Something caught in her throat. Penny sensed one side of herself sinking again, balance gone. She looked for escape to the other side of the bridge, where the mother, the original mother, had gone, but had left her car standing abandoned. Penny had the keys in her hand. It meant mobility, that she must have money of her own, now, in this dream, this new life. She wouldn’t be stuck for ever on this bridge. Keys, money, cars, all of these could rescue her from the mid-point in ways that people could not.
She started to walk towards her mother’s empty car, but her resolve was thrown off balance by her heart missing a beat. Something moved across the bridge before her. Little creatures, cackling and sniggering, running and hopping through the wet snow. They flung themselves into it up to their fragile necks, stopping Penny in her tracks for fear of treading on them. A constant stream of gleeful animals, scampering out of the brickwork, holding her up.
What were they up to? Freed from the cracks in the stone, what were these miniature buffalo, ibexes, antelopes doing?
Like ants they worked together. They hoisted their loads
(What are they carrying? Penny wondered, squinting) and as one they negotiated familiar burdens over snow.
Round, dark shapes were bundled on their shoulders. Apples. Lots of apples. The little creatures carried apples and laid them down at Penny’s feet.
‘Apparently she was at the Riverside Institute for depression.’ Fran shrugged. ‘I never knew that before. So the police are quite worried about her. At least they’re taking it more seriously.’
Jane sat opposite her, by the television set, with the last weather report of the night casting a blue gloom. Peter was in his pyjamas, glad to be up this late. He was showing Vicki how his Ghostbusters toys worked. Vicki was still in her coat, a carrier bag of clothes, hastily packed, beside her.
‘I’m sorry about this, Jane. We haven’t got the room at ours for Vicki as well. I’m going to be up all night with the baby.’ Jane was altogether bewildered. ‘That’s fine.’ She wasn’t used to having people in her living room, especially at this time of night. ‘What’s her stupid bloody husband doing?’
‘He’s going off his head. Out looking for her, on the streets.’
‘Jesus!’
‘I had no idea she was on so much treatment. It explains a lot.’ Fran caught Vicki looking at her, faintly puzzled. She’s not deaf, Fran thought.
‘It does.’ Jane yawned. ‘So anything might have happened.’
‘They think she may just have wandered off. They said she may just wander back again. It happens.’
‘We’ll have to see.’
‘I’ll let you all get to bed. Thanks for taking Vicki on. Like I say, we’ve got a completely full house. She’s got the stuff she needs. The police are coming round in the morning… statements and that…’
Jane quietly led Fran to the door. They were shaking their heads at each other in unspoken bemusement. They both knew that something, possibly something awful, might have happened to Nesta. Saying it aloud would make it seem closer. They also knew that she might simply have wandered off. That possibility seemed worse, somehow.
‘Look at this.’
They laughed when they found Penny asleep halfway up the stairs. Liz took her ankles, Cliff her head and shoulders, and together they carried her upstairs, into her room, and arranged her on the bed. It didn’t disturb her in the slightest. There was the faintest of smiles on her face.
‘God knows what she’s dreaming about,’ Liz said.
They were relieved to have Penny to take upstairs. It got them both up there, the heart of the domestic home, without embarrassment. Cliff was staying. Liz showed him her bedroom and he smiled. She left him like that and went to the bathroom.
Catching his jeans on barbed wire, he felt rather than heard the rip. As he bent to free his leg, the undergrowth seemed to uncoil itself, move in on him. The vegetation glistened like oil in the darkness.
‘Nesta!’ he hissed, with a sob.
His palms were full of crumbling earth, reeking of petrol as did all the earth by the Burn. Cars on the road above him moaned past. Tony made for the concrete bridge beneath the road and called out ‘Nesta!’ again for the benefit of the echo.
He watched the play of moonlight on the stream, stared at the graffiti on the underpass wall, which appeared brown in this light. He couldn’t read, so it wasn’t a clue he was looking for. Tony crouched down and sat on the path, his back to the wall, finding himself damp in a puddle. Piss, by the smell of it.
Looking down for a dry patch of concrete, he found Nesta’s heirloom Victorian locket. It had been her foster mother’s. His heart beating, he flipped the locket open and saw Nesta’s pictures of Noel Gordon and Pat Phoenix inside. They had been cut out of the TV Times a number of years ago, and pasted carefully into the locket’s open shell with nail varnish. He had found a clue.
Liz stood very still, gazing into the half-length bathroom mirror. Her shoulders sat square in the frame, as in a formal portrait. She was face on, unblinking; unabashed like a tailor’s dummy.
Cliff was poised behind, his chest just touching her shoulder blades, the rest of him bracing her weight, as if she were about to snap and fall.
‘You and your obsessional nature!’ Liz smiled, and watched her lips work. ‘Fancy following me into the bathroom. Is my toilette so fascinating?’ The harsh lighting rendered her make-up shiny, and showed the cracks in the tiles. Cliff’s warm face appeared on her shoulder. He nudged her Adam’s apple with his nose, making her gulp. She took a tissue from the box on the cistern and started to wipe her make-up off.
He
