“How was your night in Edinburgh?” I ask. Fiona’s eyes shift to me; I can feel their weight, but I’m focused on Carrie. There’s the merest flicker on her face, a twitch of her shoulder, and then she replies in an entirely casual manner, “Oh, fine. Nothing spectacular.” She’s astonishingly good at the lie. I shouldn’t be shocked—after all, she’s an actress—but nonetheless, I feel the blow land anew, stealing my breath. I had planned to challenge her if she lied to me directly, but I can’t do that now, not with Fiona here. I turn away quickly under the pretense of getting milk from the fridge. When I put the milk carton on the table, Fiona is studying me with something approaching unease around her eyes. She doesn’t look away when she sees that I’m looking back. She knows Carrie wasn’t in Edinburgh, I realize. And she doesn’t like the deception.
“What was the van all about?” says Carrie, when I’ve joined them at the table. Fiona has shrugged off her fleece to reveal a sleeveless T-shirt. Her arms are an anatomy study, every muscle and sinew perfectly defined.
“Security. He’s setting up some cameras for us. He’ll be back tomorrow to finish it off.”
“Because of the bones?” asks Carrie, looking confused.
“Not really.” I really don’t want to go into detail on the fox carcass or the raven until I’m alone with Carrie. “Or maybe, sort of. It made me realize how isolated we are out here.”
“That’s part of the charm, I suppose.” She turns to Fiona. “Stay for dinner?”
Fiona looks at me and I quickly add, “You’re very welcome. Of course.” Carrie glances across at me, warmth in her eyes.
“Okay. Thanks,” says Fiona with a nod. “My dad was planning fish and chips with Callum anyway.”
“Great,” says Carrie brightly. “I’ll just nip to the bathroom and then I’ll get started.”
The kitchen falls quiet without Carrie. Fiona looks at me steadily then reaches out with one hand and rubs the purple paint swatch between her thumb and first finger. I note once again her unusually short nails. I wonder if it’s a riding thing. “Are you trying to turn it back to how it was?” she asks, in a musing tone.
“What?”
“You cannae remember?”
“Remember what?” Then I twig that she means what it was like when I was a child. “Wait, do you?”
“Maybe. It’s hard for me to tell. I can see it this color, but when . . .” She’s frowning, like she’s trying to catch something in her head. “Ach, I cannae tell.”
“Because time is folded here,” I say quietly. “Isn’t that what you think?”
She cocks her head on one side, her hazel eyes gleaming. “Ben?”
I nod. “And Callum.”
“Ah.” She absorbs that for a moment. “You want to think it’s rubbish, but you live here. What do you really think?”
“Carrie lives here too. Have you asked her that?” There’s a waspish note to my tone that even I dislike.
Fiona shakes her head. “Carrie wouldnae feel it. Carrie’s anchored to now. None of it would make sense to her.” Except none of it makes sense to me. My exasperation threatens to erupt—I fold my lips to stop myself saying anything at all.
She looks at me, and her expression softens, like she’s taking pity on me. “Look. It’s like this. Imagine you saw a film. And then you saw it again. The second time round, you know how it’s going to end, you know who the good guys and the bad guys turned out to be, right? So you feel differently about some of the characters the second time round, aye?” I nod unwillingly. “Sometimes it’s like that for me. Not on everything, not even on much, but sometimes. I’m scared of things that havenae happened yet, or I’m not scared when I should be because it’s all going to turn out fine. I cannae even get cross with the old biddy who’s mean to Callum because I’ve seen her fall and break her leg, only I dinnae ken if that’s happened already or not, and I cannae be polite to the groom at work that’s going to run over the dog through sheer stupidity. Or maybe he already did that. I’m not sure. And even when I cannae see anything later, before is all jumbled up.” She looks at me wryly. “You’re a journalist. You probably rely on ordered facts.”
“If you can’t rely on those, what can you rely on?” I try to keep my tone light.
“People. Certain people. For the ones you really trust, it doesnae matter what they do. You’re on their side regardless.” She smiles. “I can see you think I’m nuts, but you’ll come round. You and me are going to be pals.”
“You said that before.” She’s right. I think she’s nuts.
“Did I?” It’s not really a question; she’s not looking for me to tell her when.
“I’m sorry, I just . . . It just doesn’t make sense to me. But any friend of Carrie’s is”—I stumble over the traditional end to that sentence—“welcome here.”
She laughs, short and sincerely, from the belly. “Nicely put.”
I aim for a change of topic. “Was Callum really born here?”
She pauses. “Who told you that?”
“He did. Was he?”
“Not according to his birth certificate.”
There’s a challenge in her words, and her half smile. She wants me to ask the obvious question. “And according to you?”
“Ah, but havenae you been listening? I can never be the gospel. I’m unreliable, I cannae date memories, my recall is questionable.” She sees that I don’t know what to say, and relents. “I only remember the arrival of one babe, so it would have to have been Callum. And I remember it being here.” She shrugs. And then Carrie is back, and in an instant the room is louder and more bustling. She puts the radio on, she co-opts Fiona as a sous-chef and in short order I’m ushered out of the kitchen with orders to go relax in the bath or something.
For a moment, I stand outside the kitchen, wineglass in one hand, temporarily at a loss. Then I climb the stairs, but I don’t stop on the second floor; I go all the way up to the attic. To the albums, which I flick through quickly, looking for any photos taken in the kitchen. There are plenty in the garden, in the dining room or on various Scottish beaches, but none in the kitchen as far as I can see. If my purple wall idea is less divine inspiration and more the echo of a memory, I can’t prove it either way.
For want of anything better to do, I go and run a bath.
* * *
• • •
Dinner is . . . nice. Truly, it is. Carrie’s food is delicious, as always, and she has a spring in her step that’s infectious. Fiona has a glass of wine in front of her when I come down from my bath, and I try not to think about whether she should do that along with whatever medication she’s on. It’s brought a flush to her cheeks and softened the sharpness of her eyes. She’s talking about Callum when I enter, and that softens her, too.
“The private school, Gordon’s—the one at the top of the hill, you ken? It has a great setup for coping with dyslexic kids,” she’s saying. “But the fees at that place are . . .” She trails off and shakes her head. She lifts the bottle of wine questioningly as I join her at the table, but I shake my head.
“Can your dad help out on that?” Carrie asks from across the kitchen, then adds, “Perfect timing, Ailsa, dinner’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.”
Fiona is shaking her head. “A police pension doesnae quite run to putting a kid through private school.” She pronounced it po-lis. I haven’t heard that for years. “All he wants to do is work with animals, but without some kind of decent education, he’ll end up mucking out horse shite forever.” She takes another sip of wine. “Like me.”
“You love where you work,” protests Carrie.
“Aye. Kind of,” sighs Fiona. “But I’d love it more if it, you know, paid me a fuck load of money.”
“I hear you.” Carrie puts a roast chicken into the middle of the table. It hadn’t actually occurred to me to ask what we were having. “Fi, you c
arve whilst I grab the veggies.”
“Was it always going to be acting for you, Carrie?” Fiona asks, as she hacks at the chicken with a total lack of finesse.
“Yeah, though Mum was never keen,” Carrie says over her shoulder as she drains something green in the sink.
“Really?” I ask, surprised. “I thought she went to all your plays.” Where did I get that impression from? Was I told it, or did I just assume?
“She had a ticket to them all. She actually came to very few.” Her mouth twists briefly, but then the corners lift. “Dad moved heaven and earth to come, of course. To every one. Though I don’t know if he’ll make it up to this one; his hip is getting really bad . . .” She trails off, and I see the future that she worries about laid bare on her face. Our mother’s death has made her horribly aware that Pete is ten years older than Karen was. “Maybe he shouldn’t even try.”
“You know we won’t be able to stop him.” She smiles ruefully at me. We’re all seated now, our food in front of us. For a few minutes we busy ourselves with our plates, and the only sounds are the clinking of cutlery and the news bulletin on the radio. I’m trying to remember the last play I saw Carrie in, but I always seemed to be out of the country on assignment. I’d like to think I would have made an effort to get there if I’d known only Pete was supporting her. I’d like to think so, but . . . I was busy, living a different life, a life that was all consuming when I was in it, a life that, now that I am temporarily out of it, seems to have all but consumed me. I would make the effort now, though. Now, I definitely would.
And so, dinner is nice. We talk about all sorts of things, and nothing much. Fiona isn’t odd or enigmatic—apart from the beeping on her watch every half hour, but even that I’m starting to get used to. She’s just a woman having a nice meal and a glass of wine with friends. She’s refreshingly blunt and slightly intense when something particularly catches her interest, but there is nothing to suggest she might be fond of the odd cigarette in a stranger’s home. I feel myself splinter in two as we eat and talk and start a second bottle of wine. Most of me is sitting at the table, enjoying the evening, one I never expected to happen. But then there’s part of me observing, watching, unable to trust what I’m seeing.
“I think I’ll head up to bed,” I say, when Fiona’s beeping watch has alerted me that it’s eleven o’clock. They chorus good nights to me. I glance back from the doorway to see their heads together, giggling at the kitchen table. It’s so precisely the image I conjured up, mere days ago, that it stops me dead. But Carrie and Fiona are oblivious, in a bubble of wine and shared laughter. I could be invisible. I feel invisible.
* * *
• • •
My sleep is disturbed by dreams that don’t feel like dreams. My father drifts in and out of them—he doesn’t look anything like either my memories, insubstantial as they are, or the photos I possess, but somehow I know it’s him—whilst I’m looking for something in a house that doesn’t look like the Manse either, but I know it is the Manse, though the rooms seem to shift and change when I’m not looking at them. I don’t know what I’m looking for, and I’m late for work, but I can’t stop looking.
I wake suddenly, gasping, dragged abruptly into reality. My bedroom door is open, with the hall light spilling through it, and there’s a figure in the doorway.
Fiona.
She’s standing there looking at me. I don’t know how long she’s been there.
“What are you doing? What are you doing here?” I scramble up to a seated position in bed.
She doesn’t answer. My eyes are adjusting. Perhaps she never left; perhaps Carrie suggested that she stay over. I grope for my bedside light switch, bumping my BlackBerry in the process so that it lights up. Finally I find the switch. She blinks in the light but doesn’t move in the slightest. She’s wearing a long white T-shirt—or at least, it’s long on her—that I think I recognize as Carrie’s, over black jeans. It’s her stillness that is the most chilling.
“How long have you been there?” The bark of my words is undermined by the tremor in them. I glance at the BlackBerry screen. “It’s two in the morning.”
Finally she speaks, in an oddly thoughtful tone. “Oh. It’s not the right time.” Then she turns and leaves. Did I see a flash of something silver in her hand as she left? What was that? My fevered brain is running through worst-case scenarios. Some kind of blade? A knife? Or something more prosaic, like a silver mobile phone? I stare at the empty doorframe for a moment, then scramble out of bed and grab my dressing gown. The hallway is empty and quiet. The Manse is listening, holding its breath.
Carrie. The thought propels me straight through the hallway and through the doorway, the door a few inches ajar, into her bedroom. Instantly I can hear her breathing: She’s safe. Some of the tension drains out of me. My eyes are adjusting, and I can see her lying peacefully on her back, one arm flung loosely out, her torso only half concealed by the duvet. She’s not wearing any nightclothes. I back out of the room quickly, feeling like a voyeur.
Back in the hallway, I try to work out which bedroom Fiona must be in. The remaining one on this floor, surely? It’s larger than those upstairs; it’s what I would offer to a guest. The door is closed. If there’s a light on inside, it’s not clear from the crack under it. I stand mere inches from it, then millimeters, straining to hear any noises from within, but I can’t hear anything above my own heartbeat in my ears. It would be extraordinarily rude to open the door, but I couldn’t care less right now; it was extraordinarily rude of Fiona to open my own bedroom door—rude, and sinister, and so very strange. There’s no way I will get to sleep until I’ve made sure I know exactly where she is, and even then, I’m fairly certain I still won’t manage it. Extremely slowly, holding my breath, I carefully depress the handle. It turns, and turns more, and finally—click—it gives. The door opens with the sound of a small moan.
I look at the gap. Three inches perhaps. I can’t hear anything from within the room. Reluctantly I push the door open a little more, enough to be able to peer into the bedroom. The bed is opposite the door; I can see the dark gray cuboid of it, a little darker than its surroundings on account of the navy bedspread. My breath is held, but my eyes are beginning to adjust; I can see a pale blob in the bed. There’s something odd about it, though. Surely it’s not big enough to be a person . . . and I can’t hear any breathing. I feel around the doorframe and press the light switch.
And then I start screaming. Because there is a skull in the middle of the bed.
My father is in many pieces. Two hundred and six, to be exact. Six are in a police lab somewhere, undergoing testing. One is laid out on a navy bedspread, as if on a giant presentation cushion, like the crown jewels. It’s hard to pin down the other one hundred and ninety-nine. They’re in the Manse, certainly, as he was at one time, but they slide in and out of focus and then abruptly, they slip, and they’re gone.
EIGHTEEN
We are in the kitchen, Fiona, Carrie and I. The three of us are in the kitchen, while the skull remains on the navy bedspread, propped in the slight gap between the pillows, like a grinning child that has commandeered his parents’ double bed. I am not screaming out loud anymore, but inside it hasn’t stopped. It may never stop. In my job I have experienced riots, shoot-outs, earthquakes and, once, a volcanic eruption, but I am not prepared for whatever vicious malevolence this is. The Manse has served this up to me. The Manse has passed judgment and it doesn’t want me here . . . But no, I cannot afford to indulge my fanciful leanings. The skull is solid and tangible and real, and someone very real broke into my house and placed it there. Someone doesn’t want me here, but who? There’s a list forming in my head of all the people I know round here—Carrie, Fiona, Ben, Ali, Jamie, Piotr, Glen, Callum, Morag, Jean the shopkeeper, the locksmith whose name I can’t remember, all the people at Ben’s birthday dinner . . . I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel and still the list b
arely makes double figures.
I distract myself with a quick swallow from my mug. We are British, and this qualifies as a crisis, so obviously we’re drinking tea. It’s reassuring to have something to do. Perhaps that’s the point of it: a way to inject some element of normality in times of extreme stress. Ben, Piotr, Carrie, Fiona, Callum, Ali, Morag, Jamie, Glen, Jean, the locksmith . . .
“Are you sure we shouldn’t call 999?” asks Carrie again. Her long-fingered hands are wrapped tightly round her own mug, as if she is afraid they might shake otherwise. Her face is sickly white, with bruises under her eyes along with smudged eyeliner.
“We know the house is empty. We’ve been over every inch.” I aim for a reassuring tone, though whether that’s for her benefit or to quieten the cacophony inside me, I’m not sure. My first instinct when I stopped screaming was indeed to call the police, but Fiona was more practical. She organized us into checking every room, every cupboard, every crawl space in the house, to ensure whoever put the skull there wasn’t still in the house—all three of us together, none of us willing to venture anywhere alone. And once we knew the house was safe, the urgency to call the police had abated. Though since we’ve retreated to the kitchen, Fiona’s control of the situation has evaporated and she’s barely said a word. Even now her head is down, her eyes on her mug, as if she can’t hear the world around her, as if every ounce of herself is contained and focused within her own skin. “We’ve been through this—that thing could have been there for days. It’s not a room we’ve been using,” I continue. “It doesn’t seem like an emergency. I mean, it’s not like there’s any chance of resuscitation.” Carrie grimaces and pulls her dressing gown more tightly closed at her throat. When she burst out of her bedroom, she wasn’t wearing anything at all; she had to grab it before we made our rounds. Funny that she woke for my screams and not for the smoke alarm . . . “Did you have your earplugs in last night?”
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