Coffin Road

Chapter nine

Karen lay on the bed with her earbuds in and the volume up high on her iPhone. Still, somehow, she could hear them. Or perhaps feel, rather than hear them. Modern houses with stud walls and composite wooden flooring left little to the imagination. And she had known plenty of them, moving as they had from house to house when she was young, always in the wake of her father’s career. London, Leicester, Edinburgh. So many houses in such a short life.

She closed her eyes and tried to quell the sick feeling that had lain like a stone in her belly ever since her mother had broken the news.

Karen had changed in the two years since her father’s death. From a hormonal, but almost painfully conventional teenager to a hormonal, rebellious little bitch. A change of which she had been the conscious architect. Short hair, shaved at the sides and dyed green in a lick across the top, but still black at the back. The nose and eyebrow studs, the rings in her lip that they made her take out for school. The pictures of One Direction on the wall had been torn down to be replaced by Marilyn Manson posters she had found in the goth shop.

The first tattoo had caused a monumental row with aftershocks that went on for days. But there was nothing her mother could do about it. Fait accompli. Tattoos were for life, and this one had been such a small thing. A delicate little butterfly just above her left ankle. The others that followed had reduced it to insignificance. A winged skull on her chest, just below the neck. An elaborate and colourful snake that coiled its way around her left arm, from shoulder to wrist. An eagle with wings spread across her back and shoulders. And a couple she hadn’t even told her mother about.

Dressed discreetly, it was possible for all of them to be hidden. But pointing that out had done nothing to allay her mother’s fury with each addition. And after every grounding she had simply gone out and got another. They couldn’t lock her up in her room for ever.

Her mother had demanded to know where she had got the money. But Karen only ever shrugged, infuriating her further. How could she tell her that the tattoo artist was a friend returning favours? An older friend, with a penchant for teenage girls.

She had gone from being Daddy’s little girl to Mother’s nightmare in twenty-four short months. A deliberate decision. To leave behind the fragile, broken child, so filled with regret, and become... she didn’t know what. Anyone but who she really was.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any more and jumped off the bed, ripping out her earbuds and crossing to the laptop on the dresser. She scrolled down a list of recently downloaded albums. Anathema, Motionless in White, Dark Princess, and a host of others whose music she really didn’t care for. A culture mostly from before her time. Loud, frenetic, violent music that her mother detested even more than Karen. She selected an album by We Are The Fallen called Tear The World Down, clicked play, and cranked up the volume on her sound system. Classic metal, screaming lyrics about sorrow, pain and tears in a song called ‘Bury Me Alive’. The perfect accompaniment to the unwanted sounds of sex.

It was less than five minutes before her mother stormed into the room, pulling a black silk dressing gown around her to cover her nakedness. She was flushed from more than anger, pupils dilated, her blond-streaked hair a tangled mess. ‘Will you turn that bloody noise down!’

Karen stood her ground defiantly. ‘Funny. I was just going to ask you to do the same thing.’

Her mother frowned and shook her head. ‘What are you talking about?’ And she stalked across the room to the computer and grabbed the mouse to click pause. The sudden silence seemed even louder than the music.

‘You and baldy boy, fucking on the other side of my bedroom wall. You think I want to listen to that all night?’

‘Don’t you use that kind of language with me!’

‘Oh. Oh. So you’re not fucking then? You’re making love, is that it? Well, it doesn’t sound much like love to me. More like war. All that banging and screaming.’ She drew a deep breath, sucking up all her anger from deep inside. ‘I don’t need that shit all night, every night.’

Perhaps it was guilt that stopped her mother from coming straight back at her. But it was the ruthless streak Karen had been cultivating that led her to press home her advantage.

‘Cos that’s what it’s going to be, isn’t it? Now that he’s moving in. Sleeping in my dad’s bed, sitting in his chair, screwing his wife. Telling me what to do.’ Her mouth curled in anger as she almost spat the accusation at her mother. ‘You didn’t wait very long, did you?’

‘Christ, Karen, it’s been two bloody years! What did you think I was going to do? Spend the rest of my life in mourning? Dress in black and live like a nun? I’m not even forty, for God’s sake.’

‘And what about me?

‘What about you?’ The words exploded from her mother’s lips in anger. ‘You’re only seventeen! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and all you want to do is romanticise some imaginary past that never even existed. You did nothing but fight with your father.’

‘I loved my dad!’ The words, shouted in defiance, were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she was immediately embarrassed.

But her mother just shook her head. ‘Well, you’d a funny way of showing it. He’s dead, Karen. Gone. Get over it!’

She slammed the door shut behind her, and Karen heard her angry footsteps all the way along the hall. Then the low murmur of voices next door. But there was no resumption of hostilities.

Her desk was at the window side, about halfway up the row, and she looked out on trees, and pale grey buildings and acres of glass. Suburban hell. The greens and bunkers of the golf course simmered silently beyond a high hedge. She could hear Mrs Forrest speaking, but she wasn’t listening. Everything that made Karen different was hidden from view. Except for her hair and a few face studs. White blouse, school blazer and tie reduced her to conformity. Almost. The green lick always singled her out for attention.

It was the third or fourth time of her name being called that finally drew her eyes towards the front of the class.

Mrs Forrest was a formidable woman. She taught English and maths and was very much of the old school. She belonged to a generation whose own teachers would have wielded the tawse. And Karen had no doubt that, were it acceptable today, Mrs Forrest would have taken pleasure in dishing out its singular punishment herself.

‘Are you listening, Karen?’

‘Yes, Mrs Forrest.’

‘Then what did I say?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘So you weren’t listening.’

‘I was. You just weren’t being interesting enough to register in my consciousness.’ Karen’s IQ was probably twenty points or more higher than most of her teachers’. It never endeared her to them and almost invariably created a sense of their inferiority, which made them dangerous.

The teacher sighed. ‘You do realise that you are the only girl in the class who has failed to hand in her assignment.’

Karen was aware of classmates turning heads in her direction. None of them would dare to cross Mrs Forrest, with or without the tawse. She was a big personality. ‘What assignment would that be?’

Mrs Forrest’s silence would have intimidated nearly any other girl in the room, but Karen was past caring. She didn’t even know why she had bothered coming back for a sixth year. Except that she had no idea what else to do. She could have applied for university at the end of the last school year, and would have been accepted by any one of them that she had cared to ask. But another three or four years in education was an unappetising prospect. With depression leading to apathy, leading to more depression, her downward spiral into lassitude had led her more recently to speculate upon whether suicide was genetically heritable. ‘The assignment that every other girl in this class has completed. Apparently they had no problem in understanding what was being asked of them.’

‘You must have spelt it out in words of one syllable, then.’

Mrs Forrest pursed thin lips. ‘I think, young lady, it’s time we made an appointment for you to speak to the school counsellor. You can stay behind after school this afternoon and we’ll arrange a session.’

‘I’m busy after school.’

‘Oh, are you? Doing what, exactly?’

‘Frankly, Mrs Forrest, it’s none of your fucking business.’

There was a collective intake of breath, and Mrs Forrest paled visibly. ‘Get out of my class,’ was all she said.

Karen scooped up her books and jotter and slid them into her satchel. ‘My pleasure.’ And she stood up and walked out in silence, letting the door bang behind her.

Gilly found her sitting smoking behind the gym after class. She was the only girl that Karen had ever met in all her years at school with whom she felt she could talk as an equal. But their relationship was fractious and competitive, and for all their closeness there was always a certain distrust between them. Gilly was a plain girl, with straight, mousy-brown hair and over-large hips that Karen would say, when she was being mean, made her perfectly suited for childbearing. Karen swore she would never have children. What a waste of intelligence, she would say, to spend your life raising children for some shit of a husband who regarded you as little better than a glorified nursemaid and housekeeper.

Gilly sat down beside her and lit a cigarette of her own. It was her sole concession to rebellion. She had not gone down Karen’s road of facial piercings and tattoos. She was certain to go to university, where she would probably get a master’s degree or a doctorate, then spend the rest of her life raising children. She said, ‘You’re in deep shit, girl.’

‘Yeah? Whose?’

‘Mrs Forrest’s, for a start.’

‘Aye, well, she’s pretty full of it.’

‘She went straight to the headmaster’s office after you’d gone. Left us a good fifteen minutes on our own.’ She grinned. ‘The place was in uproar. If you stood in the election for student rep you’d be a shoo-in.’

‘That might be a little difficult after they’ve expelled me.’

‘They won’t expel you!’

Karen shrugged. ‘That’s a pity. Guess I’ll have to quit, then.’

Gilly gave her a sceptical look. ‘And do what?’

Karen inclined her head very slightly but said nothing. ‘What’s got into you, anyway? You’re being a right pain today.’

Karen took a pull on her cigarette and stared at the ground.

It was a long time before she said, ‘That bald-headed bam’s moving in with my mum.’

‘What, that guy she’s been going out with?’

‘Yeah, her boss at work.’

Gilly shrugged. ‘So?’

‘So he thinks he’s just going to walk in and take over where my dad left off. Well, he’s got another think coming.’

‘Could be worse, she might have married him.’

‘She can’t. It’ll be another five years before she can apply for a legal declaration of presumed death. As if it’s not pretty fucking conclusive as it is. An empty boat and a suicide note. At least it means she’ll not be changing her name and trying to change mine, too.’ She flicked her cigarette away across the tarmac and watched the sparks kick up from it as it hit the ground. ‘Think it’s probably time I moved out.’

Gilly was taken aback. ‘Moved out? Where would you go? How would you live?’

‘I’ll figure something out. But I’m not staying there to let him boss me around, and spy on me in the shower.’

‘Is that what he does?’

‘Not that I know of. Not yet, anyway. But he probably will.’

She grinned and stood up. ‘I’m out of here.’

She took a bus into town, then rode out to the airport and back again on the tram. The airport was somehow symbolic of escape. But it was only ever a dream. An impractical fantasy.

The tram was fun, and she was still newfangled with it. The outward and return journeys took her through western suburbs she didn’t know, and then slap bang through the city centre. Priority for the tram, and unrivalled views of the gardens and the castle through panoramic windows. And no matter how busy it was, no one would speak to you. People travelled in their own little bubbles, listening to music or reading books, or simply staring into space, like Karen.

She had removed her tie, opening the top of her blouse to reveal a little of her tattoo, lipsticked her mouth deep purple and reinstated her lip rings. She was determined to be as defiantly ugly as possible, staring down anyone who had the temerity to look at her.

But today she wasn’t catching anyone’s eye. And, contrary to all outward appearance, she was bleeding inside, where Daddy’s little girl hid from the world, succumbing to guilt and grief.

It was still a mystery to her why she had given him such a hard time. Driven by some internal devil that made her say and do things that she really didn’t mean. Just to be difficult, or obstinate, to hurt with malice aforethought. She had felt almost possessed, driven to truculence, and always filled, in the aftermath, with regret that she could never admit to.

Her mother had doted on her when she was wee, an only child, an only daughter. But it was always her father’s approval she had sought, him she had wanted to spend time with. And in those early years he’d had endless patience, and limitless time, or so it seemed. He’d played games with her for hours on end — hide the sweetie, snakes and ladders, chequers — and read to her every night. Silly, childish stories, but they had given her an appetite for reading. Only now did she realise how desperately boring it must all have been for him. But he had never stinted on his time. He had taught her to swim on holiday in France, to ride a bike in the back garden, running along beside her, holding the saddle. ‘Don’t let go, Daddy, don’t let go,’ she had shouted, unaware that he had let go long ago.

She glanced from the window of the tram, out across the roofs of Waverley Station, and, jumping focus, saw her reflection in the window. An involuntary smile on her face with the memory of it. And tears sprang suddenly to her eyes.

From the age of twelve or thirteen she had become unaccountably angry with him. Not entirely her fault, because his work had taken up more and more of his time, leaving less and less of it for her. And she had punished him for it, mercilessly, with her moods, and sullen sulks, and sudden outbursts of anger. Even when he had gone out of his way to make time for her, to take her out sailing, or walking in the Pentland Hills, she had found excuses not to go. Hurting herself just to hurt him.

And then the very last time she’d seen him. He had been going to come and watch her in the school debate. The proposition was that GMOs were the future of food and the only way to feed the world. She knew that it was one of her dad’s hobby horses. He had always been implacably opposed to the idea of genetically modified crops, and so she had boned up on the subject and was the principal speaker against the proposition. He had called off at the last moment. A problem at work and he had to deal with it. He said that he would drive her to the school but couldn’t stay.

That he hadn’t even been going to hear her speak, after all the work she had put into it just to please him, had seemed like the last, unforgivable straw. She blew up at him, accusing him of being hopelessly selfish, of not caring about anyone or anything in the world but himself. And least of all her. As usual, he had stayed calm and patient and tried to explain. But that only infuriated her further, and she had screamed in his face, ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’ And fled from the room in tears.

She never saw him again. They found his boat that weekend, out in the Firth of Forth. Empty. All the life jackets still on board. And then the note her mother had discovered that night, left on the pillow, beneath the duvet, so that she hadn’t seen it until going to bed.

For the longest time, Karen had been utterly overcome by guilt. It was her fault. Somehow he’d been driven to take his own life because of her. The way she behaved, the things she’d said. And she had wished with all her heart that she could just go back and undo it all. Tell him that she’d never meant any of the things she had said, that she loved him really. But there was no way to do that, no way to unsay the things she’d said. And in the end her only means of dealing with it was by growing a hard outer shell that would never let anything in to hurt her ever again.

She became aware of a middle-aged woman sitting opposite, staring at her, and caught a reflection of herself again in the window, her face streaked now with black mascara, and shiny with tears.

It was mid-afternoon when she got back to the house. Her mother would not be home for nearly three hours yet, returning no doubt with Derek, since it seemed he had already moved in.

Karen could not for the life of her see what it was that her mother found attractive about him. His head was completely bald on top, smooth and unnaturally shiny. But he had a ring of dark hair around the sides and back, greying a little at the ears. And he wore it far too long, as if that could make up for the lack of it elsewhere. It might not have been so bad had he just shaved off the lot. That’s what men did these days when they went bald. And it looked so much better.

She supposed he was quite well built, but old fashioned in the dark suits he habitually wore — estate agents, it seemed, were always on call — or the neatly pressed jogpants and sweatshirt that he wore to go running at the weekends. He was invariably nice to Karen, smiling and obsequious, believing apparently that it might endear him to her. She detested him.

She dumped her bag in her bedroom and changed into a T-shirt and black jeans, then wandered through to her mother’s bedroom. In the months after her father’s death, she had come in here often. Her father’s clothes had been left hanging in the wardrobe, and they smelled of him. His smell. She would bury her face in one of his jackets and simply breathe him in. And it choked her every time. Because somehow it was as if he was still there. How could he be gone when she could smell him? That comforting, familiar smell that she had grown up with. Whether it was aftershave, or some other scent, or just the natural oils that the body exudes, it was a smell that always took her back to childhood, conjured those happy days when she had loved him unconditionally.

His clothes had long gone. Her mother had removed them all one day when she was at school, and taken them to the charity shop. Karen had been distraught when she returned home to find his half of the wardrobe empty. Those suits and jackets and trousers on their hangers, the folded piles of jumpers and T-shirts, the drawer full of socks were her last connection to him. Somehow deep down she might even have believed that one day he would come back to wear them all again. But even that had been taken from her with their removal.

Now, when she opened the wardrobe, they were Derek’s clothes hanging there, like the intruder he was in their lives. And all she could smell was the powerful, pungent odour of the aftershave he applied far too liberally to his shiny, shaven face.

She banged the door shut and went through to the dressing room off the bedroom. Her mother’s little den. Karen knew that her mother kept an old photo album in here in one of the dresser drawers. An anachronism, really, in this digital age. Colour prints from film negative. Her paternal grandfather had been a portrait and wedding photographer, and her father had inherited all his cameras, and continued to use them almost until his death, though it had become more and more difficult to get film processed. Only very late did he succumb to digital, seduced by the gift of a Sony Cybershot from Karen’s mother, who was fed up being asked to take photographs she couldn’t immediately see and post on Facebook like everyone else.

Shooting on film had meant that there were fewer photographs taken, which had made them more precious, and it was nice to have an album to sit and flick through. Pictures you could touch, almost as if touching the people themselves, a direct connection with a happier past.

Karen sat on the floor, her back against an old armchair, pulled her legs up and opened the album on her knees. She smiled at the tottering two-year-old, arms raised, hands held by her daddy as he encouraged her to walk on her own. A picture taken by someone of the three of them, with Karen in the middle. She would have been about five then, and already her mother and father seemed dated. His hair had been longer at that time, falling in dark curls over his forehead. And her mother was slim, before she put on the weight, hair drawn back in a ponytail from a small, pretty face.

There was one taken of Karen and her dad when she was about eleven. She had been quite tall then, following a period of rapid growth that had left her awkward and leggy. She was grinning shyly at the camera. Her dad had his arm around her shoulder and was smiling down at her adoringly.

She felt the tears welling up again and bit her lip to stop them from spilling. Blinking furiously, she closed the album and slipped it back in the drawer. The last photographs would all have been digital and kept, she knew, in files on her mother’s laptop.

The laptop sat open on the little dresser, where her mother would spend time posting and commenting on the videos and pics posted by her boring friends on Facebook. An endless succession of pointless quizzes, of babies and gardens, smileys and saccharine aphorisms. Share if animals are worth fighting for.

Karen sat in front of it and tapped the trackpad to waken it from sleep. The desktop was a shambles of icons and folders, files and photographs, jpegs and PDFs. She clicked the Photos icon on the dock and the software that stored all her mother’s photographs opened up to fill the screen. The sidebar listed photo events going back several years. Karen went through them at random, but couldn’t find any of her father, and wondered if her mother had trashed them. The most recent were of her and Derek. A barbecue in the back garden, a picnic in the Pentlands. Drunken faces at a party leering for a selfie taken on her mother’s smartphone.

Karen breathed her exasperation and shut down the software. She was about to put the computer back to sleep when a folder among all the items on the desktop caught her eye. It was labelled simply, Derek. She hesitated to open it. It would be like spying, and she knew how pissed off she would be if she thought her mother was trawling through files on her laptop. But curiosity overcame reticence, and she double-clicked. The folder opened up in a separate window to reveal a long list of files, tracing email communications between Derek and her mother, going back nearly five years.

Karen wasn’t quite sure why she was disappointed. Dozens of what would inevitably be boring work emails. Houses for sale. Schedules. Adverts. Appointments with clients. Photo attachments. She pushed the cursor arrow towards the red Close dot, then on a sudden impulse double-clicked to open a file at random. It was dated a little less than three years ago, and, as Karen read it with growing disbelief, her blood turned cold.

She felt as if she were fevered. Her face was hot and red and her throat burned. She could hear Derek retreating from conflict out in the hall and tiptoeing downstairs. Her mother was flushed and defensive.

‘You had no right to go poking through my private correspondence!’

‘No, I didn’t. But I did. And that’s not even the point. You and that baldy bastard were cheating on my dad long before he died.’

‘We weren’t cheating!’

‘Okay, fucking behind his back, then.’

‘Stop it!’

‘No.’ Karen was fired up by hurt and righteous indignation. ‘What did you do, bump him off so you could be together?’

Exasperation exploded through her mother’s teeth. But she held her voice in check. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘What’s ridiculous about it? I never believed he committed suicide anyway. Why would he?’

‘Look...’ Her mother was fighting to stay calm. ‘Yes, Derek and I were having an affair.’

‘Fucking, you mean. Over the desk in that back office at the estate agency, probably.’

For a moment, her mother didn’t know what to say, and blushed to the roots of her hair. And Karen realised that’s exactly what they’d been doing. But her mother recovered quickly, speaking in calm, measured tones. ‘My marriage to your father had been over in everything but name for a long time. Work had always been his mistress, the one he ran to when he needed to escape from me.’ She looked pointedly at Karen. ‘From us. And then it became more than a mistress, more than an escape. Like he was married to the damn job. It took over his life. He was never here. Well, you know that.’ She paused, breathing rapidly, and Karen couldn’t think of a single thing to say to fill the silence. ‘So, yes, Derek and I became lovers. But there was no cheating involved. I told your father. I’m no saint, but I’m no sinner either. I asked him for a divorce. One day, when you stop being a child and grow up, maybe you’ll understand what it feels like to be neglected by a partner.’

Stinging from the child jibe, Karen fired back. ‘What, you mean like the way I feel right now?’ Which didn’t miss its mark, and she pressed home on it. ‘What if it was your affair, asking him for a divorce, that made him kill himself?’

Her mother stood with her hands on her hips, eyes upturned towards the heavens. ‘A moment ago you were accusing us of murdering him.’

‘Well, maybe you did.’ Her eyes were burning now, too. ‘Dad would never have fallen overboard. And even if he had, he’d have been wearing his life jacket. So how come it was still in the boat?’

‘Because he took his own life, you stupid girl! Have you forgotten that he left a note?’

‘Oh, yes. The famous note. The one you’ve always refused to let me see. How do I even know it exists?’

Karen’s mother stabbed an angry finger at her. ‘Don’t you fucking move.’ And Karen was shocked to hear her swear. She stormed away down the hall, and Karen could hear her banging about in her den, slamming drawers and doors. When she returned, she was very nearly hyperventilating, and she thrust a folded sheet of paper at her daughter. ‘It’s not the original. The police still have that. But this is the copy they made for me.’

Karen stood looking at it, her heart in her throat, and she didn’t even want to touch it.

‘Go on, take it. You’re a big girl now. Or so you keep telling me. Time to face the truth. After sixteen years of marriage, this is all he could think to leave. Nothing about me. Not a word of apology. Or regret. Nothing.’ She pushed it at Karen again. ‘Go on, take it. It was only ever about you.’

Karen was shaking as she took the folded sheet from her mother’s outstretched hand. She opened it up very slowly, and saw her father’s familiar scrawl. Somehow she had expected there would be more. But all it said was, Tell Karen I love her, even if I never could be the dad she wanted me to be.