But Bluebeard isn’t.
*
The café is busy, hot, too noisy. Chatter and the constant scrape of chairs, the grind of coffee beans and the loud hissing of steam. I look out of a big window running wet with condensation, watch the bob of umbrellas and bundled-up bodies fast-marching along the streets outside.
‘Snow in bloody April,’ Rafiq says as she sits down, pushes a huge cappuccino and a three-pack of bourbons towards me.
I warm my hands around the cup. On a table behind us, a child starts to yell and a baby starts to scream.
‘Try and eat the biscuits,’ Rafiq says.
Nausea sits inside my stomach like a stone. Another baby starts to wail.
‘Never wanted kids,’ Rafiq says, rolling her eyes. ‘Apart from a very weird day in 2006. One wee tick-tock, and then my clock stopped for good, thank God.’
When I still don’t speak, still don’t look at her, she sets down her cup, clasps her hands tightly.
‘Look. It’s not my intention to cause you any more grief, but this needs to be sorted.’ She pauses. ‘Instead of a birth certificate, or a hospital report, or even one of those wee hand-and-feet prints, the first actual document we have for either of you is the police report of one PC Andrew Davidson dated the fifth of September, 1998, stating that you were runaways found by a Mr Peter Stewart, sixty-six, of 10 Muirdyke Place. And when Logan and I took a closer look at that report, d’you know what was even more bizarre?’
The heat from the coffee cup burns my skin.
‘Mr Peter Stewart found you at Granton Harbour.’
My fingers tingle, as if they can still feel El’s heat, the tight grip of her hand. I shiver from the bone-cold North Sea wind trapped inside the firth’s gullet, whipping up waves, rattling masts and buoys. And instead of a white sky heavy with snow, I see a red dawn creeping over the breakwater like a bruise. Like blood, sour and dark and sly.
‘When you’re both twelve years old, you appear – poof! – out of nowhere at Granton Harbour. You refuse to say why you’re there, where you’ve come from, anything but your names. Not one person ever reports you missing, comes looking for you, although you’ve both got injuries indicative of physical assault. Your names don’t exist on any register of any sort. You don’t exist.’
She pauses again, leans back in her chair. Waits. I say nothing, do nothing, look back out the window at the worsening snow.
‘So, what happened then? Social services take you into care, ask you no questions, just give you new lives?’
They asked plenty of questions. We just never answered. And when it became obvious that we wouldn’t be adopted, they helped us apply and register our names, our new lives, as long as it took, as hard as it was. Mum had always told us our surname was Morgan. After the pirate king who’d abandoned us. The father we had never known. I watch fat flakes of snow disappear into the wet pavement.
‘Okay, Cat. Then start with this. Why did El have no dental records?’
I close my eyes. Pretend I’m not shivering. Shuddering. ‘She had a phobia about dentists.’
‘Okay.’
‘She was always meticulous about cleaning, hygiene, all of that. Mum made sure we both were. And when we were in the Rosemount, El always refused to go to the dentist.’ I swallow. ‘I guess that didn’t change.’
‘Why?’
One of the wailing babies passes by our table, its arms and legs fighting to escape a sling, its mother grim-faced.
‘Mum would pull our teeth. You know, like parents do.’ I chance a quick look at Rafiq, but her expression is blank. ‘If a tooth was loose, she’d tie one end of a piece of string around it and the other around a door handle, and then slam the door shut. That usually worked. And if it wasn’t loose enough, she’d just pull it out with pliers.’
Rafiq frowns. ‘Your baby teeth.’
I don’t know if it’s a question. ‘Mostly. And once or twice, when we were older. If we got a bad cavity or an abscess.’
‘Jesus,’ Rafiq says.
‘Parents do that. Sometimes.’
‘No, they don’t, Cat.’
I remember El screaming and screaming. Me banging on the locked bathroom door, feeling the fear, the pain, the helplessness. I remember what it was like to have a mouth full of blood. To be spitting it out for days. I remember the silvery, shivery dread of hearing the squeak of the kitchen cupboard where the bent-nose pliers lived.
‘Mum was scared of clowns.’ I try to laugh, but it comes out as a choking cough. ‘She was scared of a lot of things, but she was terrified of them. I think there’s a word for that; I’ve never looked it up, but she had it. So El got the idea that if one of us had toothache, we’d dress up as clowns so Mum couldn’t … you know, do anything. Grandpa bought us the costumes, thought it was just fun. He always said Mum was too afraid of everything, that she’d pass it on to us.’ I only realise I’m twisting my fingers back and forth when one of them makes a loud crack. ‘We’d paint a clown on the bathroom mirror as a warning, and then dress up and hide in the spare room – we called it the Clown Café – and stay there. For days sometimes. Till we got too hungry or thirsty, or bored. And Mum would never come in.’
‘Jesus,’ Rafiq says again.
‘It wasn’t her fault.’ I think of her pinched, unsmiling face. Her endless stories and lessons and warnings. ‘She just … worried. She just wanted us to be safe. They both did – her and Grandpa. Why do you want to know all this?’
‘Why did they not just take you to a dentist? What happened if
