House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  I gave up waiting for a break and got out of the car to scurry up the path. Stupid. It never even occurred to me that any of the press would give me a second glance, but I only just had the front door closed at my back when the first one of them hammered on it.

  “Mrs. McGovern?” came a woman’s voice. And still I didn’t twig. I thought it must be someone who knew me. I opened the door and peered out. There were four of them, all drenched, one with a kind of plastic tent over a camera and three with mikes covered in sandwich bags and recorders under their Gortex jackets.

  “Have you got a quote, love?”

  “Did you see the body?”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “How’s your son?”

  That came from the only woman in the bunch. Tall and trim, she was wearing the wreck of a perfect blow-dry and her face was streaked black and pink as mascara and blusher coursed down. But what melted me was the state of her feet. Good patent shoes ruined and mud splattered up her ankles.

  “Jane Brown,” she said. “Record.”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “How did you feel when you heard?”

  “Did you see it being buried?”

  “Is he in or has he managed to stay at school?” Jane Brown shouted over the voices of the other three.

  And the rest were on their way over the road too, splashing and skidding in the mud ruts of the track.

  “How do you know my name?” I said to her over their heads. “How do you know my son?”

  I ignored the other three, who were jeering and whining as she pushed her way to the front.

  “Can I come in?” she said.

  “Why are you asking about Ang—about my son?”

  “Angelo?” she said. “You can let me in or I can tell you out here.” She slid her eyes to the side. The other reporters, even more of them now, had quieted to listen.

  I stood back and she nipped inside, like a little terrier down a rabbit hole, before I could change my mind.

  “Bloody hell!” she said. She took her coat off, kicked her shoes onto the plastic mat, and before I knew what was happening she had stripped off her tights. “Don’t suppose I could hang these over a radiator?”

  “Mantelpiece in front of the gas fire?” I said, determined not to apologise for the lack of proper heating. “How did you know my son’s name?”

  “I’m a good reporter,” she said. Then she shivered hard. She wasn’t acting; I saw the goose pimples pop up on her arms.

  “I’ll put the kettle on,” I said.

  “Any chance of a Bovril?”

  “So what’s all this about Angelo?” I said when I came back through from the kitchen. She had been trying to get the gas fire lit, making herself right at home, but at my words she straightened and turned.

  “Don’t you know?” she said. “You sit down. I’ll do the drinks. Seriously, you don’t know?”

  “Tell me right now or I’ll put you out bare feet and all,” I told her, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  “He reported the body,” she said. “You’re seriously telling me you didn’t know?”

  I dropped down onto the couch and stared at her. “Angelo?”

  “Reported the body. The polis have been at the school. Your husband took him to the station. Alison, are you trying to say your husband didn’t tell you? Didn’t tell the boy’s own mother?”

  I whipped out my phone and stared at it. Nothing. Not a word. But as she—what was her name?—as she edged towards me I had the sense, dredged up from somewhere, to hide the screen. I pressed it against my chest.

  “Fifteen messages,” I said. “First day at a new job! I had it on silent and never switched it back again. Oh my God! Look, I need to call them. You do the Cup-a-Soups, eh?” And I stood, shakily, and made my way upstairs, shutting my bedroom door and going right to the back before I hit Marco’s number.

  He answered after half a ring. “Als!” he said. “Hiya, babe.”

  “Is it true?” I said. “Did Angelo go to the police station?”

  “Calm down, pal,” he said. I could hear him walking and the sound changed as he went from one room to another. “There’s no need to upse—”

  “Marco, for once in your life, will you listen to me? Tell me what is happening or I will, so help me, I will—”

  “See this is exactly—”

  “Marco, if my son is at the police station and I didn’t know—”

  “He’s not. Ali, will you calm the hell down?” Marco started talking as if each word was a sentence all on its own. As if I was a drunk or a moron. “He is at school. I am at my work filling in forms. Everything is all right.”

  Finally I took a breath. “There’s reporters here.”

  “At the hospital? How did they get past—”

  “At the house, Marco. Someone from the Record said Angel was the one who found the body. Where did they get that from, if nothing’s wrong?”

  He was silent so long I thought the call had dropped. Bloody Galloway and its dark skies. Great for seeing the Milky Way, useless for mobile connection.

  “Marco?”

  “It was all a big misunderstanding,” he said.

  I had been quiet, thinking of the reporter downstairs, but at that I forgot to whisper. “What? You just told me nothing happened.”

  “The report about the remains came from Angel’s phone. Don’t interrupt me. Just listen. The police contacted me and we went to the school together and spoke to him. Then we all went to the police station so he could identify his phone.”

  “I can’t—” I said. Then I threw the phone hard against the sloping wall of the bedroom. The back sprang off and the battery fell out and thudded to the floor. The phone bounced back and landed on the bed.

  “Ali?” the Record woman shouted up the stairs. “You okay?”

  It took that long for Marco’s words to sink in. The news of Angel, my son, my little boy, in a police station and me not knowing had drowned it out. But now it hit me. I scrabbled the three pieces back together—phone, battery, back cover—and when I powered it up it was already ringing.

  “Fine!” I called down. “Won’t be a minute!” I jabbed the green button and whispered. “Why was his phone at the police station?”

  “Tah-dah!” said Marco. “Exactly. It was stolen, three days ago. He’s been working up to telling us.” I tried to speak but didn’t have the breath for it. “I know what you’re thinking,” Marco said. “Why didn’t he tell us when he found out about our new jobs. Well, get this: because the wee toerag reckoned he’d get an upgrade out of us anyway without us finding out he’d lost the old one. Talk about cheek, eh?”

  “And where is he now?” I said.

  “I told you,” said Marco, “he’s back at school. He’s fine, Als. Don’t worry.”

  This time I hung up gently.

  “Everything okay?” the woman said when I got downstairs again. She hadn’t just found the Cup-a-Soup and boiled a kettle, she’d stuffed her shoes with newspaper and set them in front of the gas fire. And she must travel with a spare pair of tights in her bag. She’d pulled them on. I could see the perfect little red cups of her pedicured toes through them. And she had wiped her face too.

  “Fine. Thank God.” All I wanted was to get her out of my house. “Just a misunderstanding. It was nothing to do with him after all. He’s back at school and he wants smoked sausage baguettes for his tea.”

  “You’ve spoken to him then?” she said. “I thought you were talking to your husband, what with the shouting.” Her voice didn’t change and her face didn’t change. But all of a sudden she made me think of Dr. Ferris.

  “He gave the message to his dad,” I said, hoping I wasn’t blushing. I’m a terrible liar. “You can’t phone kids in school hours. Don’t you have any?”

  �
�I don’t have any ties with the local education authority,” she said. “I’m not familiar with their rules.” Trying to make me think she had six rosy-cheeked geniuses in a private school, but not actually saying it, which said everything.

  “Anyway, so keep the mug, if you like,” I said. “But I’ll have to ask you to go, I’m afraid. I wasn’t thinking straight when I asked you in. I’m sure you understand.”

  She pretended she didn’t. “You—You’re putting me back out in the rain?”

  “There’s no story in here,” I told her.

  “We’ll see.” She tipped the soup into the sink and shuddered, too good for instant suddenly.

  She smiled as she left, far too professional to trash a good contact she might be needing later. She didn’t fool me.

  Six

  Marco was back. He came in quietly and stood just inside the front door, listening.

  “I’m through here,” I shouted at last. I was in Angelo’s bedroom using his laptop to try to find out something, anything, about what had happened. BBC Scotland had a tiny piece, two paragraphs and a photograph of the police under their green shelter. Human remains were discovered at Dundrennan Abbey in Southwest Scotland last night, after an anonymous report to local police. A high school student was briefly questioned earlier today in connection with the incident but later released. The Abbey, which dates from … And then the usual potted history from Wikipedia. I read and re-read the words—a high school student was briefly questioned—and stared at the picture, the view that greeted me every time I left the house.

  Then I went back to the search page and refreshed it, finding a bit more on ITV Border News, who said nearby residents were shaken by the discovery and that the Abbey grounds were a well-known meeting place for what they called “local youths.” One “local youth” had already been questioned by the police in connection and further enquiries were ongoing. I supposed I was the shaken resident, running away like that. But they were scraping together bits of nothing and making it sound suspicious. Really, it was perfectly innocent.

  His phone was stolen.

  He didn’t tell us.

  He’d just come from the Abbey

  The police found a body.

  I couldn’t get his voice out of my head. I’d just about given up, as it goes.

  “Hey,” said Marco, appearing round the bedroom doorway. “What are you doing? Don’t be looking at that.”

  I closed the laptop lid and spun round on Angelo’s desk chair to face him. “You didn’t call me,” I said.

  “I explained that,” Marco said. “Are you still annoyed?” He put his head on one side and crinkled up his eyes at me, then started forward, coming to kiss me, I was sure. That was our way. A kiss hello and a kiss goodbye. A kiss goodnight and one in the morning. It was my parents’ way; my dad stooping to kiss my mum—thank you for a lovely dinner, welcome back from the supermarket—and it had got to be our way too.

  I held up a hand, with my arm straight. “No,” I said, trying to make sure my voice stayed level. “No and no. You didn’t explain. You said things and I let it be, but you haven’t explained, Marco, because there’s no possible explanation in the world. My son was at the police station being questioned and you didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you,” he said. He had stopped advancing but the smile was still on his face.

  “Well, that was a big fat failure then, wasn’t it? Because I’m very upset.”

  “Yeah but—” said Marco. He stopped himself, literally biting down on his tongue. I could see it glistening between his teeth. “Right then. The boy’s had a shit day so I’m going to fire up the frying pan and give him a treat. Come through and keep me company.”

  It took me a few breaths to get myself off the chair and through to the kitchen and, by the time I got there, he was whistling. I stared at his back. He had put on his apron and rolled up his sleeves and, as he rummaged in the deep cupboard for the plug-in fryer, he was whistling.

  “How long was he there for?” I said. “Did they put him in an interview room? Did you leave him alone at any time? What did they ask him? Did he sign a statement? And Yeah but what, by the way?”

  Marco poured oil into the fryer, a whole new bottle of pale golden rapeseed oil, glugging out of the neck of the bottle in rhythmic convulsions that made me think of someone vomiting. I looked away.

  “Twenty minutes. Yes, he was in an interview room and they gave him a bottle of Fanta. No, I didn’t leave him. They asked him where he lost his phone and got him to ID it. And yes, he signed something and I countersigned it. And Yeah but nothing.” He had got a packet of bacon out of the fridge and a bag of sausages out of the freezer, beans from the tins cupboard. He looked at his watch and spun the dial of the fryer.

  “What did it say?” I said. “The thing you signed.”

  “I didn’t read it, Als. I think the cops might have taken it as a bit of an insult if I’d read it, don’t you?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “And why are you putting the fryer on now? It’s—” I looked at my watch and blinked. It was just leaving twenty to four. I turned and checked the clock on the cooker, which confirmed it: 3:43. What the hell? I left Howell Hall before they served lunch, came back here, let the journo in, kicked her out, looked at the news sites and now, somehow, it was nearly teatime.

  “I’m making doughnuts for when he gets in,” Marco said. “Okay?”

  I said nothing. The Cup-a-Soup that woman had made for me was still sitting on the counter near the sink. I reached out and touched it. There wasn’t a trace of warmth left.

  “I’ll zap that for you if you want,” Marco said, “but there’s doughnuts in twenty.”

  “I’ve lost some time,” I said. I was still angry—angrier with him than I had ever been—but there he was and he’d been there for twenty years and when you’re frightened you reach out to the nearest person. I saw it once on a plane when we hit the worst patch of sudden turbulence anyone had ever seen; the plane walloping up and down like a speedboat, falling away from under us like a rollercoaster. All up and down the aisles, complete strangers were clutching each other, digging their fingers into each other’s arms and staring into each other’s eyes. Marco and I had locked arms over Angel’s head, pressing him in between our bodies, so his voice was muffled when he squealed, “Wheeeee! Again, Mummy! Again!” Then with a final lurch it was over and everyone was laughing shakily and apologising.

  Marco was holding me again now. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got it wrong. But—”

  I leaned into him, letting my full weight fall on him and letting him wrap his arms tight around me, my arms pressed inside his. “But what?”

  “Nothing. And don’t worry about the time. It doesn’t mean anything. You’ve had a rough couple of days and you had a shock. Don’t worry. At least you were here at home, eh?”

  His voice always lulled me. He’s got this way of talking to me, like he talked to Angelo when he was a baby and like he talked to his grandma when she was old and would get scared, not knowing where she was and who was in the room. Then his words hit.

  “But that?” I said, struggling out of his grip. “Yeah but that?” I braced my arms and pushed against him. “Is that why you didn’t tell me when you were at the police station? Because you didn’t want me freaking out at Howell Hall?”

  “No!” Marco said. “Are you kidding? They’d be the last people to be weird about anyone getting upset. They’d have helped you.”

  “Oh come off it!” I said, instantly angry again. “They help patients but they need the staff to be … not getting calls saying their kid’s been taken out of school by the police.”

  “I think you’re wrong about them,” Marco said. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring into the fryer as the oil started to shimmer.

  “I’m going for a bath,” I said. “I’m cold. And
don’t bother frying bloody doughnuts. I’m taking Angel into Dumfries when he gets off the school bus. He needs a new phone.”

  “Fair enough,” Marco said. “Oh hey, I printed you out some stuff that looked good. You know how you were worried about the art side of it? It’s by your side of the bed. Read it in the bath and tell me what you think.”

  But I didn’t. I locked the bathroom door and ran the water blistering hot into the iron bath in there. It was rough with soap scum from the three of us having showers every morning and there was a line of black at the bottom of the tiles, but once the air filled with steam I could lie there and stare straight up and let it all melt away. I could tell myself nothing had happened. I was just engrossed in looking at news. Everyone said the Internet ate your life if you sat in front of it, clicking away. And anyway, the brain is the strongest organ in the body. I refused to be ill again just like I refused to stay ill last time. I got better and I had stayed better for ten years. I didn’t even wobble when we lost everything. No way was I going back down now, when I finally had a job and Angel needed me.

  I put my head back and let myself sink deeper into the water, letting it creep up into my ears and steal around my face like a wimple. My breath was loud in my head and the heat made my blood pulse. I took a deep gulp of air and pulled myself right under so that everything was gone. Ruins and bones, job, car, house, husband and son, phones and print-outs and treatment menus, art supplies and checkpoints, clothes and rooms, words and deeds and life. It was all gone and I floated in warmth again like we all do, in our perfect beginnings. Hello, I said inside my head. Are you still here? I’m back.

  Then I stood up, scrubbed myself down with a mitt and a dollop of vanilla body wash, rinsed under the shower with the plug out, and stepped out to dry myself. I was absolutely fine.

  I wrapped myself in a bath sheet and scampered upstairs; Angelo was due any minute and he hated to see me in anything less than a neck-to-ankle dressing gown these days. I had an ear cocked for him as I dressed, but when I started back down again Marco was standing in the living room, looking at the front door.