Beyond Black: A Novel

Henbane, wolfsbane, skullcap, hemlock?”

“Some might blow over to next door.”

“That’s what I was thinking. By the way, do you know you’re on the phone from eleven till three?”

Al groaned. Morris, squatting before the empty marble hearth, glanced up at her and began to roll up his sleeves.

“And we’ve had a call from those people near Gloucester, saying are you going on the Plutonic symbolism weekend? Only they need to know how many to cater for.” She laughed nastily. “And of course, they count you double.”

“I’m not sure I want to go away by myself.”

“Count me out, anyway. They say it’s in an idyllic location. That means no shops.” She flicked through the letters. “Do you do exorcisms for eating disorders?”

“Pass it on to Cara.”

“Will you go over to Twyford? There’s a woman got a loose spirit in her loft. It’s rattling around and she can’t get to sleep.”

“I don’t feel up to it.”

“You’re entitled to postpone things if you’ve had a bereavement. I’ll call her and explain, about Mrs. Etchells.”

A light blinked at Al from a corner of the room. She turned her eyes and it was gone. Morris was scuttling fast across the carpet, swinging on his knuckles like an ape. As he moved, the light moved with him, a crimson ripple, sinuous, like an exposed vein; it was Morris’s snake tattoo, lit and pulsing, slithering along his forearm as if it had a life of its own.

“Tee-hee,” Morris chuckled. She remembered what Mrs. Etchells had said: “They’ve got modifications. It turned me up.”

Colette said, “Are you having that yogurt or not?”

“I’ve lost my appetite.” Al put her spoon down.

She phoned her mum. The phone rang for a long time, and then after it was picked up there was a scuffling, scraping sound. “Just pulling up a chair,” Emmie said. “Now then, who is it and what can I do for you?”

“It’s me. I thought you’d like to know my grandma’s dead.”

“Who?”

“My grandma. Mrs. Etchells.”

Emmie laughed. “That old witch. You thought she was your grandma?”

“Yes. She told me so.”

“She told everybody that! All the kids. She wanted to get ’em in her house, captive bloody audience, innit, while she goes on about how she’s had bouquets and whatnot, little op, chain of love, then when the time’s right she’s offering ’em around the district to all comers. I should know, she bloody offered me. Same with you, only the lads got in early.”

“Now just stop there. You’re saying my grandmother was a—” She broke off. She couldn’t find the right word. “You’re saying my grandmother was as bad as you?”

“Grandmother my arse.”

“But Derek—listen, Derek was my dad, wasn’t he?”

“He could of been,” her mother said vaguely. “I think I done it with Derek. Ask Aitkenside, he knows who I done it with. But Derek wasn’t her son, anyway. He was just some kid she took in to run errands for her.”

Al closed her eyes tight. “Errands? But all these years, Mum. You let me think—”

“I didn’t tell you what to think. Up to you what you thought. I told you to mind your own business. How do I know if I done it with Derek? I done it with loads of blokes. Well, you had to.”

“Why did you have to?” Alison said balefully.

“You wouldn’t ask that question if you were in my shoes,” Emmie said. “You wouldn’t have the cheek.”

“I’m going to come over there,” Al said. “I want to put a few straight questions to you. About your past. And mine.”

Her mother shouted, “You hear that, Gloria? She’s coming over. Better bake a cake, eh? Better get the fancy doilies out.”

“Oh, you’re not on that again, are you?” Al’s voice was weary. “I thought we’d got Gloria out of our lives twenty years ago.”

“So did I, pardon me, till she turned up on me doorstep the other night. I never had such a thunderclap. I says, Gloria! and she says, hello, and I says, you’ve not changed a bit, and she says, I can’t say the same for you, she says, give us a fag, I says, how’d you track me down in Bracknell? She says—”

“Oh, Mum!” Alison yelled. “She’s dead!”

I said it, she thought, I uttered the word no Sensitive ever uses: well hardly ever. I didn’t say passed, I didn’t say gone over, I said dead, and I said it because I believe that when it comes to dead, Gloria is deader than most of us, deader than most of the people who claim to be dead: in my nightmares since I was a child she is cut apart, parcelled out, chewed up.

There was a silence. “Mum? You still there?”

“I know,” said Emmie, in a small voice. “I know she’s dead. I just forget, is all.”