“And what makes you so sure she did?” said Gus.
“They were here,” I said. “I met you in Marks, we came back here, you went away with the cops and came back with them. And then you got the pen from Ruby’s bedroom and went outside with it. The wheeliebin was there on the porch, and I don’t see how it got there.” He said nothing. Didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t even blink. “Stupid things like that,” I told him.
“Maybe the men were early that day,” he said at last.
“But she drove away through the farmyard so no one would see her,” I said. “Would she really risk bumping into someone when she was doing the bins?”
“Or maybe someone else brought them back,” he said. “For a favour.”
“Who, though? When I asked if there was someone who could come and stay with the kids, you said there wasn’t. And why wouldn’t they do the favour this week again when they knew what a time you were having?”
“Jessie,” he said. “Are you sure nothing’s upset you?” And I swear he glanced at the corner of the window. Unless I was going crazy. Unless my mother had really messed me up again.
“Noth-” I said, but he cut me off.
“It was probably Gizzy,” he said. “She hates our wheelies at the end of the path making her site look untidy. That’ll have been it.”
I nodded. It made sense. But I knew I would never ask Gizzy. I didn’t want to know.
“So,” he said, sounding like someone who was off on a picnic, not heading to where he was headed today, “you’re sure you can face the kids? Last night must have kicked up some dust.”
I went back to him and put my arms around him then. He was leaving his children with me. And I knew how much he loved them. And yet it was me he was worried about.
“We’re both knackered,” I said. “I’m going to ask for some time off once everything’s settled.”
“What everything?”
Kazek and the money and Ros and Gary the Gangster, was what I couldn’t say.
“This everything, of course,” I said flipping his tie. “The funeral.”
He tipped my face up and kissed my cheek. I waited until he was out of sight before I wiped the trace of the kiss away.
And I would be okay with the kids. I was in charge of whatever I chose to do. I wasn’t in charge of how I felt, but I didn’t have to let how I felt run the show. “Thanks a bunch, Stacey!” I whispered to myself. Nothing like a bit of cognitive behaviourism to strip you of any comfort and make you feel like crap. I went into the kitchen-“All right for a minute, kids?”-and put on a pair of rubber gloves.
“Another nap-py!” Ruby sang. “Cos of all the gra-hapes!” I wondered if it had ever occurred to her she used to wear them too. I didn’t tell her. I went through the living room, into the hall, out the front door. Since Ruby had my bed socks, my feet shrank and stung when they hit the cold brick of the path, beaded with melting frost, and reaching in towards the living room windowsill I stood on a thistle too.
I couldn’t have said why, but while I stretched my hand out towards it I thought of my granny’s face, wooden and purple, pebble-dashed with the dark vomit that she’d died in, teeth dry in her mouth, eyes clouding over like eggs slowly poaching.
And bugger me if it didn’t help. Or maybe Gus trusting me had helped. Or my mother giving me something to push against. Maybe all three. For whatever reason, I grabbed it, pulled it free of the spider’s web-it had stuck itself in there quite tightly-and brought it towards me, holding it up in front of my face for a good long look.
My heart was going gub-gub-gub, right up in my throat, and I knew I was shaking, and not just from the cold seeping up my legs and through my thin nightie. But I stared at it, the quill, like nail parings, like dead skin, like claws; and the grey part, stiff with grease, waxy; the softer white part, plump, plush, and gleaming. It was disgusting. It was horrific. And there was something else too. That funny brown streak running through it. I brought it closer still. Did they all have that? Did I just not know because I’d never looked before?
No. Definitely not. Not all feathers had that patch of stiffer brown in them, because it was a thread from a hessian sack. I pinched together two yellow rubber fingers and plucked it out, watching the waxy, gleaming length of it cleave to let it go and then fold in on itself again. I opened my fingers and let the strand of hessian fly away.
I dressed the children in warm clothes and wellie boots, did their teeth, brushed Ruby’s hair and tied it in bunches, then set out with them across the turf to the workshop. I had to know.
“Oh, Daddy’ll kill you,” said Ruby, when she knew where we were going.
“I’ll chance it,” I said. “Did Daddy not like Mummy coming here?”
“Mummy,” said Dillon.
“Mummy’s dead and living on a cloud in heaven,” said Ruby.
Yeah, I thought, as I dragged them along. Even though she wasn’t pregnant after all. Because she couldn’t stand it anymore. Even if she was gay, she wasn’t from the fifties (or the Brethren). She loved her kids and her garden and she had a friend. So what exactly was it that she couldn’t stand anymore? What else was there apart from the one thing in her life I hadn’t even looked at until now, because it was the best thing I’d ever had? A dream come true.
All any girl really wants is a guy who can get over his wife dying before the sun goes down. A guy who understands and understands, and then sets little hoops for you to jump through. Saves up a great big sackfuls of little hoops without even telling you and starts the training the very next morning after you’ve told him how bad it was-worse, surely, than he could have dreamed of. Or I wouldn’t want his dreams if not, anyway.
If it was true. Maybe it was just a feather, with a bit of brown crud stuck in it. Once I saw the workshop, I’d surely know. The picture of that sack was burned onto my eyeballs. If he’d moved it, it would look different.
He’d moved it right enough. I left the kids playing outside-they’d found a muddy puddle and couldn’t believe their luck-and opened up the House side of the workshop. It didn’t seem nearly so bad in the light of day with the children squabbling and giggling. Or maybe it didn’t seem so creepy without the sack lying all alone on the little bit of space between the stone wall and the breeze-block wall. It was gone. I walked to the corner and looked along the length of the room to the back. It wasn’t there either, just another passageway between the breeze block and the stone. A window in the stone on this wall. I walked along and looked round the next corner. Breeze block and stone. A door in the stone, wooden, barred shut and padlocked. And the fourth wall. Breeze block and the other wall this time was plaster, dividing this side of the workshop from the one where Gus had taken me. No sign of the sack anywhere.
I closed up again, padlocked the door, and opened the other one. The smell of the old drain was worse in here. Gus couldn’t have worked in it even if he’d wanted to. He’d definitely been here for a visit though, because there was the sack. Just inside the door, the neck tied tighter shut than I’d left it.
Still. Still I couldn’t bring myself to face it all. Still I was telling myself that his ploy with the feather in the spider’s web had worked. I had touched it and stayed standing. I hadn’t curled in a ball and squeezed my head. I had dressed the kids and come looking for more. Come looking for answers.
I let my gaze move around the crazy jumble of the workshop, over the shelves and tables, over the bags and boxes and parcels. The answers had to be here. He was a mystery to me, this man I’d fallen for like a rock off a cliff, and here was his secret place. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to ask the questions, the answers were here.