We both jump at the sudden bell ring from downstairs, its echo winding up towards us. Ross gets up, pulls on a pair of jogging bottoms. I hear him move across the landing, the slap of his bare feet against the mosaic stair tiles. I stare at the bell pull set into the wall next to the dress-up cupboard. Think of all those bells lined up on the board in the kitchen like mismatched knives in a drawer.
I look back at the photo. And I can still hear her voice in the dark. After hours and hours of ugly silence. Hoarse and mean and full of the same gleaming fear as her eyes on the day she gave me the Black Spot. How could you? You’re supposed to be my fucking sister.
By 2005, El and I had a bedsit in Gorgie. A predictably awful dump, though we were as grateful for it as shipwrecked sailors are for land. It belonged to the Rosemount, and was ours for exactly twelve months, while we sought alternative accommodation and the means to pay for it. We were both at college on bursaries, working whatever shitty jobs we could find. We still barely spoke, no closer at almost nineteen than we had been at almost eighteen. And I was still lying to her.
The care home was holding a reunion party that May Day bank holiday: a barbecue in its extensive grounds. El threw the invitation in the bin, but I rescued it, arranged to meet Ross at the rear fire exit. We probably thought we were being discreet and clever, but I doubt we actually were for even a minute. Ordinarily, we met at his mother’s house – they’d moved from Westeryk to Fountainbridge by then – and we’d have fast and muffled sex in his small single bed, listening to the murmur of people downstairs. The opportunity that an empty Rosemount presented was too good to waste.
The long, high-ceilinged corridors were deserted. Ross held my hand as he led me along them, while I navigated from the rear in loud whispers. All the room keys hung on numbered hooks in the reception office, and I knew that the new occupants of the twin bedroom that El and I had shared were busy getting stoned behind a bush on the front lawn. But that probably wasn’t all of it. I imagine that I wanted Ross there. To have him in my bed and not hers.
We had progressed past the urgent, desperate stage to slick and sweaty and loud, far beyond any shyness or inhibition, when she walked in on us. I saw her over Ross’s shoulder in the very instant that he came, twitching and shuddering against me, moaning my name.
I froze, a twin statue of El, and a shame more potent, more powerful than even the love I felt for Ross grabbed hold of me, choked my breath.
Ross caught on soon enough. Pulled out and away from me, swaddling us both in blankets, his eyes close enough to mine that I could see my own reflection. He closed them before he turned slowly around.
‘El,’ he said. ‘El.’
She stared at us, all life, all colour gone from her face, leaving only grey and slack horror. And my lips formed her name without letting out a sound.
‘There was no one there,’ Ross says now, when he comes back. He stands by the bed, awkward, reluctant, and I can’t think of anything to say to make him stay. Finally, he looks at me. His smile is flat, unhappy. He turns his back, sits on the edge of the bed, bows his head.
‘I wish we’d never come back here. I fucking hate this place.’
I don’t say anything. Maybe if they’d never come back here, I wouldn’t be here either.
‘El was having an affair,’ he says, to the stripes on the wall. ‘I think she was having an affair.’
‘Why?’ There are twin blurry pulses of pain inside my temples.
‘I lied about us being okay. We weren’t getting on. We were barely speaking. For a long time.’ He shrugs his shoulders. ‘She had another phone.’
And I can’t help it. I think of those two words. Capitalised in a subject heading. Splashed bloody across the naked stone wall alongside the washhouse. HE KNOWS. I press my fingers against my temples.
‘Did you know who it was?’
Ross shrugs. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. There was this guy she sometimes talked about. Another artist. And I could just tell, you know? I mentioned him to Rafiq, but El never told me his name.’ He shakes his head. ‘Big red flag, right?’
When he finally turns around, his eyes aren’t furious like I expected, but weary. ‘No doubt he was sensitive, patient. Listened endlessly to all of her problems.’ He tries to shrug his shoulders again, but they look too heavy. ‘Nice with a capital N. You know the fucking type.’
I do.
But instead of telling him about Vik, I think about the mother who stole Ross from his father. I think of him bloody and sobbing, on his knees in the Caribbean Sea, watching us sail away. The sound he made the night I kissed him: low and keening, trapped like a howling wind inside a narrow space. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to go on without her.
And I crawl towards him, wrap my arms around his torso, and lay my cheek against his back, feel the slow, steady thump of his heart against his ribs. Reach my fingers inside his jogging bottoms, hear the sharp inhale of his breath as I close them around him, already hard.
She left him. She doesn’t want him any more. She took him from me.
It takes a long time, long enough that he starts to beg again, but I want so badly to keep him close, to keep him on the brink of still wanting me, still needing me, that I ignore his pleas until the very end.
And when it’s over, I press my face against his skin and close my eyes.
‘Don’t regret this, Ross,’ I whisper to his heartbeat. ‘I won’t let you.’
CHAPTER 13
I always used to watch the news and wonder how people could carry on with their lives when they were stuck in limbo, but the answer now is obvious. It’s just easier. Easier than giving up. Easier than stopping. Easier to just pretend that all is okay. Until it is.
The morning is cold, the sunlight through Colquhoun’s of Westeryk’s big windows blinding. I don’t really want to go in, but we’ve completely run out of food, and Ross is still lying in my bed, his face relaxed in sleep. It’s been two days. And three nights. And already, I’ve nearly forgotten what it’s like to be anywhere else but with him.
I hesitate at the shop’s door, my palm against its glass. Whenever I go out alone, the feeling – the physical sensation – of being watched is now so pervasive, so expected, that it almost feels normal. I allow myself one look: up and down the empty street from the Links to the corner of Lochend Road, and then I turn around, push through the door.
My heart sinks when I realise Anna is the only cashier. I shop slowly, filling a basket with as much as I can possibly carry. When I finally have to approach the till, I see that Anna’s expression is just as wary. I set down my basket, and she clears her throat, makes an obvious effort to meet my gaze. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
She clears her throat again. ‘I’ve wanted to say I’m very sorry for what I said to you last week. I was upset about El, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It wasn’t fair.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, even though I sense she doesn’t completely mean it.
She sighs. ‘I was angry with you because she was alone. Because you weren’t here when she needed you. And now … now that she’s …’ She shakes her head violently. ‘… Gone. Here you are.’
I bite down on my tongue, and it hurts. But I won’t speak. I won’t protest my innocence and El’s guilt. It never does any good.
Anna doesn’t say anything more until I’m handing over my money, and then she reaches out to close cool fingers around my wrist.