The Cut
Page 28
‘Oh, yeah. She’s very creative. She’s always loved the snow.’ The woman sighs. ‘Last year was so much better, you know.’
I’m curious, now. ‘How was it better?’
‘We had our own house in High Down,’ she says. ‘Me and my husband.’
I try to stop myself from softly whistling in awe. High Down’s rural, about four miles up the road from me. A mixture of timbered cottages and brand-new, four-bed semis. A far cry from Fallowdale.
‘What . . . happened?’ I ask her gently, trying not to look around at the desolation.
She shrugs, and turns down the corners of her big red mouth. ‘My fault. I could have kept quiet, and we would have carried on just as before. But no, I confronted him about shagging his secretary.’
I pull a face. ‘That must have been terrible for you. What a cliché, too.’
She blinks at me. ‘Well – not really.’ She raises her eyebrows, and her face creases in a smile as she gradually realizes she’s given me the wrong idea. ‘Such an athletic young man. Fancied him as soon as I saw him at the desk. I couldn’t help it.’
Right. I see. ‘And . . . your husband?’
‘Well, he went up the wall. Demanded a divorce, which he got, naturally. I had to fight tooth and nail for Kirsty, but I got her.’ She smiles proudly. ‘The courts don’t seem to mind adulterers. I needn’t have fought so hard, I found out later. Brendan would only have got her if I’d been a suicidal, alcoholic nympho, and even then he’d have had to be exemplary himself.’ She sighs. ‘You live up here?’
‘Oh, no,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m . . .’ (What am I? Think of something, Bel.) ‘Voluntary work. Visiting the elderly.’
‘Oh, right. Rather you than me, girl. Don’t they all stink of piss?’
‘Yeah,’ I tell her with a grin, and we laugh together, out loud, cleanly, happily, a good sound in this bad place, sending ghosts of breath up into the sky. Punching a hole in winter.
The little girl slaps a tiny head on to her snowman.
‘Sorry to tell you my life-history,’ she says, and repositions herself behind the pushchair. ‘Kirsty, love, c’mon now . . . But I always feel I have to justify being in this dump. I mean . . . I can’t imagine anyone would live up here by choice, can you?’
*
And now I’m standing in the snow, hands in pockets, knifeless for the first time.
There is more snow drifting down from the grey dome of sky above Fallowdale, and I have to close my eyes as I remember what I have lost.
And they’re moving away from me, now, mother and child, clattering across the hard ground, heading for the road and the bus-stop. The woman has the pushchair held in one hand and Kirsty’s little hand in the other, and she’s murmuring to the girl, words of tenderness and comfort in this terrible place, saying, maybe, that there is a way out, there will be a way out. Room at the inn. One day.
The little girl twists her head round to look back at her lumpy snowman, and she sees me, and she smiles at me, and I raise a hand in return.
I see something, very briefly, before she turns back. I’ve got no way of telling if I’m right. I glimpse the redness on one side of her little face. It might be a trick of the light, or it might be just from the cold. Or it might be that she really does have a bright red birthmark on her soft cheek.
But she’s gone, now, and there’s no way I will ever know.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One – End of the World Song
Chapter Two – Communion
Chapter Three – Knowing Me . . .
Chapter Four – Nightcrawlers
Chapter Five – Blame Game
Chapter Six – Garden Zone
Chapter Seven – Topology of a Ghost City
Chapter Eight – Unsound Waves
Chapter Nine – Shopping List
Chapter Ten – Playtime
Chapter Eleven – The Outer Circle
Chapter Twelve – Definitely Possibly
Chapter Thirteen – Force Majeure
Chapter Fourteen – Dreams are not Enough
Chapter Fifteen – Everybody Hurts
Chapter Sixteen – Cat’s-paw
Chapter Seventeen – Slack
Chapter Eighteen – Insurance
Chapter Nineteen – Kicking into Touch
Chapter Twenty – A Fragile Thing Called Trust
Chapter Twenty-One – Down Payment
Chapter Twenty-Two – Shadows
Chapter Twenty-Three – Truth or Dare
Chapter Twenty-Four – Unravelling
Chapter Twenty-Five – Final Cut?
Chapter Twenty-Six – Shown Up and Down
Chapter Twenty-Seven – Tricks of the Light
Chapter Twenty-Eight – Not So Manic Now