Field of Blood

THIRTY-SIX . HOME

Paddy stood in the cold, pressing her hands into her pockets. Her warm, white sigh flowered and lingered in front of her.

Over the fence and through the window she could see the tops of their heads in the living room. Sean was sitting in one armchair, Con in the other, and they were watching the television news together. The light was on in Marty’s bedroom, and she could just discern the faint hum of a radio. Mary Ann would be having a bath. Trisha would be in the kitchen tending the food, warming plates ready for her return from work.

She told her feet to take her to the door, but she stayed, watching over the hedge, unwilling. Sean said something and Con nodded. Her parents didn’t know that they had split up. She wasn’t sure Sean had taken it in yet either, but it was nice that he was there. He wasn’t angry at her, anyway.

They’d go mad when they saw the bandage on her head, and now her eyes were raw from crying. She couldn’t tell them that her friend had died in a pub. She certainly couldn’t tell them about Garry Naismith.

She tried to think of a plausible lie that wouldn’t make her mum forbid her from going to work. She’d been mugged. No, that suggested danger in the town. There was a fight on the train- everyone took trains. A fight on the train, and she, cautious and careful, got up to get off and was hit on the head by a stray bottle. The train staff took her to hospital, but she was fine. The fighting men were arrested. One of them was fat. That sort of detail made it plausible. He had a Rangers football top on. They’d want to believe that.

The cold night nibbled at her face. Paddy saw a jagged frost forming on the leaves of the hedge. Custard-cream crumbs taking refuge in the seams of her pocket had worked their way under her fingernails. She felt Pete’s hands in hers again and promised herself that she’d never forget him or what he had done for her.

It was getting late. She dawdled reluctantly through the garden gate and stopped by the pile of bricks. She knelt down, her fingers feeling the mulchy ground for the key to the Beatties’ garage.

She’d have a smoke with the Queen and remember her friend Pete for a while before she went in.