The Day She Died

Ten

It was evening before we got to the studio. I had heard people say that the day just disappears when there’s kids, and I never bought it-thought they needed to get a grip and how could a person call the shots who was so small you could just pick them up and put them where you wanted them to be? That Wednesday afternoon was boot camp. Ruby needed a bath. Gus wanted a long walk. Dillon wouldn’t go in his pushchair. The milk in the couch was starting to stink. Three times I filled a basin with hot soapy water and it cooled, unused. Dillon’s nappy. Ruby was hungry. Gus came back and needed quiet to make some calls. They both got wet in tide pools when we were staying out the way. Ruby didn’t like what clothes were clean. Gus wanted to find some paperwork he needed for the undertakers. Dillon was hungry but only for sweeties, not for food. Ruby wanted to walk to the shop on the caravan site. Dillon wouldn’t go in his pushchair. Gus had a headache and wanted a bath. There was no hot water. Go to the shop in the car. Ruby wouldn’t go in her car seat. Dillon wouldn’t be left behind.

“I’ll just take your pushchair in case you get tired,” I said.

“Noooooo!” he squealed.

“He wants a carry,” said Ruby, making trouble.

“No,” Dillon sobbed. “Walk. Pomise. Pomise, Jessie.”

“Will he walk?” I asked. Gus was standing heating up pans of water on the cooker-top, wrapped in a towel. I was trying not to look at him. Topless men never seem to think they’re as naked as I think they are.

“No chance,” said Gus. “Dillberry, why don’t you have a bath with Daddy and let the girls go shopping?”

“Not much good for your headache,” I said. “I’ll carry him. He’s only a baby. I’m a big strong girl.”

But God almighty it was a long way. We were hardly on the sand before he was lifting his arms and smiling up at me, batting his lashes. I hoisted him onto one hip. It seemed okay. Twenty paces later, it felt like I was carrying a bag of rocks. I shifted him to the other side. Ten paces later, I put him down.

“Nooooo,” he moaned, as if I’d dropped him in a pit in the woods and left him there.

“How about a kelly-coad?” I said. Dillon sniffed and stared. “A piggy-back.”

“His legs are too short,” said Ruby.

“Noooo,” said Dillon.

“High-shoulders?” That did the trick, but there’s a reason it’s always men you see with kids on their necks. It kills your back and it doesn’t make them weigh any less. By the time we were at the end of the beach, going up the track to the shop and shower block, my legs felt rubbery enough to make me worry I would slip and drop him. And my arms had pins and needles from holding onto his feet, so putting him down didn’t feel that possible either. There was no one around to ask for help. Just the blank gaze of all those caravans with their net curtains drawn across their single eyes.

Ruby ran ahead over the car park and leapt at the door handle. She bounced back. Tried again. Turned to me.

The lights were off inside. Just the drinks fridge glowing.

“I think it’s closed, honey,” I said.

Ruby stuck her bottom lip out and glared at me. “It is not closed, you stupid!” she said. “It’s open when Mummy comes.”

And right enough, the hours said Wednesday 10 to 5, and it was just on four now. Four o’clock on an October afternoon, with two grumpy kids and a stiff neck, and a sore ear from the cold wind and the other one set to catch it all the way back. I banged hard on the door and shouted.

“Shop!” Ruby giggled at that.

“Hello?” I called.

Over at the house, a door walloped open and a woman in a toweling kaftan, bright yellow, no excuse for it, stood scowling in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

“We’re shut!” she shouted.

“How come?” I shouted back. “It’s nowhere near five.”

“We’re short-handed,” she said, and made to close the door.

“You might have put a sign up!” I said. “In emergency, call at house or something.”

“What emergency?” she said. “There’s a shop at Gatehouse.”

“Aw, come on,” I said. “I’ve lugged this pair right along the beach promising sweeties. Two minutes, eh?”

“You’re not the only one having a bad day, hen,” said the woman and slammed the door.

“Shop!” shouted Ruby. Dillon joined in.

“Shop! Shop!”

“I’ll make pancakes,” I said. “Come on. And Dillon, pal, you’ll have to walk for a wee bit because my neck is killing me.”

We were a sorry procession that trailed back down to the beach. Ruby was whining, Dillon was whining. I nearly joined in. I held them by the hand, one on each side, and dragged them along. It looked even farther this way, the outcrop of rock tiny at the end of the sands. And it had started raining too; sore, cold rain lashing across our faces. The beach was deserted. One of the houses had a light on-the one with the kayaks-but it was the light that people leave on when they’re out: one lamp in the front window, not the kitchen strip lights, not a reading light by an armchair, just the light that tells burglars the place is empty.

We trudged on.

“Wanna carry,” said Dillon.

“You’ve had a carry,” said Ruby. “I want a carry.”

I said nothing.

“Jessie, I want a carry,” she said again.

I was staring along the beach at someone approaching. A tall someone with flapping hair pushing an empty buggy.

“Here’s Daddy,” I said, pointing.

“Good,” said Ruby. “You’re rubbish.” She sat down on the sand, getting her second wet bum of the day. Dillon sat down and leaned against her. I ripped the hood off of my borrowed kagoul, put it Velcro side down on the sand, and sat down too. Gus broke into a run and, as he drew near, I could hear him making nee-naw siren sounds.

“The shop was shut, Dad,” Ruby said.

“We’ll go to Gatehouse,” said Gus. “Buggy, Dillon. No discussion. Cuddy-back, Roobs.”

“What a waste of a hot bath,” I said, shuffling, ready to get up. Gus put out his hands and hauled me to my feet. “You’ll be in a muck sweat again.” He kissed my forehead before I had time to dodge it, and I felt the kiss, the ghost of it, for the rest of the day. It was like when you scoop for a dog and your hand’s got that radio-active feel till you wash it. Except good, not manky, but otherwise the same.

I turned away from the endless whipping wind coming off the sea, sheltering myself while I velcroed my hood back on (and to get my face to stop smiling in case I embarrassed him), and that’s when I saw a shadow just flitting between two of the caravans. I wiped my wet hair out of my eyes and looked harder.

It was him. I was sure it was. His hair was even wilder than the night before, and I could see the black on the bottom half of his face from here. He was standing pressed hard against the wall of the caravan now, peering round the corner, like the pink panther, or whoever it is, because Steve’s always telling me how the pink panther isn’t the pink panther at all, like Frankenstein.

“What is it?” asked Gus. The guy had ducked out of view as soon as Gus turned to face him.

He’d told me he didn’t want to know. “Nothing,” I said.

“You’ve had a hell of day, haven’t you?”

“Coming in in fourth place,” I said. He lifted Ruby onto his shoulders, clamped one arm across her feet, and nodded at me to take the handles of the buggy. Why couldn’t he push it one-handed, I was grumpy enough to think, before I found out.

He needed his other arm to put round me.

So it was pitch black and getting on for nine o’clock before he dropped the baby monitor into his jacket pocket and took me to the studio. It was in a dip in the field right by the headland, on the side away from the caravan site. Gus’s torchlight bobbed over the dark grass, and then he raised it to show me where we were heading. I couldn’t remember seeing so much as the top of the roof during the day, but there it was: a long stone building with grey slates, two sets of double doors, windows painted the same dark red as the cottage, a Bedford van parked alongside.

“Does the monitor really stretch all this-” I said. “Sorry. As if you’d-so what is this place? What was it, I mean.”

I felt Gus shrug beside me. We were walking close together, coats just brushing.

“Just a bothy kind of thing. A cow byre. Dave used it for a workshop as long as I can remember, and I just gradually took it over.”

“And how come they don’t still use it for the cows?” I said. I knew solid buildings with roofs intact were never going spare on a farm.

“It’s not theirs,” said Gus. We had arrived at the big double doors and he gave me the torch to hold while he opened the padlock. “Dave bought the cottage and this building for peanuts back in the sixties. He bought a right of way through the farmyard too, but they mump on till it’s not worth the hassle, so we come through the site.”

“They don’t mump on, the site folk?” I asked. “I met one today that won’t win any awards from the tourist board!”

“Oh, they wish we’d go away too,” said Gus. “They’d buy us out, change the name to Bayview, and charge a thousand pounds a week in the season.”

“You’d never get a grand for Stockman’s Cottage right enough!” I said. He hauled open the doors and paused with his hand on the light switch. I could smell a shifting cocktail of unfamiliar smells-oily, sharp, earthy.

“Becky always wanted to change the name,” he said. “Listen, Jessie. This-my work-it’s… What I mean is, if you think it’s crap-”

“Tell you straight?”

“No!” He sounded just like Dillon. “Keep your gob shut.” I laughed. “My br-well, folk that don’t get it come out with stuff you wouldn’t believe. And it usually starts with ‘I have to say… ’ And I always think, ‘No, you don’t.’ ”

I laughed again. “You’re dead right,” I said. “No more than you ‘have to say’ your mum’s cakes are like bricks or your friend’s kids are ugly.” I shot him a look, wondering if he’d think I meant Ruby. I didn’t. She was growing on me-stroppy, gobby wee madam. She’d go far in this world, and I’d be happy for her.

“Right,” said Gus. He switched on the light. I took a good long look around and got ready to be polite if it killed me. It was a single room, taking up half of the building. Sacks of concrete. Shovels. Planks. Scaffolding. Rolls of roofing lead. The usual power tools you’d see in any workshop, the usual orange extension cables. Shelves of boxes, labelled in code. And lamps. Loads and loads of lamps. Standard lamps, desk lights, bedside lamps, angle poise. Whole ones and parts of ones, boxes of bulbs. The edges of the room were stacked high with total junk, as far as I could tell. It smelled pretty lousy too.

“So this is… the workshop side?” I said, looking towards the other end of the byre.

“Yeah,” said Gus. “I use the other side to store finished pieces.” I must have sniffed, maybe my nose even wrinkled. “I know. There’s a grate over a pipe from when it used to be a byre. God knows how it can smell when there hasn’t been a beast in here for years, but it really does honk sometimes.”

“So, what are you working on just now?”

He walked ahead of me and set the monitor down on a tool bench. “Just finishing something off,” he said.

I waited to see if he’d show it to me. “And then what?” I asked, when it seemed he wasn’t going to.

“Lamps,” he said. “Well, lights. You know. Bulbs. Lamps, mostly.”

I couldn’t help remembering what Buckfast Eric had said.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Hard to say.” He was sliding cardboard boxes out from the shelves, looking at their contents, and sliding them back in again. He pulled out a tangled string of fairy lights and started straightening them. “What would you do with them?” He was really asking me too. The truth was I’d wire them to plugs and use them to help me see things inside my house when the sun went down.

“Okay,” I said. “Could you… put them all in the… space with a ton of plug boards and a ton of bulbs and leave it up to the people who came to see it, what to do with them?”

I thought he would laugh. I’d have laughed. Gus, though, looked suddenly miserable.

“I haven’t got a space,” he said. “I’ve got one thing ready to sell. If it sells I might get asked to… But I don’t know if I can make myself sell it.”

“Is it here?” I asked. “Can I see it?”

“It’s next door,” Gus said. “Wait and I’ll bring it through.”

He left me and-it must have been habit-as he went out, he clicked the lights off. I blurted something out, but he was gone.

It was cloudy outside, no moon, and so the room was black as ink around me. I picked my way towards the open door, feeling ahead for obstacles, guessing where to go from the sound of the sea. I stepped out onto the grass and felt the empty air above me.

“Gus?” I said. There was no light from the other room, but one of its doors was slightly open. “Gus?” I said, louder. The door banged shut.

It could have been the wind. Except the doors this side didn’t move an inch. Had he just shut me out? Why would he do that? If he had one thing finished and he’d gone to get it anyway, what did it matter whether I saw the half-done stuff too?

I stood there, useless, doing nothing. Should I walk back to the house and wait for him there? Should I follow him through the door, banged in my face or not? Or stop being so touchy. I could find the light switch and wait in the workshop side. That’s the thing about therapy. Everything ends up meaning something huge. Nothing stays small like things really are. So in the end I picked my way back to where he had left me and stood there in the dark, waiting.

A minute later he reappeared, clicked the light back on, and smiled at me.

“Okay,” he said. “Here goes.” He turned and pulled something into the room. It was on wheels and was hidden under a dustsheet. “Ready?” I nodded. He swept the sheet aside and stood back. I stared.

It was a pram. One of those old navy-blue monsters with the painted sides and the big wheels. A double pram, both of its hoods pulled right up so it was almost round. Gus beckoned me forward.

“I can see it fine from here,” I told him, and my voice sounded strained even to me.

“You need to look inside,” he said.

“What’s in there?” I asked. “Nothing… bad?”

But he didn’t know what I meant. Why would he? So I stepped close and looked into the gap.

Except it wasn’t a gap. There was some kind of substance there, not quite see-through, not quite not. I touched it.

“Resin,” said Gus. And then something caught my eye. Behind the strip of resin, inside the belly of the pram, a light had gleamed, just for a second. It wasn’t a flash, it was a gleam. Slow, measured, as if some creature had opened its eye and then lazily closed it again. I turned as another gleam lit the other side. In its light I thought I saw movement, but it was too far away to be inside where I was looking. I waited. And waited. And just as I was raising my head, a stronger, brighter steadier light shone for a half a second. I missed it. All I knew was that there was more in there than there could be.

“What it’s called?” I asked.

“Pram,” Gus said. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s hellish,” I said. “In the good way. It’s creepy as hell.”

I hadn’t offended him. He was trying not to beam, but it was breaking through. So I decided to mention it, while he was smiling.

“Do you know you put the light off when you left me in here?” I asked. I gave him a chance to say sorry, but he just waited. “If I’d have known your sculptures were this creepy, I’d have legged it!”

“The new one’s not creepy,” he said, like that was the only thing he’d heard. “But it’s big. It’s next door.” He was grinning now. “You want to see more? You like it?”

“I really do.” I really did. “Why did you put the light off, though?”

“Well, it’s not ready. But I’ll tell you about it, if you promise not to tell other people.” He dropped the dustsheet back over the pram. He hadn’t turned anything off first; I didn’t like thinking about those lazy gleams carrying on in the dark with no one to see them.

He moved to the light switch again.

“Yeah,” I said. “That one.”

“Don’t forget the monitor,” he said, nodding to where he’d set it down.

“I get it,” I said. “Fair enough.” And it felt good to see the puzzled look spread over his face. He didn’t ask what I meant. Guys never do. Because they don’t want to admit they don’t know already. And that’s another thing therapy makes you forget: guys are just guys. And they hate making mistakes, so if you ask them why they did something daft, they’ll pretend they can’t hear you. Nothing sinister, nothing deep. Just guys.

In silence, we stepped outside and I waited while he closed the padlock and switched the torch on. We were halfway back when he started talking again.

“It’s Dave’s house,” he said. “A replica. About three-quarters size. Life-size would have been great, but it wouldn’t fit in the byre. I’ve got the breezeblocks done, skimmed the front, done the doors and windows, done the roof. Can’t decide about the porch.”

“What’s inside?” I was thinking about the pram again.

“Wrap-around video screen. Plays a video of the rooms. With sound.”

“Empty rooms?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t creepy.”

“It’s not. Well, the breathing is till you get used to it. Dave shot the film and he had a cold. He kind of whistled under his breath a bit too.”

We were back at the garden fence. I looked at the cottage, the orange light over the door, the net curtains turned see-through by the lights on inside. There was a replica of this place inside a barn in the next field. A dead man whistling. Not exactly stale bread in a bog, but not exactly the Mona Lisa.

“How will you move it?” I said. I could see the gleam of his teeth when he smiled.

“Thanks,” he said, and then he laughed at my confusion. “You think I’ll need to move it. When someone buys it or asks to show it somewhere.”

He opened the front door to the sound of Dillon sobbing, dry cracked sobs as if he’d been crying for hours.

“Daddeeeeee!” he shouted.

“What the hell?” said Gus, charging to the bedroom. “Did you switch that bloody monitor off when you were touching it?” He slammed the door behind him.

Shame and rage flooded me, both together, so strong I was almost reeling. Then together they ebbed away.

Did I? What did I know about baby monitors? Did I turn it off without knowing? Like he did with the light? Except I was a grown-up and Dillon was a baby. I could have turned the light back on but Dillon just had to cry and cry, just like yesterday, and had no way of knowing why nobody came. How I could do that to a little kid? What was wrong with me?

So I went to the kitchen, stupid bitch, to see if there was anything left to tidy up after I’d tidied up earlier when he was bathing them. The table was clear, dishes draining, cloth wrung out and hung to dry on the edge of the sink. I had already washed out some clothes for myself, spun them, and hung them up on the pulley to dry. I could sweep the floor if I could find a broom. Or I could clean out the fridge, check the dates, write a shopping list. I sure as hell couldn’t go through and sit down and see what was on the telly and just be sitting there like the Queen of Sheba when Gus came back. Imagine switching off the monitor after what they’d already been through. Except I didn’t. I knew I hadn’t, and there was one right there on the windowsill, nearly the same design, and there was no way I could have switched it off without noticing.

Maybe the batteries were dead. Finally, something I could do: I could look for new batteries. I slipped the compartment cover off the monitor on the windowsill so I knew what I needed and then eyed the kitchen, wondering which drawer was the Sellotape, cracker prize, spare key, dry biro, and battery store. There had to be one. I found it on the third go, right after tea towels and Clingfilm. All of the above, and hair bobbles and dummies too. And mid-rummage I found the other thing that always ends up there with the foreign coins and chargers for old phones you’ve flung out. Photographs. Real photo-booth photographs of two girls, one sitting on the other’s lap, both mugging and gurning and giving it duck-face for the camera. Gus only had a brother. It was too new a picture to be his mum. So this had to be Becky. One of these dark-haired girls was lying in the mortuary in Dumfries right now, waiting for them to cut her open. I couldn’t take my eyes off their shining faces, both of them. Which one was she, and who was the other one? Her sister? They looked enough the same.

“What’s that?” said Gus. I hadn’t heard him come in. I almost put the photo strip behind my back like a kid would. Look over there! And then hide it in the biscuit tin. Something about this guy unhinged me.

“Photos,” I said. “I was looking for batteries for the thingy. In case that was why we didn’t hear it, you know? Was Becky a twin, Gus?”

“Becky?” He was giving me his turned-to-stone face again. “What photos?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking about Pram, I suppose.” He crossed the room and took the pictures out of my hand. “How’s Dillon?” I said.

He stared at the photographs. “Fine. Just dropped his Spongie. And Ruby wouldn’t get it for him. She can be a right wee besom.” He turned the pictures over, looking for dates and captions, I guessed. “I bought the pram at a boot sale.” He took his wallet out of his pocket, folded the strip in half, and slid it in. “Good thinking about the batteries, by the way.” He went to the fridge and opened it. Sighed. Slammed it closed again. “Do you like red wine? How do you fancy a glass of red wine sitting outside looking at the sea?”

Maybe that was as close as he was going to get to saying sorry. Maybe he didn’t remember that he had shouted and sworn at me.

“Okay.”

“Getting frostbite,” said Gus. “Should have included that, I suppose.”

“If Dillon didn’t suck that blanket away to nothing, I’ll take it.” He smiled. “So who is it? In the pictures. With Becky.”

Gus put his hand on the pocket where his wallet was and shook his head, like a dog just out of water.

“God! I was so… I was looking at Becky. I’d never seen those ones before. That was Ros. Her that left. Becky’s pal.”

“They could have been sisters,” I said.

“Except then she wouldn’t have left and maybe Becky would still be here,” he said. He took a breath as if to say more but let it go. Took another that went the same way.

“Is this a cure for hiccups?” I asked. Gus’s laugh was like fresh air, like a cold splash of water.

“I want to tell you something,” he said. “But I’m bricking it. Come out and sit with me.” Maybe he was one of those guys who think saying sorry is the biggest deal on the planet. That would suck. But at least he was trying to say it anyway.

I was glad of the blanket, even over my coat. The wind was stiff and salty, making me lick my lips, making the cold wine taste sweeter than my first sip had in the kitchen, and I drank half the glass as we sat there in silence, listening to the dead leaves of the rowan clattering on the bricks of the path as the wind stirred them, listening to the slack sound of low tide sloshing in the distance, listening to the quiet murmur of The Big Friendly Giant on the Fisher Price soothing Dillon to sleep again. It was so long before he spoke that I jumped at the sound.

“I didn’t love her,” Gus said. “There.”

“Okay,” I said. “Things were pretty tough, I know.”

“Ever,” he said. “She was-I love the kids and I loved the idea of a family. Making a family. But I didn’t love Becky. I didn’t even like her very much. And the cops and the undertakers’ guys and the folk at the hospital last night are all treating me like I’m heartbroken.”

“I heard you on the phone,” I said. “Trying to talk her down. I saw the state you were in. I see you trying to stop the cops finding out bad stuff about her.”

“I don’t want the kids hurt, that’s all that is. But I didn’t love her, Jessie. I’m not sorry she’s gone.”

“You’re in shock,” I said.

“I would never have left her,” he said. “But all I feel now is free.”

“Okay,” I said again, needing to stop him. I couldn’t bear it. That dark-eyed girl, whichever one of them she was, cold and dead and her kids not even old enough so they’d remember her. “You’re telling me how you feel. I shouldn’t be arguing. I’m sorry.”

“Have I got a free pass to say anything then?” he said. “Get out of jail?”

I couldn’t speak. What more could there be?

“When Ruby was born,” Gus said, “I felt love like I never even imagined before. No way to explain it. Same with Dillon.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Gus. “Bugger all to do with genes. Manky wee space alien screaming his head off in a hospital blanket. Bang! It was just like someone hit the on-button.” He took a big drink of his wine, and his throat made a dry, sore noise as he swallowed it. “I thought it was only kids that could do that to you.”

I drank every drop of wine in my glass, right down to the specks of black stuff.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he said.

“You mean… you sort of did love Becky, just not as much?” I asked. “Is that it?”

“No,” he said.

I closed my eyes and listened to the sea, to the wind, to the leaves, to The Big Friendly Giant, to the buzz of the bulb in the orange light above the door. Kept them closed so that I wouldn’t see the world rushing away from me and have to hold on. Anytime I’ve ever been up high looking down, I’ve wanted to jump. Or maybe push someone. How can you not? And that’s what I felt like then. Like I could fall off the shore into the water. Could pull him over with me, drown the pair of us.

“I think you know what I mean,” he said even quieter than before.

He was sitting close enough so I could feel the heat of his body. Except how could the heat of his body jump over two inches of cold October air so I could feel it? It wasn’t that after all. It was just every hair on my arm and my leg all down that side of me, standing up on its own wee goose-pimple mountain, trying to grow long enough to touch him. It was the blood in my brain washing up against that side of my skull trying to float my head over to his shoulder. It was the earth underneath that foot nearest his foot, tilting, hoping to slide my ankle over to twine under his.

“Gus,” I said at last. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going home, and maybe after Christmas or something, give me a call and we can go out for a drink.” Go out for a drink and never spend another day apart until we die in our bed on the same night when we’ve just turned ninety-nine.

“I’ve got no one, Jessie,” he said. “I’ll never make it to Christmas alone.”

And who did I have? Dot and Steve. Father Tommy and Sister Avril. My brother that screened my calls and pretended he didn’t. My chocolate teapot of a mum. How did I end up with no pals? When did that happen?

“I need a friend,” he said, mind-reading me.

“Friends,” I agreed. I didn’t need any more than that. If I could just see him, feel the ground tilting under my feet, feel all my hairs standing up on end, feel my blood course over to whichever bit of me was nearest him instead of going round and round me like it used to do before he was there, I could wait. I’d rather wait. I’d rather build my reserves for the next bit, in case-like it felt it might-it just plain killed me. Like a frog in a blender. One wild whirl and then gone.

But he stretched his arm up and back and around me and pulled me along the bench. Made me think of those things for shoving chips about in a casino, like you see in films. Or a window-washer’s blade pulling suds off the glass, like you see everywhere. And when he put his mouth close to me to whisper, his breath was hot, sour with the wine.

“I lied about the friends thing,” he said.

It wasn’t really that comfortable, the way he was holding me, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“You need to sleep,” I told him.

“If I put Ruby and Dillon in her room and promise not to lay a finger on you, will you sleep next to me?” he said.

“If you promise,” I said. And he did.

But that was a lie too.