The Thin Place

by C D Major

  Keven stepped back, both palms up, backing away. In the moonlight, his face seemed drained of colour, his eyes almost all white. ‘I thought . . . You looked like . . .’ His breathing was heavy.

  Ava felt her insides settle. ‘I . . . I’m sorry, I . . . I was . . .’ What was she? How could she explain the strange impulse that summoned her here; that drove her to stay awake; that distracted her from her job, her relationship, her own baby; that triggered the things she heard when she was lying in the darkness?

  ‘I saw you from the house. I thought . . .’

  He didn’t explain what he thought as Ava noticed a toothpaste mark on his lip and realised he was dressed in a dressing gown and slippers. He had obviously run down to save her. She stumbled out an apology. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you . . .’

  He stepped towards her, glancing over her shoulder into the void. ‘The lady . . . she jumped from this spot.’ The quiet words almost lost by the noise of the water running below them. ‘You look—’

  ‘I wasn’t going to jump.’

  They both stood in silence for a moment. The bridge was like a living thing, breathing in and out, eavesdropping on them both. She didn’t want to be standing on it any more.

  ‘I saw it.’

  A fox shrieked in the distance, making Ava’s heart pound. ‘Saw it?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘I saw her jump. I was eight years old. I spoke at the inquest.’

  ‘Oh God . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘When I saw you . . .’ He dropped his head and Ava felt a desperate sadness for the poor man. Even sixty years later, it was obviously still a dreadful memory. What must he have thought seeing her on the bridge from the house? History repeating itself.

  ‘I am truly sorry. I’ll go now. I’m . . . I’m not sure why I came. I needed to . . .’ She moved past him, her footsteps quick, away from the water, the bridge, the spot where so many terrible things had happened. She was swallowed up by the shadow of the house, heading back towards her car.

  ‘Wait, hold on!’ Keven followed her. She twisted back around. He was still breathing heavily. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I’ve wanted to apologise to you – about the other day . . .’ She could barely make out his face as they stood beneath the stone tower.

  ‘It’s fine. I should have told you what we were doing.’ Guilt about the stolen bone robbed her of any more words.

  ‘I shouldn’t have shouted. I’ve been stressed.’ He raked a hand through already mussed-up hair. ‘I’ve been wanting to attract visitors back here and I was worried that dredging up the dog suicides would stop people wanting to come.’

  ‘I don’t want to endanger that,’ Ava blurted. ‘But I suppose I’ve become . . . there’s something . . . something here.’ Her words were as jumbled as her thoughts. Keven waited as she tried to put them in order. How could she explain the feeling that overwhelmed her when she stood on that bridge, something unfinished, something she felt connected to? How did she tell him about the sounds she’d heard in the studio, the baby, her own body reacting as if they were communicating with her own child? The hands behind her on the crags? The words on the sill and the bone in the ground? The feeling that something terrible had happened here? ‘I find myself thinking about the place, the bridge . . .’

  Keven pulled the cord more tightly around his dressing gown, his teeth chattering with cold.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go.’ She hadn’t realised she was trembling, but as she drew her car keys from her pocket the metal tinkled and clashed.

  ‘Ava, wait.’ A hand on her shoulder. She froze. Keven took a breath, something clearly troubling him. ‘I need to give you something . . . something I found in the house.’

  Ava stood dumbly in the darkness, the moon slipping behind a bank of cloud.

  ‘It was something I should have shown you before, perhaps. I think you need to see it.’

  Chapter 40

  MARION

  The doctor has visited – a new doctor because the previous one has retired. This doctor is a great deal younger, with soft hands and a thin moustache disguising a lack of top lip and hair combed into the neatest side parting. His accent is English and that in itself is a comfort. He is from Hertfordshire but he moved to Dumbarton with his wife and young daughter because he had visited Loch Lomond as a child and fell in love with it.

  ‘My first sight from the top of Conic Hill is one I will never forget,’ he says.

  I don’t tell him I have never been. I crave for him to tell me more.

  On his first visit I cannot do much but listen. Miss Kae had telephoned him. I have been fainting, struggling to climb the stairs to my bedroom, my bones ache, my skin is dry, Miss Kae tells me I am a skeleton, although I believe she exaggerates wildly. The doctor has prescribed bed rest and meals brought to me on a tray. He promises to return and see me.

  The following week he is pleased. Miss Kae tells him I have eaten a little bread and soup every day and he takes my pulse, his fingers warm on the inside of my wrist. He smells of lemons and the outdoors and I want him to tell me about the views over Loch Lomond again, about the ache in his thighs as he climbed the last hillock, his breathlessness as he stared across the water and the fields. I want him to look at me earnestly, notice the infinitesimal changes, his moustache twitching with concern.

  On the third visit, I am sitting up in bed and he has asked me more questions. My voice is scratchy and unused but I tell him about the babies I have lost. He reaches across and holds my hand and we sit there for an age. I could still feel his hand when he removed it, my own palm glowing from the contact. He told me I had extraordinary fortitude, that I must be very strong to have shouldered such hardship. He suggested that we pray together and I closed my eyes and allowed the words to wash over me and give me strength.

  I look forward to his visits.

  He rewards me with smiles and praise as I put weight back on, as I regain colour, as I move out of my bedroom again, as I am well enough to walk around the grounds once more.

  Miss Kae pats me, relief in the tears that line her eyes. She’s never married. She has a sister in the town and a young niece she visits, but mostly her life is this house and I. The doctor says I am a special woman, that others would not be so strong. He will visit me while I am recovering. I want him to stay always. I want to please.

  I do get better. Gradually I find my strength. I garden, plant flowers for a new year, trying to brighten the grey facade of the house that seems to have absorbed the grief of the last few years: the stone duller; the stone walls cracked in places; a boarded-up window over broken glass; abandoned rooms, thick with cobwebs; the smell of festering damp that seeps into my clothes. I can see the house through the doctor’s eyes: a glance at the bear; flinching at the clank of pipes; the whistling wind that can pass through a room without warning; the yellow stains on the ceiling of my bedroom like gnarled hands inching towards me in the bed, wanting to wrap me up.

  When the war breaks out, I am relieved the doctor tells me he will not be called up. He will stay here and minister to his patients.

  London is unsafe and so Hamish returns to Overtoun. I think he should fight, I tell him. That Hitler is a terrible man. We must all do our part. Hamish joins up.

  The doctor says he doesn’t need to visit me any more. I’m a perfect patient; he would that they were all like me.

  The next month I get a dreadful migraine. I ask Miss Kae to summon the doctor back. He returns, kind face filled with concern, soft hands writing me a prescription. ‘Does it hurt dreadfully?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  ‘Is this your first?’

  ‘Oh, I have had them before, Doctor.’

  ‘Does light make it worse?’

  ‘Why, yes. It does, Doctor.’

  The twitch of the moustache, the grey eyes darker as his brow furrows.

  He promises to come back. He might do some tests. I feel a wonderful heat in my stomach. I watch him leave, his motorcar bobbing down the dr
iveway to the road. He will be back.

  Chapter 41

  AVA

  She drove home a few hours later. There were barely any cars about at this time. Street lights flashed past her and there were long stretches of dark road. The dusty item she’d been given lay on the passenger seat next to her. She shivered as she recalled what Keven had told her.

  The block was quiet, the neighbours above and below her no doubt asleep. Once inside, she was stung by their perfectly made and empty bed. How long would he stay away? There was the blink of the microwave clock, the counters visible from the faint light of a street lamp, the note that began Taking some time . . . and signed with his name. She opened the fridge, light spilling out, the gentle hum of its motor. Lingering, she reached for the bottle of white wine and twisted off its cap. The acidic shock of it sharpened her senses. She picked up her newly acquired item from the counter.

  Settling on her sofa, she clicked on the side lamp. The baby moved inside her, the feeling like bubbles. She’d put back the wine bottle and replaced it with water, one hand on her stomach by way of an apology. She fumbled to pick up the box, the items slipping inside it.

  She had followed Keven inside the house, the heavy wide doors revealing a cavernous hallway, the bear lurking in the shadows, the temperature as cold as outside.

  ‘It’s in here.’ Keven indicated the doorway to the right, down a few steps. She sucked in her breath as she followed him down to the locked door on the right, a wooden ramp, dusty and disused, propped on the wall next to it.

  Keven twisted the key in the lock and Ava heard a click. She hesitated as he looked over his shoulder, imagining him bundling her inside for a mad second. HELP ME scratched into the windowsill. A prisoner? The door swung open and she felt a stuffy warmth drawing her closer to the entrance, a smell like warm oats. Beyond Keven she could make out the end of the single bed, the corner of a rug. Her eyes moved straight to the diamond panes of the window, the sill below.

  ‘I kept it in a trunk,’ he said, moving inside as Ava edged closer. There was a doll above her, its face lit with moonlight, sitting on a shelf thick with dust. Books slanted, their spines unreadable. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It didn’t seem right to throw them away.’

  He emerged clutching something to his chest. She got a last look at the room before he drew the door shut, pocketing the small metal key after he’d turned it. As she stepped out it was as if the house enveloped her back in its icy grip. She hugged her arms around herself, her back teeth shaking with cold. Keven walked up the steps and rested the item on the wooden pew that ran along one wall.

  It was a shoebox, dusty smears on its lid. Keven watched her as she approached it, as she opened the lid to see yellowed notebooks and diaries.

  ‘They found them when they tore up the floorboards of the master bedroom. From way back, the thirties . . . before she . . .’

  Before she jumped.

  Ava lowered herself onto the pew next to it, her eyes wide, her body tingling as she lifted the top diary from the box.

  ‘Maybe reading her story will persuade you more than anything I say.’ His expression was sad, mouth turned down as he looked at the box. ‘It’s a sad history, and that’s why I haven’t wanted it dredged up again.’

  He had walked her and the box back towards the heavy front door. A clank of old pipes and an icy draught forced her head up. Keven shuffled beside her in slippered feet, his lined face exhausted, the bags prominent under his eyes. ‘I think you’ll understand when you read them.’ She had left him there in that frozen corridor, his eyes following her as she made her way to her car.

  Tucking her feet beneath her, she lifted off the lid of the box once more, unable to wait until it was light. She wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing they were there in the flat, answers to questions, answers to things she hadn’t thought to ask. The smell of aged paper, of damp, assaulted her. One or two of the books were watermarked and damaged. She sorted them into date order, hungry for information about the woman from the bridge. What had happened to her and how had it left its mark?

  She took out her first volume, a small rectangular book with yellowed pages and a faded spine. The old leather cracked, dry and peeling, large sections already lost so the dried glue on the spine could be seen. On the inside cover in slanting blue ink was written Marion Foot.

  She felt her baby roll and gurgle inside her as she reached to turn the first page, her mouth dry, a sip of water before she began to read.

  The first entry was dated 1929. It made her smile. A tea dance in the Savoy. A man! She pictured beautiful people doing the Charleston, legs kicking, bright expressions, beaming smiles. Marion wrote with a lovely innocent naivety. How would she end up so far away, jumping from a bridge in a remote estate in Scotland? Ava forced herself to slow down, not to skip ahead, to drink it all in. The first diary was full of hope and excitement, her courtship, the dances, her upcoming marriage.

  She picked out the next, and the next, her smiles soon fading, all warmth slipping away, the writing increasingly messy and scrawled. She blinked at the appalling details, shivered at the memory of a baby’s cry.

  Ava’s eyes ached with the effort of reading, dawn filtering into the room, the curtains never closed. She felt woozy and thick-headed, her mouth dry, the glass of water long gone.

  The last diary was wrecked, loose pages that Ava carefully pieced together. So many losses. On the endpapers, a strange collection of disconnected words, some crossed out – apples? plums? – and a peculiar chart with dates and numbers. It didn’t make any sense. But the last entry distracted her, and the words and chart fled her mind.

  The final entry was written in a different style, capital letters on the page. No lengthy explanation but a short phrase:

  I WANT TO BE WITH THEM.

  So, this woman who had lost all her babies couldn’t face a life without them.

  Ava thought then of the room in the house: the books, the doll, a single child’s bed – empty. A baby had lived. Ava was sure. What had happened to the child that had survived? Surely she would have been loved? Ava felt goosebumps on her skin as she thought of the words on the windowsill. Where in the diary did it tell about that child? Or did Marion never want anyone to know?

  She pictured the bank on the edge of that burn, the dog’s barks as he burrowed beneath the soil. Ava remembered the chill in that desolate spot. What had he sniffed out? What had she taken to Liam? If all the babies had been buried in the ground, was a sickly child buried there too? Was that what they had found? Depending on what bone it was, it could have been big enough.

  She shut the last diary. She knew she would never forget what she had read, that she would never again wonder why the bridge was such a hopeless, desolate place. She sat still, hearing the cars moving past outside, people beginning their day. Her head and eyes throbbed with lack of sleep, staring at too-small writing and the things that filled the books.

  Poor Marion. Poor Marion. Ava felt nausea build within her as she recalled the details of her losses, the terrible ordeal she’d been through on her own, the things that poor woman had endured. If she had lost a child too . . .

  She felt the baby somersaulting inside her. Memories of the twenty-week scan returned to her: the moving image on the screen; the feel of the probe on her stomach, pressing and pushing to show Fraser and her all the healthy parts – heart, two legs, two arms, the brain, the fluid levels good, the measurements correct. Their healthy, growing baby. And she had barely thought about it, barely acknowledged how lucky they were.

  She closed the lid of the box on the diaries. So much sadness contained inside. She felt tears line her eyes as she rested back on the sofa, as she hugged the box close to her chest and wept.

  Chapter 42

  AVA

  She’d snatched an hour or so’s sleep and woken with a sore back, a dry mouth, her breath stale. She had to leave early to get in on time.

  Her head woolly, she decided to leave her car. S
he was in no fit state to drive it. She headed to the subway. Horns blared and early morning traffic was at a standstill. Almost there. Her eyes barely able to stay open, she thought for a moment she had imagined the figure moving in parallel with her on the other side of the road.

  He was tall, a baseball cap pulled down low. She wouldn’t have noticed him but for something about his movement; his occasional glances made her feel he was following her. Shielding her eyes, she turned to get a better look at him but a bus pulled up beside her with a sigh and obscured her view. The bus doors closed with a hiss and it set off once more. The figure had gone.

  Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation, perhaps she had imagined it, but she recalled other times over the last few weeks: a feeling she couldn’t quite pinpoint, that she was in someone’s lens. She thought of the note. Maybe it was all related? She shivered at the connections. You are being watched.

  The briefing in the too-bright conference room, its glass walls allowing the sunlight into the room, was a struggle. On the wall and under the harsh office light was a set of blown-up photos of her and her fellow reporters wearing their best toothpaste smiles. When had these been taken? She couldn’t help but think of her red eyes, the bags beneath, the cracked lips.

  Garry was late for the meeting, but when he did appear, he didn’t glance her way. She offered to cover a story and spent the rest of the time doodling to stay awake. Afterwards, Garry talked to another reporter as Ava lingered, wanting to talk to him. A squeeze on her shoulder made her jump. ‘For fu—’

  Claudia stepped back and laughed. ‘Sorry, I saw you through the glass. We need a catch-up. It’s been ages.’

  Ava was slow to respond. ‘We do,’ she agreed.

  Claudia frowned. ‘Are you alright? You look a bit . . . peaky.’

  Ava touched her face self-consciously.

  ‘Is it . . .’ Claudia lifted both her eyebrows. ‘Have you told work yet?’