‘It’s autumn.’
‘Yes.’
Catriona remained silent for a minute or so. She was nervous about what was to come next.
‘This is so wrong,’ Catriona said, her eyes welling with tears. ‘I love you,’ Irene answered, ‘with all my heart.’
A beat.
‘I’m going to Italy, Mum.’
Irene froze and then began to tremble. ‘Don’t, Cat. Don’t go. What did Anna say?’
‘I haven’t told her and I’m not going to tell her. I just need to get away. I need to apologise to Joe for everything. I need to see him.’
Irene let go of Catriona’s hand and became very distressed. ‘Please, please don’t. You promised me!’
The Freak intervened, just as she used to when Catriona became upset during visits. She hauled Irene from her seat and escorted her from the room as she yelled, ‘DON’T! DON’T GO, CAT! CATRIONA! PLEASE!’
There were not many things about her daughter that Irene understood, but she fully comprehended why she had wanted to end it all in prison. After days in the police cells, then a period in hospital having this test and that, and since arriving in the remand hall in Cambusvale, Irene had plummeted into despair. She held onto images of her daughter – she was safe, she was with Anna, and she was in Scotland – and these images helped the long hours tick over.
She had been clear and consistent in her statements – that she had watched her daughter on each and every date, followed the men afterwards, and killed them. She had meticulously cleaned each scene, using rubber gloves, bleach and disinfectant, and had left no discernible traces of her DNA on the bodies. She had retrieved the secateurs from their hiding place and handed them over – complete with her fingerprints. Her daughter had been asleep in bed, Joe had been in Italy, Stewart in London, and Anna in Glasgow in the arms of her ex-partner. It was she, and she alone, who had killed the men. When she was officially charged, she felt strong. She would get through this. She would do her time and then go home and everything would be okay.
But Catriona’s visit changed everything. She couldn’t leave Scotland. How could she? The strength of Irene’s resolve to cope dissipated. She felt tearful, angry and frustrated. What could she do to stop her daughter from leaving? Nothing.
She was completely powerless.
27
Mum’s reaction was what I expected, and I left that terrible place feeling desperate for her, but knowing that I would never feel better until I talked to Joe again.
With an unsuspecting Anna still at work, I packed my things and got a taxi to the airport. It wasn’t as I’d fantasised during all those weeks in prison – champagne on the flight, a giddy feeling in my tummy as I watched the Alps from my window, Joe waiting with open arms at the other end.
I felt sick.
The airport was as frantic as ever, and it took a while for the train to arrive. When it did, I hauled my luggage to the platform just outside the terminal, up into the carriage, and back down again five minutes later at Pisa Central. The plan was a vague one which involved getting the train from Pisa Central to Lucca, booking into the hotel, and writing a note.
The hotel was what I expected. Three stars. Just outside the city walls. Not too close to Joe’s surgery. I unzipped my case, washed my face, sat on my single bed, sighed, and opened a litre-bottle of vodka. For courage.
The room wasn’t much bigger than the cell I’d had, I thought, as time dragged on without the arrival of courage. Despite the anxiety and excitement I felt at Joe’s closeness, the room felt safe. I put pen to paper.
Joe,
I’m here. Room 13, Hotel di Mezzo, via Roma.
I locked my room, walked down the stairs, out of the hotel, across the road, into the tunnel that cut through the thick stone city walls, and made my way to Joe’s surgery. I watched from across the square till the reception area was empty, then raced across and plonked the note down in front of the ridiculously young and good-looking receptionist.
I ran back to the hotel, feeling terrified and silly at the same time.
Then I waited.
I lay on the bed, bottle in hand, and said names out loud to stop my heart from exploding.
Anna, Di, Irene and Joe,
Catriona, Jamie, Janet, the Freak.
Bugger – it didn’t rhyme. I took another gulp and tried again, using the names of kids I’d gone to school with, mixing them with people from A Change Is As Good. Then I tried the names of Joe’s family, the names of people from uni, names of actors I knew. Bugger it, I couldn’t make a decent rhyme. I found a pen and started writing on the wall next to the bed.
Johnny, Rory, Mani, Stewart, Joe, Jim, Catherine, Katie, Brendan.
It was no use. The wall was covered in names, yet not one of them rhymed with another. It seemed impossible. What did that mean?
Bang.
I jumped out of my skin, walked carefully towards the door, and looked through the spy-hole.
There was no one there.
I opened the curtains I’d closed after taking the note to Joe’s surgery. Outside, in the street below, two cars had collided. No one was hurt, by the looks of it.
I took a swig from the bottle. Ah. After several others, and at least another hour, I started to realise that the names on the wall represented my life. The thirty-three years of Cat Marsden. At home, as a baby. At school. At uni. At work.
Bang.
This time, I didn’t jump. The alcohol probably helped keep me calm, but also, I was getting used to the bangs of Lucca. They were never Joe. They were cars colliding or rubbish bin lids closing. Never Joe.
Where was he? I’d left the note ages ago. Drawing the last drop from the bottle of vodka, it hit me that he may not have seen the piece of paper. A gust of wind may have whooshed it into the square or the receptionist may have thrown it in the bin. Or perhaps he had read it, and decided not to come.
These thoughts became distorted and were eventually taken over by questions. Where was I? How many bricks were in the walls? What was I doing? Could I please go to the toilet?
I was back in my cell, I found a buzzer next to the telephone and pressed it, then waited for someone to come and let me out.
Another half hour passed. No one had come to let me out. Typical, leaving me, desperate in my cell, for hours on end. The urine I’d emptied into the glass stank. The pen I needed to find rhyming names with had run out, as had the vodka, and there was some kind of pounding noise – the Masturbator, perhaps, but hadn’t she gone to the ‘convicted’ hall? – coming from the cell next door. Or was it from the door? The Freak at last, to take me to the loo?
I stumbled from my bed and fell to the floor, crawling past the urine to the door. Why wasn’t she opening it, I wondered. Why wasn’t her bunch of keys jangling?
‘Why won’t you let me out?’ I yelled from the floor, almost tearing my hair with despair.
‘Let me out! Please!’
But no one did. The Freak walked away – I could hear the footsteps. The Masturbator finally shut up. There was silence for a few minutes. I lay on the floor and groaned, expecting to lie there till morning, till it was time to be let out for breakfast. I closed my eyes.
The clanging of trays? The setting up of breakfast? The opening of cells?
‘Hello?’
The Freak was standing above me. A bit blurry at first, and upside down. I rolled onto my stomach, pulled myself into a kneeling position and looked again.
‘Catriona?’
It was Joe.
28
Joe’s receptionist had given him the note just minutes after receiving it. He read it, saw several unhurried patients, closed the surgery, and phoned his mum.
‘Mamma,’ he said, ‘it’s Giuseppe.’
She was worried. Did he really know what he was getting involved in? Could he really talk to her? How could he ever forgive her for what she’d done?
‘That wasn’t her fault, Mum,’ he said.
‘How could it
not be?’
He talked to her carefully, agreeing to take things slowly, to stay close by, and to let them know if anything worried him. ‘Will you be there for us?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Will you be kind to her?’
A pause. ‘Of course. We must all be kind to her.’
Joe’s mother hung up the phone and sat at her kitchen table. Her precious son, the most eligible man in town, was determined to sacrifice himself for a woman whose first, middle and last names were trouble. She looked over at her husband, staring blankly at the television. She glanced at her son, Pietro, reading the newspaper. Signora Rossi looked at the half-chopped vegetables on the kitchen table and swore quietly, ‘Cunterale fucker.’
But Giuseppe was a good boy. He was a successful boy. Her boy. It was her job to help him. So, if he insisted, she would be kind.
Joe walked up to the second floor of the hotel, and knocked on the door. He paused and listened. He could hear her screaming ‘Let me out! Let me out!’
A feeling of concern overwhelmed him. She needed him. He raced to reception, convinced the owner to give him the spare key, ran back upstairs, and opened the door.
There she was. Not as he’d last seen her, frail and sad in prison.
Not as he liked to imagine her, holding out her arms to greet him at the airport.
No, she was crazy. She’d pissed in a glass and it stank. She’d scrawled names all over the walls. She’d finished off an entire bottle of vodka.
‘Joe . . . is it really you?’ she dribbled.
He knelt down beside her. She was his Catriona. He cradled her in his arms.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here, Cat. I’m here, my darling.’
‘Everything’s gone wrong. Don’t leave me again. Don’t leave me again.’
‘I won’t. I won’t. I promise,’ he said.
29
Wedding jitters are a terrible thing. Men wind up naked tied to lamp posts. They get blow jobs in toilets and have unprotected sex on open-top buses. Women scream at strippers and wear weird pink headgear while squealing in gaggles through the streets of Prague.
After we first decided to get married, Joe and I expected them.
‘Just imagine,’ I said, lying next to him in bed. ‘You’re the only person I’ll sleep with from now on.’
We were in one of the two mezzanine bedrooms in his lovely stone barn.
I hadn’t said it in a regretful way, just as a fact.
‘Good!’ he laughed, then kissed me.
‘It’s compulsory,’ Joe said, ‘to ask and to give every little detail about past lovers. Clear the air.’
He liked playing games, Joe. Dares and gambles, mostly, like:
‘I’ll pay you to walk backwards along that wall.’
‘Dare you to hold your right hand in the air till we leave the restaurant.’
He said we had twenty questions each and then he fired away.
‘Did they have special names for you?’
‘How often did you do it?’
‘And how did you do it?’
‘Any “our songs”?’
‘Favourite places?’
I didn’t hold back. I agreed with him. It’s unavoidable. You have to talk away all traces of the people you’ve kissed and shouted at and said I love you to, raking out stones before laying fresh turf.
But he cheated. His first answer left me with nineteen unnecessary questions.
‘I’ve never had a relationship,’ he said. ‘Only ever had flings. Shags. I’ve never loved anyone before. And, I have a confession. I am completely and utterly turned on by red hair. The very notion of it. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not much of that around these parts.’
‘That’s not fair!’ I chided. ‘I’ve given you all the gories!’
Moving on, we talked of young couples we knew.
‘They’ll end up divorced,’ I said.
‘And hating each other,’ he agreed.
We wouldn’t be like them. We would continually reinvent ourselves. We would make time to date each other, even after kids – ‘Yes, kids!’ he said.
We would take bubble-baths together.
Have weekends away.
Try a new position every few days, use books for inspiration, the internet.
Never be scared.
Always be willing.
We would communicate our desires and our longings, never clamming up to become cold and resentful like older couples we knew.
We would be living proof that romance need not die. It would thrive as long as we admitted our innermost secrets and desires and listened not with judgement, but with maturity and generosity.
I would miss smoking after sex.
He would let me smoke after sex.
I would miss flirting.
We would flirt at parties.
Would I miss the excitement of touching new skin?
Um . . .
What if he let me? What would I do? He could let me – starting now. We were open enough. Mature enough. In love enough.
Yes. And I could let him – starting now. Of course I could. We could do that.
It was a week before our wedding. I had booked to return to Edinburgh the following day. We were a little drunk from wine and love-making, and we offered each other the gift of one week. If we wanted to, we could touch new skin, we could be wild, and for the rest of our lives these experiences would feed our fantasies, keeping our love new, always new. It would be our last hurrah and our secret.
‘I won’t, you know,’ I said.
‘But you can,’ he said.
I suppose it might have helped my case later on if I’d told the police. Certainly the tabloid coverage might have differed. Or would it? Perhaps not. Anyway, Joe never mentioned it to the police, or to Janet, and I took my cue from him. It was our secret, and by keeping it, as promised, I was demonstrating that I still had integrity and – more importantly – that I still loved Joe with all my heart.
So at Pisa Airport, Joe waved me off to have a week of wildness.
But Janet Edgely was right. Despite occasional in-appropriate sexual behaviour, I was a serial monogamist.
I sipped pints alone in Edinburgh bars, watching the men on offer and comparing them to Joe – not as tall, not as cute, not as charming, not as funny, not as manly, not as happy, not as down to earth, not as sexy, not as exotic, not as good. Worse still, I worried about hygiene. Would he have brushed his teeth? When would he have last washed his willie, pulling back the foreskin to de-cheese?
I had my line all ready. ‘Hello, my name’s Cat. I’m getting married soon and I would like to make the most of my freedom. How would you feel about coming home with me?’ I imagined I would then take them back to my flat, encourage a pre-shag shower and have sex on my spotless Egyptian cotton bed linen.
Once I got as far as the ‘I’m getting married soon’ line – the guy was quite cute, actually. He had a dimple and worked in housing. But instead of offering him my body, I got sidetracked and told him all about Joe. ‘He sounds great,’ the guy said, before moving to the other side of the bar to talk to a girl about something other than Joe. I was useless.
Instead of taking my freedom by the balls and twisting, I phoned Joe obsessively. He answered on the first day, but then he got ill, apparently, and switched his phones off. I lay on my unrumpled bed linen imagining that he wasn’t really sick, that he was partying with women. Images of him kissing girls on the neck the way he kissed me on the neck flashed though my brain again and again, of him holding someone’s hand walking down the street, and making coffee in the morning. I tried to fill my time by seeing old friends, but I felt miserable. I realised I wasn’t mature or open or non-judgmental or special. I was jealous and angry and hurt and sick to the pit of my stomach.
‘You have the jitters,’ my mum said, not realising the real reason for my sadness. ‘You need to tie up loose ends.’
And so, after dozens of failed attempt
s to contact Joe to say, ‘No! It was a mistake! Please don’t get a blow job in a restaurant toilet! Please don’t sleep with a stripper in Milan! Please! Tell me you haven’t. It won’t feed my fantasies, it’ll torture me for the rest of my life. Tell me you haven’t,’ I decided to meet with my exes. I didn’t want to sleep with them, but it would fill my time with men whose hygiene did not concern me, and it might help me be less resentful and upset and angry that my bastard fiancé had taken a post-coital-therefore-not-to-be-taken-seriously conversation and probably embarked on a fucking shag-fest.
Of course, I realise now that open relationships are a pile of shite. One of my friends went travelling during her gap year, leaving her poor partner at home to ‘see other people’. She was just too lazy to end it, and her boyfriend lost a stone with the pain. Then there was the forty-something I knew from work who agreed to play the field: he just hated his wife and had decided to take the longest, most agonising route towards divorce.
And me? I was in love with a man who was as charming as the hills he lived in. I was blissfully happy, lying in bed talking of our wedding and our life together. So confident and so comfortable I felt I could take on the world. I could renovate seventy Tuscan farmhouses and sell them for millions. I could ignore the fact that my mother-in-law despised me. I could learn Italian in two weeks. I could have and give one week of sexual freedom.
What a dickhead.
Sometimes when I think of my exes I think of them making love for the last time. Johnny: technical, tried and tested, his moves perfected by at least three girls a week.
Rory: fat and wheezy behind his desk, saying yes and yes and making me wonder, ‘Why do I have this wee cock in my mouth?’, my knees throbbing with pain on the hardwood floor of his office. I wanted to stop halfway through, but realised that would be rude.
Mani: the most pleasant, really. But in a dull hotel room with a dull beginning, middle and end. Just as our relationship had been.
Bloody Women Page 11