They left the floor to dry and sat in the kitchen, watching the start of the good Friday night shows on TV. Leslie ran downstairs and came back with a single fish, a haggis smothered in vinegar and a portion of chips. Maureen started eating the fish to avoid being nagged but it was delicious, fresh flaky fish in a sweet crisp batter. She ate some of the chips too.
They finished painting the floor at midnight. Leslie couldn't take the smell and went to sleep at her mum's, promising to come back in the morning to help tidy up. Maureen sat on the settee in the hall, touching the bandages on her stinging forearms, looking into the living room. The floor was pale blue now, a slick of shining, stinking blue, reflecting the lights rolling across the ceiling. The room looked enormous without the bloodstains.
She remembered when she had first bought the flat, standing inside the front door in the dark, afraid to be alone in a house that was hers. She remembered the things left behind by the people who had lived there before her: a cupboard full of empty ginger bottles, a saucer used as an ashtray and a recent copy of Playboy hidden behind a stack of folded boxes. She'd cried that night, knowing this was where things would get really bad because the flashbacks were getting so much worse. She remembered coming out of hospital and turning Beethoven's Fifth up loud on the stereo, smashing the mattress with a tennis racket until her palms were raw and she was exhausted. She remembered sitting out here in the hall, hunkered into a tight little ball, looking at Dead Douglas, trying to think her way to the phone, three feet away. She'd survived all of that and there wasn't a solitary doubt in her mind that she'd live through the aftermath of Michael.
Chapter 48
It was one o'clock in the afternoon when maureen looked at her watch. She had slept for ten hours and couldn't bring herself to get out of bed. She could tell it was a cloudy day from the gray light peeping in through the curtains and she was glad. The flat was full of the new-beginning smell of paint from the front room. When she got up to go to the toilet and climbed over the settee in the hall she was amazed at how different the living room looked. She checked that the floor was dry before walking into the middle of it. It was as if Dead Douglas had never been here, like the room she had known before he died.
She had a bath and soaked the bandages on her arms before peeling them off. The bit of glass stuck under the skin was aching and when she pressed on it yellow pus came out, but the other cuts were healing nicely. By the time Leslie knocked on the door she was dressed and sipping coffee on the settee in the hall. She reached over and unlocked the door. Leslie climbed across the back of the settee and looked in at the living room.
"Fucking hell," she said, reaching into her bag, "that's the business. Here, I brought ye a present."
It was wrapped in pink tissue and when she pulled it back she saw that it was a half bottle of Glenfiddich in a fancy presentation tin. "I only got the half bottle 'cause I know you're a bit of an alkie."
Maureen grinned up at her, opened the tin and pulled the bottle out. "What's this for?" she said, peeling the metal seal back.
"No." Leslie grabbed the bottle and put it back in the tin. "It's for Monday or Tuesday, when the verdict comes in."
It seemed a cruel gesture to Maureen, to hand her lovely whiskey and tell her not to drink it right now, as if Leslie was testing her. She must have known how hard it would be to have it in the house.
"Well, thanks," said Maureen, and slid it under the sofa. She could buy another on Monday and pretend it was the same one when Leslie asked her to open it. "My arm's going off."
Maureen sat on a blue sea of the living-room floor where the light was best and let Leslie cut the skin with a sharp needle. The bit of glass stuck in her arm had worked its way back from the original wound and was pressing through unbroken skin. Leslie had already tried squeezing it forwards but it hurt like a bastard. Leslie's cigarette idled in the ashtray. Maureen looked at the top of her head as she bent over her arm, scratching at the skin. Maureen wanted a drink. Michael was over, Angus was almost dealt with, and Si McGee would never import women again. She didn't know how to have a glad heart without a glass in her hand but Leslie would give her a row. Even if she didn't give her a row, she'd look at her in a way that suggested a row and, because Maureen knew her so well, she'd have no trouble filling in the blanks herself.
"Should you be smoking?" said Maureen.
Leslie bent deeper over the wound. "Fuck off," she said. "I haven't had a drink for weeks."
"A mother's love's a blessing." Maureen was glad it was hard for her too.
"Should you be winding up a woman who's sticking needles into your arm?"
The skin split behind the glass and a press of opaque yellow pus rushed to the surface. Maureen felt the release of pressure from the wound, and after a bit of painful poking, Leslie had the bloody splinter out and was holding it up between her fingers. She dabbed on some antiseptic cream that Maureen had found in the bathroom. It was a very old tube and the cream felt a little gritty but it was better than nothing. Finally Leslie wrapped fresh bandages around her arms and Maureen pulled on a shirt fifteen minutes before the surveyor arrived.
The photographer was half an hour late and didn't bother to apologize. Leslie tried to pull him up about it but he only spoke when she was speaking, cutting through her to say that his car had broken down. She was saying that they had intended to go out but he interrupted her to say that it was a Korean car, his wife's, actually, and it tended to break down. The conversation turned into a battle of wills, both of them refusing to stop their sentences and let the other one speak, like parliamentarians on a radio show.
"Just," Maureen shouted over the top of them, "take the pictures."
Everyone stopped talking and the man took his lens cap off, snapping the living room and getting them to move the settee back in from the hall. He left after ten minutes to take a photo outside and Leslie slammed the door on him.
They settled back in the living room, sitting on the settee and looking out of the window.
"God," said Leslie, rubbing her tummy, "I feel sick again."
"Is it the smell from the paint?"
"No, I just feel sick. Tell ye what else, I've got tits like rocks."
Maureen slid down the settee into a slump. "What do ye think, then? A boy or a girl?"
Leslie took a deep breath, sat up and smiled. She had been thinking about it, enjoying thoughts of the future. "Dunno." She looked around the room. "How much do they think you'll get for this place?"
"Don't know until the surveyor files his report. He reckons flats like this have been going for fifty grand. I'll just have to pray no one clocks that it's the scene of a grisly murder. Are ye going to tell Cammy?"
"I'll tell him if he tells me about Katie McIntyre. And he won't."
"Ye sure?"
"Yeah." Leslie seemed sad but resigned. "Even after you've paid the tax and fees for a curator's course that'll leave you with a bit of extra cash, won't it?"
Maureen grinned. "Yeah."
"What are ye going to do with it?"
"Piss it up against a wall."
The phone rang in the hall and Maureen stepped out to pick it up. It was Liam and he had been crying. "Mauri," he said, "she's in hospital."