The Missing Years

by Lexie Elliott

  “Don’t you know?”

  She shakes her head. “I saw this. I dinnae ken what happens next. Carrie . . .” she falters, and closes her eyes briefly. “I dinnae want her to have to lie.”

  A dozen different sentences start in my head, but I can’t complete any of them. I don’t want Carrie to have to lie either. And she would. I know she would do that for Fiona.

  Carrie appears in the doorway. “Callum is safe—Glen has him. The police are . . . Oh my God.” Both hands are at her mouth. Clean hands, not a spot of blood on them. I look at mine. They’re clean too, actually—it’s the tea towels that are sodden—but they don’t feel it. “What happened? Is he . . . ?”

  “I think so,” I say. I can hardly believe this is happening.

  “He got free. He had a knife,” Fiona explains. “He was going—”

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Oh my God, you’re bleeding.” Carrie rushes to her side, standing over her. One of her clean hands is on Fiona’s shoulder. Her enormous eyes are fixed on Fiona’s face.

  “It’s okay. It’s not my blood.” Fiona has turned toward Carrie, but her eyes keep flicking across to me. “I was checking the ties; I didnae think they were tight enough, and then somehow he was free. He had a knife.”

  “Maybe I didn’t tie him properly, with my shoulder and everything.” I look up at Carrie. “It was self-defense.”

  I don’t think I’m lying.

  My father is dead.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  We huddle on the floor in a corner of the kitchen, as far away from the body as possible, but somehow unable to leave the room. Carrie sits in the middle. I drop my head onto her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry. I was wrong about Fiona—sorry, Fiona,” I add. “Jamie said things . . .”

  “Aye, he was good at that,” says Fiona quietly, from the other side of Carrie.

  “But I shouldn’t have presumed,” I continue. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” says Carrie. She bends the arm that belongs to the shoulder I’m leaning on to stroke my hair gently with one finger. “I know you were only thinking of me.”

  “Under the circumstances, Ailsa,” says Fiona thoughtfully, “I think you could maybe see your way to calling me Fi.”

  I start to giggle, but it hurts too much, in my head and in my collarbone.

  “Listen,” says Carrie suddenly. She left the front door ajar. The sound of a car on the gravel reaches us.

  “Ailsa? Fi?” calls a familiar voice. It’s Ben. I can hear him clomping down the hallway. He must have a large torch. Or two: there are two circles of stark white light, much stronger than our three puny candles, dancing over the kitchen units before training on Jamie’s body. “What the—?”

  “Fuck!” comes Ali’s voice. That makes more sense. Ali is here, and has a torch too. The sense of relief that someone has arrived to help is overwhelming. Almost immediately after it floods through me, I realize I don’t feel well.

  “We’re here,” calls Fiona. “We’re okay. Sort of.”

  “He’s not,” I hear Ali mutter. I can see the dark shadow of him bent over by the body. Taking a pulse, presumably, though there’s none to take. How many times a minute does Jamie’s pulse not beat? Ben’s light explores the rest of the kitchen and finds the three of us. “Jesus Christ,” he says. I can’t see his face behind the circle of light, but he sounds like someone just punched him. “Are you hurt?”

  “We think Ailsa’s broken her collarbone,” Fiona says. “But it’s not our blood.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s . . . it’s a long story. The police are on their way. How come you’re here?”

  “We were just doing the rounds, checking on folks given the power’s down everywhere. Your dad and Callum are okay, Fi; they’ve got the generator going. He said you might be here.” He plays the torchlight over to Ali, who raises a hand to shield his eyes.

  “He’s dead,” Ali says shortly, shaking his head. The light pauses, then swings away.

  “Where was Callum?” I ask into the silence.

  Ben clears his throat. “The barn. The cat had kittens. He was fascinated and lost track of time.”

  Fiona—Fi—gives a short rueful laugh. “I’m not really in a position to get mad at him for losing track of time. How many kittens?”

  “Never mind the fucking kittens. Why is Jamie dead?” Ali’s voice is rising, both in pitch and volume.

  “There’s a skeleton upstairs too,” Carrie pipes up. “It’s Ailsa’s dad.”

  “Jesus, fuck.” The shock in Ali’s voice is unmistakable now. “Cannae one of you give a straight answer to a question? What happened? This is like the fucking three witches.”

  “Macbeth.” This is Carrie.

  “And look how that turned out,” I murmur. I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all.

  Carrie turns to me. “Are you okay—”

  “I might throw up,” I blurt. And then I do.

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s three days before I’m discharged from hospital, not on account of my collarbone, which is indeed broken, but because it’s discovered by my very thorough doctor that I have carbon monoxide poisoning and therefore need to be oxygenated for at least forty-eight hours. Apparently the boiler in the bathroom has been silently pumping out invisible lethal fumes right next to my bedroom for who knows how long. Yet another thing the Manse was trying to tell me, with the smoke alarm incident—if you believe in that sort of thing. More of me does than before. The doctor lists the symptoms and I nod to almost every one: headache, fatigue, nausea, depression, confusion, feeling better whenever out of the house. Ever since I got to the Manse, I’ve been slowly undergoing poisoning. Carrie has only the mildest of symptoms, because her room is farther away and she sleeps with her window open, but she still has to spend twelve hours on oxygen to be safe. We both endure several lectures on the importance of testing smoke alarms and how stupid I was not to have replaced the batteries after the fly incident, about which Carrie and I feel equally guilty but for different reasons—her for not believing me, and me for putting her at risk by not immediately buying new batteries.

  Bryn and other officers come to the hospital to speak with me, but it’s fairly clear they have no intention of pressing charges on Fiona, or anybody else for that matter. Jamie threatened us with a gun and then fired in a confined space; his guilt is not in doubt. And neither, apparently, is his mental state—we have Jamie’s computer to thank for that. It holds some fairly odd stuff that Bryn doesn’t want to detail for me. And despite sophisticated efforts at hiding his tracks, the police easily prove that he bought the skull—which dates to the sixteenth century, and probably originated in Asia—from the Internet, which is not illegal (How can that not be illegal! I exclaim to Bryn), though the breaking and entering to lay it on a bedspread certainly is. With all that evidence corroborating our story, nobody is interested in a different narrative, procedures manual be damned. I get the impression that Fiona’s story and mine don’t quite tally exactly, but I have carbon monoxide poisoning, and she has always had her own issues; slight inconsistencies are apparently forgiven. Instead, Bryn lectures me about the smoke alarm. He seems oddly stricken at what has happened, as if he should have been able to stop it.

  Callum comes to the hospital, too, immediately scrambling onto the bed to snuggle into me despite his mother’s protestations from the doorway. He has the sense to at least climb on the side without the sling. “Hey you.” I smile at the little face tucked against me. “How are you?”

  “Good,” he says, then stops as if unsure he’s allowed to say that. “Uncle Jamie died.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I’m sorry. The words sting as I say them. He didn’t need to die, I think, or one version of me thinks. I try to quash that version. No m
atter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t my fault, I still feel like I let it happen. When I stepped away from the kitchen, I knew something was wrong; I knew something was going to happen.

  Clearly nobody has yet told Callum what Jamie did, because he says, “Grandad says he’s gone to a better place, but it cannae be that good.” He’s frowning. “Otherwise everyone would kill themselves right now and go there.”

  I glance at Fiona, who is trying not to laugh. “I think life here is pretty good. Probably worth living that first.”

  “Aye. Oh!” He brightens. “The cat had kittens! Four of them!”

  “I heard.”

  “You can have one now. You can have the cutest. It’s fine, Toast says it’s okay to go in the Manse now.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Toast can speak now?”

  He giggles. “Dinnae be daft. She’s still a dog.”

  Fiona speaks from her position in the doorway. “Remember, Carrie is buying sweeties in the shop, Callum—if you want to help her choose, you’d best go now.”

  He scrambles off in a shot, then pauses by the door. “I’ll be back,” he promises me. His mum tousles his hair and he races off.

  “Do you think it was the carbon monoxide?” I ask Fiona. She shrugs but doesn’t move from the doorway. She’s wearing mascara again, and rather a nice V-neck jumper over her jeans. I think it’s for Carrie. “You can come in, you know,” I say.

  “How’s the collarbone?” she asks, pulling a chair across to sit near me.

  I grimace. “Remarkably sore.”

  “Aye. I’ve broken mine a couple of times, falling off horses. I cannae recommend it.”

  “My head is so much clearer, though. I can’t quite believe I didn’t even realize something was wrong.”

  “Carrie feels awful that she didnae pick up on it.” She’s looking at the bed, not at me. I don’t know what it is that she’s reluctant to say. There are too many possibilities.

  “Can animals detect carbon monoxide?” I press again. “Is that why they wouldn’t come inside before?”

  “I dinnae ken. I suppose it’s one theory.”

  “What’s yours?”

  She meets my eyes calmly. “That the Manse was trying to tell us something.” I wait for more. “We used to be able to walk the dogs through the Manse grounds, when I was much younger. I wonder if that stopped when Jamie started taking your dad’s bones there.” She smiles wryly at something in my face. “But you’ll come to your own conclusions in your own time.” She could tell me more, I think. She’s waiting for the right time. It must be even harder for her to gauge that than for everyone else.

  I check that the doorway is clear of listeners. “Are you going to tell Carrie what happened?”

  “She knows what happened.” I raise my eyebrows with my best skeptical look. She relents. “All right, she mostly knows. I will tell her one day, I promise. It’s just . . . it would be too much, now. Too much to put on her and the relationship.”

  I nod. “She’ll hate that you lied, whatever the reason.”

  “She’ll get over it.” Her words are blunt.

  “Is that a Fi fact?” I ask lightly, and she shakes her head, smiling, her triangular fan of hair bouncing around her.

  “Nope. Just blind faith.”

  I hope for both of our sakes that she’s right. “Why did you do it?” I ask hesitantly.

  “I didnae have a choice.”

  “You did.”

  She shakes her head again, her mouth a thin line. “Not once he threatened Callum.”

  “Was he . . . right?” I’ve been turning it over in my mind. If he’s not hers, whose is he?

  She takes a long time to answer, but I don’t press her. I can see that she’s considering it—her eyes track around, thinking, remembering, perhaps seeing the things that only she sees. She’s the oddest package, Fiona. Blunt practicality and capability mixed with extreme vulnerability, and all set slightly off-kilter, like she’s out of phase with the world and trying to figure out how to catch up. “I dinnae ken,” she says at last. “I dinnae remember having sex—with any men, I mean—but with the drugs . . . well, who knows? Sometimes . . . sometimes I wonder if he slipped through to me. Or maybe I slipped back to him for a spell and brought him with me.” Callum McCue, babe in arms. I find I’m holding my breath. But I’m being ridiculous; Callum is a common Scottish name . . . Fiona cocks her head and says fiercely, “He’s all mine now, though.”

  I nod and wait until a little of the tension has left her. “You know that sounds completely nuts, right?” I’m not sure if I’m trying to reinforce it to myself or her, but I add a smile to stop my words biting.

  “Aye. Well. No more nuts than the Manse kicking Jamie in the head, and we both saw that happen,” she replies pointedly, though with a touch of humor, and I incline my head to her—Touché. I can’t help wondering how Fiona remembers that, and for a second I’m back there, in the kitchen of the Manse, as the lights go out and the Manse roars its fury at Jamie. But in my hospital room, Fiona’s face sobers. “I couldnae take the chance. And”—she shrugs—“I kent he died. I’ve always kent that. No matter what he did to me, no matter how he manipulated me or everyone else, I kent he’d be found out in the end. Not the details, mind, but the gist of it.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Like you’d have believed me.” True. “And anyway, I knew it was going to turn out all right in the end.” I look pointedly at my arm in the sling and raise my eyebrows. “You’ll live,” she says dryly. “I kent we’d be fine. And I kent he would be gone.”

  Jesus. It occurs to me that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy for her. Killing Jamie to protect Callum, I can understand. Waiting silently for years for your manipulative half brother to get his just deserts is somewhat more chilling. “Please tell me you don’t see Carrie or me dying in strange circumstances.” I’m not entirely joking. Though of course it’s more likely that Fi has no more foreknowledge than an astrology chart, and is simply trying to make sense of the memories in her tangled brain as best she can . . . But at least one of my selves doesn’t believe that, can never believe that. Because I was there when the Manse expelled its fury on Jamie.

  Fiona smiles. “I already told you. You and me are going to be great pals.”

  “And Carrie?”

  She looks down as if she’s fighting something, but when she looks up at me again, I see what’s inside her—the hope, the excitement, the fear. “I cannae see it. I dinnae think I’m meant to. You have to leap blindly into love.”

  “Love makes a furnace of the soul,” I mutter. I’m thinking of Carrie, of Pete. Of Callum. The people I would jump into a fire for. The people I want to play a part in any life I fashion for myself now. Perhaps Fi will be one of those too, one day, though I’m still a little splintered where she’s concerned. Maybe I always will be.

  “Aye, well. A wee bit melodramatic, but I cannae argue with it.” She pauses. “Ali wanted to come see you but he wasnae sure if he’d be welcome.”

  “What? Why? Because of his mum?” She nods. “But that’s not his fault.”

  “He feels guilty; he thinks he should have twigged. Especially with the fox.”

  “Does he know why she—”

  But Fiona is already shaking her head. “He thinks she was blaming your folks for the business going under, but she willnae talk about it.” She grimaces. “She’s going downhill pretty fast now.”

  “Does Ali know I’m not pressing charges?” She nods again. “Tell him to come. Tell him . . . tell him we’re not our parents.” That’s not quite right; that’s not quite what I want to say. “Tell him I’d like him to come.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day, Carrie arrives to drive me home from the hospital. Home. I don’t yet know if the Manse could ever feel like home af
ter what happened there.

  “It’s your sister,” says a cheery nurse, popping her head round the doorway of my room. I’m all packed up and sitting in a chair. The nurse surveys us both, in turn. “You two are nothing alike,” she marvels.

  “We’re half sisters,” I say, and her face clears in understanding.

  “Will you shut up about the half sister thing?” says Carrie irritably. The nurse looks at her face, then mumbles something like, I’ll leave you to it, then, and makes a hasty exit. “It’s such a stupid phrase. It’s not as if anybody has the other half of me.”

  “It’s not like that.” I’m genuinely surprised. “I didn’t . . . I’ve never wanted to presume.”

  “Oh.” She absorbs that for a moment and smiles, the wondrous smile that so rarely comes. “I choose whole sisters, then.”

  “Whole sisters it is.”

  We talk on the way home without covering anything meaningful, but I know she’ll get to the things that matter in her own time. It’s a bright day, with patches of sunlight painting the slopes of the glen, but it doesn’t feel fixed; the weather might change at any moment. After a while Carrie tells me that Pete has been going spare, and he’s flying up at the weekend. “Oh, I forgot to say, he gave me a message for you. In connection with the painting—what was it? No Safe Place? Morbid title.”

  There’s something in her voice. “Yes. From the Danish guy?”

  She shakes her head. “Not Danish, Scottish. I never said he was Danish; he just lives in Denmark. Hang on.” She changes gears for a roundabout with a series of alarming lurches. “I bloody hate driving a manual,” she mutters.

  “I’m not so keen on you driving one either.” She sticks her tongue out at me. “But go on,” I press her, when the road looks thankfully clear of any obstacles. “The Scottish guy living in Denmark?”

  “You’ll never believe his name.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Gordon Jamieson.”