House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  “Oh no,” I said. “We decided not to go ahead with that … project. Your soon-to-be-ex-husband is looking after the Boswell girls, and Lars and I are here teaching my soon-to-be-ex-husband a lesson. Okay?”

  “Project?” Dr. Ferris said.

  “We’ll never prove it,” I told her. “So you’re probably safe. You’ll only get done for … Lars, what would you call it? What the good doctor did to Sylvie?”

  “Assault,” said Lars, loud enough for her to hear. “False imprisonment, actual bodily harm. Maybe grievous bodily harm.”

  “There’s no evidence,” she said.

  “No evidence?” I said. “Did you know my son took a photo of the hand while it had the watch on? Did Dido tell you?”

  Her intake of breath was like paper ripping. “What?” she whispered.

  “Oh yes. He took it off his phone but he kept it on his laptop and I’ve got it on a flash drive too.”

  “A photo? Of the watch?”

  “Before it wound up in your desk drawer,” I said. “Didn’t Dido tell you?”

  Another sheet of paper ripped and afterwards her breath came rough and ragged. “Nonsense,” she said. “My desk drawer?”

  “And I took a photo of it in there,” I lied. I wished I had, but her thinking I did was almost as good. “You’re telling me you didn’t know?”

  “Of course I didn’t know!” she said. “Why would I bother taking it off if there was a photo?”

  “So you didn’t send your daughter to silence my son?” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You sound sincere,” I said. “And I want to believe you. So how about if you tell me where Dido and Angel are.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know they were—”

  “Or give me her number, at least,” I broke in. “And we’ll help you pretend Sylvie just recovered suddenly. How about that, eh?”

  “You’re not going to harm her, are you?” she said. They were the first genuine words I had ever heard drip from her lips.

  “Harm her?” I said, incredulous. “Harm your daughter?”

  And I think she recognised the truth of my words too. At any rate, she gave me the number. I relayed it to Lars and he keyed it into my mobile. Then without another word we left the house. Left Marco just sitting there. The sun was going down behind the Abbey, long fingers of yellow light dazzling through the empty sockets where windows should be.

  I stoop on the doorstep and stared across at it.

  “Is this real?” I said. “Is any of this really happening? Or is this me going off my head like Marco’s been waiting for all these years?”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” said Lars. “Sorry, Ali. This is as real as rat shit in your raisins.”

  “Right,” I said, laughing. “Right then. Looks like I won’t be getting a month in Howell Hall in one of the big bedrooms with the good toiletries, even if I am married to the boss’s boyfriend.”

  “If the doc’s right about the SCCE inspectors heading that way this afternoon, nobody’ll be in there long,” said Lars. “I’ve seen those guys bring the hammer down on a place before. It’ll have started already.”

  “As quick as that?”

  “If getting sued’s the other option, yeah. Anyway, that’s not the point right this minute.”

  I nodded, gathering myself up again. “How are we going to find Angel and Dido? Where will we start? Are you going to try her phone?”

  “Speaking of phones,” said Lars. “What did Marco mean when he said the phone call was a long time ago? What call was he talking about?”

  I shook my head, casting my thoughts around like driftnets. So many phones. Missed calls and logs and messages. It was so much harder these days for anyone to miss anyone they wanted to speak to, and yet it didn’t make it any better. It was just as hard to reach across a chasm once you’d let it open.

  “Oh!” I said as the truth broke over me.

  I rubbed the phone screen with my thumb. I’d kept the number. I even transferred it phone to phone when I upgraded, made sure I had a Euro-roving account. All for that one French phone number I had never rung. I hit the little green icon and listened to it ringing.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Mum?” I said. “It’s Ali. Mum, I know this is coming out of nowhere, but … all those years ago, what did Marco tell you?”

  “He simply made your position clear,” my mum said, that same snippy voice that used to tell me to sit up straight and clear my own dishes.

  “What did he say?” I asked her again.

  “He told me you were fine and didn’t want a fuss. That there was no funeral planned and we’d only upset you if we came over and tried to change your mind.”

  I nodded—as if she could see me! And I took a few big breaths, calming myself, before I tried to speak again.

  “We’ve got a lot of talking to do,” I said. “When would be a good time for you?”

  “Anytime, Ali,” she told me, all snippiness gone. “Day or night, darlin’. I’m your mum.”

  I hung up, because the neighbour was twitching at his curtains and because if I said one more word I would be sobbing.

  Twenty-Four

  All those years. I’d missed their ruby wedding. They’d missed my fortieth birthday. They hadn’t seen Angel on his first day at school or his best day at swimming. They hadn’t been there to share the champagne when Face Value opened or the vodka when it closed. My dad hadn’t been around when Marco laid out his plans, and he couldn’t tell me how muddle-headed they were, help me get him told before we lost everything. And how I had hated them for it. If she’d phoned me, I wouldn’t have said day or night. But, then, I wasn’t her mum.

  The neighbour was peering at me. Poor old codger. Bloody awful neighbours we’d been since we rolled up, hadn’t we? I waved at him and mimed opening the window.

  “I don’t want another mouthful,” he said as he leaned out.

  “I need your help,” I said. “I think my son probably got picked up by a friend in a car a wee while ago. Can you tell me which way it went?”

  “Went? It didn’t go anywhere,” he said. “That’s it sitting right there in my space outside my gate.”

  I looked where he was pointing. Julia had said a red Mini or a pink Jeep. It was actually a Volkswagen Beetle in lemon yellow. Same difference; it was a car that screamed spoiled teenage girl.

  “You haven’t got a car,” I said. “What harm’s it doing you?”

  “I might have a taxi coming,” he said and slammed the window.

  Lars was already dialling, on speaker, and, of course—of course—when the call went through we heard it both tinny from inside the phone and very faint from all the way across the road in the Abbey grounds.

  “Where else?” Lars said and started walking.

  “I think she meant it,” I said, scurrying along beside him. “I don’t think Dr. Ferris knew about the photo. I don’t think she sent Dido to … shut Angel up.”

  Lars took my arm and broke into a run. “Let’s hurry anyway,” he said grimly.

  All the police cars and vans had made a worse mess than the flood. A week before, when the water went down, the grass was still grass, even sodden in yellowing clumps. But now the whole bowl of grounds where the ruins sat was a soup of mud, churned up into ropes and clods from the tyres, like piped chocolate icing. It sucked at my feet and splatted up my trouser legs. Lars had to give me his arm to steady me as I lurched and skidded towards where the phone was ringing out, bouncing off the high stones and echoing.

  “Why doesn’t she answer?” I said, clutching at Lars.

  “Angelo?” he shouted. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  The ringing stopped.

  I could see it in my head long before I got to the corner and looked for real
. I saw her, tall and haughty, standing over him, looking coldly down, taking a picture for a souvenir. And Angel’s face blue with blood, his eyes drying, his tongue pushed out and as black as his lashes. I threw myself at the last of the buttresses and hauled my way round to look at the scene, to grab her and choke the life out of her with my two bare hands.

  They were huddled together on a slab of rock, their muddy feet pulled up out of the mess, arms around each other. Angel and a little round girl with a pink flash in the front of her Mohawk.

  “Dido?” I said, as the vision of a younger, taller, icier version of her mother melted away.

  “Are you Mrs. McGovern?” she said.

  “Does your mum know where you are?”

  “My mum?” she said. “You’re kidding. My mum told me I had to dump Angel. She told me he was trouble.”

  “Who’s that?” said Angel. He was glaring at Lars. I dropped his hand and took a step towards the pair of them.

  “Sounds like you made a proper job of the dumping,” I said. “Did your mum tell you to send your friends to carry out a public shaming?”

  “Mu-um!” said Angel. “We’ve sorted all that out.”

  Dido had put her head down and when she spoke again her voice was tiny. “I had to burn my bridges to make myself stick to it,” she said. It sounded like something she’d said more than once before.

  “It doesn’t seem to have worked,” I said, looking at the way their arms were wrapped round one another. “And did your mum tell you to go out with him in the first place? I said. “Did your mum tell you to get his phone?”

  Angelo took his arms away and stared at her, the shock making his face turn pale. “Did she?” he said. He turned to me. “Mum, is that why you’ve been asking about Dr. Ferris on and on?”

  “Of course she didn’t,” Dido said. “No! He left the phone in the car, I think. It fell out of his pocket when we were—” She stopped as a blush the colour of a raspberry filled her cold cheeks.

  “Wow,” said Lars. “It was a coincidence? Her daughter and your son? His phone?”

  “Well,” said Dido, her face still flaming. “She pointed him out. She—Angel, she pointed you out. One day in Kirkcudbright. You were with your dad and she just said you were handsome.”

  I could imagine it; Dr. Ferris seeing her fancy man and saying to her daughter, “He’s a looker, isn’t he?” not realising that Dido would look at the boy Dr. Ferris barely noticed. I shook my head at the wonder of it all. Such frail threads pulling us all to where we were now. Such tiny moments that our lives all turned on.

  “What’s going on, Mum?” Angel said.

  I stared at him. Where would I begin? “Nothing you need to worry about,” I said. “A bit of trouble with a couple of patients at work, that’s all. But it’s going to be okay.”

  “Is it Sylvie?” Dido said.

  “What do you know about Sylvie?” said Lars.

  “Only what my mum says when she’s been drinking,” Dido said. “Is she in trouble?”

  “Sylvie and her sister are both in a bit of trouble,” said Lars. “But really, it’s going to be okay. There might be a lot of changes coming, but it’ll work out.”

  Dido gave a small unhappy laugh. “I want to live with Dad, not with her.”

  I smiled at her. I only knew what it was like to be a let-down to my husband; I couldn’t imagine how it must be for a girl like Dido to be the kid of a woman like her mother.

  “Sylvie and her sister.” Angelo’s voice was as flat and cold as a slab of mud.

  “What about them?” I said.

  “Her sister? There’s two of them, Mum? Seriously? I’ve got two sisters living a few miles away and I’ve never met either of them? What the fuck is wrong with this family? How could you come and live here? No wonder you didn’t want to go and work there.”

  “Oh, my sweetheart,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said that, except I was embarrassed that your sister never had a name. I said the first one that came into my head when you asked. Sylvie is over thirty. She’s not your sister. Your sister was … Darlin’, I’m sorry, but she was so deformed she wasn’t really a baby at all.”

  Dido winced at the words but Angelo just frowned at me. “What are you talking about?” he said. “Of course she was a baby. I told you Dad took me to the hospital. I saw her. She was perfect. She was like a dolly. She was like the dolly I brought for her. You remember that dolly, right? I took it to Australia.”

  “Oh, Angelo,” I said. “That wasn’t her. Your dad showed you a different baby so’s not to upset you.”

  “Nooooo,” Angel said. “That’s not right. It was definitely her. She was perfect, but she was dead. Like a dolly.”

  The wind had dropped that way it does winter afternoons, and when the rain started it fell straight down like threads of heavy silk. Lars came wading towards me through the mud and put one flap of his jacket around my back. “We need to get out of here before we all drown,” he said. “Ali, you’re shivering.”

  “I don’t know where to go,” I said. I didn’t even think of what Angel would make of his mum sounding so lost. He was on his feet, helping Dido down from the slab of stone. She came up to his shoulder, her little pink and black head fitting in close under his chin. He wasn’t paying any attention to me. In Angel’s head the last few days had been about a date and a dumping and now a second chance. The police and his mum cracking up didn’t even register.

  “Angelo, take Dido to my place,” Lars said, fishing in his pocket and handing over a set of keys. “17 Bailey Park.”

  “It’s my car,” Dido said. “So I’ll be taking him.”

  Angelo rolled his eyes, but I couldn’t help a small smile. I liked her. She took no nonsense from anyone.

  “Where are we going?” I said to Lars.

  “You need to catch Belle coming off her shift.”

  He wouldn’t say more.

  Back at the Hall, the carpark was full.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Lars as we drew up.

  “I told you,” he said. “If the doc’s chucked his wife under the bus, things are going to move pretty quick.” He pointed to a couple hurrying in the front door. “That’s Byron’s mum and dad, coming to pick him up and save themselves a fortune.”

  I twisted round as an NHS patient transfer minibus came up the drive behind us. Lars whistled. “He’s really stuck it to her if they’re scooping up the referrals as quick as this, though.”

  “It’s too much,” I said. “What if we’re wrong? It’s all so unlikely, you know? We can’t be responsible for this on a crazy hunch about a crazy plot to—I can’t—”

  “Ali,” Lars said, putting a hand on my arm. “You need to start trusting yourself again. We’re not wrong. You know that, really. And … ”

  “And what?” I said, watching Ryan come out of the front door carrying a bulging gym bag, a nurse I didn’t know holding him under the elbow.

  “And you need to get ready for something else that’s going to seem unlikely,” Lars said.

  Ryan had seen us and came over, the nurse trotting after him. I wound down the window. “Fucken hell,” he said in greeting.

  “I couldn’t put it better myself,” I said, getting out of the car and giving him a quick hug, expert that I am in getting a hug in before a teenage boy can stop me. “Take care, eh?” Then I made for the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Lars said, once we were inside.

  “Sylvie. Where do you think? If Belle really needs to speak to me about this other unlikely thing, bring her there.”

  Julia was lying on the bed and Sylvie was in her chair facing the window, but she turned her head just a little as she heard me coming.

  “It’s all kicking off,” Julia said. “You wouldn’t believe how quick the tents are folding. Garran’s coming back from P
ortugal. I told them I was eighteen, and I’ve got Perry here anyway, but back he comes. That’ll be fun, won’t it? Both of them fussing over me like two hens with one chick.”

  “And your mum?”

  “On the run,” Julia said. “Cops came. Dr. F told them she killed Ralph and kept Sylvie high as a kite. She’s for it.” Her voice was back to the drawl again and she was scrolling through texts and swinging one of her crossed legs with her shoe dangling from a toe-tip. But she didn’t fool me.

  “You’ll get help,” I said. “You’ll get the help you need and you’ll be okay. Don’t be brave if you feel like bawling, eh?”

  Then movement at the door told me Belle was here.

  “I’ll stay with this pair,” Lars said. “You go.”

  Belle took me to the gazebo. The security light was on and it shone like a lantern as we tramped across the grass towards it through the mussed remains of Julia’s leaf collage. The inside didn’t smell any better and the cold blue tint of the lightbulb made it more cheerless than it would have been in the dark.

  “So you remember why I got sacked,” Belle said, once we were settled.

  “Boundary issues?”

  “You see, the thing is,” she said, “that sometimes the parents of a stillborn child, or even a late mis, sometimes they want to see and hold and love on that baby a while. And sometimes they can’t. But afterwards they might regret it and it’s too late? I always wanted to help them not regret the decision they made.”

  She had taken something out of her tunic pocket, but she was covering it with her hand.

  “Because you can’t unsee a horror,” I said, nodding. But Angel’s voice was in my head and the words he said were perfect and dolly.

  “She wasn’t a horror,” Belle said and uncovered her phone. On the screen was a picture of a sleeping child, a long sweep of lashes from the huge almond eyes, eyes that seemed to reach around her little face. Her mouth was pursed shut and firm lines scored down it, on either side. Queen Victoria, not amused. The hospital blanket that was wound around her like a cocoon covered all but a single sticky spike of jet black hair.