Exile

Chapter 5

Ann hadn't been seen for a month. She had left the shelter five days after Christmas and never come back. The other women in the shelter weren't worried. They thought she'd gone back to her man. The kids were still with him and it must have been hard for her to stay away, especially over Christmas. The police weren't worried either. They took her man's word for it that he hadn't seen or heard from her. But Leslie was worried. Ann had left behind a bundle of photographs. They were childhood pictures, birthday and anniversary snaps. Young Ann with workmates in a factory. Ann sitting up in a hospital bed smiling softly down at the newborn in her arms as if the whole world lay there. Among them was a Polaroid of a big man standing in a school playground. He wore a camel-hair coat and brown Reactalite glasses. He was grinning and holding the hand of a sullen six-year-old boy. Maureen came to a series of badly focused pictures that were all the same size and shape: Ann with a sore lip and some other women in front of a Christmas tree with Leslie behind them, her arm raised in mid-gesture, the flash turning her pupils a demon red.

"These are in the shelter at Christmas, aren't they?" asked Maureen.

"Yeah," said Leslie.

"How did ye get the women to stand for a picture?"

"I just asked them if they wanted to be in it." Leslie shrugged. "It's Christmas Day. We try and keep it as normal as possible."

It was late. The meeting had run over and the other house managers had hurried home quickly to warm houses and hungry children, leaving Maureen and Leslie alone in the office. They were sitting on the edge of Maureen's desk, listening as the wind whistled up the stairwell, tapping illegal fags on the floor and stepping their ash into the carpet. Leslie was in a different mood now, efficient and formal after her meeting, and she wouldn't look at Maureen.

"She wouldn't leave these," said Leslie, taking the photographs back from Maureen. "I know she wouldn't."

"Were you quite close?" asked Maureen, trying to catch her eye.

Leslie blew a brisk cloud of smoke at her. "No," she said, rubbing her eye with the ball of her hand. "Not really."

"Well, how do you know she wouldn't leave the photos?"

Leslie dropped her fag end into a dry Radio Clyde mug. "I just know she wouldn't. She'd only leave them if she thought she was coming back."

The mug oozed smoke like a beaker in a crazy professor's lab. "Maybe she just forgot them," said Maureen, reaching in and stubbing out the butt, getting the sticky smell on her fingers.

"She wouldn't forget pictures of her kids – she talked about them all the time."

"Maybe she wanted to start a new life," said Maureen, "and she just got pissed, snapped and fucked off. Loads of people do that. It was Christmas, that's bound to be an emotional time."

Leslie shook her head. "I think it was something to do with the card she got. It was delivered on the thirtieth of December and it freaked her out. She left an hour later."

"Do women get mail delivered to the shelter?"

"Some women get application forms for jobs and things but hers didn't look formal."

"Did you see it?"

"I saw the envelope. Most of the mail we get is bills and stuff so it comes to me and I dish it out. She didn't tell anyone what it was."

"How do you know it was a card, then?"

Leslie thought about it. "The envelope was square and stiff and Christmassy. It was red."

"And she disappeared just afterwards?"

Leslie nodded. "Hours afterwards," she said, formal. "I'm worried about her. I'm worried something's happened to her."

Maureen looked at Leslie. She had the distinct impression of being lied to, of Leslie giving her limited information and herding her into a corner. "Well, other women have left the shelter without saying anything and ye didn't worry about them this much."

"But it's not usually this sudden. There are usually signs that someone's going to leave, like they drop hints or withdraw emotionally." Leslie sounded as if she were giving a presentation. "Usually they leave the shelter for longer and longer periods, stay out an odd night, take some of their belongings, and then they just don't come back. Ann didn't do that. She was just there and then, suddenly, she wasn't there." She glanced sidelong at Maureen, gauging the impact of her speech, and went back to pretending to pore over the photographs.

"But Ann was a steamer," said Maureen, "and steamers do crazy things."

"How do you know she was a steamer?" said Leslie quickly.

"Because"-Maureen pointed at the row of plastic chairs next to her desk-"she sat next to me. She was there for an hour on and off while they filled out her forms and set up the camera. I smelled her."

Leslie shrugged resentfully. "So, what does that mean?" she said. "We're both steamers too."

"We're not quite in Ann's league, though, are we?" said Maureen, thinking that Leslie might have been. Maureen didn't know how much she drank anymore. "Did Ann drink when she was staying with you?"

"Sometimes."

"That's against the house rules, isn't it?"

Leslie glanced at her. "She never drank in the house." She sounded defensive. "She'd say she was going to the shops and come back drunk."

Maureen stubbed out her fag in the mug, compounding the smell on her fingers. She shouldn't have to do this, waiting behind in the horrible office, trying to guess what Leslie really meant. If Leslie didn't trust her anymore she should fucking find someone she did and bore them with it.

"I heard you asked for her as a resident," said Maureen.

"No, I didn't."

"I heard ye did. I thought you were strapped for cash."

"That's utter shite," said Leslie, belligerent and annoyed. "I didn't ask for her, I just happened to have a space."

Maureen looked at her and sucked a hiss through her teeth. "Leslie," she said, "do you know Ann?"

"No."

"Why are you so interested in her, then?"

Leslie paused and pulled another cigarette out of her packet, but Maureen knew she wasn't a consecutive smoker. She was lighting up so that she'd have something to fiddle with, so she wouldn't have to look at Maureen.

"I don't know Ann," said Leslie slowly, measuring her speech, "but I'm worried about her." She pursed her lips tight around her cigarette, lifting the lighter to the tip. The orange flame cast her face in stark relief and Maureen saw a miserable tremor on Leslie's chin. Whatever she was holding back wasn't keeping her warm at night.

Leslie was looking at the Polaroid of the big man and the small boy. The boy had Ann's fluffy yellow hair and pink skin. He didn't look happy and Maureen could tell from the strain in his forearm that he was trying to pull his hand away His free hand clutched a handmade Christmas card decorated with glitter and gluey cotton wool. "Is that Ann's kid?" she asked softly.

"Yeah," said Leslie, her voice a little higher, a little uncontrolled. "She's got another three, all boys."

"He's like her, isn't he?"

Leslie nodded, clearing her throat, regaining her composure. Maureen sat next to her on the desk, pretending to look at the picture but letting their hips touch, staying by her. "I didn't see her again after she left the office," said Maureen gently. "Did her lip heal okay?"

Leslie nodded again. "Yeah. She got a scar on it but the swelling went down pretty quick." The color rose in her face. "Mauri, I'm frightened she's dead," she blurted.

Maureen looked at her and snorted with surprise. "Where did ye get that from?"

"From these." Leslie slapped the photographs in her hand emphatically. "They're pictures of everything big that ever happened to her. She wouldn't leave them. I think someone was after her."

"Come on, Leslie, it's a shelter for battered women – there's someone after all of them."

"This is different."

"Why is it different?"

But that was exactly the question Leslie didn't want to answer. "I think we should look for her," she said, "see what we can dig up."

"We wouldn't know where to start."

"We did it last time."

"Yeah," said Maureen, "but you weren't lying out of your arse the last time."

They sat side by side, looking around the office, as if the answer had been misplaced on someone's desk. Maureen rubbed her eye.

"Winnie came to see me this morning," she said, falling into the old way of telling Leslie everything at the forefront of her mind. "Michael's got a flat in Glasgow." She wished she hadn't said it. She was opening up to Leslie through force of habit, telling her most intimate worries when Leslie wasn't there and Leslie didn't care.

Leslie looked at her aggressively. "If he bothers you at all," she said, "I'll kick his teeth in."

"Aye," said Maureen skeptically. "Right."

Leslie had crapped it when they were chasing Angus. It was the one and only time Maureen had asked her to lift her hands but Leslie still talked like the world's hardest gangster. Maureen had begun to suspect that she needed to feel hard in response to a deep, souring fear. Leslie had been working at the shelter for a long time and she needed to differentiate herself from the women. If Leslie couldn't handle herself she would be a candidate for everything she saw there, a victim in waiting, as vulnerable as the rest of them, waiting to be raped and ripped, waiting for fate to ambush her.

"Are you hungry?" said Leslie, pulling on her leather jacket.

Maureen shrugged. She didn't want this, spending an evening with new, distant Leslie, being lied to and feeling like a mug and pretending that it didn't matter. She wanted to be alone, at home with a bottle of whiskey and the unquestioning companionship of the television.

"Well, are you coming, or what?"

Wearily, Maureen picked up her coat and her bag and followed Leslie down the stairs.

It was seven o'clock but as dark as midnight. A thin drizzle was falling, wafted up and down and sideways by the high wind, clinging to every surface. Leslie's bike was parked across the street. She gave Maureen the spare helmet from the luggage box and kick-started the engine on the fifth go. Maureen held on to her waist, resting her head on her shoulder.

A slick of rain covered the road and Leslie was driving too fast.

She ducked between vans and cars, revving the engine angrily before changing gear. At the foot of a high hill she skidded on a sharp turn, bristled with fright and corrected herself, steadying the bike at the last minute. Maureen thought they were going to crash, that they might die, and the possibility left her feeling strangely elated. She let go of Leslie as the road slid away beneath her, holding on to nothing, feeling the wind push and pull her off balance. She swayed like a reed on the pillion as they drove through the dark, sodden city to the west.