Paddy nodded at her notebook, trying not to blush.
“He was sad when he split up with Vhari.” The woman spoke quickly, trying to brush over the implied slight. “He talked to me about it, seemed to be confiding but I think, really, he was trying to get me on his side. Mark was a natural politician. Everything was an opportunity to lobby. He was very measured.”
“It wasn’t a very nice thing to do, go off with someone else.”
“Well, his wife, Diana, she’s the insistent sort. Vhari was much more like Mark, very even-tempered. Diana has a bit more fire.” She wouldn’t look at Paddy.
“You don’t like her.”
The woman smiled wide. “No. Diana gave up work after she married. I can’t abide women who won’t work if they’re able. I’m like Vhari: came from money but refused to take it and worked. I’ve never married. I’ve always supported myself.”
“You’ve made your own way.”
“I have.”
They smiled at each other, these two working women, both keeping jobs from needy men, betraying nature by escaping the kitchen sink, these two women who were out in the world, active not passive, subjects not objects.
III
Paddy was walking calmly away, feeling smug and superior when she thought of JT just ahead of her in the street. She bolted after him, hoping she had correctly guessed his route back to the office, and caught sight of him a hundred yards ahead, about to turn the corner into Albion Street and the office. She jogged on, losing her breath, and caught his sleeve.
“Wait, wait, JT, I need to trade for a favor.”
He turned to look at her face-on, skeptical that she had anything to offer him.
“I’ll do all your library searches for Mandela on Monday in exchange for a couple of taxi chitties. You’ll get your Ramage story done twice as fast. He might even kiss you with his big red face.”
His head recoiled on his neck. “What do you need a chitty for?”
“To take a cab journey at the paper’s expense,” she said, acting stupid.
“Going to see a boyfriend, no doubt.” He started a smile, trying to engage in a bit of sexual banter, but she left her face flaccid and he gave up. “Mandela and one other search.”
“No, just Mandela,” she said flatly. It was no skin off his nose to give her chitties. They were presigned forms to give to the paper’s taxi firm and, as chief reporter, JT had an infinite supply, never questioned by management. They were supposed to be for office business only but she saw him climb in a firm’s cab on his way home most evenings.
He watched her, grinding his teeth and looking for a chink he could exploit. “Full-time search,” she said. “And one on his wife, Winnie, as well.”
He pulled a small pad out of his inner pocket and tore off two yellow slips, handing them over.
Paddy took them greedily, checking to make sure they were signed.
“What’s it for, then? You doing a story?”
She smiled up at him, pleased by the small wondering throb in his voice. “I’m doing an exposé of the illegal taxi chitty trade. And now I’m making my excuses and leaving.”
Pleased with the line, she turned and walked away.
IV
Kate found herself driving the battered Mini through streets so familiar they made her feel quite sentimental. Every street corner and hedge held a memory of an event or a person or a rumor or a game. Mount Florida. As she neared her parents’ house she could name the family who lived in every second house back then, recall summer afternoons spent in most of the front gardens. There was the school bus stop and the wall where she first met Paul Neilson.
She hadn’t meant to come here really, but was drawn by a memory. She had her snuffbox with her, had taken a good dose and knew she could do anything.
She looked at the house. Daddy’s lawn was as neat as a sheet of glass, leading up to the small thirties detached house, perfectly tidy and completely unobjectionable. They could have had a bigger home. They could have had a big home in Bearsden like the one her grandfather had, with a bedroom each and a field at the back. Their parents made sure the children knew that they could have afforded a lot of things, but were being actively denied. Money was available, but the children weren’t worthy of it. Their school fees were expensive. They all knew, in itemized detail, how much food cost, how much their uniforms set the family budget back, how dear each holiday was. Their parents’ ever-changing wills dangled over everything like a Damoclean sword, casting a threatening shadow, spoiling every banquet. It affected them each differently: Vhari stopped caring about money and Bernie refused to take a penny off them. Kate liked money, though. As soon as she got some, from Paul admittedly, she splurged on jewelry and trips and clothes, lovely lovely things.
She stayed in the car, watching her parents’ house to get a measure of it as she rifled blind in her handbag and felt the cold surface of the silver snuffbox. She couldn’t see any movement inside the house and a suffocating sense of dread came over her. She hadn’t seen her parents for three years. If she went in now she’d have to tolerate their shock at her appearance. They’d be crying about Vhari now she was dead when they had been so nasty about her when she was alive.
A fat girl in an old green leather coat sloped past her. Kate watched her in the rearview mirror. She looked cheap; a loose thread was hanging from the hem of the coat. She had a small rucksack slung between her shoulder blades and spiky hair, as if she’d cut it herself. More interestingly, she stopped across the road, at the gate to the Thillingly house.
Kate looked back at her parents’ house and wished herself back at the start of all of this. She’d play it differently if she had another chance. Moderate her intake, scurry money aside into a secret account. Now she had nothing but the pillow. And Knox. She still had Knox. And she knew where he lived.
EIGHTEEN. A HUNDRED SHADES OF GRAY
I
Paddy hesitated by the wooden gate, looking down the long lawn toward the house. She had never been sent out on a death knock. The news editors always seemed to overlook her for the task and for once she was sure it was out of kindness. Dub had been asked to leave the paper after a death knock. He was supposed to ask a decapitated man’s wife how she felt about it but was seen sitting in a café reading a poetry book instead.
It was a critical moment in most people’s professional development. Even seasoned journalists hated it. Whenever people expressed bewilderment over JT’s complete lack of compassion someone would bring up the rumor that he had cried in the toilet after his first death knock, as if it mitigated his lack of humanity to know that there had once been some to beat out of him. More worryingly, some people took to the work: one guy who made the move to a London tabloid had a habit of getting death knock exclusives by turning on the family on his way out of the house and insulting the dead person. It was her own fault, he’d say, bitch shouldn’t have been driving a shit car. The family would be so hurt they’d refuse to speak to another journalist.
It was two in the afternoon and the curtains were still drawn in the living room. Tingling with trepidation, Paddy walked the gray gravel path across the tidy lawn and remembered the horrified cry she had heard through the hedge two nights ago. She was going to hurt the woman again, she knew it. And yet her feet kept moving, one in front of the other, falling onto the gravel, crunching it beneath her weight, displacing it to the side as she passed. She wished she had Dub’s integrity.