Chosen

by Lesley Glaister

  About the Author

  © Andrew Greig

  Lesley Glaister was born in Northamptonshire and grew up in Suffolk, moving to Sheffield where she took a degree with the Open University. She was ‘discovered’ by the novelist Hilary Mantel when she attended a course given by the Arvon Foundation in 1989. Her first novel, Honour Thy Father, won the Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award.

  Thirteen novels later, Lesley Glaister lives with her husband between Sheffield, Edinburgh and Orkney. She has three sons and teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.

  Chosen

  Also by Lesley Glaister

  Honour Thy Father

  Trick or Treat

  Digging to Australia

  Limestone and Clay

  Partial Eclipse

  The Private Parts of Women

  Easy Peasy

  Sheer Blue Bliss

  Now You See Me

  As Far as You Can Go

  Nina Todd Has Gone

  Edited by Lesley Glaister

  Are You She?

  CHOSEN

  Lesley Glaister

  This edition published in June 2011

  First published in May 2010

  by Tindal Street Press Ltd

  217 The Custard Factory, Gibb Street,

  Birmingham, B9 4AA

  www.tindalstreet.co.uk

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright © Lesley Glaister 2010

  The moral right of Lesley Glaister to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP OLP

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 906994 20 4

  Ebook ISBN: 978 1 906994 53 2

  Typeset by Alma Books Ltd

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Lesley Glaister

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Dodie

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Stella and Me

  Dodie

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Acknowledgements

  To Lawrence, Andy and Ginny with love

  Chosen

  DODIE

  1

  She stands on the dark front doorstep, shivering, listening to the sound of nothing happening inside. You can sense if there’s someone in a house and there must be someone here – Stella never leaves the place. But that doesn’t stop the awful feeling that there’s no one here: no one who’s breathing.

  A weird red dress, Seth said. She should have taken more notice. He’d been round at her house after school one day last week – Wednesday? Thursday? He’d come through the door and dropped his schoolbag on the floor, as he often did, to scrounge something from the fridge – and to put off going home to Stella.

  Crowing with delight, Jake had toddled over to Seth, to be swung, shrieking joyfully, into the air. Four-thirtyish, it must have been. That time when the day starts to collapse into a blur of mess and fretfulness, towards food and bath and stories and bed and at long, long last, quiet and a glass of wine.

  So she hadn’t paid much attention.

  ‘But, will you babysit on Friday?’ She definitely had asked that.

  ‘I’ll text you.’ He’d grinned – and they both knew that meant yes. He loved to babysit, to get to eat pizza in front of the TV with a can of beer and his feet up on the coffee table – something Stella would never allow, not in a million years.

  He’d put Jake down, gone to the fridge for milk. She’d watched his long knobbly fingers, clever fingers that could mend anything. He liked nothing better than to take a machine apart and put it back together.

  And then he said: ‘Mum’s gone weird.’

  ‘Gone weird!’ Dodie said. ‘And don’t swig from the carton.’

  With his sleeve, he wiped the milky moustache from his handsome face – well, potentially handsome, with his dark blue eyes, and humorous quirky mouth. ‘Weirder than usual.’ He burped sonorously. ‘She’s got this dress hanging in the hall. A red dress, like a weird red dress.’

  ‘What’s weird about it?’ she asked, but at that moment Jake fell over and cracked his head on the table leg and then the phone rang for Rod and she had to go and get him out of his shed, and then . . . well it was all busy and hot and Seth had gone to lie on the floor and play trains with Jake, keeping him out from under her feet while she peeled the spuds.

  And she’d forgotten about the dress, though in miniature it has been swaying somewhere at the back of her mind ever since: a red dress hanging in that cold bleak hall.

  No one’s going to open the door. The streetlamp shines a dappled light through the dripping branches of the laburnum on the wet pebbledash. She braces herself to go down the darker, dank side passage. The garden gate squeals, grating on its hinges. She stops and runs her finger inside one of the wrought-iron twiddles, picking up a scratch of rust. You’ll get lockjaw, Stella used to warn her – that lockjaw smell of swing chains, seesaws, seasick. She stands looking up at the back of the house, but there’s no sign of life: just blank, black windows with the rain sluicing down.

  She returns to the front doorstep, pressing her finger continuously on the bell and rat-tat-tatting with the fox-head doorknocker that used to scare her with its snarl. She opens the letterbox, catching her finger in the sharp bristles behind it, angles her head down and calls, ‘Mum, Mum!’

  Seth had definitely said he’d text about the babysitting, but he didn’t, and so she’d come round on Friday afternoon to find him. Rain gurgles and drips from the gutter – as it did on Friday – and a greenish mould spreads map-like from a leak in the drainpipe. Ask Rod to fix that, she thinks, though he wouldn’t and she won’t. Her stupid teeth are chattering. She will have to go back into that darkness, down the garden to the shed and get the key – but she puts off the moment, remembering how it went on Friday afternoon.

  She’d stood here then, knocking and ringing and eventually giving up and trying round the back. But that time there had been a light in the downstairs window, and she’d seen the curtain twitch. ‘Mum!’ she’d called. ‘I know you’re in there.’ Eventually the door had opened and Stella had stood hunched above her on the step.

  ‘Going to let me in then?’ Dodie said, and when Stella hesitated, ‘What? You got a fancy man in there?’

  Stella stepped back to allow her in. Dodie pushed down her hood and scrabbled her fingers through her hair. ‘You look nice.’ She took a closer look at her mother. For years Stella had crept about in a filthy dressing gown, but today she was tattily splendid in the weird red dress – which
wasn’t so weird, just ancient and ethnic of some sort – but weird, certainly, to see her so attired. Her hair, usually a mass of greasy rats’ tails, was washed and fluffy and there was kohl smudged round her startling grey eyes.

  Stella squeezed out a smile. She might have been dressed up but the kitchen was the same as ever: chilly, bleach-scented, a trace of dope hanging in the air. As if checking for continuity, Dodie’s eyes had ticked off the normal things: the tea cosy – a knitted cottage – derelict now; the potato masher with its split wooden handle; the giant scissors that could snip through bones. But there was also a carrot, half-chopped on a wooden board.

  ‘Cooking?’ Dodie said, surprised. Stella hadn’t, to her knowledge, cooked for years.

  ‘Soup,’ Stella said. ‘Thought I might.’

  They stood in the tiny kitchen like actors in need of a prompt.

  ‘You could offer me a cup of tea,’ Dodie suggested and Stella turned – so thin that, from behind, the dress looked empty – to fill the kettle, before she led Dodie through into the dining room. On the table, as always, there was a puzzle, this time a view of Venice. It was almost completed, just a few jagged islands left to fill – a bit of sky, part of a façade, the curved prow of a gondola.

  Dodie shivered and huddled into her jacket. ‘Why don’t you put the fire on?’ The overhead light was a bleak forty watts, flattening and ageing, seeming to drain everything it illuminated of light.

  ‘Did you want anything in particular?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Actually I’m looking for Seth. He in?’

  Stella went back into the kitchen, a fusty, patchouli smell coming off the old velvet as she passed. The one-handed clock showed it was gone five and Seth’s schoolbag was on the floor, but if he was in he’d have come bounding downstairs by now.

  ‘Seth told me about the dress. Why are you all dolled up, anyway?’ Dodie said, studying the puzzle.

  Stella returned with a mug of tea, centred it on a coaster on the table. She’d kept that table immaculate for years, an island of shine among the rest of the mean, dull furniture.

  ‘He’s out,’ Stella said, avoiding her eyes.

  ‘Out where?’ Dodie said. ‘Aren’t you having one?’

  Stella gnawed the corner of her thumbnail.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Dodie asked. She watched Stella frowning at the puzzle. Dodie spotted a piece, the gondolier’s stockinged shin, and her fingers twitched. Half her childhood was spent here, like this, hunched over a puzzle, her reflection floating deep beneath her in the shine of the rosy wood.

  ‘Mum, where is he? See, he’s meant to be babysitting tonight but I can’t get hold of him.’ She took a sip of weak, bleachy tea.

  ‘Not here to see me, then?’

  ‘That too, of course, Mum. Has he lost his phone or something?’

  Stella ripped at her cuticle and a bead of blood appeared beside her thumbnail. She licked it off and Dodie looked away, watching her own hand pick up the piece and fit it in. There. Satisfaction at the snugness of the fit. The striped trousers distinctive; she immediately saw another bit.

  ‘You know that if I thought you wanted to see me, I’d come more often.’ She looked up at Stella but the face was closed, the winter-coloured eyes unreadable. There was a creak on the stairs and Dodie looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘The pipes?’

  ‘Where is he?’ Dodie insisted, but Stella only shrugged. No point trying to get round her if she wanted to be like that. Dodie went to the foot of the stairs, looked up, and called Seth’s name – but there was no response, just cold gloom and she couldn’t bear it. Besides, she had to get back and pick Jake up. She didn’t have time for this.

  Stella called her, and she went back into the dining room, irritated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Help me.’

  ‘What, Mum?’

  Stella’s eyes were wide, mouth opening on a half-formed word.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The puzzle,’ she said. ‘Only that. I want to get it finished.’ Her fingers were trembling and she wound a strand of hair round one of her bitten finger-ends.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ Dodie said. ‘Tell Seth I’m expecting him at eight.’ She kissed Stella’s cheek, and felt the tension quivering through her.

  ‘Dodie?’ Stella said.

  ‘I’ll have to run for my bus. What?’ Dodie opened the back door onto the rain, pulled up her hood and tucked her hair inside. Stella came to stand beside her on the step. ‘What?’

  ‘I . . .’ Stella extended her hand as if to touch Dodie, something that she hadn’t done voluntarily for years.

  ‘What?’ Had the irritation shown in her voice? She looked at the rain glistening on Stella’s outstretched palm. ‘Come on, Mum, I’m getting soaked.’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Stella wiped her hand on her skirt and – sort of – smiled.

  ‘I’m off, then,’ Dodie said.

  ‘Goodbye, Dodie.’

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  That was Friday and this is Monday and she’s still heard nothing from Seth. And he’s always round at the weekend. Of course, she should have gone upstairs when she heard the noise; she shouldn’t have let Stella fob her off like that, like always. She steps back to look at the rain streaming down the dark window-glass. She will have to get the key and go inside and find out what’s wrong.

  It’s horrible going down the dark side of the house again, squeaking though the gate, stepping across the long soggy grass and snagging brambles to the shed, where the spare key should be hanging on a nail. The shed door creaks open on the smell of flower-pots and spiders and there are webs there, in the dark, where she must put her hand. From a neighbouring garden there’s the half-hearted detonation of a firework going off, though Guy Fawkes was weeks ago. She presses her fists against her mouth before she can steel herself to feel about in the darkness. Her fingers tangle in a resistant softness before she finds the key, unhooks it from its nail and hurries round to the front of the house, grateful to be back in the wavery streetlight. She scrubs her fingers fiercely against her jeans to rid them of the sticky sensation of cobwebs before she lifts the key and fits it in the lock.

  2

  She knows what she will see before she sees it. Once she’s twisted the key, the door swings open and the streetlight illuminates in patches the bruisy velvet of the hanging dress. Her eyes flinch in their sockets, her fingers press against her lips. It’s too dark inside to see properly. She reaches round to the switch, and in the sudden blare of light her eyes slide every where before she can make them rest on the central thing.

  The rope is blue; over the head a brown paper bag; the fingers are curled and purple; the toes beneath the velvet hem are dusky. The bag looks comical with its poking corners, and a laugh like a curd of something sour catches in Dodie’s throat. There’s a strong smell of patchouli oil and a stain on the carpet. She shuts the door, turns her back to it, her hand going for her phone.

  ‘Come,’ she says to Rod, ‘now, and don’t bring Jake.’ And then rings off. She supposes she should call the police. Too late for an ambulance. There’s something ludicrous and melodramatic about dialling 999. ‘A body,’ she says, giving the address. ‘A suicide,’ and her voice splinters on the word mother.

  She slides down the door and crouches with her chin on her knees, arms clamped round her legs. Beside her is the old cow milk crate, its tail a pointer: 0 Pintas Today Milkman Please!

  Earlier in the day Rod told her he was leaving her. Timing, she thinks, the curd in her throat again, perfect timing. She’d rushed out to see Stella in order get out of there, to get away from him. If he hadn’t said he was leaving, she’d have stayed at home and Stella would still be dangling undiscovered. Or Seth might have found her. Thank God, it hadn’t been Seth. But his head teacher couldn’t be right. ‘Seth’s gone to stay with your rel
atives in America,’ he’d said when she rang him that morning. America? What relatives?

  Rain patters on her hood and falls like interference against the light. Over the road a porch lamp glows cheery and innocent. It’s not late, though it feels like midnight or past midnight or no time; it feels like no recognizable time at all. The police will be gearing up to investigate. Rod will be trying to find a babysitter.

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ Rod had said, once she’d done the dishes and Jake was in his cot – though he knew she was trying not to drink on Mondays or most Tuesdays.

  ‘America.’ Dodie had picked up a J-cloth and swatted half-heartedly at some crumbs on the highchair tray. ‘Why would he go to America? The head teacher said we had relatives there, but we don’t, not that I know of.’

  ‘Dodie?’

  ‘And why didn’t Mum say?’

  Rod thumped his fist down on the table. ‘Dodie.’

  ‘What?’

  She knew what he was going to say, such a cliché she was embarrassed for him: ‘We need to, you know, talk.’ And then he glugged his beer with the relief of having said it.

  She opened Jake’s feeder-cup and watched the dregs of milk go down the drain.

  He sat at the kitchen table then got up again. He finished the can and squashed it flat. The room was too small for him, too small for pacing about in.

  ‘Christ, I need a smoke.’ He opened the back door. Jake’s plastic toys glowed in the rainy yard. The crusty old hydrangea heads glittered like disco balls in the spilled kitchen light. He stood just outside the door so the smoke, mingled with the rainy air, flowed inside.

  ‘You might as well smoke in here,’ she grumbled. Rod stood with his back to her, filling the doorway; a big man with broad shoulders. ‘Go on then,’ she said.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I think I met someone,’ he said.

  The tap dripped. The clock ticked. There was a streak of something like tomato ketchup on the door of the fridge. ‘Think?’