VI
She pressed the rim of the receiver tight against her ear, wondering. Terry was watching her from the car. She was certain they were doing the right thing when she was with him, but as soon as she was alone in the call box, dialing the number for Anderston police station, she wondered if the whole idea seemed sensible only because she wanted to show off to him, acting confident of the facts the way she had acted about sex in his bed the night before. Her pulse throbbed in her throat as she blurted out the story to the officer on the other end: She had seen Heather Allen on that Friday night getting into a grocery van outside the Pancake Place in Union Street; she didn’t know whose van it was, but it was purple and old and she’d seen it doing rounds in Townhead. She hung up when he asked for her name and address.
Striding back to the car, she hoped she looked as confident as Terry had when walking away from Naismith’s van.
“Is that it?”
“Done,” she said, catching her breath. “Done and done.”
Terry drove her all the way to the first leg of the Star, and she didn’t care if she was seen with him. Around the Star, front room lights were on as families settled around the telly after Songs of Praise. Terry smiled at the little houses and said he liked it.
“All the houses are facing each other, though. Don’t the neighbors all watch each other?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Paddy. “Everyone knows everything. Even the Prods know who’s skipping mass. Cheers for running me home.”
They looked at each other, a bold, bald stare, and she was dismayed to see a tiny ambivalent twitch on his chin.
“We did a good thing today, Terry.”
“I hope we did.”
They would be forever bound together by what they had done, and they both knew it.
She climbed out of the low car, regretting the fact that her fat arse was the last thing to leave his line of sight, and bent down to look at him once more. She saw him sitting in the sagging seat, his little pot belly straining through his T-shirt, saw herself lingering too long to talk, reluctant to leave his company. If Pete could see what there was between them, then other people could too. Sean would be hurt to his core.
“We’ll hear in the morning, anyway. I’ll see you then.” She withdrew and slammed the car door behind her.
She could see his face as he took the rickety car around the roundabout. He looked scared but bared his teeth in a smile as he came past. She waved back, watching the rusting backside of the car until Terry was gone.
THIRTY-ONE . GOOD-BYE
I
They were still treating her like a walking sack of pitiful contagion. Marty wouldn’t speak or look at her when they were alone together, Con pressed his lips tightly together when they passed on the stairs, as if she were a stranger he had heard unpleasant things about. She had seen them do it to Marty and had happily participated in it herself, but she wasn’t going to let them wear her down.
She sat alone on her bed, looking at the engagement ring on her finger. The ring felt tight and cut into the skin- she had put on weight in the last week or so- but she kept it on. Sean might not help her otherwise. She could hear Marty listening to the radio in the next-door room, John Peel’s droning monotone interspersed with bursts of synth music and thrashing punk vocals.
She jumped up when she heard the doorbell downstairs. She heard her mother greeting Sean in the hall with a loud, cheerful whoop followed by a hundred tittering questions about his week, talking as if he had been away at sea for two years. The voices drew closer, and she heard their soft tread on the carpeted stairs.
They were almost up the stairs when Paddy suddenly fumbled the ring off her finger. She grabbed the little velvet box from the dresser and tried to fit the band back into the foam slit, but her hands were too jittery. She dropped the ring inside the box and snapped the lid shut just before the bedroom door opened.
Sean looked in at her. He was wearing formal clothes, his new shiny bomber jacket over a crisp orange Airtex shirt, troublingly close in tone to Terry Hewitt’s bedsheets. Trisha was standing behind him. “Here’s Sean to see you.” Her voice was manically cheerful.
“Hiya.”
Paddy stood up. “Let’s go, then.”
“Well, we’re a bit early,” said Sean, angling to come into the room for a snog.
“But the buses…”
Paddy looked vaguely at her mother, willing her to move out of the way. She didn’t want to talk to him here, not with her mother creeping past on the landing, downstairs praying to JC for a Catholic outcome, and smiling hopefully every time they came down for a cup of tea.
“Let’s go,” she said, keeping her eyes down stubbornly.
Down in the hall, Trisha helped them on with their coats. She patted Paddy on the arm, signaling a motherly message about compromise and keeping a man: Don’t let him go, perhaps; or, Agree to anything.
Outside in the crisp air Paddy looked back through the mottled glass and saw the outline of her mother standing still with her head bowed in prayer. She wanted to kick the fucking door in.
“Which cinema do you want to go to?” asked Sean, pulling up his collar.
“Can we go up the brae?”
Sean raised a suggestive eyebrow. There was never any evidence of it, but rumors abounded of sexy goings-on up the brae, just because it was dark and out of sight. Paddy didn’t giggle or respond the way he expected.
“I need to talk to you,” she said seriously.
His face tensed. For the first time since he shut his front door on her, Paddy felt that he was on the back foot, not her.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go up the brae.”
They walked to the end of the street in silence, to the raw mud path leading up the hill. It was a long corridor, with bushes on either side. Sean took out his cigarettes to have something to do, and Paddy tapped him on the back.
“Give us a fag, eh?”
He looked surprised: he had never known her to smoke. He held out the packet and she took one, holding it between her lips and tipping her head to the side to take the light from the match in his cupped hand. She didn’t really like smoking. It made her teeth feel dirty and her blood pressure rise, but she liked the idea of being a narrow-eyed, knowing smoker.
“We’re never getting to the pictures, are we?”
Paddy exhaled, looking down the dark path.
“Is it because it’s a boxing flick? We don’t need to go and see that one; we could go and see a romance if you like.”
“No, no, I liked that film.”
“Ye saw it already?”
“Yeah.” He looked suspicious. “I went on my own. It’s been a lonely week.”
She scratched her nose and saw his eye fall on her naked ring finger.
“Come on,” she said, pushing him forwards, following him along the wild path until the bushes cleared.
They found their way along the steep hillside until the lights from the Eastfield Star were eclipsed by the bushes and trees behind them. Paddy found a flat shelf of rock and sat down on it, crossing her legs and clearing her coat next to her to leave room for Sean. Less elegantly, he lowered himself beside her, stiff from a hard day’s carrying.
“Since when do you smoke?”
Paddy shrugged, staring out at the flat valley below them. She started to speak and stopped, taking a smoky draw before starting again. She felt in her pocket and found the engagement ring box. She held it out to him, afraid to look in his eyes and see the hurt there.
“I need to give you this back, Sean. I’m not getting married.”
He laughed at the abruptness of it and looked at her, hoping for a moment that she’d laugh back and it would be all right. She didn’t. She stared ahead, squinting at the road below them, tucking her hands into her sleeves.
“It’s not you, you’re wonderful. If I wanted to get married to anyone, it would be you, but I don’t. I’m too young.”