Ties that Bind E-Book

Deveney Catherine

• Herausgeber: Old Street Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

What would you do if you were invisible to your husband and your teenage son? How would you feel if they no longer spoke to you; if you knew your husband had had an affair? And what if your mother, a life-long alcoholic, had just suffered a stroke and become completely dependent on you? Above all, what if you were nurturing a secret grief so bitter and painful that it was consuming you from within? Now imagine that one day you won £30,000. Would you take the money and walk away? When Carol Ann disappears without trace from her middle-class life in Scotland, she leaves behind a troubled family struggling to come to terms with their past. But the secrets that drove them apart follow her to a new life in Ireland, where she is pursued by memories, particularly of the mysterious Josie. But who was Josie and why does she have such power over the family? In this stunning debut, award-winning journalist Catherine Deveney explores the loneliness, secrets and silences that can haunt even the most loving of families -- and shows how some bonds, against all odds, can never be broken.

Leseprobe

Ties That Bind

CATHERINE DEVENEY

With love for my dear mum Mollie, and my dad, Peter Black Rafferty, whose passing changed everything.

Also for Colin, for everything we have shared, and for my beautiful children Conall, Niall and Caitlin.

Contents

Title PageEpigraphCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENCHAPTER FIFTEENCHAPTER SIXTEENCHAPTER SEVENTEENCHAPTER EIGHTEENCHAPTER NINETEENCHAPTER TWENTYCHAPTER TWENTY-ONECHAPTER TWENTY-TWOCHAPTER TWENTY-THREECHAPTER TWENTY-FOURCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVECHAPTER TWENTY-SIXCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTCHAPTER TWENTY-NINECHAPTER THIRTYCHAPTER THIRTY-ONECHAPTER THIRTY-TWOCHAPTER THIRTY-THREECHAPTER THIRTY-FOURCHAPTER THIRTY-FIVECHAPTER THIRTY-SIXCHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENCHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTCHAPTER THIRTY-NINECHAPTER FORTYCHAPTER FORTY-ONECHAPTER FORTY-TWOCHAPTER FORTY-THREECHAPTER FORTY-FOURCHAPTER FORTY-FIVECHAPTER FORTY-SIXCHAPTER FORTY-SEVENCHAPTER FORTY-EIGHTCHAPTER FORTY-NINECHAPTER FIFTYCHAPTER FIFTY-ONECopyright

CHAPTER ONE

Carol Ann

Most people do their running away when they are fourteen, but I waited till I was forty-two. Maybe my mother was right after all. Lily always said I was a late developer.

I left Scotland in the late spring, when the rape fields and the cherry blossom were in full bloom. I love those few weeks each year when the two overlap: marshmallow pink at the side of the house and, out front, the bright, puff-candy yellow of the rape. I watched it through the picture window at the front of the house for days before I left, the yellow turning up gradually like a light on a dimmer switch, until it glowed as strong and vibrant as the midday sun. Then, when it was at its peak, I got a terrible pang knowing it was dying already, that the colour would fade slowly now into sunset. After that, the spring breezes came, and the cherry blossom rained down pink and white on the path, the colour of coconut ice, soft and gentle as a baby’s kiss.

I guess everything starts dying when it’s at its height. You think it’s the beginning, but it’s really only the beginning of the end. Like the day I married Alex.

In the weeks before I disappeared, the swallows were constantly fluttering round the eaves of the house. I watched them, their wings quivering as they hovered under the roof with mouthfuls of straw and mud, building houses while mine was being dismantled. Mother said they weren’t swallows at all. They were too small to be swallows. They were house martins. I didn’t argue. Lily always knows best.

We sat in the garden together the day before my disappearance. Neither of us knew I was going. That was the best bit. The unexpectedness. The way a long-harboured dream that had drifted into fantasy suddenly became reality. People say you hug a secret to you, and I did, but at the same time, I can’t say my secret felt entirely like that. It wasn’t small and insular. It was vast and expansive. It was like riding surf waves in your head. Like hearing the air whistle past you when you skydive. Not that I’ve ever skydived, obviously. Carol Ann Matthews would never do anything that daring.

It felt like the first day of summer. Lily had her tights off and there was a watery sunshine hitting her white, old-lady legs, the bulge of varicose veins running like blue mountain ranges in white snow. She was wearing a striped blouse, strips of coral pink and lemon, so that it was hard to know where she ended and the deckchair began. Her lipstick had gone ever so slightly over the edges of her lips, I suppose because her hand shook when she applied it. There were deep little lines, needle-thin trenches, running from her mouth, and the lipstick colour had seeped in, spreading like tiny rivers from a burst bank.

‘What’s your nail-polish colour?’ she asked, looking at my fingers as they dangled over the wooden arm of my sun lounger.

‘Parisian Rose, I think it’s called.’

‘That’s silly, that,’ she said. ‘What’s a Parisian rose?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Eh?’ she prodded. ‘What’s the difference between a French rose and any other kind of rose?’ She was a bit querulous that day. She’d had a few already when I picked her up at her house for lunch, though it was only quarter-past eleven. I could smell it from her. It hung around her like the smell of damp in an old house.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, eyes closed.

‘No … well … you wouldn’t, would you?’ she said crossly. ‘That’s because there isn’t any difference.’

‘Maybe not.’

‘Definitely not, Carol Ann. Some silly marketing man’s come up with that.’

‘Or woman.’

‘A woman would know there’s no such thing as a Parisian rose.’

‘Maybe.’

The sun intensified suddenly, briefly, on my closed eyelids, a blast of warmth like the rays from a grill.

‘Carol Ann, will you please stop saying maybe,’ Lily snapped.

‘Sorry.’

I think it was annoying her that I wouldn’t open my eyes, but they felt stuck together with warm glue from the sun. I could hear her fidgeting in her chair.

‘It’s chipped,’ Lily said.

‘What?’

‘And I don’t like the colour anyway. Too strong. Neutral, I like.’

I opened one eye and raised my fingers to examine the nails. There were small chips out of the tips of the rose-pink shells.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s chipped.’

‘Very common-looking,’ she muttered.

I let my thoughts roam free then, where she couldn’t reach me, fantasising about the going, the walking away. I had imagined it so many times that it was like a favourite novel, reread so often I almost knew it by heart. Except it was only the first chapter I kept reading and rereading. The going. I never thought about what came after because I simply couldn’t imagine it. I just imagined the walking, up past the bridge at the end of the house, past the pond where I like to walk, heels clumping rhythmically on the road, the smell of mown grass on the wind. And each time I imagined it, the hundreds and hundreds of times I imagined it, there was always something new and undiscovered, a tiny detail I hadn’t imagined before that would give me pleasure.

‘Carol Ann,’ said Lily. ‘Be a darling and get my handkerchiefs from the house. I think I left them in the kitchen.’ She sniffed theatrically, and I looked at her with the cynical, insider knowledge of a lifetime’s game-playing.

‘They’re in there,’ I said, ‘in the side pocket of your bag,’ and I nodded down to the sprawl at her feet: a light canvas bag that she had brought some chocolates for me in, and a square black vinyl handbag. Lily doesn’t invest in expensive leather goods. She has contributions to Gordon’s gin to maintain.

‘Oh yes.’ She had slumped down into the deckchair and now she wriggled her bottom up to sit straighter. But she reached for her glass rather than the tissues.

‘Any ice?’ she said.

‘In the house.’

‘Any chance?’ A light ripple of aggression marbled her voice.

I held my hand up over my eyes and squinted at her against the light.

‘Mother,’ I said, with uncharacteristic firmness, ‘you want me to go into the house so that you can take the quarter bottle of gin out of your handbag without me seeing and pour it into your lemonade. So I tell you what. Why don’t I just close my eyes. Like this, see? And that will save me getting up. Then you can fill your glass and pretend it’s lemonade, and I can sit here and pretend I haven’t seen. Hmm? Why don’t we just do that, the two of us?’

There was silence for a second. Lily’s lipstick-stained trenches were quivering with indignation. She smoothed her skirt down over her knees. ‘Sometimes, Carol Ann,’ she said, refusing to look me in the eye, ‘you can be terribly vulgar.’

* * *

Sometimes, if I close my eyes, I can feel him. The way he was. I can feel him so clearly that his breath is warm on my neck. ‘Carol Ann,’ he whispers, and my name sounds sung, like a hymn. His voice is an echo in my head. ‘Carol Ann.’

Our shoes are kicked off at the side of the bed, but we are fully dressed. My hair is spread out on the cool white cotton of the pillow and he coils it lightly round his finger before letting it drop. Later, I will find strands of my blonde hair side by side with his dark.

His lips taste of red wine. He brushes them softly over my mouth, fluttering down over my throat. In my memory, I remember the desire, not the sex. He pours it over me, his longing, till I am drunk with it, my eyes closed lightly, like a cat in the sun.

I am lying on my back. Alex is on his side, leaning on his elbow. He rests his hand on my waist, slips it under my shirt so that I feel his fingers run lightly over the taut skin. Skin on skin. His fingers slide to my back, and he exerts pressure on my spine to pull me towards him. His lips find my mouth. When he pulls away, he leaves his face just inches from mine. I can see the pupils of his eyes dilating as he looks at me. You can’t hide attraction.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he says provocatively, and I smile lazily at him, run my index finger over the outline of his lips.

‘Do you know where I want to be right now, right this very minute?’ he says. His voice is low, playful.

I like fantasy games.

‘Paris?’

‘Nope.’

‘Venice?’

He shakes his head.

‘Where could be more romantic than Venice?’ I ask, brow furrowed, because I am only eighteen and my ideas of romance are still textbook. I even think it lasts for ever.

He smiles.

‘Where?’ I repeat.

His hand pushes slowly upwards from the soft curve of my stomach to my breast, and he leans forward, burrowing into my hair to reach my ear.

‘In. Side. You,’ he whispers.

I take Lily back early. She’s had her lunch. Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. Thin slices of wholemeal toast. Fresh raspberries and drizzled honey. I always buy little delicacies when Lily comes. Maybe it’s guilt. I pretend everything is normal when I shop for her in the supermarket. I walk round the aisles telling myself that my mother is coming for a nice lunch and what does a good daughter buy for a beloved mother who is coming to lunch? She buys small, pearly, queenie scallops, and ripe vine tomatoes blushed with the sun. She buys fresh-ground Italian coffee and dark chocolate florentines, fat with cherries and plump sultanas and green angelica.

Lily always eats like a bird. She never has anything lining her stomach to soak up the alcohol. Her appetite is shot to pieces and so is her co-ordination. Her hand trembles as she lifts her fork to her mouth, nuggets of scrambled egg spilling onto her skirt. Tiny particles cling to her lipstick.

‘Very nice, Carol Ann,’ she says, laying down her fork after only a couple of mouthfuls. ‘I taught you well.’

Everything in the world is seen through her own reflection. She is very egocentric. It is part of her illness.

I feel guilty when I take her back. When I picked her up this morning I promised myself I would keep her all afternoon. Till four at least. Then I’d run her home to her small flat before Alex returned from work. Best to keep them apart. But at two o’clock, I lie and tell her I am filling in for a couple of hours at the charity shop this afternoon. She doesn’t complain. It would have been a long afternoon for her without free access to the bottle. She picks up her canvas bag and it clunks against the chair leg. Her shirt is stained dark down the front with scrambled egg and raspberry juice.

I insist on taking her upstairs to the flat. Must be attentive. Less guilt. I guess if I could actually carry it through, if I could only be as attentive as I mean to be, there would be less guilt. The windows are all shut in the flat and when the door swings open the air smells stale, of trapped heat and dead flies and booze. Toby, her cat, streaks by us as the door opens. Who can blame him? A whiff of oxygen would go to anyone’s head after being locked in here. Lily goes over on the side of her shoe as he shoots past, reaches out a hand to steady herself against the wall of the hall.

‘I’ll be fine now, Carol Ann,’ she says. ‘You’d better get to the shop.’

‘I’ve got time to make you a cup of tea, Mum,’ I say brightly.

When I feel at my most guilty, I call her Mum. Inside – and sometimes, when I forget, to her face – I call her Lily.

‘Off you go,’ she says. ‘I don’t want any tea.’

‘Are you sure?’

She flaps her hands at me with a shooing motion but says nothing. I am frightened she knows how much I want to leave, so I go into the sitting room and open a window.

‘This place needs airing,’ I say.

Lily stands by the window.

‘I’ll wave,’ she says. ‘Off you go.’

‘I’ll phone tomorrow.’

Downstairs I open the car door and look up, wave exaggeratedly. In the frame of the window Lily looks tiny. Her hair is wild, manic, always backcombed into dishevelment like a crazy lady’s. Lily is a crazy lady. She is stuck in old beauty habits that she can no longer carry out or carry off. Even from the street I can see her bright-red lipstick, applied so liberally it looks like a little girl’s first attempt. She lifts her arm to wave as I turn the key in the ignition, her hand moving solemnly, concentratedly, like waving is the most important thing in the world. The indicator clicks rhythmically, beating in time with the pendulum of guilt inside me, and I open the window to wave up to Lily as I drive off. I feel a sharp pain in my gut, like I have left my child behind instead of my mother.

The sunshine is streaming through the picture window onto the television, a shaft of dancing dust forming a vortex between windowpane and screen. I draw the curtain slightly to block the light, listening to the monotonous voice of the commentator.

‘And it’s Paris Rose on the inside coming through fast now … Paris Rose looking like she’ll cause a major upset this afternoon. Terry’s Girl is way, way behind, the odds-on favourite fading spectacularly here at Haydock this afternoon. Paris Rose thunders by …’

‘Come on,’ I whisper through clenched teeth. ‘Come on, Paris Rose.’

The commentator’s voice rises to a squeal.

‘Paris Rose is finishing strongly now, followed by Red Demon in second place and Flapjack making up ground in third. But what a SURGE from Flapjack … Flapjack neck and neck now with Red Demon …

‘COME ON!’

‘… Flapjack in second place and pushing Paris Rose all the way. But jockey Jimmy Cochrane is keeping Paris Rose steady, holding on bravely in the dying seconds of this race … and Paris Rose has DONE it. The thirty-three-to-one outsider crosses the finishing line from Flapjack in second place, followed by Red Demon, Olive Branch and Terry’s Girl …’

The voice becomes a drone. I look stupidly at the betting slip in my hand. Of course, I couldn’t resist Paris Rose when I saw the name. After Lily and everything. And roses always make me think of pink, which is a very special colour for me. I always bet by name, which is why I don’t usually win.

I’ll tell you how it is. Nobody knows I have a flutter. It’s my small rebellion. It started two years ago, when the dream first started, the dream of walking away. I chose a hiding place. An old biscuit tin with a picture of Monet’s ‘Poppy Field’ inside a plastic bag, inside a big old handbag, hidden at the back of my wardrobe. I wanted to walk away with only cash. See, that way there would be no trace. I couldn’t just go and make withdrawals from an ordinary bank account. There’s no point walking away if you leave a trail. The secret is to disappear into nothing.

And maybe I knew five-thousand pounds was an impossible dream. I’d always be reaching the target, always dreaming but never quite going. Safe dreams. I don’t earn much. Two mornings in the village tearoom, just to get me out. Six pounds an hour. Alex earns plenty, of course, which is why he goes through life like he’s worth something, and I tag along like behind him like the buy one, get one free offer.

For a new life, there must be new rules. The most important one is that I pay. My dream, my funding. It would be easy to take money from the joint account – in other words, Alex’s account – but I can’t. He’s not mean with money, but it wouldn’t be right. So for two years I have put fifteen quid away almost every week, barring the month before Christmas and birthday weeks. It has grown slowly. Each week I gave myself small targets of how much I needed to raise. It pleased me somehow, when I got away with little economies without anyone noticing. A tin of tomatoes in the bolognese instead of fresh. Alex hates tinned tomatoes, detests the smell of them. But I purée them and he never notices. Saving: £1. Rustic casserole instead of sirloin. Saving: £3. Walking from the tearoom instead of taking the bus. Saving: 60p. Five days a week I have a target, with Saturdays and Sundays off.

The trick is that you make the saving and put the money in the tin instantly. You don’t wait a week, round it up, round it down. That’s not how it works. It’s an abstract saving until you put the money in the tin, so you have to do it right away to make it real. There is just over a thousand pounds in there now. Not enough to leave for at least another couple of years.

Once a month or so, I have a small bet. I set up a telephone account with Bob Smith Bookmakers in town, so I don’t have to go in. I don’t use the house phone, obviously. I can’t have the number appearing on bills. Not that Alex deals with that stuff, but still. You can’t take chances. I have never won more than a tenner before and I have lost more than I have won – the punter always does. But today a surge of madness made me put on twenty quid. I don’t know why. In fact, I felt sick at my own stupidity when I put the phone down. I’d never get away at this rate. But now, I stare at the betting slip in disbelief. One treble: Dream Time 11-1; Forbidden Fruit 5-2; Paris Rose 33-1. Oh, beautiful Paris Rose! I get out my son Stevie’s calculator. £28,560.

There is only a pulse beat between victory and the ring of the telephone, between triumph and disaster. The shrill insistence barely registers in the enormity of the moment. Maybe it’s a sixth sense that makes me pick it up automatically, something being transmitted to me from Lily. I believe in that: a way of communicating that is not about words. Though when it comes to me and Alex, a few words would do just fine. I’m just not sure we know the same ones any more. As far as he’s concerned, I might as well speak Punjabi.

‘Hello? Yes. Yes, I’m Lily Matheson’s daughter.’

The words that follow are a jumble, senseless but shocking, the chaos clearing to leave specific words that cut like shards of ice, sharpened to a dagger point of precision. Lily. Hospital. And then, in the middle of the confusion, a single word slices the dagger straight through my heart and nails my life to the floor: stroke.

CHAPTER TWO

Carol Ann

Lily looks shrivelled in the white shroud of the hospital sheets and pillows. Her eyes are closed when I arrive. I sit beside the bed, gently lift the hand that lies on top of the coverlet and hold it in both of mine. Her skin feels dry, wrinkled like ageing parchment. The muscles on the left side of her face have slackened, the left-hand corner of her mouth drooping downwards like the sad clown of a child’s drawing. Saliva dribbles into the fold that has formed from mouth to chin.

The silence is broken only by the whispered exhalation of her breathing, rising and falling steadily, and by the muffled noise of voices and trundling trolleys and sudden bursts of laughter that filter through the cocoon of closed doors, a world away. The tune of her breathing is fragile, as if the music is fading slowly at the end of a track.

Lily wears a pale blue hospital nightdress, open at the neck; the bones of her chest spread in an artery of ridges. You’d look at her now and you wouldn’t know. You’d have no idea. How beautiful she was. As a child, I’d open her wardrobe and sniff her clothes, sit amongst her shoes, just holding them. She found me once, when I was about four, on the floor of the open wardrobe, the outline of her lipstick on my mouth, my baby feet slipped into the gargantuan magnificence of her best patent shoes. It is my earliest and happiest memory. On my head, her black, wide-brimmed straw hat, and on the floor a discarded striped hatbox and crinkled puffs of pink tissue paper. She scooped me up and laughed, raising me high above her face till I gasped; the rock-solid safety of a mother’s hands under my oxters, the insouciant tenderness of a mother’s kiss planted on the snub of my nose beneath the brim of the hat.

She was dark haired in those days, her locks swept back from her face to reveal marvellous, delicate cheekbones. And while schoolfriends’ mothers were dumpy and frumpy and smelled of bleach, I rejoiced in my glamorous mother with her circular skirts and nipped-in waists, her tight-fitting trousers that skimmed boyish hips, her black, Jacqueline Kennedy shift dresses. She was gamine then, not wasted, and I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. My mother.

Sometimes, my tenderness for her threatens to overwhelm me, consume me, but then almost immediately it becomes tempered by the resentment of responsibility. I cared for her when she should have cared for me. Now she is old it should be her turn, but it still feels like mine. It’s been her turn all my life.

Sitting here by her bed, my nostrils fill suddenly with a wave of hospital smell, the sickly aroma of antiseptic and decay. I hate hospitals. Earlier, scurrying wildly through the corridors trying to find Lily’s ward, I had passed maternity and the newborn wails shot a faultline of memories through me. A couple came through the swing doors towards me, all smiles and tenderness, leaving the hospital with a baby lost inside an enormity of padding, a tiny little nut inside a great big shell. I tried to smile as I held the door for them, but they passed through, barely seeing me, and anyway, my eyes were fixed on the trailing pink blanket they had wrapped round the infant. Soft pink, baby pink, the colour of wild roses in the rain, as delicately protective as a bird’s egg shell.

Through the glass windows of the room, two figures appear. Alex and Stevie. Stevie will be sixteen next week. He walks self-consciously, shoulders hunched forward against the world, eyes cast upwards from under the dark lick of his lashes. He walks several paces behind Alex, as though they are not together really. Alex, in his business suit and a crisp white shirt and tie, walks briskly, as though late for a meeting. He looks ten years younger than his age, whereas I look five years older than mine. He gets younger, I get older, and sometimes, I think that before long I will look like his mother. I watch him, head bobbing as he walks past the window towards the door. A young nurse turns her head back surreptitiously to look at him once she has walked by him. He’s still got it.

Sometimes, I can reduce my feelings about Alex to a kind of emptiness. But mostly, there’s repressed anger, anger that it’s too late to talk about. We’ve passed the moment. I cannot look at Alex but I see her face. Her haunting face with its bone-china beauty and clear-eyed intensity. She stands between us always, a constant presence, a silent ghost. A hand on my shoulder. A hand on his.

‘How is she?’ asks Alex, opening the door. He glances at the bed and his expression doesn’t change.

‘Drifting in and out of consciousness. The doctors say they think it has been a fairly minor stroke, but it has left her groggy and temporarily paralysed down her left side. It’s too early to say how much damage has been done.’ I bite my lip, the skin dry and tough beneath my teeth, desiccated by hours in the dry, hospital heat. ‘There’s always the danger of a bigger stroke, particularly in the next forty-eight hours.’

Stevie hangs back from the bed, not looking directly at Lily, as if he’s just an onlooker, not really there because of any connection to anyone else. But there is fear in his face. I try to smile encouragingly at him, but he doesn’t respond.

‘Steve, get rid of that chewing gum, will you?’ says Alex. His voice is sharp with irritation. He never sees Stevie’s fear.

Stevie’s neck juts forward aggressively from his shoulders. He looks at his father with hostility.

‘Why?’

‘It’s not very respectful, is it? Standing chewing gum round your grandmother’s bed when she’s in that state.’

‘It’s okay …’ I begin quickly, soothingly, but neither of them hear.

‘What?’ says Stevie incredulously. ‘What difference does it make? She’s hardly gonna know, is she?’

His dark brown eyes are hooded with resentment. Sometimes, he looks as if he hates Alex.

‘And anyway, what’s disrespectful …’ He says the word so that you can hear inverted commas round it. ‘… about chewing?’

‘Steve, you’ve got too much to say,’ says Alex with a quietness that I know from experience is deceptive.

‘Alex, there are chairs over there if you …’ I begin.

‘Try engaging your brain before you open that big mouth,’ continues Alex, and Stevie tuts, shooting him a glancing look of utter disdain. Neither of them are aware I have even spoken.

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ I mutter, putting my head down momentarily on Lily’s bed.

Alex hears that bit, of course. He looks at me belligerently, like it’s me he’s arguing with instead of Stevie, like it’s my fault. He raises his hands helplessly in the air in a gesture of angry despair. ‘Carol Ann,’ he says. ‘It’s no wonder that kid marches about like he owns the place.’

‘I’m not a kid,’ mutters Stevie.

‘Alex,’ I say, and my voice flutters uncertainly as I look into his eyes and remember hers – long, black lashes sweeping upwards in spidery curls. Then I feel that familiar kick-back of anger I experience when I think of them together, which hardens my voice again. ‘Alex, my mother has had a stroke.’

‘Yes, I know that, Carol Ann,’ he says. I hate the way he only ever uses my name now as a kind of angry emphasis. ‘We all know that. We’re here, aren’t we?’

Yes. They’re here. ‘Carol Ann,’ whispers an echo from the past in my head. ‘Carol Ann.’ I don’t take my eyes off him. Does he know what I’m thinking?

‘I can’t stay long,’ says Alex. He looks at his watch. ‘I need to meet Dave Bannerman in half an hour.’ Alex doesn’t like Lily. She may be an alcoholic, but she sees through him. She ought to; she’s an expert in deception.

‘I’ll stay,’ says Stevie, so he doesn’t have to share a car back with Alex. He scrapes a chair back against the wall opposite Lily’s bed and sits down, his long, gangling legs sprawling in front of him.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Alex. ‘I’d stay a bit if I could. I just popped in … you know … but I’ll be back …’

I shake my head. ‘It’s all right. You go.’ I sound like Lily.

Alex hesitates. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Try not to worry too much. I hope things are a bit better when I come back.’ He pats my shoulder as he goes, a small gesture of comfort. He cannot bring himself to hold me any more. Somewhere inside, I am glad. If he held me close it would only emphasise our distance. When he holds me, I cannot help thinking of the way he held her. I want him gone. I feel less lonely when I’m alone.

Alex stops at Stevie’s outstretched legs, though he could easily walk round them. I hate the way he does that, forces confrontation when he could avoid it. Slowly, slowly, Stevie shifts slightly in his seat, moving his legs back a little. Still chewing, he refuses to look at Alex.

‘Is she gonna be okay?’ asks Stevie when Alex is gone, nodding towards the bed.

‘I don’t know, son.’

Stevie jerks his head in acknowledgement that I have spoken but says nothing.

‘What are you missing in school this afternoon?’

Stevie looks at his watch. ‘French just now. Chemistry last.’

‘Maybe you should go back now you’ve seen her. The doctors say she’s stable. There’s nothing you can really do here.’

He tilts his head back and leans against the wall.

‘I don’t want you in any more trouble.’

‘I won’t be in trouble.’

‘Did you and Garry finish painting the bike shed?’

‘Yeah.’

He scowls, irritated with me for bringing it up again. Stevie doesn’t like being reminded of anything where he’s in the wrong. He’s a bit like Alex that way. He got caught spray-painting the school bike shed with his pal, Garry. Stevie said it was urban art. Mr Martin, the headmaster, obviously doesn’t ‘get’ urban art, because he said it was vandalism. I said, well what’s the difference between urban art and vandalism, and Stevie said grey matter. Brain cells. Mr Martin made them the offer of painting the whole thing in their own time or being reported to the police. I thought it was pretty reasonable, but Stevie just said it was typical of the fascist wee shite.

‘Is Mr Martin happy with the job you’ve done?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’

‘Hasn’t he said?’

Stevie stands up. ‘I’m going back,’ he says, without looking at me. I know he’s going for a wander round town.

‘Stevie …’

‘I’ll see you later.’

The door swings shut behind him with a bang.

Lily stirs slightly, as if at the noise. I reach out a hand, run a finger down her cheek. Her eyes flicker open, then close again. Her left eye droops sinisterly. They don’t know the full extent of the damage yet, but she’ll probably need help to talk again. Help to walk. Help to eat. Help to dress. When she opens her eyes and looks at me, I see suddenly how it’s going to be. There is something short of recognition in her expression, a puzzlement, a weariness. She doesn’t even know me. But then, who does? Who in the name of God does? There is a sudden ping inside, like an elastic band being stretched beyond tolerance and snapping. I stand up. Gently, I push the hair back from Lily’s face.

‘Bye, Mum,’ I whisper, and bend to kiss her cheek. She says nothing, but I feel her suddenly alert as I walk to the door. If I didn’t know better, I’d say her eyes were following me. I turn quickly and look at her again, as if trying to catch her out, and see her eyes are open, burning like black, shining stars. Burning so bright, it’s as if they are floodlights, casting light on me from the inside out. I swear to God, in that moment you would almost think she knew.

CHAPTER THREE

Karen

Fucking wanker, Mackie!

The words are in my head and then all of a sudden they’re spitting into the atmosphere, echoing round the bathroom. The water in the bath is cooling rapidly and I reach out with my foot and turn the hot tap on with my toes. The water tank rumbles angrily.

‘FUCKING WANKER!’

I shout it this time, above the sound of the gush from the tap, and it’s like a release.

Jesus, I hate that guy. Fat, sweat-drenched, disgusting Mackie. He started in the police force at the same time as me and I haven’t been able to shake him off since. Even in the first few weeks he thought he could put those octopus arms of his round me until I twisted round one day and kneed him in the groin.

‘Fuckssake!’ he spluttered, doubling up.

I don’t like anyone touching me without permission.

‘Aw, Macks, did I get your balls?’ I said softly. ‘Sorry. Didn’t realise you had any.’

The steam is rising from the bath and I switch the tap off again. I always run a bath after a shift, take some wine in with me. One of those plastic wine glasses people use for picnics. It has scratches on it from the dishwasher, looks permanently cloudy. I’m not fussy like that. The bath and the wine help me relax before bed. I don’t sleep well, never have. I got into bad habits as a kid, sleeping light, listening out. It was always important to listen out.

Mackie is only a PC, like me, but it always feels like he’s testing me, watching me constantly with that smug smirk to see if I’ll crack. In the early days, I’d feel his piggy little eyes on me at road accidents, waiting for me to show weakness, to turn away, especially if there was a kid splattered across the carriageway. Now he has to resort to wind-ups in the station because he knows that out in the streets, where it matters, the others would rather be paired with me than him. I’ve got more bottle.

The bathroom window is half mottled glass, but the top half is clear. The evening is darkening rapidly, light summer clouds skidding by in a red-stained sunset. It felt like a long day today. I heard about the CID vacancy and felt the first flicker of hope in a long time. Uniform work does your head in. It’s all teenage kids nicking cars, old guys getting drunk and disorderly, and the dreaded fucking missing persons inquiries. I really hate working on that stuff. Bored housewives running off with their new boyfriends. Deranged nutters trying to drown themselves in puddles …

I take a sip from the glass, feel the warmth of the wine and the heat from the bath engulf me. The water is too hot; my cheeks flushed red, the mirror above the sink frosted with condensation. I stick my legs on the side of the bath to cool them, the water dripping below onto cool white tiles. I quite liked uniform at first. People knowing who you were, having to take note of you. Bit of a turn-on in the early days, but I’m so over it. I really, really want that CID vacancy. I need it. Stop me going crazy. Trouble is, Mackie wants it too.

He took great delight in telling me today that he thought Chief Inspector McFarlane would favour him over me. I just looked at him for a moment, then shook my head with as much of a sneer as fear would allow me. No fucking chance, I said, before hearing someone moving behind me. McFarlane, creeping around as usual. Need to watch my language, apparently. Said it was inappropriate for the workplace. He also muttered something about femininity, which was out of order but typical of McFarlane. He’s a fucking wanker, too.

He’s one of those book types – can’t have a thought unless he’s had it confirmed in print somewhere first. He’d be totally useless on the streets, which is no doubt why he’s got where he has. Those who can do the job get on with it; those who can’t read about it before spitting it all out again in front of promotion panels. It’s obvious he doesn’t like me. Seems to want me to behave like a vicar’s wife instead of a cop. That’s the thing about men, though. Half of them are turned on by someone with long hair and tits who can handle herself like I can. The other half are threatened. You’re not as smart as you think you are, Karen, McFarlane always screeches like some demented parrot. I’ve tried a bit of extra lipgloss on him, but there’s never a flicker. Bet he’s a poof.

The bathroom is airless now, stale with condensation and heat. My cheeks are pink and I can scarcely breathe. I don’t know why I always run baths too hot. Somehow I never feel clean otherwise. If the water is near scalding it makes me feel stripped, like there’s new pink skin where the old dirty scales used to be. Hard to feel clean. A sudden thought runs through my head then out again before I can grasp it properly. Mackie vaguely reminds me of someone, but I can never quite place the recognition because it’s not entirely physical. A couple of times it has almost come to me and it nearly did again there. But the comparison always disappears just as I have almost grasped it.

I walked back to my desk after McFarlane told me off about my language and was surprised when he followed me. There was something he wanted to talk to me about, he said. In his office. He had a case for me. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me and I shot a furtive glance at Mackie, trying to see how he was taking it. McFarlane led the way and as I walked past Mackie’s desk, I raised an eyebrow at him. McFarlane favour him? I feel hot all over again at the memory. The way it turned out …

I pull the plug with my toe, feel the water level dropping. My skin feels flushed and wrinkled with the water. I lie in the heat, waiting for my body to cool, eyes closing, suddenly too tired to move.

Mackie … McFarlane … bastards, the pair of them.

CHAPTER FOUR

Carol Ann

I go for breakfast in a patisserie that is warm with the smell of dough, the air lightly dusted with the scent of roasted coffee beans. It’s smart, chic, unfamiliar. A tiny kernel of excitement flickers inside. A beginning.

Already it feels like a lifetime ago that I was someone else, yet it is only a few days. After leaving Lily in the hospital, I walked to the car, hearing nothing but the crashing waves inside my own head. Was this a crisis? Dr Hammond said if I ever found myself in a crisis, I should phone him. Any time. But if this was crisis, it beat normality. I felt calmer than I had in years. Not on the outside where it’s easy to look calm. Deep, deep inside me. In there, I found somewhere hidden, an uninhabited island.

In our appointments together, Dr Hammond would say quietly, ‘Tell me, Carol Ann, what is the worst thing that can happen?’ I loved his calmness. It made me feel safe. I was capable of anything in there. Depression, he said, could be a transient phase, not a permanent state, and a little bit of hope, soft as a sigh, would surface inside me. And then I would leave his office and head back into the storm and almost immediately I was powerless again.

He would work patiently, soothingly, to show me I could survive the worst. And maybe he was right. Right now there should be nothing left to salvage. I had become the worst possible person, the one who runs, who abandons everyone in her life. I was weak, trivial, flimsy as a dandelion clock in a breeze. Worthless. As I had always known I was. And yet look. Look at me. My heart still pumped. My fingers tapped a rhythm on the steering wheel to a radio tune I did not realise I even listened to. I looked down and saw them moving and was full of wonder. I was still here.

I drove slowly, deliberately, from the hospital. When I reached the village, I saw Linda Strachan coming out of the post office. She waved but I didn’t wave back. I didn’t care enough to wave, didn’t care what she thought. Imagine that! Carol Ann Matthews not caring what other people thought. I knew, then, a little part of me had left already.

I drove the car up past the pond, the place where I often walked when I needed to be on my own, and then to the house, parking neatly in the drive. I didn’t need to go back to the house before going, I suppose.

The funny thing is I didn’t go back to collect anything. I went back to leave them.

The car. My keys. My pay-as-you-go-mobile, £2.23 in credit. I took the cheque books, the credit cards, the bank statements from my handbag and put them in an old one in the bottom of the wardrobe. I didn’t pack a bag, not even one with clean underwear in it. I didn’t want Carol Ann Matthews’ underwear. I didn’t want her life. I didn’t want anything that she owned. I wanted to take her life off like an old dress and hang it in the wardrobe. Then I wanted to put on a new one that she had never seen before.

You’d think it would be hard to walk away, to leave a whole life. But it’s really very simple. You walk and you keep on walking. I closed the door, heard the click of the lock. The heels of my ankle boots rang on the paving outside the house. I passed by the picture window but didn’t look in. There was no nostalgia forming, no need to see things for a last time. One time more was one time too many. Deliberately I looked outward to the open road. A swallow swooped above my head on its way to the eaves.

The noise of my jeans rubbing as I walked was comforting, the rhythm of a new tune. Swish, swish, swish, a metronome marking time. A lorry thundered by, too fast on the narrow country road, brakes squealing, its load tilting dangerously. When it disappeared past, there was silence again. A glint of pink foil glittered in the grass of the ditch, a discarded chocolate wrapper. A white butterfly landed on it, wings trembling, mistaking it for a flower.

I tried to imagine what they’d think when they discovered I had gone. It is not as if there would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Alex would be shocked at first, of course. And Stevie … well, Stevie … he was young still, of course, but already he was severed from me. His head, his life, were elsewhere. He no longer needed me. Sometimes, it’s as if he looks right through me.

It had been my job to keep Alex and Stevie apart as much as possible, to keep the peace. What happened now? Strangely, I didn’t feel the usual nagging sense of responsibility. They would simply have to sort it out themselves.

Lily … My footsteps slowed. Lily produced the biggest stab of guilt. So helpless. I stopped, hesitated. The fact that I could walk from her shook my sense of self. What kind of person could abandon their sick mother? Then I thought of that look as she lay in the hospital bed, the look that went right through me and out the other side. She didn’t know me. Anyway, the truth was that Lily had been dead for years. She didn’t really exist any more. And neither did I.

Looking after her would be impossible. She and Alex could never co-exist in the same house. If I even tried, there would only be turmoil ahead and I’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. No, the only thing to do was to put these people in a box and tape it up, then put it in the loft of my mind where it could slowly gather a comforting film of dust.

I can do nothing for them. That is why it is right to walk away. I can’t help them. I never have been able to help any of them. They will be better now I am gone. Alex will wait the decent amount of time and then have me declared dead – so that he can remarry – and I feel relieved about that. Carol Ann Matthews is dead.

There are businessmen in the patisserie, with papers spread across the table. Like Alex. Who are their wives, I wonder. Stay-at-home wives? Or women-with-their-own-lives wives? Liberation boils down to economics. I knew that as I stood outside the bookie’s on the last day, my senses heightened to the nth degree. The warm smell of tar from roadworks prickled inside my nostrils. The heat had been sucked out of the day and my cheeks were stinging with the chill of spring breezes. I heard the rattle of a stank as a car trundled over it, the scoosh of a water hose on a shop window, the distant echo of a siren.

You want to know what £28,560 feels like? The notes were new and sharp and crisp and difficult to separate, the paper not yet worn limp. It did not curl or fold when held between my fingers. The colours seemed artificial. I imagined I could smell ink. But none of that matters because, actually, the feel of £28,560 pounds is much, much simpler than any of that. I’ll tell you what it feels like. It feels like freedom.

I took the last train to Glasgow. It was after eleven when I arrived in the city, so I bought a toothbrush in the late-night chemist at the station and booked into a hotel. I had to give myself a new name. I only realised as I started to write that I could not use my real one. I had already written the ‘Ca’ of Carol when it occurred to me. I would have liked more time to think up a name, to choose something significant. But I had to decide instantly. I wrote Cara May for a Christian name and am ashamed to say I panicked and wrote Smith for a surnamebecause it was the first thing that came into my head. How little imagination for a new beginning. I suppose I could change it any time I like, but somehow signing the hotel register felt like signing some kind of baptismal certificate. It felt like my new identity was fixed: Cara May Smith.

I washed my underwear out in the sink in the hotel room and hung it over the radiator to dry. The room was pretty basic, but there was a television, so I switched it on and lay back on the bed. Highlights of the European football. I switched over. Alex and Stevie would be watching it, though not in the same room, obviously. If I’d been home, both televisions would still have been used up, so I’d have read.

The late night Scottish news flashed up and I froze. It made me nervous. In case, you know, in case there was something about me being missing. How silly. People go missing all the time. Thousands every day. Nobody’s going to care about Carol Ann Matthews going missing, or think it even remotely newsworthy, are they? And, anyway, it’s too soon. But I still switch it off. I’ve thrown the stone in the water and now I simply want it to sink without trace. I don’t want to watch ripples.

I tell myself I have to stop thinking about that woman, Carol Ann. I don’t even like her very much. I’m certainly not taking her with me, carrying her like a big solid lump on my back. I’m not thinking about her and I’m not thinking about her family. They’re nothing to do with me any more.

I slept naked that first night. Like a newborn. Next morning, it felt like the beginning. You might think it would be frightening, being in a strange town, being completely without possessions, having no idea of where you are going. But I wasn’t frightened. £28,560 took care of fear.

This morning, I went to Marks & Spencer before breakfast to buy underwear. But I didn’t buy it there. That’s Carol Ann’s shop. I decided that Cara May Smith is not the kind of woman who buys her underwear in Marks & Spencer. It’s very creative, building a new life. You have to take it seriously. Details count.

I bought in a specialist lingerie shop. Soft, creamy satin trimmed with deep lace and threaded with ribbon. Delicate, shell-pink French knickers and balcony bra, the straps a handful of spaghetti-thin strands of twined pink lace. Blue-black voile, the colour of winter midnight, shot through with silver thread, like a thin trail of falling meteors. The assistant wrapped them carefully, in deep-purple tissue paper, and scattered scented beads into a purple paper carrier bag with black string handles. I love the feel of that bag in my hands, the way it swings, the paper rustle of it against my leg. I love the decadence of what lies buried in tissue paper in the heart of it. I am a woman who likes nice underwear.

The waitress in the patisserie is young, slender and stylish with tight curly hair and an open smile. She is dressed in black trousers and top with the ties of her long white bistro-type apron wrapped round and round her waist and tied casually. What would I like? The question makes me smile. A whole menu. I can finally have anything I want.

Cara May has blueberry muffin for breakfast and a large espresso. Possibly two. The muffin is warm still, and soft, crammed with berries that bleed blue into the light cake. I do not have to practise being Cara May. I understand her life immediately. I do not live in her; I am her. She is the me I have never allowed myself to be.

CHAPTER FIVE

Karen

Just as we reached the door, McFarlane stopped and turned back.

‘Mackie,’ he said, like it was an afterthought, ‘you’d better be in on this, too.’ I was rooted to the spot, but McFarlane marched on out, letting the door swing behind him. Mackie grinned and swivelled his seat round towards me, sitting in one of those gross, legs-akimbo, cock-o’-the-north male poses he specialises in. As he turned, I was hit with a wave of sweat followed by an after-ripple of cheap aftershave. The buttons of his shirt strained over the swell of his middle, mounds of belly fat creasing into concertina folds. His chair creaked with the strain as he stood up. He winked.

‘C’mon Karen. Best not keep the boss waiting.’

So we’re sitting there, the pair of us, in front of McFarlane’s desk while he drones on. He knows we’re both interested in CID work and he’ll be giving us both a few tests over the coming months and watching how we respond. As he talks, there’s a picture on his desk that keeps catching my eye, a snap of his wife and his four sandy-haired, turnip-headed kids. Four kids is trying too hard. It’s denial. I still think he’s a poof.

My eyes flick back to his face when he says he wants Mackie to be involved in a fraud case, because he thinks if Mackie has a weakness, it’s organisation, and he wants to see how he copes with detailed analysis.

‘And you, Karen,’ he says. ‘What’s your weakness?’

‘I think I’m pretty much an all-rounder.’