by Jane Renshaw
Although not if Damian was there. Even the boys who thought they were hard didn’t mess with Damian, and Josh Turner wasn’t hard, he was pretty much blancmange.
When she got to the music room she slammed the door and went to the window and opened it and let the breeze onto her face. She swiped at her eyes and sniffed and looked down at Lower Quad and everyone scurrying about between classes, all laughing and happy.
And now Chimp was in her head. His real name had been John, but she always thought of him as Chimp because that was what he liked to be called. One day when she’d been walking along the track behind the House, there he’d been, standing in a ditch and leaning on a spade and grinning up at her. He’d told her about a frog that had jumped down his shirt the day before. She’d only spoken to him like maybe three other times, but he’d always been so nice and friendly and cheery. Even when he was digging out a ditch. He’d been a cheery sort of a person.
‘I’m sorry, Chimp,’ she said, even though she didn’t believe in an afterlife or ghosts or anything supernatural. She knew he couldn’t hear her.
Don’t think about it.
She watched the people down in Lower Quad. There was Eve, gliding along with Murray on one side and Andrew on the other, managing to make her school uniform look like something by Givenchy. All the boys fancied Ice Queen Eve even though she wasn’t really that pretty and had low-maintenance hair, cut short and shaped round her ears, although on Eve even that looked cool. When Karen had told Eve about being summoned to Mrs Harvey’s office, Eve had just said, ‘It was only a matter of time.’
Bitch.
She hated her so-called friends.
She hated her family. Mum could at least have stood up for her a bit in there. That had been shit. It wasn’t even like she’d done anything that bad. Wait till Mum found out that Karen hadn’t resigned from her Saturday job. Wait till she found out that she’d been sacked for ‘embezzlement’.
God!
A tenner from the till every now and then? It wasn’t exactly the Hatton Garden Heist.
Of course dear little Mollie didn’t have to have a Saturday job because she was a child prodigy, and all her spare time was spent practising her fucking violin.
It was as if Karen’s PTSD had broken her life into bits, like the prism in that first year physics experiment that broke white light into all the colours you couldn’t normally see. It was as if now she could see all the bits of her life as they really were, only they weren’t lovely rainbow colours, they were basically all shit.
She turned and looked round the room, at the posters of composers on the walls, the piano and music stands and the cupboards where the no-hopers’ crappy violins and flutes and stuff were kept. This and the room next door were where the instrumental lessons happened unless you were Mollie or Damian or Andrew. Their masterclasses were held in the room off Mr Abbot’s because their teacher was Fridolf Brotzen who drove up specially from Edinburgh three time a week just for them, and their instruments were all worth like ten thousand pounds and so of course they couldn’t leave them lying around in just an ordinary classroom. Damian owned his violin but Andrew and Mollie’s were from a scheme that lent out instruments to child prodigies.
Mr Brotzen knew Dad.
He had performed with him twice when Dad had been the principal conductor with the Hallé, and sometimes he came to Mum’s ‘musical soirees’. Karen always refused to play in front of him and Mum didn’t make her.
Her dad was Lorenzo DeCicco the famous conductor and Mollie’s dad was Bill Mair the English teacher, but guess who’d got the genes for musical talent? Karen had literally scraped a pass at grade five in cello last year. Mollie was twelve and had just got a distinction in grade eight violin and had applied for Young Musician of the Year. She’d probably win it too.
Mollie’s violin was a Melegari that had been made in Turin in 1880.
Karen’s cello was an Accorida that had been made in China like five minutes ago.
There was the fucker, skulking behind the cupboard. She supposed she should get it out of its case and tune it and put rosin on the bow. She slouched over and undid the clasps and opened the lid and pulled the bow out. She started to tighten it. You weren’t meant to go beyond a certain point or you could ruin it but she kept turning the little knob at the end of the bow and watched it getting straighter and straighter and then bulging up –
‘Oh Karen, I think that’s tight enough.’ Not Mum – Miss Larsen and her annoying American drawl, and her annoying perky curls and perky American smile.
Miss Larsen was new this term. It was her first teaching job. On those really hot days at the beginning of term she’d started wearing short almost-see-through dresses and going barefoot until Mrs Harvey had ‘had a word’, according to Bill. She probably thought she was a free spirit.
‘You’re gonna bust that bow.’
The bow was bulging out the wrong way but it wasn’t snapping. Bastard. She flung it at the wall and yelled: ‘I know what you’re doing! I could get you fired and you’d never work as a teacher again! Wouldn’t be so smug-face then!’
Miss Larsen stood there, her face going red. From the open window the sound of kids laughing drifted up.
‘You’re disgusting and it’s illegal!’ Karen yelled. ‘You could get jail time!’
‘Okay, Karen. You need to calm down.’
‘Oh right, I’m the problem here?’
‘I’m gonna go get your mom, okay?’
‘Okay, go get her, I’m sure she’d be fascinated to hear all about it!’
She expected Miss Larsen to back down and maybe beg her not to tell anyone, but she just shook her head and turned on her heel and left the room. Karen grabbed her cello out of its case and lugged it to the window and looked down to check there was no one directly underneath, and then she pushed the window up higher and lifted the cello up and through it.
But the window was too narrow.
She tried it the other way, fingerboard first, but it jammed on the curly bits at the waist, half in and half out of the window.
She was gulping now, tears and snot all over the place, running off her face onto her shirt, and she had to keep blinking her eyes so she could see. She shoved at the fucking cello but it wouldn’t budge. Down in the quad she could see people looking up at her.
Karen the Sicko fucking up again.
Couldn’t even have a meltdown without fucking it up.
And now there were teachers down there, and Mrs Aitken-Smith called something up at her. They were corralling kids away from the part of the quad under the window. And there was fucking Damian, standing looking up at her and half smiling, as if he was mildly curious about what was going to happen. The boy next to him looked from Karen and the cello to Damian, and then he half-smiled too. Like he couldn’t decide how to react until he’d got his cue from Golden Boy.
Pathetic.
Damian lifted his hand, holding it horizontal and then slowly tipping it on a diagonal.
She stared down at him. She blinked to clear her vision.
And then she got it. She angled the cello and pushed.
It flew.
It flew out of the window, improbably airborne for two, three seconds.
It hit the ground and exploded.
Polished wood flying in all directions. Kids screaming.
‘Karen!’
She whipped round, but Mum wasn’t glaring at her, she wasn’t going mental, she was just looking at Karen and then she was trying to hug her, and Karen was pushing her away and yelling something and then she was running again, out of the room and down the stairs and along the corridor to the main hall, pushing past a group of fifth year boys, and finally she was out of the building and running across the car park and down the drive.
4
As soon as Claire had left the layby behind in the rear-view mirror, she opened both windows wide and flipped up her hair to let the currents of air cool her neck. To complete her look this morning, she’d p
ut her hair up in a housekeeper-ish bun, but Phil had insisted she let it down again. ‘This is one time you need to use all your assets,’ he’d said in that unconsciously sexist way a lot of middle-aged men had.
But she’d let her hair loose. She had good hair, red-auburn and glossy, with a slight natural wave in it that looked like she’d had it done in a salon.
She’d have to stop before she got to the place and run a brush through it. And call Jennifer about that bloody oven temperature.
She followed the Satnav directions through another prosperous little town – this one was called Aboyne – and on through the ever-more-beautiful countryside to the turn-off right. And suddenly there was no traffic, and she was bowling along through fields and woods, and a huge bird flapped up from a fence post – an eagle?
The woods got bigger and the fields smaller. A man in a boiler suit leant on a gate and watched her go past with a smile, the breeze lifting his wispy white hair. The farmhouse behind him was set on a little mound and she got a glimpse of a cobbled yard that looked as if there could be a pony and trap in it and people in Victorian garb straight out of a sepia photograph. There were more hills, with moorland at the top of them and wooded gullies where the direwolves probably hung out.
‘In quarter of a mile,’ said the Satnav, ‘turn... left.’
But she almost missed the road because the sign saying ‘Kirkton of Inverglass 2’ had weedy vegetation obscuring it. As if no one would go there unless they already knew the way. After making the turn, she found herself slowing the car and pulling over onto the verge.
Two miles.
She’d be there in two miles.
Oh God oh God oh God!
She flung open her door and stumbled out of the car, leaning over into the weeds to vomit her lunch all over them. Her stomach heaved and heaved as if it had a life of its own, as if she had absolutely no control over it and just had to stand there bent over until it decided to stop.
When it did, she wiped her mouth and dived back into the car for her bottle of water. She swallowed some, and straightened, breathing in the fresh air. It was so quiet. No traffic noise, just birds twittering and the sound of the trees shooshing over her head. The air felt good in her lungs, sharp and clean and resiny.
The Satnav put her destination, the House of Pitfourie – weird name – at just ten minutes away, but the interview wasn’t until three-thirty. She had plenty of time to pull herself together. She propped her bum on the bonnet and rooted in her bag for a brush and started pulling it through her hair, closing her eyes, making her breathing slow in time with the strokes. If anyone happened to pass and see her, that was okay. She was Claire Colley nervously preparing for a job interview.
She put the brush away and pulled out her phone.
Jennifer answered immediately. ‘Hi Claire!’
‘Sorry Jen, just a quick question – what oven temperature are the soufflés supposed to be cooked at?’
Jennifer’s infectious gurgling laugh was better stress relief than any breathing exercise. ‘What temperature have you gone for?’
‘No no,’ she smiled. ‘I haven’t made them yet – I’m not even there. I’m... well, I’m en route.’
Strictly speaking, she and Phil shouldn’t have told Jennifer anything about the operation, but at least they hadn’t told her where exactly they were going or anything at all about Hector Forbes.
‘A hundred and eighty. Fan, a hundred and sixty. Gas mark four. And remember not to open the oven door while they’re cooking. That’s crucial, Claire. Just leave them be.’
‘Okay.’ God, she’d forgotten that too. ‘Thanks, Jennifer.’
As she ended the call, standing alone on that little country road surrounded by trees she couldn’t name, in the perfect quiet, a familiar feeling of disconnection hit her, as if she wasn’t quite part of the real world, as if she was living and breathing in it but not really of it.
Did all UCs feel this way?
Had John Innes?
She knew from Phil that John had had no family, no close friends, no home, really – just a bedsit in Wandsworth. At least Claire had her family, Grannie and Grandpa and her parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins, and she loved them all, but when she was undercover it seemed like she’d imagined them, made them up, that they were someone else’s wonderful family she’d temporarily appropriated in a dream. And even when she was with them she sometimes felt she wasn’t Claire Castleford any more, that she was still playing a part, still just pretending, still wearing her chameleon’s skin. Strong, sensible, eldest-child Claire with the worthwhile, responsible, challenging job she was so good at.
She could only really be herself with Grannie, and with Phil and Jennifer.
During the interminable return journey to London after that awful meet-and-brief in Inverurie, Jennifer had texted Phil to tell him to bring Claire back with him. ‘Claire’s room’ had been all ready for her, the bed turned down, fluffy towels and robe laid out. Laura had been in bed, but Jennifer had fed Claire and Phil a very late supper, and they’d sat round the flame-effect fire in the lounge munching on bread and cheese and little pickled onions. Usually Claire would have opened her heart to them, poured out all her doubts, but this was John Innes’s murderer, potentially, she was charged with bringing down. They didn’t need to know just how much she was struggling.
If she failed, Phil wouldn’t be her handler any more because Claire wouldn’t be a UC. Would Phil and Jennifer still want to be her friends? Would ‘Claire’s room’ be ready and waiting whenever she needed it? Would she spend time with the three of them, watching the latest cop show, stuffing her face with Jennifer’s cooking, playing DayZ with Laura?
Possibly not.
A dusty bus rumbled past, the first vehicle she’d seen for quarter of an hour. She was surprised to find there was a bus route out here at all. She waited another five minutes and then got back in the car and made herself turn the key and pull out onto the road and drive.
The road twisted and turned through the wood until the trees fell away and ahead of her were fields, yellow and lush green in the sun. In the middle distance was a little plantation of small conifers, and a cluster of buildings under the fiery autumn canopies of some huge old trees, with more woods beyond, and a breathtaking view of the hills.
God it was beautiful.
She drove on into Kirkton of Inverglass, which was like a set for a period drama: imposing Victorian villas, cute cottages, gardens full of autumnal roses dotted with red hips, big papery hydrangeas and those little hedges you got in formal gardens – box hedges? The bus had stopped outside a couple of shops set back from the road and elevated slightly above it, with cars parked on the sloping tarmac space in front of them. One was a ‘General Store and Post Office’; the other was called ‘Damask and Delft’ and seemed to be a high-end interiors shop. Two well-groomed women were loading a painted chair into a car in front of it. Ordinary life, going on all around her. She wished she could be one of those women –
No she didn’t.
She was Claire Colley, experienced housekeeper and cook, on her way to a job interview in a beautiful part of the country. Looking about her and smiling, and thinking it must be nice to own a village. Especially one as pretty as this.
Claire Colley wouldn’t be thinking of the accident in which, according to the DCI, Hector Forbes had killed his father and maimed his seven-year-old brother.
Claire Colley wouldn’t even know about that.
The section of road where it had happened was on the other side of the village. She’d pass it in a minute or two. When she’d read through the file she’d thought it weird that, other than potentially the boy, there were no witnesses; that no one had seen the other vehicle just before or after the crash. But now she was actually here, she got it. Traffic levels were like she’d travelled back to the 1930s.
She nosed out to pass the bus –
And slammed on the brakes.
◆◆◆
The bus stopped in Kirkton of Inverglass outside the shoppie and the two old wifies in the seat in front of Karen got up, slowly, and everyone else just had to wait while they waddled up the bus and then had a long conversation with the driver about some old man who’d been ‘hauching up phlegm aaaaa nicht.’
Ugh.
And that was when Lorna appeared at the door of her shop, helping a customer carry a chair to the boot of their car. The chair was one of the ones painted blue with little white flowers on it that was meant to be Scandi-chic.
Her phone buzzed again. This time she took it out of her bag and looked at it. There was another text from Mum asking where she was and if she was all right, another from Susie saying ‘u ok honeybunch?’, one from Eve saying ‘Just let us know you’re all right,’ one from Damian saying ‘Health and safety nightmare for Mrs H. Every musical instrument now requires urgent risk-benefit analysis. Does benefit of neuronormative utilisation in a tutelagary context outweigh potential risk arising from neurodivergent repurposing as projectile?’ – typical – and one from Bill saying ‘Please call your mum; she’s frantic.’
Not so much of a crisis, then, that Bill couldn’t take the time to select the correct punctuation.
She turned the phone off and shoved it into her blazer pocket.
When the chair was in the boot, Lorna smiled at the customer and then she looked up and saw the bus and, before Karen could turn away, their eyes had met and she expected Lorna to give her one of her looks but all she did was sort of grimace, but not in a nasty way, as if she was saying ‘I know, it’s shit and I’m really sorry’ and somehow that was the worst, getting puppy-dog eyes from Lorna fucking Beattie.
Karen gave her the finger and shouted ‘Fuck off, Lorna!’, and all the pensioners in the bus gasped and Karen jumped up and grabbed her bag and shouted ‘You can all fuck off!’ and ran out of the bus and across the street and a car pulling out to pass the bus had to brake to stop running her over and she shouted ‘Fuck off!’ at the woman driving it but she didn’t know if she was saying it for nearly hitting her or for not hitting her.