A plyboard wall ran along one side of Kennedy Street, blocking entry to one of the many bomb sites still pockmarking the city from the Second World War. On the other side, a snake of houses followed the spur of land around. They were mirror images of Gina Wilcox’s house, from the concrete steps leading up to the narrow door to the three-banded green fence. A nearby household had taken offense at the Irish Republican implications of the fence color and had repainted theirs a royal blue. Apart from one house using its small garden to store bald tires, the neighborhood was well tended, the front rooms cozy and peaceful when seen from the cold street.
Around the shoulder of the crescent she saw a middle-aged man in a navy overcoat walking down the road towards her, his hands jammed into his pockets. Paddy walked towards him and saw him flinch warily, hurrying to get past her.
“Excuse me?”
The man sped up.
“Can I speak to you, sir?”
He stopped and turned, looking her over. “Are you the police?”
“No,” she said. “Why would you think that?”
“Ye said ‘sir.’ You’re not the police?” he repeated, seeming annoyed that she had misrepresented herself.
“No. I’m Heather Allen, Daily News. I’m here about Thomas Dempsie?”
“Oh, aye, the wee fella that was murdered?”
“Yeah. Do you know which house was his?”
“There.” He pointed to the house with the tires in the garden. “The family moved away after. The mother lives in the high flats down at Drygate. It was his dad that killed him, ye know.”
Paddy nodded. “So they say.”
“Then he hanged himself in Barlinnie.”
“Aye, I heard that too.”
Together they looked at the house. Beyond the tires and the muddy grass, limp white curtains formed an arch in the window.
The man nodded. “Ye don’t know what goes on indoors, sure ye don’t. At least he was sorry enough to kill himself.”
“Aye. Didn’t they think he was taken from the garden?”
“At the start they did. He just went missing, but of course then it turns out that the daddy had him all along.”
“I see.”
The man shifted his weight uncertainly. “Is that it? Can I go?”
“Oh.” Paddy realized suddenly that the man, ages with her father, had been waiting to be dismissed. “Thank you, that’s all I wanted to know.”
He nodded, backing off before turning and carrying on his way. She watched him go, amazed at the power gleaned from introducing herself as a journalist.
Kennedy Street should have had an open vista over the new motorway to Edinburgh, but the view was blocked by a makeshift barrier. Bits of plyboard had been pulled off, and Paddy crossed over to look through it. The ground was muddy and uneven. A stubborn ground-floor tenement wall stood alone with melancholy cherry wallpaper around the impression of a fireplace.
She had never met anyone like Tracy Dempsie before. Everyone she knew who had suffered terrible tragedy in their lives offered it up to Jesus. She thought of Mrs. Lafferty, a woman in their parish whose only child had been run over and killed, whose husband had died agonizingly of lung cancer, and who had herself developed Parkinson’s, so that she had to have communion brought to her seat during mass. But Mrs. Lafferty was all high kicks and yahoo. She flirted with the young priests and sold raffle tickets. The possibility that suffering could defeat people disturbed Paddy. The only other person she had ever heard of like Tracy was old Paddy Meehan. The unfortunate were supposed to rise above adversity. They should become fat, bitter men in cheap coats boring people in dirty East End pubs.
It took her a moment to register the sound. Coming around the corner towards her was a hurried, scuffed run. For no real reason she thought of the boys in the lift and felt a stab of fright in her stomach, thinking she’d be pushed through the hole in the wall. Without looking to the source, she scurried across the road towards the nearest working streetlight and calmed herself. There was nothing to be afraid of. Tracy had creeped her out, that was all.
She slowed her pace to a walk and turned to see the person behind. He smiled at her with disarming warmth. He was tall, taller than Sean, with thick brown hair and a creamy complexion. He stood thirty feet away, hands in his pockets.
“Sorry, did I frighten you? I was running because I saw ye and I thought you were my pal.”
Paddy smiled back. “No.”
“It’s a girl I’m trying to meet. By accident.” He nodded and looked sheepishly back up the street. “You live here?”
“No,” she said, thinking he was sweet. “I’m working.”
“What d’ye work at?”
“Journalist. For the Daily News.”
“Ye a journalist?”
“Aye.”
Impressed, he looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on her monkey boots and gelled hair. “Don’t they pay ye?”
“Listen, these are Gloria Vanderbilt monkey boots.”
He smiled at that and looked at her with renewed interest. He held his hand out. “Kevin McConnell,” he said, leaning forward to take her hand.
It could be a Catholic name, she wasn’t sure.
“Heather Allen.”
His hand enveloped hers, the skin powder soft. As he stepped forwards the light caught a gold stud in his ear. Paddy had only ever seen male pop stars with earrings, and Glasgow was not a city that calmly accepted blurred gender boundaries: she’d once heard of a guy being beaten up for using an umbrella. Looking at him with renewed admiration, she noticed that his eyes were small and neat and his lips were glistening.
“You need to be careful coming up here, visiting people in a scheme ye don’t know.”
“I was only here for a minute.” She started strolling slowly down the road, hoping he’d follow.
“A minute’s long enough,” he said, falling into step. “There’s gangs up here, ye have to be careful.”
“Are you in a gang?”
“Nut. Are you writing about the gangs? Is that what you’re doing up here?”
He veered towards her slightly, keeping the space between them narrow, as if he could feel the frisson between them too. “I’ll see ye out safely, then.”
She kept him talking, asking if he was working (he wasn’t), where he went dancing (he didn’t), and what sort of music he liked. The Floyd, Joe Jackson, and the Exploited sometimes, but only sometimes. Ye have to be in the right mood, eh? Paddy knew what he meant: she never happened to be in the right mood for the Exploited.
By the time they reached Cathedral Street she was reluctant to leave his company. He was a big, handsome man, like Sean, but not annoyed at her or talking about his family or angry about her job. He walked her down to the bus station, waving her off across the dual carriageway, giving her a coy look and saying that maybe he’d see her again.
As Paddy walked down through the town to the train station it occurred to her that maybe the world was full of men she might choose; that maybe Sean was just one of the nice men instead of the one nice man.
Reluctant to go home to her family, she took her time wandering down through the town. The closer she got to the station the smaller she felt. She wasn’t Heather Allen. She wasn’t a journalist at all. She was just a fat lassie playing a stupid game because she was too afraid to go home.