House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  I could feel my colour rising, flustered as I was by his lack of discomfort. I changed the subject before he could ask me what was wrong. “Can I ask your advice about something?” He nodded and I plunged on. “My kid, my son. He’s fifteen and he’s had a bit of a knock. Some girl asked him out and then sent all her friends along to laugh when he turned up for the date.” Lars whistled. “He’s taking it really badly.”

  “First ever rejection?” said Lars. “It is his first ever rejection, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re still married to his dad, eh? No losses?”

  “Grandparents,” I said. I blurted it out so hard, Lars cocked his head in interest.

  “Recent?” he said. “Sorry, if it was one of yours.”

  “Oh no, it was ten years ago,” I said. “But it was complicated. That’s all.” I took a breath and tried to get a hold of the conversation again, tried to steer it away. “And he was pretty low anyway yesterday.”

  “Oh?”

  “He had his phone stolen and it was the one that was used to call the cops about the body.” It was out before I had decided to say it.

  Lars had been nodding along, but it took a couple of blinks for him to take that in.

  “This is just between you and me, right?” I said. “Except I’m surprised you haven’t had it from your pal already. Whatsisname.”

  “Boney,” said Lars. “What makes you think it was stolen?”

  I thought back over everything and couldn’t remember who had said that or why we’d thought it.

  “Because you live right there, right?” Lars went on. “Across the road? Does your son ever go to the Abbey? Because it said on the news it was a hang-out.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “What? Oh come off it, Ali, I’m not saying anything about your boy! Just that, if you live there and he goes there, maybe he dropped it. And if someone was over there and saw something suspicious and saw a phone just lying … Well, of course they’d want to use the lost phone and keep it anonymous. Wouldn’t you?”

  Relief rushed in and filled me until I felt I might start floating. “Oh!” I said. “Oh my God, you’ve no idea the nightmares I’ve been having. I thought he was lying about it being lost. I thought he was lying to the police and he knew something about the bones.”

  “Why would you think that?’

  I stared at him. Because he looked at the police lights that night and said I’d just about given up, as it goes. But I didn’t say that. And I didn’t even say because he was too upset for it to be a stand-up from a girl he hardly knew. What I did say—changing the subject again—was, “Something suspicious? Like what?”

  “Bones breaking the surface when the flood went down,” Lars said. “That’s the obvious thing. You’re right, though. Nobody’s ever said it. We’ve no idea how the person who made the call knew the body was there, have we?”

  “Kind of gets in the way of saying they found Angel’s phone lying there and grabbed it,” I said.

  “Angel’s your boy?” said Lars.

  “Angelo.”

  “Unless … ” He looked at his watch and started. “Bugger it, I’m late.”

  “Unless what?” I asked him.

  “Unless it was the killer,” he said. “Unless the killer’s been visiting the grave all the time the bones were in there, knowing he’d have to report them sometime and then he sees a phone and thinks it’s a sign. TTFN, Ali.”

  And he was gone, just leaving me with it. A killer coming to gloat over the site of his crime. Bones breaking the surface. Angelo over there all those nights on his own.

  “How you feeling?” I asked as I edged round his bedroom door.

  “Shit, thanks. You?” he said from under his duvet. The room was beyond stale. It was foetid. My fingers itched to open the window. I sat down on the end of his bed and he snatched his feet away as if the touch of my hip had burned them.

  “What have you got planned for this weekend?” I said.

  “Skiing,” Angelo muttered. “Surfing. Scuba-diving. Might go to the opera.”

  “You’re a cheeky wee toerag,” I said, grabbing an ankle through the bedclothes and squeezing it. “Do you want us to take you to get a new phone or will I just give you cash and you go yourself?”

  “I don’t need a phone,” he said. “I’ve got no one I want to talk to.”

  “Now look, Angel,” I said. “I’m sorry you got hurt. I’d like to track her down and tan her arse for her, if you’d tell me her name.”

  “Her arse is tanned already,” Angelo said. “She’s got a sunbed.”

  “That’s more like it,” I said. “That sounds more like you. And I’m going to choose to think that was a guess, by the way, and you’ve never seen her arse.” But I made a note to tell Marco to buy some condoms and hand them over. “I’m not here to talk about that, anyway. I want to talk about the Abbey. The times you were over at the Abbey.”

  “I’m not going back,” he said. “If that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “But when you were there. Did you ever see anyone hanging around? I mean, did you ever see the same person twice?”

  “Mum, just leave it!” he said, nearly shouting. “I’m not going back. I don’t want a phone. I’m not asking you for anything. Just leave me alone.”

  “Oh, okay, I’ll leave you alone,” I said. “Except for this one thing: I’m never going to leave you alone, Angel. You’re my son. I’m your mother. You are stuck with me asking you stuff and worrying about you and being right in your face whether you want me there or not until the day I pop my clogs. Me and your dad. Sorry, kid. That’s a family.”

  “Aye right,” he said. “Our perfect family.”

  I let go of his ankle and laid a hand instead on his arm. He swatted me away. “Is this about Granny and Granddad?” I was casting around wildly now, but I hadn’t forgotten him saying that his cousin Billie had been in their swimming pool. “Just because they reckoned they’d done their job and I had graduated, you have to believe I’d never do that to you.”

  He was moving. He sat up and shook back damp hair. “You haven’t got a bloody clue, Mum, have you? And you think I’m as clueless as you are.”

  “What does that mean?” I stared at him, his red eyes and his picked spots.

  “If you have to ask the question … ” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t understand the answer. That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. Okay, answer this question instead: Why weren’t you surprised when the cops found the bones?”

  “Bones?” he said. He shook his head and did that breathing-out laugh. “Not a clue.”

  So I left him, shut the door on the stale air and misery, went into the kitchen, and pulled the magnetic notepad down off the door of the fridge.

  So many notes over the years. The early ones had love hearts and kisses on them, then they were dashed off in shorthand code as we juggled our jobs and the baby: ETA? Defrost 8 mins. Lately I’d been careful to compose them just right: kisses again and nothing too breezy. Still, I had never hesitated this long. I could text Marco, but he’d call back. He always did. And for some reason I couldn’t fathom, I didn’t want to talk to him. Gone to big T, I wrote in the end. Need to PaT. KO. Love you, Ax.

  That should do it. It would make him happy to see me back to my old ways, off to the big Tesco to push a trolley, always my cure for a rough day. And he’d know what I meant by KO, not OK. He was always better at talking to Angel than I was. Loved his Daddy’s boy.

  Tesco shone out across the dark like a mega-church and I could feel myself unwinding as soon as I bumped the trolley over the corded mat between the double doors and into the Technicolor burst of flowers and magazines and the pumped-out scent of fresh baking. I took my coat off and stowed it in the baby seat, checked there were plenty of hot chicken portions in the display for when I’d finish
ed, and headed for the books.

  I didn’t even need to buy anything, just touch and wonder. Seven quid for two good paperbacks, bras and pants for a tenner a set. One of my clients bored me to death one time about why I should shop local and shun The Man, but nowhere else made me quite as happy in quite the same way. And it was guaranteed to keep Marco and Angelo away too, so it was all mine for the taking.

  I put pâté and raisin loaf and coconut milk in my trolley, feeling a little bit of the last six months shake loose and lift away from me in flakes, like the dark grease from a roasting pan when it’s plunged into deep hot water. I could even face the cosmetics aisle again. At first, after I lost my wholesale supplier, I couldn’t stand trawling up and down this mass-produced muck. Then I couldn’t afford it and I was buying litre bottles of body lotion, putting it on my face and pressing a flannel over it before bed. When I got up for the toilet one time, Marco, sitting in the living room with a bottle of beer half-drunk said, “Why’s your face so shiny? You not feeling well?” I said nothing. It was shiny every night—as he’d know if he ever came to bed—because I was saving the money he spent on beer.

  There was another woman in the make-up aisle with me. I walked past her and then something about her face made me turn back. She was testing lipsticks on the back of her hand, opening tubes and drawing stripes on herself. She had a phone crooked against her shoulder.

  “Calm down,” she was saying. A haughty voice, plenty of tobacco in it. “I shall hang up if you don’t calm down and talk properly.” She found a shade she liked and smeared it over her mouth then looked around for a mirror. I was sure I knew her, I thought, as she wheeled briefly to face me. I pretended to read the back of the night cream box I was holding and kept listening.

  “How short is short?” she said. “You haven’t shaved it off, have you?”

  Her face was definitely familiar, strong and ugly, and the way she stood, knees locked in that overstraight way and her high bosom thrown out …

  “Julius Caesar?” she said, with a smoky laugh. “That’s supposed to be a reasonable stylistic choice, is it?”

  I turned away and picked up another pot of cream from a higher shelf, jumping when the censor went off. This was one of the expensive ones.

  “What?” said the woman. “I didn’t hear you. I’m in the middle of a supermarket with God knows what going on.” I could feel her eyes on my back. “Oh don’t be ridiculous. It’ll grow, Ju-ju. God knows it can’t look worse. No, of course I won’t sue them. You must learn to act with a little more— I shan’t stay on the line if you’re going to be silly. I’m hanging up. Goodbye.”

  I gave her a minute and then turned round. She was still twisting this way and that, looking for the mirror she wanted. I scrabbled in my bag and held out a vanity compact to her. A pretty embellished thing Angel had got me for Christmas. I knew he had probably pocketed it in some accessories shop, but I treasured it anyway.

  “Ha,” said the woman. “Very civil of you. These places used to have mirrors and tissues, didn’t they? Gad! Horrific. I look like a tart.”

  I was sure now. This was Julia’s mother.

  “Did one of your girlfriends get the haircut from hell?” I said. “Sorry. I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “My daughter,” she said. “She’s boarding and there seems to have been a sort of pyjama party that got out of hand. She’s done a bit of a DIY Samson job, apparently.”

  “Oh dear,” I said. I couldn’t think of a single way to keep this conversation going.

  “No loss. She had perpetrated a hideous home dye job anyway and she takes after her late lamented father in the follicular department.”

  I hoped I had managed to hide the leap of interest in my face. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said.

  “What?” She was raking through the lipsticks again.

  “Late father, you said.”

  “Oh!” she said. “Not a bit of it. He left no will, so I scooped the lot. No loss at all.”

  “And your daughter’s away at boarding school, is she?” I said. “That must be difficult at such a time.”

  “What?” she said again. She was just about to tell me to get lost and stop pestering her. I knew it.

  “You’re working from the wrong palette, you know,” I said, moving closer. “You should be steering clear of blue-ish reds and pinks with your colouring. A tomato-red would be much more flattering.”

  “Tomato?” she said with another rasping laugh. “Bet they don’t call it that!”

  I handed her a tissue and started riffling through the stand, ignoring the ones she’d broken open, looking for what I wanted. “Here you go,” I said seizing one and handing it over. “Try this.”

  “November Sunset,” she said. “See what I mean? Not a tomato in sight.” But she cracked the seal and smeared it on her top lip, rubbing them together to spread it. She peered in my mirror and grunted. “You’ve done me a favour,” she said. “I look almost human.”

  “You look very striking,” I said. The yellow-red was better against her drinker’s complexion and her tombstone teeth. She really was a remarkably unattractive woman. So much so that she had come out the other end somehow and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  “Well, thank you,” she said. She gave me a little nod of dismissal and started to move away.

  “You could say it with coffee,” I said. “I’m going up to the caff for a sit-down.”

  She frowned. Maybe she thought I was trying to pick her up. I smiled and walked away, then held my grin in check as I heard her coming after me.

  “I’m headed that way myself,” she said. “Meeting someone, but I’m early. So why not? Whyever not?” She had pocketed the lipstick, I saw. I left my trolley at the bottom of the stairs for when I came back again.

  “What did you say your daughter’s name was?” I said, when we sat down with our coffees. “Sorry. I wasn’t really eavesdropping, but being a hairdresser, I couldn’t help pricking up my ears.”

  “Ah,” she said. “And I suppose you do all the paint and powder too, do you?”

  “Busted,” I said. “Jo-jo? That’s my sister’s name.” The lies were pouring out of me.

  “Ju-ju,” she said. “Short for Julia.”

  “How old is she?” I said. “You never think when they’re toddling that they’ll ever be more trouble, do you?”

  “Julia gives trouble a new meaning,” the woman said. “Hence a meeting, out of hours, with her bloody headmistress. If I go in during office hours I’m liable to break things. We meet on neutral territory.”

  I nodded. She was really going for this “boarding school” story. Odd. Women like her were usually immune from shame. They let it all hang out and stared down anyone who had an opinion.

  “Private school?” I said. “No way you’d get this service otherwise.”

  “I pay for this and more, believe me. And she’s late.” She took a draught of her coffee as if it was a pint of cider on a hot summer’s day and left half the colour from her bottom lip on the cup. “Ugh,” she said, swiping at it with her thumb. “That’s why I don’t usually paint myself like the whore of Babylon. But this bloody woman I’m meeting is always so perfect. With her scarves matching her shoes and her bloody tailored—”

  I was gone. I shouted over my shoulder about my pager going off on vibrate, as if a hairdresser would ever have to break into a run, and then I was gone. I left the trolley where it stood and took a wide swerve towards the front door, checking for Dr. Ferris before I darted out the double doors and across the carpark, my stomach roiling. Not until I was sitting in my car did I let my breath out.

  No way. It was strange for a school headmistress to meet one of the mums at half seven in Tesco’s café. It was bizarre for Dr. Ferris to do the same. Which one of them didn’t want Julia’s mum at the Hall? And why?

  I couldn�
��t make sense of it, but one thing was clear. That woman had said her husband was dead. Dr. F had told me he’d walked out. Someone was lying.

  Thirteen

  The weekend laboured past, an angry wind hurling rain at the windows and the three of us sealed in our separate little spheres.

  Angel stayed in his room, silent and plugged in, refusing to answer any of my inquiries or even respond to my smiles. His MP3 player and earbuds were so tiny it seemed worse somehow than a big box on his desk and a cushiony pair of headphones that dwarfed his face like a bonnet. Now he was just absent, and until you looked closely, it was hard to see why. “You know where I am, if you need me,” I mouthed at him.

  Marco was on the couch, his phone on the armrest chirping at him. He had a ring binder of his own, a grubby blue plastic thing mended with insulating tape, and he flipped through it, pretending to be learning the stock but with golf and football both on the split screen.

  I should have tried harder to get through to them, either of them, but I stayed upstairs, under the covers, drawing up treatment plans, trying to learn names. There were three junkies called Ron, Trish, and Cate—three women in their twenties with the same over-dyed, over-straightened hair and the same dark shadows round their eyes, and with histories so identical I knew I’d never learn which was which. I wondered if it mattered. Unless I got the name of one of their kids wrong, they’d never know. The new ana-mia joining Drew, Posy, and Roisin was called Beryl. Her photo didn’t tell me if she dated from when “Beryl” was a common name and she’d been ill for years or if “Beryl” was coming back round again and she just looked old from starving. I studied her picture and wondered if I would dare to touch her, if her scabbed skin and skeletal frame could actually stand up to anything I could offer.

  That was my split screen of golf and footy. What I was really drinking from, as Marco drank from the beeps of his phone, was the picture Sylvie had drawn for me. I gazed at it for long spells and spun tales. It hadn’t even occurred to Dr. Ferris that Sylvie had put those marks on the paper, I thought again. And she’d been thunderstruck that Sylvie met my gaze that first day. She hadn’t seen the smile or the echoed whisper better. Maybe I was getting through to Sylvie like no one had for ten long years.