Lauren spots Billy and hurries to walk beside him. ‘How’s it going?’ he says. He never seems surprised to see her. She starts to say something, but then shrugs as they walk towards their school bus in the twilight.
When he’s finished work, Niall meets Sandy for a pint at the Tavern. It is smaller and dingier compared to their usual haunt, the Black Horse Inn, but the pints are slightly cheaper. The bar is on a hill – a main road – and a window stretches across two walls, overlooking the rolling peatland, its heather no longer in flower. The moon has appeared, shining over the rugged afternoon.
Niall remembers coming here as a teenager with his group of friends on the never-ending summer nights, when the hills were purple from June to August and they felt unmoored from the rest of the world. He remembers learning to fish on the long midsummer days of June and July, when the bright sun begins to set just after 10 p.m. He would go out with his friends to remote lakes in the woods catching rainbow trout, drinking from yellow tins in rowing boats, whether they were allowed to or not.
Niall sits in one of the beech chairs and recognizes a man across from him as someone from school.
‘Kenny! You all right there? We’re getting some pints in,’ he says to the balding man seated alone with the crossword. ‘You want something?’
‘Hi there, no, you’re OK actually, thank you.’ Kenny gives Niall a funny look. ‘I hardly ever see you about these days.’
‘I’m about,’ Niall says, trying to read his expression.
‘Still got your wee girl and that?’
‘Aye … of course.’ Some people in the town still ask him these strange, cold questions. Niall looks up and sees the barman is now looking over at him. As Niall catches his eye, he looks away.
‘Sandy!’ Kenny brightens.
‘Hello hello,’ says Sandy.
‘Still at it with the ladies?’
‘Well, you know.’ He winks.
‘Still doing those house calls?’
‘What can I say? Gotta give the customers what they want.’ They burst out laughing as Niall shakes his head and orders three beers.
8
Lauren’s father looks unusually smart in a kilt, shirt and waistcoat as he stands by the back room’s sliding glass door. His ponytail is neat, and he has trimmed his beard.
‘Why are you wearing that, Dad?’
‘Have to, don’t I?’ He begins to pace the room, frowning. ‘These guys I’m playing with? This band. You know what it’s called? The “No Troosers” Ceilidh Band. What that means is – before you start giggling – you have to wear a kilt. Naff, really. But money’s money.’ He takes his old semi-acoustic guitar out of its case, flipping up the latches, checking it over. He starts to play the opening to ‘Paranoid’. ‘I’m not sure that’s what they’ll be wanting, is it?’ He stops. ‘Sing this one to me, Lauren, why don’t you?’ He starts playing ‘Bonnie Tammie Scolla’ loudly, as he knows she’s trying to learn it. He points the guitar towards her, with a nod. She begins to sing:
‘Where have you been aw the day, bonnie mammy, bonnie mammy …’ Her father hasn’t noticed, so she carries on. ‘Where have you been aw the day bonnie mammy Chris …’
He stops the music and stares.
A shadow passes the hall window and there is a loud rap at the door.
‘Right.’ He shoves the guitar in its case. ‘That’ll be Ann-Marie.’
She enters the hallway in an ice-blue anorak, her short hair in tufts from where she has pulled off her knitted hat.
‘Hullo, how are you?’ Ann-Marie says. ‘Hi, Lauren!’
Niall says, ‘Aye, no bad, yourself?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK. Exams and stuff.’ She sounds out of breath and her nose and eyes are watery from the cold.
‘I see. You were missing home, then?’
‘Yeah. It’s been ages since I’ve been here properly, you know? Nice to see people again. Vairi. Alan popped by the other day. Dad’s giving me some more driving lessons. I’m almost there.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He looks down at his guitar case and sighs. ‘Right. That’s me off then. Lauren – don’t be giving Ann-Marie any cheek, you hear?’ He pulls Lauren’s head to his chest and kisses it, then takes off and slams the door.
Ann-Marie turns towards the locked living room.
‘No,’ says Lauren. ‘C’mon this way, through here. Just put your jacket on the staircase.’ She leads Ann-Marie to the back room, with its worn sofas and table, while they hear the pickup’s engine start its low growl, then fade away.
‘Oh, it’s lovely and warm in here.’ Ann-Marie smooths down a blanket on the armchair.
‘Do you babysit other people?’
Ann-Marie shakes her head, smiling. ‘I’m at boarding school. Hang on. Did that lamp just switch on?’
‘Which …?’ As she speaks, Lauren can see it is the salt lamp, glowing pink again. ‘I’m not sure …’
‘Maybe it was on when I came in.’
Lauren looks around and sits on the carpet by the dying fire. ‘Our TV isn’t very good at the moment.’ She would rather be at Ann-Marie’s.
‘It’s OK. I don’t think there is much on tonight anyway.’ She looks around the room. ‘Do you have Wi-Fi?’
‘I don’t think so. We’ve got a computer over there. It has internet.’
Ann-Marie looks at the PC on its beaten-up Formica desk, in the corner. ‘It’s OK. I can still get some 4G.’ She pauses. ‘A bit. I forget what it’s like here.’
‘I have my own mobile, but it doesn’t have the internet.’
‘Really?’
Lauren takes out an old Nokia.
‘That’s a nice-looking phone.’
‘Thanks.’
‘People text you?’
‘Just my dad, really.’
‘None of those girls, those girls at school you mentioned? Because—’
But Lauren is already shaking her head. She can tell Ann-Marie wants to ask her more, but instead Lauren motions to look at her touch-screen phone. The cover is shaped like a bucket of popcorn and the screen bubbles with coloured squares. Behind these, there is a picture of Ann-Marie with a blond-haired boy. Their heads are close together, on a beach. Lauren can see parts of the boy’s scarf. They are both smiling.
‘Who’s that?’
‘That’s my boyfriend.’
Lauren squeals. ‘You have a boyfriend!’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Rory.’
‘Rory and Ann-Marie sitting in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G.’
Ann-Marie rolls her eyes and tries to find a video with a cat on a treadmill, but the internet doesn’t work.
‘Can I use your bathroom?’
‘Sure.’
Ann-Marie is gone for quite a while, even though she knows where it is; Lauren can hear creaking in a different part of the house. She wonders if Ann-Marie is nosy, like her mother Angela, but decides it isn’t important. She likes her too much.
When Ann-Marie returns, Lauren asks, ‘Can I meet your boyfriend?’
She shakes her head. ‘Shhh. He doesn’t live here, does he?’
‘Ask him to visit!’
Ann-Marie laughs. ‘Oh! Your dad forgot to say – when’s your bedtime?’ She raises her eyebrows, like a threat.
Lauren looks at the clock. ‘It’s six thirty now. Not for a while. He’s going to be home late. I know it. Ann-Marie, you don’t want to stay here late, do you?’
‘He’s up at the Castle Hotel, right? My parents are too. It’s for charity. To help people who aren’t very well.’
Lauren scrunches up her mouth, thinking.
‘How was your day at school?’
‘OK.’ She catches the smell of something rotten, like meat left in the sun, but different, more floral.
Ann-Marie looks over at the lamp again. ‘Do you mind if I switch that off? It’s bugging me.’
Lauren nods. They are next to the kitchen, but she is sure her father hasn�
�t left anything out to rot.
‘So,’ Ann-Marie continues, ‘school is just OK? What did you learn?’
‘About pyramids.’
‘Pyramids?’
‘When a pharaoh died, they buried all his things with him in the tomb. We had to write what our favourite belongings are.’ She remembers once a mouse died in the wall, but this doesn’t smell the same way.
‘That … you would have buried with you? Hmmm. I’m not sure about that.’
‘Why?’ She feels embarrassed by the smell. The dripping from the utility room seems to be getting louder, somehow.
‘Have you told your dad about that?’
‘No. I said I wanted my Jacqueline Wilson books buried with me.’
‘I see.’
‘And Jameson might be buried with me. But he would have to die too.’
‘Oh, Lauren. Are you still playing the fiddle?’
‘Yes.’ Surely Ann-Marie can smell it too and she is just being polite.
‘Do you want to play something for me? What have you been learning these days? Can you play “Mairi’s Wedding”?’
‘Can you read me a story at your house?’
‘Why not here?’
‘I don’t like it here.’
The house is called the Elms. It is made of dark brick and black slate. The panes are painted white. There is a well-kept walled garden with topiary hedges and rose briars. A red hen house and a white duck house stand adjacent in one corner of the garden. The edges of the sloping grounds are dotted with birch trees. Lauren’s feet slip unsteadily in the gravel as she crunches up the dark incline to the house. Ann-Marie is wheeling her bike after giving Lauren a backie down the forlorn hill to her house. She looks over at her. ‘I forget how dark it gets here. In Edinburgh there are always people around, and so much light. It’s so quiet here. So quiet.’
Lauren can see that she is spooked and trying not to show it. ‘The quiet feels calm, though.’ She stops in her tracks and gestures for Ann-Marie to stop too. ‘Just stand here.’ It is so quiet she can hear Ann-Marie breathing in the cold. ‘Your eyes can see better than you think, if you let them. The dark is a good thing. My dad says the dark is useful. It’s useful for rabbits and the little animals, as well as the big ones. The worst you can do is try and run away from it. Then you’ll really feel scared.’
Her father often walks the dog in the dark, when the moon and stars are so bright they can shine the way. Even when they don’t, she knows he lets his eyes open up and he never ever runs. Now she lets her body melt into the dark and lets the other senses – hearing, smell – work harder. It feels somehow relaxing to be hidden away in the night. The air is dry and clear as glass. It cuts through her gloves to the bones of her fingers. Her nose begins to run. ‘Come on,’ Ann-Marie says and they walk up the drive.
The wide hall grows thick with heat from the open fire Ann-Marie has made. The only other light comes from a Tiffany lamp. There is a thin bench with red leather padding in front of the hearth. Years of smoke from moss-covered logs and peat has sunk into the oak panels and velvet. The particular smell is as comforting to Lauren as her father’s stew.
‘I know what we can do!’ says Ann-Marie. They go down into the huge kitchen and Ann-Marie takes out a clear package from a cupboard in the island. ‘Have you ever toasted marshmallows before?’
‘No! Can we?’
‘Of course we can!’
Ann-Marie finds sharp iron skewers. Lauren enjoys driving them through the pink flesh of the marshmallows. She lines up the white ones, thinking about the white of the young woman’s dressing gown, the girls talking behind her back at school. She pushes the thoughts away, not wanting to break the spell of this happy moment.
Back upstairs, the two girls draw the bench close to the hallway fire and Ann-Marie shows Lauren how to hold the skewer just above the flames, to toast it without burning. Lauren copies her movements carefully and the marshmallows begin to soften and bubble brown.
‘We’ll text your dad, won’t we? Will you text him? Don’t want him wondering where you are when he comes home.’
‘Yes. OK. He’s going to be annoyed.’
‘Why?’
Lauren notices the oil painting of a gun dog with a pheasant in its jaws, half in shadow on the wall. She has never really paid attention to it before. There is blood soaking its mouth. Below, on the mantelpiece, are silver-framed photographs and a candelabra holding unlit used candles that have sunk into themselves.
‘When do you use that?’ she asks.
‘Oh. We can now.’ Ann-Marie takes a large box of matches from behind a photo frame and strikes a flame. Lauren collects empty matchboxes. She has decorated a couple at home with silver glitter and pictures cut from newspapers. Inside she keeps things that are small and precious to her – a tiny shell, a palette of eyeshadow from her mother’s vanity case, a foreign coin. Sometimes she will use them for spells, too, and bury them in the ground. Lauren watches the match glow blue, orange and yellow. She watches the flame catch the burnt, sunken wick of the first candle. Ann-Marie uses the same match to light the next candle and the next, her back straight, concentrating.
‘Did you know that candles have magic powers?’ says Lauren.
‘Er … no, I didn’t.’
‘Well, they do. Blue means protection. Yellow means happy. Red means love.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘We have a book at home.’ Lauren doesn’t ever mention the secret book, but she talks about others. She picks at a corner of the bench where the red leather has cracked and yellow padding spills through. ‘It’s one of my favourite books. Candle Power: The Inspiring – something – Ritual and Magic.’
‘What do white candles mean?’ Ann-Marie says.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Let’s look it up.’ Ann-Marie begins tapping on her phone. ‘White is … “Psychic development. Purity. Truth.” That sounds good, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah. What does the first one mean?’
‘I don’t know. Look. There’s a poem you’re meant to say when you light the candle.
“Flickering candle,
Enchanted fire,
Grant me what
I so desire.”
They watch the three small flames move. ‘One two three …’ Lauren holds her breath. Ann-Marie points to her phone screen and they say the last part together: ‘… So shall it be.’
The lamps and candles flicker and the room turns black. Lauren grabs Ann-Marie’s hand and they try to see each other in the dying flames.
‘That can happen,’ says Ann-Marie, her voice a little shaky. The bulb has blown. The room feels very cold and damper now, Lauren notices, as though they are underground.
Back downstairs in the bright kitchen, the Irish wolfhounds rise from their ancient baskets and sniff around the girls’ feet. Lauren does not want to pet them with her clean hands. The dogs look up at her, and one tries to rise up on its hind legs, its nose almost touching hers.
‘Down, Rowland!’ says Ann-Marie.
They eat quietly for a while, leaning against the untidy island. A bowl of ageing fruit, wine stains, bills, a corkscrew and a gardening fork litter its marble surface. ‘Ann-Marie.’
‘Yep?’ Ann-Marie has her mouth full of marshmallow.
‘You know how you said I should tell you if those girls gave me any more bother?’
‘What have they been doing now?’
‘It’s just … They don’t like me. I feel like they’re going to play a trick on me.’
‘How could anyone not like you? They’ll be jealous of you.’
Lauren shakes her head. ‘No, they’re not. How would they be?’
‘Because you’re different.’ Ann-Marie puts her arm around Lauren in a half-hug. ‘You’re cool, Lauren! Come on. Tell them to go and … kiss your bahookie.’
Lauren giggles.
‘Shall we put on some music?’ says Ann-Marie. ‘What do you like?’
‘U
m. I like Frozen.’
‘OK. I don’t have that.’ She picks up the greasy kitchen stereo by its handle and they go back to the hall by the fire.
Ann-Marie plays synth music and Lauren begins to dance, sitting on the wood floor, swaying her arms above her head.
‘My parents really like them. They’re from the eighties,’ says Ann-Marie. ‘They’re called Duran Duran.’ She skewers another marshmallow.
They bring candles back to the fire, to light the room, now the bulb has blown. The fire crackles. Part of a thick branch breaks and falls into the flames with a rush and snap.
‘Ann-Marie? Some girls were talking and it made me wonder. Where do you think my mum went?’ Lauren’s words rush out like water. She sees Ann-Marie go still as she continues. ‘I once asked Kirsty about it, but she said I have to ask my dad and my dad doesna want to talk about it.’
Ann-Marie looks Lauren straight in the eye. ‘Yeah?’ She nods encouragingly. Her mouth closes. Lauren can see the shape of her tongue moving, as if dislodging food or finding the right words. When she speaks, it is in a more formal tone. ‘It’s difficult. And the truth of it is, Lauren, I don’t know what exactly happened.’ She gives a puffy-cheeked sigh. ‘I wish I did. Diane and I have always said that.’
‘What do you mean?’
She gives a searching look and closes her eyes. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, pal.’ She puts her arm around Lauren once again. ‘It’s hard to talk about.’ She pulls away, leaving her hand on Lauren’s shoulder. ‘We don’t know where your mum went to. Nobody does. She left, one day. When you were little. She didn’t say where she was going.’
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