There’s a strong smell of cigarette smoke.
A wave of adrenaline races over my skin that makes me freeze then whirl round, looking right, left, expecting to see a slight girl with triangular hair and a lit cigarette . . . but then rational thought kicks in. I’m right next to the coats hanging neatly on their hooks by the front door. I sniff mine, and then Carrie’s. It’s faint, but there’s a definite scent of stale tobacco. They must have picked up eau-de-tobacco from the people smoking outside the Quaich, given that smoking is banned inside pubs and restaurants in the UK. I take two steps away from the coats and sniff the air again. Nothing. I climb the stairs to my bedroom. Then I go back downstairs and turn all the lights back on before I finally go to bed.
My father is lying at the bottom of the Albert Canal, near Hasselt. It might as well be a river as a canal, it’s so much wider than what is conjured by the word “canal” in the UK. Not that that matters to my father, seeing as he’s dead. One supposes he might prefer to be resting near the more picturesque parts—near Smeermaas perhaps—but as fate would have it, he has settled a stone’s throw from the industrial zone, where the view rather disappoints in comparison to the rest of the canal route. His death, as deaths go, was a little disappointing, too: a sudden hemorrhage in the brain, causing him to topple into the water whilst taking a pleasant night stroll along the towpath; he was dead before he could even drown. He would have preferred a demise with more substance and flair.
TEN
I wake with my heart thumping, utterly disoriented, to a shrill, earsplitting beeping that’s extraordinarily loud. I fumble for the bedside lamp switch and fail to find it, then give up and leap out of bed to switch on the ceiling light and grab my dressing gown. By now my brain has identified the cacophony: it’s a smoke alarm, one downstairs from the sound of it. I’m sure it’s coming from the ground floor. I can’t smell anything, though. I slam on the hallway light and take the stairs two at a time in my bare feet. There’s no mistaking the source of the unceasing screech: the unassuming round white alarm clinging to the ceiling of the kitchen. The objectionable din it’s emitting isn’t helping me think clearly, but I can’t smell smoke, or gas, and I can see from a glance that all the hobs are off. Certainly there’s no visible signs of a fire. My only focus now is turning the bloody thing off.
I have to stand on one of the kitchen chairs to reach it, and even then it’s a stretch. There are arrows on the alarm: a clockwise turn should release the cover. As close as I now am to the source, my ears are actually hurting. I can’t believe Carrie isn’t downstairs by now; surely nobody could sleep through this? I’m straining to turn the cover and at last I feel it give and come away in my hands, and as it does so, I’m suddenly aware of an undertone of buzzing and then—dear God—it’s raining flies down on me, angry fat black bodies falling on my face, in my hair, buzzing round my neck, down inside my dressing gown, dropping onto my feet, their petroleum-swirl blue-black bodies bristling with fury as they taint me with their germs with every contact. I’ve dropped the cover and I’m scrubbing frantically at my face and hair in a cloud of the insects, almost toppling off the chair as I bat them away. In a panic, I drop down to the floor and feel some bodies squelch beneath one bare foot; I can feel myself start to retch as I tip my head upside down and rake my hands through my hair, even as I become aware that the awful din has stopped and that the sound I can now hear is my own shrieking. With an effort, I cut it off, only for the shrieking to be replaced by whimpering, then I run out of the kitchen and straight up the stairs to the full-length mirror in my bathroom.
There are carcasses of dead flies on the shoulders of my dressing gown; there are dead flies still caught in my hair. There’s an acrid taste of bile in my mouth as I grab a hairbrush and furiously drag it through my hair while simultaneously stripping off the dressing gown. I’m almost crying with revulsion now, naked and shivering with the dressing gown discarded at my feet among a scattering of the lifeless black flies. One vile creature is still moving on the white porcelain of the bathroom sink, slowly and dully, as if unsure if it’s worth the effort. I grab the bottle of hand soap and use it to squash the fly mercilessly, then hurl the bottle at the bin in the corner. It misses, clattering loudly off the rim. The noise comes as another jolt.
I need to calm down.
I take several deep breaths and look at myself again in the mirror, scouring my naked image. I could barely be more of a disaster—my eyes are red and my face and neck are blotchy, I’ve managed to scratch myself in several places in my haste to brush off the revolting creatures and my hair is sticking out at ludicrous angles—but at least I can’t see any remaining insects on me. And then I look at my feet and see a squashed body, oozing out yellow innards, stuck to one of my big toes, and I have to rush to the toilet to physically retch.
When I’ve calmed myself a little, I clean the carcass off my toe with some toilet paper. Then I look in the mirror again, taking deep, slow breaths. I will have to go back downstairs. I will have to clean up the kitchen. How on earth can it be fair that I am dealing with all of this whilst Carrie is peacefully sleeping?
Actually, how can that even be possible? I suddenly feel sick with dread. Heedless of whether I might be stepping on any more insects, heedless of the fact that I’m stark naked, I dash from the bathroom. I cross the hallway to her bedroom door, which is ajar, and push it gently open, painting the floor with an ever-widening trapezium of light from the hallway. She has left the curtains undrawn again and the blackness is peering in. It takes a moment for my eyesight to adjust, but soon I can make out a hump in the bed. She is sleeping on her back, one arm tucked up under the pillow, her head turned away from where I’m standing. I can’t hear her breathe—and then I do, a long, peaceful huff out. I stand for a moment, and as I do, my eyesight adjusts even further, and I can see that she has earplugs in.
Earplugs.
Jesus.
Even so, it’s still a marvel that she has slept through all this. Maybe the alcohol is playing a part in her oblivion, too. I back carefully out of the room and go to find myself some clothes to wear to set about the unenviable task of cleaning up my fly cemetery of a kitchen. It turns out there’s insect spray under the kitchen sink, which is useful because some of the creatures aren’t quite as dead as I would like. I can’t imagine how all of these fitted in the small smoke alarm—there are hundreds of them. When I’m finished, I feel vaguely light-headed from the spray and the kitchen is spotless, but my skin is still crawling and my hands feel itchy and raw, as if they’re reacting to the chemicals of the spray.
It’s just gone 3 A.M. now. I put myself in the shower and wash my hair twice. It’s such a relief to feel the warm water flowing over me, taking away the contamination and the revulsion. It can’t wash away my thoughts, though. I should leave here. The locals don’t want me here, I don’t want me here and even the Manse itself doesn’t want me here. I should leave tomorrow; I can do all the Presumption of Death stuff from a distance. And then I think of Carrie, and I know I won’t leave. Not until she does.
* * *
• • •
A scant few hours later I wake to the faint sound of running water. The light is slanting through the gaps around the edges of the thin curtains. I lie still on my side staring at the stripes of light on the chest of drawers and let reality soak into me. It’s been the kind of sleep that wipes memory clean of the where and the when; my brain needs time to get up to speed. I push my hair out of my eyes and find that it’s damp, and with that, the events in the kitchen come rushing back in.
The running water has subsided: Carrie is out of her shower now. I feel an urge to be in her company, as if that might reassure me that—what? That I haven’t done anything unforgivable? The vague sense of wrongness that sits within me reminds me of my university days, when it was the done thing to drink beyond one’s sensibilities at least once a week; the self-loathing that curled in my stomach each
morning after, the inherent mental shudder when recalling the lack of control, was somehow never enough to prevent the next binge. The wine is to blame for my unease, surely. The wine and the undercurrents with Carrie, with Jamie, with Fiona.
I pull myself out of bed and head for the kitchen, where there’s not a single fly carcass to be seen, and no lingering chemical smell from the spray either. Carrie must have been through the kitchen already; the empty insect spray can is nowhere to be seen. She’s also replaced the cover of the alarm, which I’d left on the kitchen table; I was too tired to deal with that too after all my cleaning. The sun streams in at an angle through the rectangular leaded windowpanes, anointing bright diamond-shaped patches on the tile floor, the red-checked plastic cover, the daffodil walls. The sunshine is just another layer of artifice, I find myself thinking. Another way to hide what lies beneath.
Carrie joins me when I’m contemplating the contents of the fridge, wondering whether my stomach might consider scrambled eggs a good or bad idea. “Morning,” she says. She seems suspiciously bright in comparison to yesterday; perhaps the shower has woken her up. “I thought you were going to sleep in?”
“Morning. There’s some coffee on the table for you.” I close the fridge door and stifle a yawn. I don’t think I’m quite ready for eggs. “You slept through quite an eventful night.”
“What do you mean?” She glances round from filling the kettle at the sink.
“I got woken at 3 A.M. by the smoke alarm going off.” I gesture up at the ceiling. “This one. Quite the racket it made. It turns out the unit was full of flies. God, it was horrible. They must have been nesting in there or something. Cluster flies do that, I think, or maybe they were a different variety . . . They were everywhere. They got in my hair, my clothes . . .” I’m shuddering. Carrie is staring at me, openmouthed. Then she looks around, as if searching for evidence. “I cleaned it all up. Didn’t you wonder why the smoke alarm cover was off?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The cover. I left it on the table.”
“This is the first time I’ve been in the kitchen this morning.”
“But . . .” I stop talking and look at the back door. There should be a black bin bag there full of a day or two of trash topped off with fly carcasses, knotted at the top to stop any creatures that somehow survived my chemical assault from escaping. “Did you take out the bin bag?”
“No, I told you, this is the first time I’ve been in here this morning. What’s going on?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.” I’m opening the cupboard under the sink. There’s no insect spray there. Where did I put that?
“Did you have some kind of weird dream or something?”
“No!” She recoils at my tone, and I stop myself, then go on less vehemently. “No. It happened. Feel, my hair is damp. I had to take a shower afterward, to wash off all the . . .” I shudder again. She reaches out a hand and scrunches a handful of my hair. “See? Damp.”
“Yes.” I can’t read anything in her gray eyes.
“Someone must have been in here.”
“Maybe. Or—”
“Or what? You think I took a shower in my sleep?”
Carrie shrugs. “It doesn’t sound any stranger than your version, which has me sleeping through a smoke alarm, and disappearing bin bags,” she says flatly.
“You’d been drinking and you wear earplugs in bed.” My words are level, but I’m not attempting to keep the bite out of them.
“Even so.” She isn’t backing down. “And wouldn’t you have woken me anyway?”
“There didn’t seem to be any point. I was dealing with it.” She spreads her hands, her jaw set stubbornly, and I am filled with a stinging, furious resentment. I turn to stare out of the window as I fight to collect myself.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” she says quietly after a moment.
I take a deep breath and turn back to the kitchen. “No, thank you,” I say with studied politeness. She nods calmly, then bends to look in the cereal cupboard. “I thought we bought—ah, here it is.” She pulls out a packet of Special K and sets about finding a bowl and spoon. I lean against the counter and watch her, trying to let the negative emotions flow out of me. There’s a fluidity to her movement, yet every action is economical: precisely what is required and no more. The sophisticated veneer of last night’s clothes and makeup is gone. With her hair still shower-wet and her face scrubbed entirely clean, even of her habitual eyeliner, she has the skin of a child, perfect and pore-free. She could be a different person, or the same one, freshly reborn. Just looking at her makes me feel more aware of how tired I am, and of the age gap between us.
“Anyway, it was a good night,” Carrie offers into the silence, as she sits at the table. Her gray eyes are fixed on me, giving nothing away. “A nice bunch.”
“Yes.” Would I feel the same doubt as Carrie if the situation were reversed? Possibly, but that doesn’t make it any less hurtful. “Jamie’s sister was pretty wasted,” I add. Carrie’s mouth is full of cereal now; she makes an indistinct noise in response. “Did you speak to her much?”
“A bit. She seems fun.”
Oh God. I imagine Carrie inviting Fiona over. I imagine their heads bent together, their faces hidden by their hair as they shake in shared giggles. I imagine Fiona in this very kitchen, the smoke from her cigarette spiraling lazily toward the ceiling. “Really? I thought she was kind of odd. And what was it with that bloody watch beeping every half hour?”
“Oh yeah, I asked her about that, but it was at the end of the evening. I didn’t quite catch the gist of what she was saying.” She gestures with her spoon, as if it’s an extension of her hand. “Something to do with not having a grip on time.” She shrugs. “But by that point I’m not sure any of us had much of a grip on time.”
I digest that for a moment. “Jamie said she’s a bit . . . unpredictable.”
“Did he? I’m not sure they get on that well, so I wouldn’t set a lot of store in what he says. Anyway, what are you doing today?”
“Decluttering the attic, food shopping. Welcome to my glamorous life.” I pause for a moment, considering whether to offer to take her to the station, and then mentally slap myself for my petty reluctance. “I’ll pull on some clothes and give you a lift to the station, though, if you want.”
“Really? That would be great.” She tosses a grateful smile to me, and is about to speak when her phone, lying faceup on the checked table cover, begins to chirrup insistently. I see her eye the screen for the caller ID, and grimace. “Sorry, I have to get this.” She pushes back her chair and picks up the phone, and as she does, I see that odd movement of her shoulders again: not a shrug exactly, it’s not pronounced enough. It’s more of a wriggle, or a slight shimmy. “Graham!” she exclaims into the phone, a wide smile fixed in place. “How lovely to hear from you.” She’s leaving the kitchen now, but her words float behind her. “Of course I’m up. I’ve got rehearsals to get to . . . Yes, that’s right, Edinburgh . . .” I look around the now-empty kitchen, with Carrie’s bowl abandoned on the table. She’s left the cereal cupboard door open; I noticed that she did the same yesterday. Jonathan would hate living with her. I close the cupboard door and take myself upstairs, still surprised by how perky Carrie is this morning. Certainly she’s a far cry from the woman who was desperately in need of a caffeine infusion two mornings ago. She’s even exiting her own bedroom, coat on and bag at the ready, when I emerge from my own, a mere ten minutes later.
“Look,” she says. “I must have missed this one.” She’s holding something in her hand, balanced on her flat palm. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness of the hallway after my bright bedroom; I can’t immediately identify what it is. And when I do, I feel my stomach wrench and knot.
“Where did you get that?” I bark, staring at the ashtray in her hand. There are six or
seven butts in it.
“On the windowsill of my bedroom.”
“Your bedroom . . . What, the outside sill?”
“Yes, like the other one. I must have overlooked it.” She cocks her head and then sighs. “Ailsa, don’t be building this up into something it’s not. I just overlooked it the other day.” There’s no judgment in her tone, no accusation in her eyes, but all the same, I know it must be there. I can feel the stiffness in my face. She sighs again. “If there was anybody out there having a tab, he or she would have to be BFG-sized to put an ashtray on my windowsill.”
“Or be inside, not outside.”
“But you locked the doors last night, right?”
I nod.
“Well, then.”
“So, what, you think I’m being delusional? That Ali’s story spooked me and I’m inventing ghosts?”
She doesn’t let her voice rise to my challenge. “Not Ali’s story. I just think that maybe you’re overtired. You said yourself you haven’t been sleeping well.”
“I just haven’t got used to the Manse yet.”
“You told me that before we even got to the Manse.”
I turn for the stairs, exasperated, even though it’s true. I haven’t slept well since I took the call from Pete telling me my mother had died. Carrie follows me down to the ground floor after a beat or two. I busy myself finding my own keys, then I go outside and unlock the little Golf just as my phone starts to ring: Jonathan.
“Hey there,” I say, inordinately pleased to hear from him. It feels like an expression of support in the face of adversity. “I wasn’t expecting you still to be up.” Carrie is outside too, now. I mouth Jonathan at her and hold up two fingers. She nods and starts locking up the Manse.
“I’m almost not. Just climbing into bed as we speak. I wish you were here with me—not that I’d have enough energy to do anything about it.”
The Missing Years Page 11