by Julie Corbin
My eyes were closing when I heard shouting and the sound of thundering feet. I stood up and went to the door, expecting to see just Gabe and his friends, but they’d been joined by almost a dozen others and they were all running up the hill towards me. Not far behind them were two men with guns. One man fired his gun into the air and shouted, ‘Get off my land, you thieving bastards!’
As the young men drew level with me, I heard my name being called and then a hand grabbed mine and hauled me along with the crowd. It wasn’t until we reached the road that I realised it wasn’t Gabe who’d grabbed me but my brother Diarmaid. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him, knowing full well that Diarmaid and his crew could turn up anywhere. Both Diarmaid and Finn were part of a marauding, adrenaline-fuelled pack of young men who couldn’t stay home and were banned from most of the pubs in the neighbourhood.
‘I could be asking you the same.’
I turned away from him. ‘I have to go back and get Gabe.’
He yanked me back by the hair. ‘What’s he to you?’
‘My boyfriend, if you must know.’ He yanked my hair again. ‘Ow! Stop it.’
I tried to get his hands off me but he held me fast. ‘Sure you haven’t been having sex with him, Scarlett?’
I didn’t answer but the look on my face must have given me away and he punched the air beside me. ‘You dirty little slut!’ He shook me hard. ‘Don’t you move. Don’t you feckin’ move.’
He whistled on Finn who ran off to fetch his car and they drove me to Declan’s house. It was a small two-bedroom cottage on the rise of a hill and Diarmaid pushed his way into the house without knocking, dragging me behind him. Aisling was sitting by the fire – her sister Deirdre had given birth to a baby boy and Aisling was knitting a tiny blue cardie – and when we burst into the room she jumped up from her chair. ‘Scarlett! What’s going on?’
I was crying so hard that I couldn’t answer her. In the car, Diarmaid had called me all the names under the sun, the tone of his voice not dissimilar to my mother’s.
‘We need to see Declan,’ Finn said.
‘Well, Declan isn’t here,’ Aisling said, reaching for my hand and bringing me over to her side of the fire.
‘You need to tell him about her,’ Diarmaid said, pointing a vicious finger at me. ‘She’s been whoring it around the village.’
‘How dare you!’ Aisling said quietly. ‘I’d like you to think about your language in front of your sister.’ She shooed them both towards the door. ‘Be off with you! And don’t be coming back until you’ve found your manners.’ For a small woman she had an authority that brooked no argument and they were in the car and away before I could say so much as a Hail Mary.
‘Oh holy hour!’ Aisling said, holding me by the shoulders. ‘What a carry-on for a Friday evening! Declan will be home soon and in the meantime you can have a nice hot bath and get warm by the fire.’
Again, I did as I was told, and while I was drying myself Declan arrived home. I could hear his voice in the living room, the low murmuring tone of his and the higher tones of Aisling, soothing and placatory. I gathered that he’d met Finn and Diarmaid further along the lane and heard all about where I’d been and who I’d been with. When I came out of the bathroom, I was wearing Aisling’s nightie and dressing gown and a pair of Declan’s thick socks. Declan held me tight against him for an age and it set me off crying again.
‘You could have been hurt, Scarlett. You mustn’t hang out with boys like Gabe Duggan. He’s like Diarmaid and Finn, only worse.’
‘He’s not like them! He’s good to me.’
‘He’s a menace! Promise me you’ll never get in touch with him again.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Promise me, Scarlett!’
I promised him because I’d never seen him look so sad and I couldn’t bear to be the cause of it. I never found out what he said to our parents, but I moved out of my home and in with Declan. Aisling was training up in Dublin and only came to stay once or twice a month. So it was just me and Declan and their dog Captain, a retired sheep dog, half blind with cataracts but blessed with an ever-wagging tail. Being with Declan made me the happiest I’d ever been. We lived on bowls of soup with bread to dip in and big pots of stew, and I tried very hard not to be jealous when Aisling came to stay. She was kindness itself, though, and I thanked her for sharing her Declan-time with me.
‘It’s you who’s sharing him with me, Scarlett,’ she said. ‘Declan told me all about when you were born, how you were always smiling and how excited you’d get when he took you on the tractor with him.’ She was a tactile person and she hugged me then. ‘You know your brother loves you, now don’t you?’
Declan took me to talk to Sister Mary-Agnes to see whether she’d give me extra lessons after school. She was Aisling’s aunt and already my science teacher. She agreed at once. ‘You have an aptitude, Scarlett Olivia Naughton,’ she told me, steering me into a chair. ‘And what God has given you should never be wasted.’
‘I don’t think I believe in God any more.’
‘Scarlett Olivia Naughton!’ Her hand clutched the crucifix that hung down on her chest. ‘How can you say such a thing? Do I need to have a meeting with your mother and father?’
‘No, Sister. I’m sorry, Sister.’
‘And so you should be. The good Lord believes in you, so that’ll be an end to such talk.’ She swooped around me, moving books from shelf to table so that I ended up with a bigger pile in front of me than I could carry. ‘Have you seen the way a workman shapes a copper pot?’
‘I don’t know why I should have, Sister.’
‘Well let me tell you, Scarlett. He holds a hammer in his right hand and bashes the outside, while his left hand shapes, gently and persuasively, from the inside. That’s the way God will work on you.’
As the days passed, Sister Mary-Agnes dropped my first name – ‘Scarlett is a colour, not a name’ – and began calling me by my middle name, Olivia, chosen by my father because I was born on 10 June, which was St Olivia’s feast day. The patron saint of music, she lived in the ninth century and was as unlike me as any girl could be, but it was a better name than Scarlett, and as it was a name I’d been writing down between Scarlett and Naughton for the last ten years, it still felt like me. Just a different me.
I never saw Gabe again. I found out that he’d been caught by the farmer and I worried that he was only caught because he slowed down to look for me. He was charged with criminal damage because two of the farmer’s rowing boats had been spun out on to the ice, the surface cracking under their weight so that the boats were lost in the water. I suspected this had happened before Gabe even got there but he accepted the blame for it anyway. I worried that he would be sent to prison and I worried that he’d think that I’d abandoned him, but I didn’t dare break my promise to Declan. I did, however, keep my ears pricked for any gossip, and after a few months I heard that Gabe was given a suspended sentence and went to stay with his uncle down in Cork where he could finish school away from distractions.
If I’d been a lover of the dramatic, as my mother was, then I would have felt sorry for my poor self and stood on the cliff edge with a shawl wrapped around me, but I knew I was just an ordinary girl who’d lost her way. I wasn’t especially intelligent but I had an almost photographic memory, and Sister Mary-Agnes made sure I had a slew of facts to memorise. Soon, though, her presence wasn’t necessary, and I studied because I enjoyed it. When I got the letter to say I’d been accepted to study medicine at university, the first person I told was Declan. He sat staring at the letter and grinning, as if the dream had come true for him, not just me. When I told my daddy I’d got in to medical school, he stood on the pub table and announced to all his cronies that his daughter was going places and then he bought them all a round of drinks. I asked Daddy not to tell my mother because I knew she’d be less than impressed. We were so rarely in each other’s company now, anyway, but I didn’t want her seeking me out to tell me what a
failure I was making of my life.
Before I left for university, Declan and Aisling were married in the local chapel. She wore a white broderie-anglaise, full-length dress and a crown of pink roses on her hair. If someone had asked me to describe what happiness was, I would have said it was Declan and Aisling, holding hands on the church step.
I left on the bus that evening and by the time I’d got to Edinburgh I was looking forward to making my future.
12
The front door opens and slams shut. I listen as footsteps come along the corridor. There’s a slight pause outside the door – I imagine she’s spotted my shoes – and in that space of time, I take a deep, preparatory breath. The door opens and Emily comes in. Her eyes meet mine and she doesn’t miss a beat. She closes the door behind her and smiles. ‘Olivia,’ she says. She has the strap of a canvas bag across her body and she pulls it over her head, putting the bag down neatly beside a row of shoes. ‘Thank you for coming.’
I don’t speak immediately. Now that we’re face to face, I feel calm. She is so much the Emily Jones I know: a sweet-natured, patently non-threatening slip of a girl, just five feet tall. But then, when I look at her more closely, I see that she is also Kirsty Stewart. She has traits in common with her parents: her mother’s almond-shaped eyes and wide mouth; her father’s hair and eye colour.
‘This is awkward,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in pretending I have an identical twin?’
‘No, I don’t think there is.’ I smile. ‘Should I call you Emily or Kirsty?’
‘Kirsty,’ she answers at once. ‘I’m not sure I’m quite cutting it as Emily. Parts of Kirsty just keep on bubbling through, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do.’ I give a short laugh. ‘I do know what you mean. Most people know me as Olivia, but during my childhood I was called Scarlett and my Irish family still call me that.’
‘Really?’ She pulls across one of the tub chairs and places it about three feet away. ‘Why the change?’
‘It was a hard name to live up to.’
‘Right.’ She nods as if she knows exactly what I mean and then she sits down, smoothing the material of her light summer dress over her knees. The dress is a pale cream with a faint pattern of flowers across it and, like my skirt, it’s wet at the bottom. Her legs and feet are bare, her toenails bright with a rainbow of different coloured polish. ‘I would offer you a cup of tea but I’m sure you’ve seen the state of the place? Hygiene isn’t their strong point.’ She screws her toes down into the sheepskin rug. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I missed the bus.’
‘That’s okay.’ I clear my throat. ‘I tried to call you but your phone was switched off.’
‘Was it?’
‘Is it your foster parents who live in Murrayfield, then?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘At the hospital, when I was booking a taxi, you said you lived in Murrayfield.’
‘Did I?’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t know anyone who lives in Murrayfield. My foster parents lived in Lasswade but they recently moved up to Inverness. I don’t see them any more.’
‘Really?’ I start back. ‘I thought that was why you’d changed your name to Jones?’
‘No. I . . .’ She stops and purses her lips. ‘You’ve been talking to the police.’
‘DI O’Reilly told me that he’d had a chat with you.’
‘Interrogation more like.’
‘I’m sorry if he was tough on you, Emily—’
‘Kirsty,’ she says. ‘I said you should call me Kirsty.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I hold up my hand. ‘It’s just that I’ve known you for nine months as Emily. It’s hard to make the leap.’
‘But you do remember, don’t you?’ She stretches her hand to the table and takes hold of the photo frame. ‘You do remember this couple?’ She holds the photograph at chest height and I look at Trevor and Sandy’s smiling faces, then up into their daughter’s more serious one.
‘Yes, I remember them,’ I say quietly.
She turns the photo towards her and for a moment her expression softens before she puts the frame back on the table.
‘I went to see your dad on Monday.’
‘I know. One of the nurses told me. That’s why I asked you to come here.’
I wait for her to elaborate but she doesn’t. She’s staring at her feet, pointing and flexing her toes several times before saying, ‘What made you realise that my dad was part of the puzzle?’
‘Well . . .’ I look up at the ceiling, not seeing what’s there, but instead seeing the red-painted MURDERER, shouting its message with a deafening roar. ‘You know about what happened to Robbie and you also know that someone came to my house and covered the wall with paint. The police told me to think about who might have done it and when I looked back into my past I realised that . . .’ I stop, unsure how frank to be.
‘Go on,’ she urges, leaning forward now, her face pale and serious, her hands clutched together on her lap.
‘Did your father speak to you about how your mother died?’
‘My father never talked about my mother. But he kept diaries. He wrote them all his married life and then for five years after Mum died. It was hard for him to cope and I wasn’t always an easy baby.’ She looks thoughtful. ‘He was a professional writer, you know? Did you know that?’ I shake my head. ‘He wrote articles for the Edinburgh Courier. Ironic really, when the woman who killed his wife then goes on to be celebrated in the very same paper.’
She doesn’t say it with any emotion. It’s a throwaway comment, a casual acknowledgement of life’s funny little coincidences. But for me, her words feel like an ice grenade that scores a direct hit and freezes my brain.
‘I was taken into care when I was ten. A nosy teacher at school said that she could tell I was forging permission slips. Annoying really, because we were doing all right, me and Dad. Most of the time he was drunk, but he never hit me or anything, and I could cook, do the washing, stuff like that.’ She’s very deliberately not looking at me. She’s examining her fingernails and then she reaches into a drawer and brings out a nail file. ‘But when social services got their hands on me I was slotted into the system. I was with three families that didn’t work out and then I got the Joneses and they were nice. They didn’t foster children for the money; they did it because they believed in giving something back. They encouraged me to apply for the scholarship to Sanderson.’
‘I’m sorry, Kirsty.’ I find my voice. ‘I’m sorry that your childhood has been so tough at times.’
‘You’ve been to Sanderson.’ She stops filing and stares at me. ‘Haven’t you?’
I nod. ‘I gather you’re a talented actress.’
‘I bet Mrs Tweedie gave you the whole spiel about me arriving all shy and retiring and leaving with the world at my feet?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Couldn’t you see through them?’ she says, astonished. ‘They are churning out actors after all. Performance is everything.’ She throws the nail file on to the bedspread and stands up. ‘Let me show you.’
I watch as she lurches across the room, slurring words under her breath. Her coat is hanging on the back of the door and she reaches for it, but her hand is slightly too far to the left and she re-reaches, grabs it and fights to put it on. The battle with the coat sleeves causes her to break into a cackle of laughter and then, in the space of a lengthy, exhaled breath she slides down the emotional spectrum into maudlin self-pity. I catch some of her rant, ‘dinnae care’, ‘life’s a bastard’, ‘fuck the lot o’ them’ as she tosses the coat aside and drags her limbs around the room, her head jerking from side to side.
Part of me can’t help but be impressed. Her act is not a parody of a drunk – it is a drunk. She is utterly convincing. And then, like the flick of a switch, she turns off the performance and comes back to her seat. ‘That was one of the pieces that got me my scholarship.’ She inhales slowly. ‘And then there’s this.’
The room grows still. We’re both barely breathing. I watch as her lower lip begins to tremble and her face reddens. ‘Okay, so I know I go too far sometimes,’ she says. ‘It’s just . . . it’s just . . .’ There’s so much pain in her eyes that I flinch. ‘I know I alienate people, and I want to be a better person, but I’m just not sure how.’ She takes a halting breath. ‘With my dad and everything, my life’s been a mess.’ Her fists are tight and she draws her dress into them until the remaining material bunches up over her thighs. ‘All the time drunk. Never talking or spending time with me. Just drunk.’ Tears flow in two steady streams down her cheeks. ‘I’m a horrible person.’ She shakes her head at me. ‘I hurt people and I hurt myself.’ Her tiny frame shakes with emotion. ‘Can you help me?’ It’s a whisper, and it echoes the look of shy hopefulness that brings a dull light back into her eyes. ‘Do you think you can . . .’ She bites her lip, her expression conflicted, and brings her face closer to mine. ‘Do you think you can help me get revenge?’
Her eyes flare with heat, compelling me not to look away, and I don’t, I can’t. A couple of seconds to make her point and she withdraws, stands up – I can breathe again – walks over to the cupboard in the corner and rummages around before sitting back down. ‘I have to keep my food in my room because if I leave it in the kitchen they steal it.’ She tears the wrapper off a muesli bar and takes a bite. ‘They get the munchies at night.’ She breaks off a piece, being careful with the crumbs and holds it out to me. ‘You want some?’