Garnethill

Chapter 17

Maureen walked into the office and smiled at the receptionist. "Hello, Mrs. Hardy," she said. "I think I might have missed an appointment last Wednesday."

"Yes, you did," said Mrs. Hardy. "We waited for you."

"I'm so sorry, it slipped my mind."

Mrs. Hardy smiled. "Don't worry, you're here now. I'll tell Louisa."

Maureen thanked her and went into the little waiting room. The eager man who always tried to speak to her was sitting on the edge of his usual chair. He had turned it sideways to face the door and called "Hello" the minute she stepped into the room. She ignored him and walked over to the window, propping her elbows on the high ledge, bending her head forward and shutting her eyes, thinking about Liam walking off through the double doors in the Stewart Street police station, his head low. She could feel the numbness coming over her.

She scratched the back of her neck slowly with her nails, ripping long, deep welts, trying to chase it away. Numbness is worse than pain: it's like a violent wasting disease when all connection with the outside world evaporates, nothing matters, nothing counts, nothing touches or entertains or surprises', even physical sensations feel distant and unreal. It's death without the paperwork.

Her neck felt wet. She stopped scratching and looked at her fingers. The tips of her nails were smeared with watery blood. She pulled the elastic band out of her hair and let her ponytail fall over her neck, covering the rips. She opened her eyes properly, looking out over the greening roof of the black medieval cathedral.

She thought of Siobhain and the numbness pulled back. Siobhain had seen Douglas at three-thirty that day. If they arrested Liam she could get Siobhain to talk to them as a last resort. They were asking about the nighttime. Maybe someone had seen something at night.

Mrs. Hardy called both of them over the intercom. Mr. McNeil was to come to the office and Ms. O'Donnell could go into Dr. Wishart's office now. Maureen turned and saw the wee man hurry out of the door. Bad day to get your nerve up, pal, she thought.

Louisa was sitting stiffly behind the desk. She pushed the newspaper across to Maureen.

"I've seen it," Maureen said.

"So your boyfriend Davie is really Douglas Brady?"

"Yeah. You can see why I couldn't tell you. I thought you might know him."

Louisa hummed and nodded.

Maureen told her how they had come to be involved with one another and described finding the body, how red everything was and how the police had treated her.

"The police came here," said Louisa.

It hadn't occurred to Maureen that the police might physically turn up at Louisa's office: she had thought perhaps they'd telephone an underling. If McEwan saw her notes he'd think she was a compulsive liar.

"Did they see my notes?"

"No," said Louisa. "They'd need a court order to see them and they didn't think it was that important. They asked me about you."

"What did they ask you?"

"They asked me if I thought you knew the difference between a lie and the truth."

"What did you say?"

"I said I thought you did."

They made meaningful eye contact for the first time ever. Maureen wondered if she knew she lied to her all the time. Louisa's line of sight slid sideways to an empty space by the door. Maureen thought it was her turn to speak. "Did they just come to see you the once?" she said.

"Yes, just once. Do you want to ask me anything else about it?"

"No," said Maureen. It was the longest conversation they had ever had. Louisa sat back.

"What else would you like to talk about today?" she said.

Louisa's blind protectiveness had touched Maureen and she gave her the after-mass rape dream as a thank-you gift. Louisa listened, and smiled happily at the end. They talked about the dream, trying to relate it to Douglas's death.

Maureen didn't want to bare her id, it was just a token gift. She said that her friend Ailish had fallen out with her boyfriend when she found out he was sleeping with her sister. Maureen had thought Ailish would have been more supportive of her during this difficult time but she wasn't being helpful at all.

"Perhaps she has a lot on her mind," said Louisa.

They speculated about Ailish's motives for a while.

"I'm a bit concerned about the hospital," said Maureen. "I keep thinking about it and avoiding going past it. I think I'm getting phobic about it again."

But Louisa wasn't biting today. "Tell me how you feel about Douglas now," she said.

"I don't feel much about it. Often I didn't see him for a week, so it just feels like that."

"You're probably in shock. When it hits you, and I'm sure it will, I want you to phone me, day or night, okay?"

Maureen thanked her.

She said she'd write a line for Maureen to excuse her from work for three weeks.

"Louisa, you know what I said about the hospital? Well, I want to face it. Do you have any contacts there I could get in touch with?"

"What for?"

"I want to go back and have a look around. It might make me feel better about it."

"I wouldn't recommend it. I think you're under enough pressure as it is."

"I feel sort of fearless just now."

"I think that's shock. You may be focusing on that to avoid your feelings about Douglas."

"Maybe," she said. "I'd still like to go back. I don't want to go around it on my own in case I can't handle it, but I won't know any of the staff there anymore."

"Martin Donegan's still there."

Maureen opened the door and turned back to Louisa, sitting quite still at her desk with her hands clenched in front of her. "Good-bye, Louisa," she said.

"Good-bye, Maureen," said Louisa.

Maureen went back into the waiting room and sat until Mrs. Hardy called her back into the office. "Here we are," said Mrs. Hardy, holding out a sheaf of papers. "That's a line from the doctor."

Maureen took it. "Thanks, Mrs. Hardy."

"Will we be seeing you next week?"

"Aye, see you then."

IT WAS DARKER IN THE streets now and the officer who had watched her enter the hospital followed her back through the town, heading toward the Stewart Street station.

As she walked down the hill the back of her neck stung in the brisk evening air, the razor tips of her hair switching against the raw skin. But the sharp stinging brought to mind Siobhain: she could vouch for Douglas's being alive until half-three, even if she couldn't talk about the hospital.

She could go to see Martin in the next few days. He'd been working as a porter at the Northern for twenty-something years and was a quiet, steady-tempered man. The hospital complex had developed chaotically over the years but Martin knew every corridor by sight. If there was anything she needed to ask about the Northern, then Martin was the man to see.

The officer on the desk said Liam wasn't out yet. She asked how long he was likely to be but the well-mannered officer said he was sorry, he didn't know. She waited for a bit, sitting in the plastic chair Liam had sat in on the first morning, licking her fingers and rubbing the soothing saliva onto the bloody scratches on her neck, working out how long it would take to get to Winnie's. Twenty minutes later she left, catching a bus to the South Side.

The plainclothes officer followed her, sitting downstairs on the bus, watching for her.

She got off the bus and was walking the two streets to the house when suddenly, across the road, passing below an orange streetlight, she saw Michael. His walk was exactly as she remembered it, a defensive, boyish swagger. She dropped back, crossing the road so that she was walking behind him. She followed him for ten minutes before realizing that it wasn't him at all. It was just a tall bald guy. The stabbing-comb teeth left an imprint on her hand. She hadn't sharpened the handle yet: all she could have done was give him a nasty poke. She shouldn't have told Louisa her dream – it revived the sensations.

She still had her key for the house. She worked it into the lock silently, hoping to avoid Winnie altogether. The lights were on in the living room and the kitchen but the house was quiet. George often went out, he had friends in different pubs all over the city, but Winnie tended to stay close to the house. She must be crashed out somewhere, probably in her bedroom or on the settee in the living room. Maureen tiptoed upstairs to her old room at the back of the house.

Her bedroom had been a beloved refuge during her growing up. When she was thirteen she'd got a Saturday job in a fruit-and-veg shop and bought a Yale lock with her first wage, fitting it on her bedroom door to stop Winnie coming in late at night when she was pissed, reeling at the bottom of the bed in the stark stream of light from the hall, scaring the shit out of her. Winnie changed the lock one day when Maureen was at school. Maureen changed it back. Liam declared his room an independent republic.

Winnie used Maureen's as a box room now. The door still had the scars from twelve screws bored into the same three square inches. Greasy Blu Tack stains on the wallpaper hinted the outline of each of her favorite posters, and the books she no longer wanted were lined up on the shelf, Enid Blytons, Agatha Christies, an O grade math textbook, Dandy annuals. A pile of cuddly toys sat in the corner gathering dust: Winnie had kept giving them to Maureen for birthdays and Christmases, confusing her with Marie, who liked that sort of thing.

She found the shoe box full of photographs under the bed. They had been rifled through recently, photos were bent over and shoved down the side, still springy but resigning themselves to their new position. She stuffed her bag with them, taking all of them, even the ones from when she was small.

The last one was stuck under the fold at the bottom of the box.

She picked and picked at it but it was stuck. She had to unfold the floor of the box to get it out. It was of her and her father. She was sitting on his knee, hugging him. He seemed to be drunk, his shirtsleeves were rolled up – he always did that when he was drunk, they used to look out for it. Maureen remembered the time. It was winter and the abuse had begun. She was adoring to him when other people were there and she knew he couldn't touch her. She thought if she was nicer to him he would stop hurting her when they were alone.

She remembered that it was taken at Christmastime. Liam wanted a chopper bike and Maureen asked for a big doll she'd seen hanging from a stall in the Barras. It had a tartan dress and a big tammy. She got the doll but the minute it was out of the packet she noticed that the stitching was rough and the doll's eyes had been painted on wrong. She cried all day. Liam got his chopper and wouldn't let her have a go on it.

She lifted a copy of The Master and Margarita and a battered hardback, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, stolen from the school library. She put them in her bag and scanned the room. A yellowing picture of Joe Strummer was lying under the bookcase. She shoved it in her pocket. There was nothing else there she wanted.

A bizarre ceramic ashtray she'd made in occupational therapy at the Northern was sitting on a table on the landing. It was round, with a target pattern painted on the face of it in red and white glaze. It was the first thing she had made in the class and Pauline had helped her with the colors and the varnish. When she presented it proudly to Liam in the hospital gardens he had said it was great: when she got out she could make a fortune designing ashtrays for badly coordinated smokers. She picked it up and crept out of the house.

They'd been questioning him for three hours. The officer on the desk told her that he didn't know when Liam would get out, it could be a while.

She bought a lemon tea from the machine in the lobby and was just settling down for a long wait when Liam emerged from a corridor followed closely by McEwan. They both looked exhausted and angry. Liam's expression didn't falter when he saw her. He took the steaming plastic cup from her hand and put it down on a chair. "Come on," he said, taking her hand. "We're going home."

McEwan and Liam parted without saying good-bye.