by Lin Anderson
‘You know what I mean. Who I mean.’
Chrissy took a quick look at the door and imagined herself walking silently through it. Joseph could not, would not do this to her. She’d had to tell him what she’d done about Patrick. He couldn’t know any more than that.
She was wrong.
‘Fucking queer!’ Joseph’s contempt was whispered He gathered strength for the kill.
‘Rents out his arse to any queer that will pay for it.’
‘Joseph!’ her mother was horrified. ‘What are you saying? Are you talking about Neil?’
Forgive me Father for I have sinned.
‘I’m saying,’ Joseph shot a vicious look at his sister. ‘Your precious little Miss whiter than white is having it away with a well known rent boy of this city.’
‘A rent boy? What does that mean Chrissy?’ Her mother looked at her pleadingly.
‘Forget it mum. He’s lying. He always lies when he needs money.’
‘Is that right?’ Joseph’s voice was triumphant. ‘Well, ask her who she went camping with and what was going on in the fucking tent.’
‘Stop it!’ shouted Chrissy.
‘Did you ask him where it had been before it got to you?’ Joseph’s face twisted in malice.
‘Don’t Joseph. Please don’t,’ Chrissy whispered.
Her mother was looking on with incomprehension. Then, with a huge effort, she said, ‘You go upstairs Chrissy. I’ll come up in a wee while.’
Chrissy climbed the stairs like an automaton. If Joseph was prepared to tell her mother, he would tell her father too. Once he found out, the house would descend into bedlam. He would force her to tell him about Patrick as well. He would ban Patrick from the house. Her mother would be destroyed.
Chrissy lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Since Patrick left, her home had become a prison. She only chose to stay there because of her mother. Chrissy could not abandon her.
Your duty as a good Catholic daughter is to obey your father.
Chrissy got up and opened the window. The curtain danced in the breeze, reminding her of what freedom could do for the soul.
Eventually the talking downstairs stopped and Chrissy heard the back door slam. Her mother must have found some money for Joseph. It was the only thing that would get rid of him.
A tap on the door brought her eyes from the ceiling. Her mother asked quietly if she might come in. She had been crying. All her life, Chrissy had tried not to make her cry.
‘Is there somewhere you can go tonight?’ she asked, coming in and sitting beside Chrissy on the bed.
Chrissy nodded wordlessly.
‘Will you go to this lad?’
‘I… I don’t know if Neil’s in Glasgow.’
‘Joseph says he phoned here just before you got back. Asked him to tell you he was home. That’s what set your brother off.’
‘That and no money,’ suggested Chrissy.
‘Aye.’ Her mother’s eyes were very sad. ‘Will you go to him?’ she asked again.
‘I could go to Dr MacLeod. Rhona would let me stay.’
She watched her mother wince with embarrassment.
‘I don’t know what your father will do when Joseph tells him.’ Her mother was smoothing invisible creases from her skirt.
‘It’s okay, mum.’ she said wearily. ‘I know where to go.’ She patted her mother’s shoulder. ‘Will you be alright without me?’
‘Are you sure you’ll be alright?
Chrissy nodded. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Chapter 27
It was nine o’clock and still light. The day had been hot and there was a smell of rain in the air. Somewhere the heavens had opened.
Chrissy hitched her bag over her shoulder and set off.
A bus appeared in the distance. It would take her near the town centre. She would go to Neil’s flat. If he wasn’t there, or if he wouldn’t let her stay (Chrissy could not think of that happening), she would phone Rhona.
Neil’s street was deserted. There were no cars parked outside and none passed her as she walked along.
The close had been washed out. Strings from a distintegrating mop still clung to the shiny stairway and there was a pungent reek of disinfectant. Chrissy coughed a few times at the bottom, in case the woman she’d met before was already at work, but there was silence from the landing above.
When she reached Neil’s door she paused, unsure. What if he was with someone? Neil had sex for money. Neil had sex with her. No. Neil loved her. There was a difference between having sex and making love, she told herself. TheTheir lives would change. They must.
Chrissy knocked hard and watched aghast as the door moved under her hand.
She stood motionless, her heart drumming in her ears. She gave a small push and the door swung slowly backwards with a moan, and the air began to fill with the sickening stench of singed skin.
She gagged. Desperate for fresh air, she staggered back and leaned over the banister, breathing deeply. When she felt better, she opened her bag and took out a tee-shirt and held it over her nose. This time she pushed the door open wide, shouting Neil’s name as she stepped inside.
The gas fire hissed furiously and the room was like an oven. Chrissy crossed the room, pulled back the curtains, threw open the window, and turned off the fire. Only then did she brace herself to look for the origin of the smell. The bed was a mass of blood and vomit, but it was empty.
Chrissy crossed to the bathroom. The door resisted at first, then opened with a sucking sigh, fighting the draught from the window. Under her feet lay a film of pink water.
She mouthed a prayer before she pulled back the shower curtain. Water dripped into an empty bath.
Someone had washed themselves in here. Someone who was bleeding badly. Chrissy turned away, not daring to hope.
She went back to the living room and followed the bloody footprints to the kitchen door, all the time praying, to whom or what she didn’t know, the words tumbling over themselves.
Forgive me Father for I have sinned, Hail Mary full of Grace. Please God don’t let him be dead, and pushed open the kitchen door.
A bottle of vodka stood on the draining board, the cap beside it. Someone had drunk straight from the bottle, leaving a faint pink hand print on the glass.
It took Chrissy an hour to clean up.
She stripped the bed and put the sheets and pillowcases in a bin bag and took them downstairs to the street. It had started raining. She went back up and found some disinfectant and wiped the watery bloodstains from the bathroom and the kitchen. Then she found clean sheets in the drawer and remade the bed. She kept the window wide open, ignoring the raindrops that skited over the sill and landed on the carpet. When she had done everything she could think of, she sat down on the rickety sofa with a glass of vodka, to wait.
Chrissy opened her eyes.
Dawn was touching the rooftops. She jerked up and examined her watch. It was five o’clock. The hum of a diesel cab traced down the street. That was what had woken her, she realised. The room was cold now, but at least it smelt fresh. She pulled the window shut and let the curtain fall back.
It was then she heard someone at the door.
Chrissy moved quickly, making for the bathroom. She slipped in and stood behind the door, crushed herself against the wall and peered through the crack. She heard the front door open, then shut, and then there was silence. Someone was standing in the hall. Then the living room door was pushed open and the light came on.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’
‘Neil.’
‘Christ, Chrissy!’
She ran over to him. He winced as he drew her into his arms, but he burrowed his face in her hair, then slid his mouth over hers. He tasted of blood and she pulled back. His face was like pummelled beetroot. One eye was completely closed. She noticed a white bandage under his shirt.
‘What have they done to you?’
‘I’m okay. It’s not that bad. Believe me,’ he tried
to make a joke of it, ‘I was the good looking one in A and E.’
Somehow the swollen mouth managed a smile. She helped him over to the bed, hearing herself mutter crooning noises as if he was a baby. He lowered himself down.
‘Lie beside me,’ he said and took her hand.
She heard herself start to cry.
‘Don’t Chrissy. It’s okay. Sshh, now.’ He stroked her hair. ‘They won’t come back. The bastards think they’ve shut me up. They came for the photos and they had to have their fun as well.’
‘Did you give them the photos?’
‘Oh aye, I gave them the photos alright.’ He winced as he turned towards her. ‘But they bastards didn’t get what I know.’
‘What d’you mean?’ She sat up.
‘I know where that curtain comes from, Chrissy. I know where it comes from. I can’t tell you yet.’
‘You’re going to go to the police?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t need to. All I need to do is shop them. I’m going to see that newspaper man, Connelly. He’ll listen.’
Chrissy was overwhelmed with terror. All she could think about was the next time they came for him. To shut him up for good.
‘Wheesht Chrissy. They won’t know it’s me.’
Chrissy knew that was ridiculous. They would be after him. But he was thinking like the kid she’d once known, full of himself and his latest fantasy about how life was OK.
‘Chrissy?’ he said.
‘Mmm.’
‘There’s something you have to know.’ He lifted her face. ‘The doctor says I can’t have normal sex until I’ve healed up,’ he told her.
‘Neil!’
‘But he didn’t say anything about abnormal sex.’
Chapter 28
The street was a sedate curve of tenements and two-storey houses. The small gardens at the front were neat and colourful and the view from the windows would be good. Tall trees and a park beyond.
It was a nice place to grow up in.
Number ten was halfway along, a main door flat, the front windows hung with flower boxes in full bloom. Rhona walked by on the other side, then walked back again, on the same side. When she reached the blue door she stopped and looked at the name above the doorbell, her heart racing. She just wanted to know. If they were there she would go away, she told herself, go away and wait for him to contact her.
The name wasn’t Hope.
The woman who answered her ring was in her early fifties, with springy grey hair and glasses. She seemed unperturbed at finding a stranger on her doorstep and quite anxious to help. Rhona suspected she liked dealing in information of any kind, giving and receiving it.
‘Sorry dear,’ she was saying. ‘They left here four years ago and moved to England.’
‘Do you happen to know where in England?’
There had been no forwarding address.
‘I’m not much help, dear.
‘Sorry I can’t be much help dear. Except, I do remember it was a big place they went to, with a University. Mr Hope was a lecturer in Geology, I think. He got a new job down there. Manchester, or Birmingham perhaps?’ She shook her head. ‘Rather them than me. They say Glasgow’s violent, but we know better don’t we?’
Rhona didn’t answer that one.
Rhona walked back to her car. It was no good being disappointed, she told herself, she shouldn’t have come anyway.
She climbed in and switched on the radio. As she turned the ignition, she decided she would go back to work. Try and forget all about it. Concentrate. Decide what she was going to do about Sean.
As she turned into the main thoroughfare she spotted the local Primary school, its gates wide open. A sign was up on the railings giving details of the Polling Station hours. The playground was thronged with adults instead of children. Rhona suddenly remembered this was polling day. She slowed down and stopped, knowing he would be there.
He was on the steps, hand held out, a smile on his face. Edward Stewart, distinguished lawyer and happy family man, doing his bit to revive Tory fortunes in Scotland and looking, Rhona thought, every bit the next MP for this area.
She started up the engine and drove away. She had kept her side of the bargain. Let him have his seat in Parliament, she thought. With any luck it would mean he would be out of Glasgow most of the time and she would never have to see him.
The traffic was busy on the road back into town and Rhona cursed herself for having brought the car at all. It was hard enough to keep her mind on the traffic with all this fighting for her attention. Rhona was rewarded with an angry horn blast. She turned off onto the next side street and looked for somewhere she could get a coffee. In half and hour, the traffic would have dwindled and she might get back in one piece. She stopped at the first café and bought a large cappuccino.
Preoccupation wasn’t the only problem. She had had little to no sleep the previous night. At three o’clock in the morning, she’d finally given up tossing and turning and switched on the light. If she was going to be tortured by thoughts of Liam, she might just as well have them with the light on. So she let herself think. And the more she thought, the more she wanted to see her son. She had lost years of his life, she didn’t want to lose any more. Around four o’clock in the morning, she made up her mind. She would go to the address on the printout, check if the Hopes were still living there. She had never imagined they wouldn’t be.
Rhona looked up, startled out of her thoughts by the waitress, who was asking if she wanted a refill. She nodded and pushed over her cup.
‘You were miles away,’ the waitress said.
‘I was thinking about my son,’ Rhona let herself say.
‘Giving you bother, is he?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Lucky you. I could see our Michael far enough. Still. You only get a loan of them, don’t you? That’s what my mum says.’
Rhona nodded. It’s the sort of thing her own mum would have said. She suddenly and achingly wished her mother was alive. Both of them still alive. Wished she had told them. Wished. Wished.
For months after her father died, she had imagined driving home, where he would be waiting for her as always. He would hug her and tell her how glad he was to see her. Silly. But it helped. Kept her going.
Her dad told her she was adopted when she was twelve years old.
They had been at the cinema. It was a Saturday in winter and very cold and they had had a chippy on the way home. A treat. Her gloves smelt of vinegar because she had eaten half the chips with them on, until her dad said not to.
The news didn’t bother her at the time. She wasn’t even sure what ‘adopted’ meant, not until she was thirteen and her friend Louise told her all about sex and how babies were made. Even then, she didn’t want to know who her real ‘mum and dad’ were. It didn’t really matter.
Her mum had finally volunteered the information one day, while they chopped vegetables for the soup together at the kitchen table. Just in case she wanted to know, and couldn’t ask.
‘Your mum was my cousin Lily,’ she explained. ‘She was a traveller.’
It sounded romantic.
‘She’s travelled all round the world.’
Her mum went on grating the carrots as she talked.
‘She brought back this nice boyfriend once. He wanted to marry her, but she always said no.’
‘Why?’
It was the only question Rhona ever asked about her real mother.
‘Our Lily was her own woman. “Give a man a bit of paper and he’ll think he’s bought you.” That’s what she used to say.’
She stroked the grated carrot into the soup pot.‘His name was Robert,’ she continued. ‘Robert Curtis. He was tall, blonde and very handsome.’ She looked fondly at Rhona’s curly blonde hair. ‘They went off to Venice together and he got food poisoning and died. It was a real tragedy. Lily came back. But she only stayed long enough to have you, and then she went. Couldn’t stand the weather here. It was the greyness, sh
e said.’
She stopped and looked at Rhona.
‘She would never have managed you, you know, not in those foreign places.’
She scraped the leek into the pot. It seemed to Rhona that her life was being stirred round and round with that big wooden spoon.
‘So, you came to us, and a lucky wean you’ve been too.’ She touched the top of Rhona’s head with a damp hand. ‘Then Lily died somewhere in Istanbul and they buried her there. I wanted to try and bring her home but your dad said, no, Lily never thought of Glasgow as home anyway.’
Later on that night, her mum had pulled out the big black tin of family photos and showed Rhona her real mum and dad. They were standing on a quay.
‘We went to Millport for the day,’ her mum said with a smile. ‘Our Lily could never stay in Glasgow when the sun shone.’
Rhona looked out of the window at the bright street busy with shoppers. Women with children in prams and by the hand. She wondered again why she hadn’t told her parents about the baby. They would have been kind, helped her look after the baby so that she could finish her studies. It was just that her life had been so tied up with Edward. And Edward didn’t want to be a father. Not then, anyway.
Rhona finished her coffee and went to pay.
Her waitress was on the till.
‘Don’t you worry about him,’ she told Rhona. ‘If you put the hours in, they turn out alright in the end.’
Rhona thanked her and left.
She realised she had unconsciously taken the route to Police HQ when she found herself behind Gartnethill. She swore and hit the wheel, then resigned herself to the prospect of a round trip back to the lab. She ignored Garnethill’s mesh of one way streets and headed for Hanover Street. Suddenly she was on George Square and hesitated long enough to miss the right turn into St Vincent Street. God, she was going round in circles literally. Then she spotted the magnificent pillars of the Gallery of Modern Art. She could get to St Vincent Street that way. A bus stopped suddenly in front of her. She hit the brakes.
A teenager jumped off and stood hesitantly. A group of goths were sprawled on the Gallery steps in the sunshine, but this boy wasn’t dressed like them. He was scanning the entrance, looking for someone but whoever he was looking for wasn’t there. His disappointment showed in the sudden droop of his shoulders.