Maureen didn't want to go back to the Northern hospital after she got out. Slowly, she stopped phoning Pauline. She had nothing to say to her and wanted to distance herself. Six months later Pauline killed herself in a wood near her parents' house. She had told the hospital staff that her father and one of her brothers had been anally raping her since she was young but couldn't bring herself to tell her mother – she thought it would break her heart. Her housing application had fallen through and she had been released back to the parental home. She was found in the wood, dead two days from an overdose, with dried spunk on her back.
Michael had been missing for fifteen years when Marie's diligent work paid off and she found him. She had been looking since Maureen was admitted to hospital. They found him living in a council flat in south London, with nothing but a bed and lager cans for furniture. Una paid for him to come home. When Maureen looked out of the window of her flat at the city she knew that he was out there somewhere. On bad days she knew that he was everywhere, watching.
The Broomhill flats were among the most coveted council flats in Glasgow. Built on a sharp escarpment high above the river Clyde, the tower promised a view over the sprawling Govan shipyards. They were well tended and near to the trendy West End. Picking her way among the modest cars, Sheila backed deftly into a tiny space. "This is us," she said.
Maureen looked up at the gray front of the tower block. Warm yellow lights shone from the box homes, competing with the fading evening. The only clue that the flats were council owned was the peeling paint on the concrete exterior and big blue bylaw notices everywhere prohibiting ball games, parking, loitering and rubbish. "This is lovely," she said, noticing that there were no people hanging around outside.
"They don't allow kids," said Sheila, opening her door. "Plus, most of us have had to work full-time for years to get moved in here so everyone's very precious about it. You need about eighty points."
The lobby was quiet and the lift came immediately.
"What do you have to do to get eighty points?" Maureen asked.
Sheila stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the eleventh floor. "Be homeless for a decade," she said, as the lift took off. "Have at least one breakdown, be a victim of crime and cry in the housing office every day for six months."
Maureen puffed out her cheeks. "Harsh," she said.
"Hardest work I've ever done," said Sheila.
The doors opened and they stepped out, following the broad corridor along to Sheila's door.
"I don't bring many people here," said Sheila, wiggling the key into the lock. "It's my sanctuary."
The hall was painted pale gray and led into a white rectangular living room with low beige corduroy chairs and a glass coffee table with a pile of green pebbles on it. Maureen glanced out of the window and was disappointed to see that the flat looked over the roofs of red stone tenements.
"No," said Sheila, as she dropped her keys into a brass dish on a hall table. "It doesn't look out over the river."
"Aw, well, it's still lovely."
Sheila smiled. "It is, isn't it?" She hesitated and blushed a little. "I don't think about it much. I suppose I should."
"If you don't bring many people up here why did you invite me?"
"Let's have a cup of tea."
In the narrow galley kitchen the kettle hissed to a boil. Sheila took a packet of biscuits from a cupboard and put some on a plate. Maureen was surprised that someone with such a bad eating disorder would have biscuits in her house. When she tasted one, it was soggy and old. There was no food in the kitchen, Maureen realized, no bread left out, no wrappings sitting on the side. When Sheila opened the fridge to get the skim milk Maureen saw that the shelves were empty apart from three large bowls of jelly with spoonfuls missing. "I take it black, thanks," said Maureen. "Sheila, is there something you want to talk about?"
Sheila picked up the kettle. "I heard you tonight," she said. "Don't do it."
Maureen cast her mind back over what she had said. "Don't do what?" she said.
"We've all thought about it-you're not special." She poured the hot water into the cups, squeezed out the teabags and put them into the bin carefully. "Come next door."
They sat next to each other on the low chairs, their knees converging, and looked out of the window at the powder blue sky. Maureen didn't want to ask her what she meant. Sheila sipped her tea. "I think if abusers are absent it's easy to see things in black and white. They're not there to cloud the issues," she said. Maureen looked a bit confused. "Abusers come to personalize the damage they've done. You think that if you kill him, you'll undo the damage he's done, but you won't."
She was exactly right. It was one of the bizarre aspects of being in the group: other people would know what Maureen was thinking, sometimes before she articulated it to herself. It felt a little uncomfortable, like hanging about with a bunch of psychics, several of whom she didn't like very much.
"I haven't decided to do anything yet," she said quietly.
Sheila watched calmly as Maureen pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, sucking down the sense of wild panic. The fag scratched her throat as she inhaled. She liked it and inhaled again, making herself light-headed.
"My grandfather," – Sheila waved her hand to the past-"he got my mum as well. No one talked about such things then. She had an eating problem, drink and drugs. Dead at thirty-eight. I wanted to kill him for her because she never had a chance."
"But you didn't," said Maureen, knowing full well that the old man had died in a nursing home at the ripe old age of eighty-eight, surrounded by family and friends. His funeral had been well attended, his obituary had been in all the local papers and one national paper because of his position on the board of a charity for blind people.
Sheila ignored her. "It's a fairly typical gut response, you know, but you have to unpack it, look at what's in there, look at your real motives for doing it. You mentioned your sister's pregnant?"
Maureen nodded.
"Baby's important," said Sheila, "but probably not as important as it seems. It might be an excuse, you know, to do what you want to do anyway. If you don't value yourself enough to make a stand but you're still angry, you might be channeling it into saving someone else. It's easy to confuse what's good for Baby and what you want. People do that all the time. Have you phoned Social Services about Baby?"
"If I do they'll tell the police," said Maureen, uncomfortable with Sheila's reference to the child as if it were Lord High Muck-a-Muck.
"Is that out of the question? Filing a report doesn't mean you go to court."
"I've had trouble with the police," said Maureen.
Sheila looked at the tip of her cigarette and Maureen could tell she was wondering whether to say it.
"I know Hugh's a policeman," said Maureen. "I've been interviewed by the police and it was fucking horrible. You know how hard it is to talk about it. The very last thing I ever want to do is to try and explain it all to them."
Sheila nodded. "Maureen," she said, "think about this. You're more than the sum of his actions, much more. Look, you haven't been in the group that long but we do make progress. We can recover. He's already stolen your childhood, don't give him your adulthood as well."
Maureen was dismayed that Sheila didn't understand. "Sheila, he's got my adulthood. I see him everywhere, I feel him everywhere. I can't have a relationship with a man because of it, I can't hold down a job. I don't know why my friends stay with me, I can't even look at myself in a normal mirror. D'ye understand? I have to use a magnifying mirror because I can't stand looking at more than a wee fragment of my face at a time."