He looks at me steadily. ‘Are those questions?’
I don’t say anything. Press my lips together so that I can’t.
‘I want to know who sent those cards to El, who’s sending them to you. But I don’t think whoever it is has done anything to her. I’m just worried that … I’m worried the stress of the fucking things made her do something stupid.’ He leans forwards. ‘And I don’t mean suicide. Yeah, she was depressed, she was a pain in the bloody arse, but she wasn’t suicidal. I told you …’ He must realise how loud he’s being, how animated, because he looks around, lowers his voice. ‘She’d changed. She was different. Distant. Distracted.’ He sighs, closes his eyes. ‘So, yes. I think she went out on that bloody boat, and I think she had an accident.’
I look at him, the shadows under his eyes, the tight hard lines of his frown. ‘You really think she’s dead?’
He doesn’t blink. ‘Yes. I really think she’s dead.’
‘How were your starters?’ Michele says through a smile that has frozen in its beginning, and we both lean away from each other like we’ve been electrocuted.
‘Great, brilliant,’ we mutter, and he stops fake-smiling, takes away our plates without another word.
Ross looks at me, his expression resentful.
‘Where else would she be, Cat? A Travelodge on the M6, living on Game of Thrones and room service? And why? Has your twin ESP, or whatever the fuck you think it is, told you that? Why would she do it?’
The first terrible thought that goes through my head is that Travelodges probably don’t do room service. The second is that angry he looks good, better, less like he’s drowning. The third is what I want to say but won’t. Because she’s playing a game. Because she hates me. Maybe she hates you, too, I don’t know. Maybe you’re still too dumb to see her.
‘Christ,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I know your mum did a number on you, but—’
‘What?’
‘She was textbook delusional disorder. Paranoid, grandiose, persecutory. She filled your heads with shit weird enough to confuse anyone, never mind two kids. Told you over and over that you were special, different, that you couldn’t function without each other, until it was true. No wonder you had such a fucked-up relationship.’
Have, I think, and my fingers tighten on the tablecloth. EL IS DEAD. I’M MOUSE. We have a fucked-up relationship. I nearly laugh, and then think of Mum instead, brushing our hair through long hard strokes: You’re growing up too fast. As if we could stop it. As if the accusation wasn’t entirely at odds with her apocalyptic dread; the adult books she read to us; the bravery she expected of us. The readiness. Those fingers always prodding at my spine, pushing against my shoulder blades. Stop being afraid.
Ross sighs, deflates. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ He reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. Letting go only when another waiter walks past. ‘Can we just talk about something – anything – normal? Just for five minutes?’
I pour the last of the wine even though we’re barely halfway through our meal. ‘I guess we can try.’
CHAPTER 12
Four months nearly to the day after we’d bumped into Ross outside the Scottish National Gallery, I woke up in our tiny room in the Rosemount, had breakfast, and snuck off to the communal shower block to get changed into my very best outfit of skinny jeans, Docs, and a Dutch army shirt tied in a knot at my waist. I got the bus to the Royal Botanic Gardens, where Ross was waiting for me by the big gates on Inverleith Row. He took my hand as we walked across the grass, and when we sat down we were both grinning, even though neither of us had spoken a word.
He stretched out on the grass and closed his eyes, and I took the opportunity to greedily watch him. His T-shirt was just the right side of too tight; he was growing muscles where before he’d only been skinny. His arms and face were tanned just like mine, after weeks of sitting in Holyrood Park and Princes Street Gardens, watching buskers and early summer tourists. El always came too: sullen, monosyllabic. But this day, she was sick. This day, I had left her coughing and spluttering in her bed, and when I’d told her I was going to answer an ad for bar staff, I’d pretended that the heavy thickness in my chest was only phantom infection, sympathy pain.
Ross lit a cigarette, and I watched its smoke spiral. He seemed so changed, so grown-up. I knew he smoked weed, sometimes took pills. He talked about going clubbing and getting high, and it all seemed so unknown, so exciting. I knew I’d do anything – all of it – if he just asked me to.
When he laughed, I realised that I’d moved my scrutiny to his crotch instead, and the heat rushed into my face.
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Ross said, pushing up onto his elbows. ‘I like it when you look.’
I liked it when he looked. Even as a boy, he’d had this way of making me feel like the most important person in the world. And when he stopped looking, the least.
‘I feel guilty,’ I said, and then instantly cursed myself for it.
‘What for?’
But he knew what for. For lying to El when I never had before. About anything. For not telling her that Ross and I had been secretly texting for months. Or that sometimes I couldn’t sleep for thinking about him, for wanting him for myself. For being glad – ecstatic – that she was sick enough that I could sneak out to see him on my own and she probably wouldn’t even notice.
‘She doesn’t talk to you,’ Ross said. ‘She doesn’t talk to anyone.’
