his voice almost drowned by the water. Ava looked at him, lost in thought. ‘Your mum’s dog,’ he added.
Ava nodded. ‘He did.’
Neil removed the drone from its case. ‘What if’ – his voice was low, most of his face hidden as he bent to press buttons – ‘a sniffer dog came here. My friend Aaron has a dog like that. He used to be in the police but he left to be a fine art photographer. I read that people thought there might be mink, that the smell might be driving the dogs.’