There follows another awkward silence that I’m not very inclined to fill. El has never been a joiner. What few friends she had as a teenager, she knew only through me. Ross and I were the only people she ever let close, and yet these two women don’t just know her, they seem to genuinely care for her.
‘And Ross?’ Marie eventually says. ‘How is he?’
‘As fine as he can be.’ I pick two bottles of wine, start inching towards the till. ‘I should …’
‘Bien sûr. Pardon.’ Marie’s too-bright smile falters. ‘You must visit. For tea, apéritif, anything at all. I am just over there. The end house.’ She points at the Gingerbread Coop, and I notice a long keloid scar – stark against her dark skin – running from her wrist to her elbow. When she sees me looking, she snatches her sleeve back down.
‘And perhaps you could let me know if you hear anything?’
‘Of course,’ I say.
She nods, presses her hand to the emerald-green scarf around her neck, and I realise there are scars on her knuckles too. And under all that immaculate make-up, the skin of one cheek is raised, rough like damaged plaster. The silence between us lengthens. And then she’s waving, leaving in a cool jangling breeze and another waft of Chanel No. 5.
I immediately turn towards the till, feeling both guilty and relieved.
‘Do you want a bag?’ Anna says. Her expression is stony again, and when I nod, she snatches one from under the counter and tosses it at me. Begins scanning and discarding my shopping with brutal efficiency.
I clear my throat. ‘Are you all right?’
She thrusts a bottle of wine at me without looking up, although her cheeks have flushed pink. ‘I don’t understand why you’re here.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘El told us what happened between you.’ Her eyes flare, defiant again. ‘Why you left.’
I can only imagine what she said. El can twist truth into the kind of knot that will never be undone. ‘What happened between us is none of your business.’
Anna visibly swallows. Squares her shoulders. ‘You should leave. She wouldn’t want you here.’
I press my card against the chip-and-PIN machine. Snatch up my bag and march fast towards the door and the street. I’m too jet-lagged and already angry to trust myself to speak.
‘You should be careful,’ Anna calls after me.
And although it sounds like a threat, the sudden lack of ice in her voice makes it seem like a warning.
Ross isn’t downstairs when I return. That’s probably just as well. I feel unsettled. The dream and the conversation with Anna have kept me on the same edge as El’s email, the page from her diary, the rediscovery of Mirrorland. I knew that coming back here after all this time would feel strange, but I wasn’t prepared for uneasy. Uncertain. Afraid.
I stand at the Kitchener. Overcook the pasta to the point of disintegration, dump it all, start again. I watch the water bubble and churn, and remember Mum stroking my cheek, her nails scratching. Don’t be like me, Catriona. See the good instead of only the bad. So I think of El and me sitting at the kitchen table, sneaking too-sweet bites of Grandpa’s coconut toffee when Mum wasn’t looking. Tossing loose socks up towards the hanging Clothesmaid we’d christened Morag. One point for landing over a wooden slat; ten for one of the cast-iron rackends. My phone vibrates, and I jump, fumble it out of my pocket.
The email is from john.smith120594. Its subject line is HE KNOWS.
And its message:
CLUE 2. WHERE GRANDPA’S FIRST MATE IRVINE DIED
The anger is almost a relief. Less welcome is the sudden rush of recognition. I turn away from the range and sit down at the table, where Grandpa first told us about the fate of doomed Irvine. In 1974, Grandpa almost lost his leg – and his life – during a two-day fishing trip in the North Sea, aboard a stern trawler called The Relict. He told us the story so often, we sometimes dreamed of it: the snowstorm, the shrieks of the gulls and gannets, the smells of the seabed as the floats and warps emerged from the Devil’s Hole, a hundred and thirty fathoms down – salt and oil and earth. The drum stalling, the hydraulics screaming as the net snagged on the bottom and the boat tipped stern, and Grandpa and his oldest mate, Irvine, slid down the deck towards the jammed trawl doors and the sea. Grandpa’s leg snapped in two between ramp gears, but still he threw Irvine a net hook, still he held on to his friend for dear life until his friend finally let go.
Every surviving deckhand on The Relict got something, but Grandpa got more, because he was the one who’d filed report after report about those faulty trawl doors; he was the one whose friend had died and whose leg no longer worked. In the end, he got enough compensation to comfortably retire and buy this house. Folk have allus underestimated me, hen, he’d say. Ah wis that skipper’s worst fuckin’ nightmare. Unlike Mum, Grandpa had only one rule, though it was as oft repeated as it was absolute: There’s an arsehole on every boat, and if there’s no, it’s prob’ly you.
I get up, march across to the wonky beige units. I crouch down and start opening the doors, moving aside bowls and Tupperware until I find it. In the corner of the back wall of the last cupboard. A tiny swirling pool of charcoal and black Biro. The Devil’s Hole. El was fond of vandalising the insides of cupboards and drawers, small and sly, where no one was ever likely to look unless they knew it was there. She drew the Devil’s Hole here a few days after Grandpa first told us the story. I have to get down on my knees to reach in for the folded square of paper beneath it. And just as I realise that there are two squares of paper this time, someone – something – hisses:
You’re a disgusting wee bitch!
I rear back. I think I shriek. I know I snatch my hand out of the cupboard and frantically kick backwards with my feet until I’m on the other side of the kitchen again. I swallow. There’s no one here. But I can still feel that voice. The venom in it, the spite. The fury. And in some far corner of my mind, I see a woman: tall with brittle black hair. The Witch.
‘What are you doing?’ Ross says, from the kitchen doorway.
‘Slipped,’ I manage to say, affecting a laugh, rubbing my arm as I shove the two squares of paper into my pocket, let him help me back onto my feet.
I know this woman – at least, I feel like I do. The vague recollections those hissed words have provoked are more like impressions, curls of smoke. Her voice, thin and high and cruel. Brows low, eyes narrow, staring down at me like I’m just about the worst thing she’s ever had to look at. Grandpa finding me crying at the kitchen table. A wink, the cool, heavy pat of his hand. Ye’re a long time dead, lassie. Nothin’ else ever worth greetin’ over.
I go back to the Kitchener, look down at the two tiles close to my feet, the dark rusty stain running through the cracked grout between them. I shiver. Shake it off. Glance at the pasta, bendy and well on its way to inedible again. ‘I think it’s ready.’
We both eat like machines: slow, steady, efficient. Afterwards, neither of us looks any better for it. I get up, open the Smeg door, take out a bottle of wine.
‘The bottom drawer of the old fridge-freezer used to be crammed full of M and S sausage rolls, with “FOR MY FUNERAL – DO NOT TOUCH” printed on these big ugly labels,’ I say, trying to ease the tension. ‘Grandpa called them his fancy horse doovers.’ I think of his easy, quick grins. Good spread at a funeral’s rare as rockin’ horse shite these days, hen.