Surtsey felt sorry for her, everything she’d gone through, but she was angry too. Fuck this bitch haranguing her all the time, putting her own kids at risk, building up emotional scars for them in the future.
‘They’ve arrested you, how can they let you go?’
‘They haven’t arrested me.’
She couldn’t quite believe it herself, that they’d let her walk out of the station. But they needed more evidence. Maybe they would get it, maybe they wouldn’t, maybe they would make it up. She couldn’t think of any possible way this could all end. A purgatory of dead friends, lovers and family parading past her every day, casting accusing looks in her direction.
The slap came and she welcomed it, didn’t flinch, kept her chin out in case Alice wanted another crack at it.
‘Christ,’ said the lady with the shopping bag.
Surtsey looked over the road and caught Gracie’s eye. Nine years old. Tom had talked about the girls all the time, besotted with them. She hadn’t minded at all. It reminded her that what the two of them had wasn’t permanent, there was no way he was going to leave Alice because it would mean leaving them. That was fine. It showed he could love unconditionally, that he had a big heart. But now this whole thing with Iona, what the hell did that mean? Did he know about her? Surely not, or how could he be sleeping with Surtsey? Louise’s letter hadn’t said if she’d told him. If he knew, then he was the biggest arsehole alive. Well, dead. And either way, he had been cheating on his wife for two and a half decades. But for all that maybe he was a good dad. And now his girls had no dad; that was the worst thing in all this. A lost husband or lover or boyfriend, you come to terms with that eventually. A lost parent, well, Surtsey could relate to that now. And Iona. They were both the same as Alice’s girls, left to fend for themselves in the world.
Gracie was stony-faced, Belle still oblivious, looking at herself in the rear-view mirror, sticking her chocolatey tongue out.
‘Your daughter is watching,’ Surtsey said.
‘Good,’ Alice said. ‘I want her to see what happens to the fucking slut who killed her dad.’
‘I didn’t kill Tom.’
‘Of course you did,’ Alice said. ‘Just like you killed your Irish boyfriend.’
Surtsey frowned. ‘How do you know about Brendan?’
‘You’re evil and I’m on to you. I can’t believe the police let you go.’
Surtsey stared at her. Red cheeks, gin breath, haphazard make-up. ‘Maybe the police should interview you.’
‘Why?’
‘You seem to know a lot about me and Brendan, that’s all.’
Alice twisted at her own wrist. ‘I’m going to make sure they lock you up.’
‘Is that what you’ve been doing?’ Surtsey said. ‘Setting me up?’
Alice stepped closer, the alcohol rank. ‘If they don’t deal with you, I will.’
‘Like you dealt with Tom and Brendan?’
Alice shoved Surtsey hard so that she stumbled back into the women behind her.
‘Hey,’ Tartan Bag said.
Surtsey struggled to right herself as Alice turned and stormed across the road without even looking at traffic. In the car, Gracie had turned the other way, as if she wasn’t a part of this.
38
She cut down past McColl’s and the back of Scotmid, through double-parked streets. Like a bird with a homing instinct she headed for the beach, the prom and the sight of the Forth. A view that included the Inch, a place that used to feel like a haven for her.
As she was passing the boarded-up old bingo hall, the earth shook. Another tremor, Christ. How many was that since the big one a few days ago? This was stronger than the last few aftershocks, her balance shifting as she splayed her feet and held her hands out. Aftershock was the wrong word, these quakes happened any time and they didn’t follow a pattern. So much effort went into understanding seismology, geophysics and the rest, and yet it was still so spurious, no way of predicting when and where an earthquake would strike. The world shrugged off all their attempts to understand it and Surtsey had respect for that. Screw us, it was saying, we were worthless specks on the surface of the planet.
She caught the eye of a young mum pushing a girl on a trike who’d stopped to hold a railing, using her other hand to keep the trike still. The tremor lasted a few more seconds, then the buzz in the air afterwards, an expectation of more mixed with the vacuum left behind. The woman shook her head and grimaced as her daughter looked puzzled about why she wasn’t able to go forward. She pushed on the pedals but her mum held her back. Surtsey shook her head at the woman and turned down Bath Street, pulling her phone out and dialling.
Ring tone then Halima’s voicemail.
‘My God, Hal, where are you?’ Surtsey said. ‘Call me.’
Another tremor made her stomach drop. Her hand went out but only found a ragged hedge. Her legs shook from stress as much as the earthquake. She thought she might be sick. The world was trying to shake her off into space. The planet had finally had enough of the billions of parasites on its surface, it was ready to start again, shake itself clean.
Then the weird stability afterwards, silence after noise.
Bile rose from her stomach up her throat. She spat on the pavement and pushed her hair away from her face.
She began again down Bath Street then stopped outside the Espy. Stared at the chipped paint on the wooden doors for a moment then pushed them open. She scanned the bar. No sign of Iona, just the lanky Canadian guy she sometimes fucked, shaved hair on one side and emo tattoos sleeved up his arm.
‘Is Iona here?’ she said.
He looked up from his phone, glanced around. ‘She didn’t come in for her shift. I’m covering for her.’
Surtsey stared at the gantry of spirits behind him, tempted.
‘If you
