And here they were at a picnic bench, with Katy fetching Astrid’s cigarettes, which she’d left in the car. Katy and the German woman had taken a shine to each other.
“Is Joshua still filling the house with bric-bracs and nick-a-nacks?”
“Oh, yes,” said Katy. “More than ever. His taste is even weirder than before. I said, Dad, you’ll never get old. And he won’t. He’s always finding out new stuff.”
“And Wendy,” said Astrid. “What have you been permitted to do to the house? Have you filled it with your obsessions too?”
Wendy smiled. “I haven’t contributed much. Joshua has taste enough for both of us.”
“But that is no good!” burst Astrid. “We are like the animals, you know, and we must mark our habitats. Otherwise it means we are not staying. You remember, of course, how I have my launderette full of my pictures?” Pictures mostly of Marlene Dietrich, Wendy recalled, including the picture of Marlene leaving the private jet in Edinburgh, smiling on the arm of her fancy man. The very day she was abducted. How often the younger Wendy had started at that picture, imagining Belinda just off the edge of it, breathless at all the glamour.
After ten and before setting off again, Katy wheeled Astrid off to the loos inside the pub.
Timon looked at Wendy. “Hon, something’s chewing you up.”
She nodded.
He said, “Sorry I’ve not been much use. I’ve been sleepwalking for ages. Years.”
“You’re my oldest friend, Timon.”
“Besides your sisters.”
She exhaled loudly. “Haven’t heard from our Linda in ages. And Mandy… I don’t know, Timon. I don’t trust her. That sounds awful, right?”
He looked at her levelly. “You’ve been reading the book, haven’t you?”
“Yes. On the train.”
“I read an earlier version, but I think it’s the same. Like I said in my card, I don’t think it’s up to much. But it’s got you worried, hasn’t it?”
“How can it not? How can she do this to me?”
“You think it’s about her and Joshua.” Timon shook his head, smiling. “But if that was true, how could she be so up front about it? Could Mandy be two-faced like that?”
“I think she could. Really, she’s only ever been out for herself.”
“Oh, hon,” he said.
“But she hasn’t opened his file from the adoption agency. I know that much.”
“All that was true?”
“Even down to the drawer he kept it in. That’s what I mean, Timon. It’s like she’s trodden right through my life. But I know she hasn’t seen inside his file.”
“How?”
“Because I’ve got it. It’s untouched. I’ve…” I looked at Timon. “I’ve nicked it.”
He was shocked. “You can’t go stealing Josh’s stuff like that! It’s his! It’s important… his past.”
“I bit my tongue, in case I said too much here. “Josh has some funny priorities of his own about things like that.”
“You shouldn’t have told me this, Wendy. It’s his birth-mother inside of there. Her name… everything he doesn’t know about her.”
Katy and Astrid were emerging from the pub, into the sun. Astrid waved. “We are getting back into the car!”
Timon stood up. “I think you’re acting daft, Wendy. Joshua loves you. You’ve got all het up about something you’ve read in a piece of fiction. Allow Mandy to have an imagination, hon. And stop yours going mad on this.”
I wanted to tell him all sorts of things, but I couldn’t.
“Let’s get on,” he said, and led the way through the garden to the car. “Don’t look in that file, Wendy. If you did and used the information, Josh will never forgive you. I wouldn’t if I was him.”
Of course: Timon was an orphan as well.
There were more of the unicorn people than we had bargained for. Luckily we had booked the hotel rooms in advance, and moved easily into our own twin rooms above the bar. Last time he was here, with Belinda, Timon had had his eye on this hotel, in the shadow of the almost completely pyramidical mountain. The hotel had looked luxurious to them and at that time they couldn’t afford it. We were shown directly to our rooms. The kind of place that puts bowls of pot pourri by your bed and you end up putting your hand into it in the middle of the night. The management knew who we were and we were escorted neatly away from the others in the foyer, all of them wearing black appliqued sweatshirts.
“They must be the richer unicorn people,” said Astrid disgustedly as we sat on the beds. “The others are sleeping out in old tents.”
Timon was peering out of the chintz curtains. “The day’s turned gloomy. Just like it was the last time we were here.”
I hope he wasn’t banking on a repeat performance. I’d noticed his video camera in the car boot.
“I hate those unicorn church people,” Astrid went on. “They have opened a church down Leith Walk.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Katy, who liked to keep up with this business.
“Jesus God, yes. And they come into my launderette—not to wash and talk nicely, oh no. They want me to talk about Belinda, to pick my brains, as if she was a goddamn goddess or a saint. And she was just my friend.” Astrid was getting herself upset. “They do not really love Belinda. Not like we did. I think they are using her.”
Timon said, “Come and see this.”
In a field just close enough to see, their ragged encampment was staked out. And, as the light lowered, you could still make out individual figures on the glen. Someone was exercising the horses. They were a startling white against the murky land, and running in a wide and endless ring.
FORTY-ONE
Jesus Jesus God.
This is my part of the story now, my account of it all that night of the vigil. This is the testament von Astrid.
And the first thing, the worst thing I must recount as I launch off into this piece is to complain about the rutted fucking ground, the terrible Jesus-love-it place
