‘Yes.’ I whisper it. I can hear children crying, babies wailing, hot-water hissing, chair legs scraping, my heart beating. I can smell damp coats and umbrellas. Coffee and doughnuts. I can see the snow, the dull white sky, the slick wet pavements, the bundled-up bodies rushing past the window. I can see Rafiq’s small bright eyes. The warmth that has always been behind their dark scrutiny. She reaches for my clenched fists, wraps them tightly inside her own.
‘Tell me their names, Cat.’
I swallow. I look at her and look at her until I can’t see anything else.
‘Nancy Finlay and Robert Finlay,’ I whisper, but the names still sound too loud.
‘Your mum and your grandpa?’
No, I think. The Tooth Fairy and Bluebeard.
CHAPTER 22
The house is as empty as it ever gets. It echoes with silence, is thick with threat, with memory. I stand inside the hallway and look around at its closed doors, the grandfather clock, the telephone table, the dark curlicue of staircase, the spill of green and gold light across mosaic tiles, the dusty black curtain hiding the pantry and the entrance to Mirrorland. I look around at all the mounted plates: finches, swallows, robins perching on leafy branches, bare branches, snowy branches. I hear Mum’s voice: There’s a bird called a glorious golden curre, and she’s the cleverest of all birds. Because whenever she spreads her big golden wings and flies away, where she lands is where her next life begins as if the one before it had never happened at all. All she knows, all she remembers, is who she is now. Like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Don’t be like me. Be like her. Never be too afraid to fly.
I have to lean against the hallway wall. All this time, I’ve pretended that twelve years ago I flew away; that twelve years ago my life began again. But it was a lie. I’ve gone nowhere at all, because I never forgot who I was, who I had been, and the memories that I took with me were only one half of a whole. Their goodness, their fairy tale, has turned sad and sour inside me, has haunted me far more than this house and its ghosts. And what loosened and broke free inside me on the day I walked back through its big red door might have been sharp with brittle edges and warm with deep dark chasms, but it wasn’t fear, or dread, or expectation. It was relief.
And I owe it the truth.
One truth is I need a drink. I don’t want one, I need one.
There’s a half-full bottle of cheap vodka sitting on the kitchen table next to an empty tumbler and a note.
Cat, I’ll be back soon. I just need some time alone. We both probably do. I’m sorry I couldn’t go to see her with you. I love you xxx
I sit, pour the vodka.
Another truth is that I thought – I absolutely believed – that El was still alive even after the body was found. That it was someone else. That she had escaped the boat, the firth. That the blue Gumotex kayak in the shed had been left there by her. That it wasn’t my hate or my hurt that needed it to be true – that it was just the truth. Some people find strength in courage, fortitude, hope. Ross was right: I have always found mine in denial.
Another truth. Grandpa was the worst and best person I’ve ever known. I shake my head. A half-truth. I drink some more, look across at the bell board and its bells, its faded calligraphy. I think of I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER. I WANT YOU TO WANT TO REMEMBER. I don’t want to. But I will. Because the ways in which I betrayed El – by lying, sneaking, hating, leaving – they were only symptoms and never the disease. I betrayed her first and last by denying, by pretending, by forgetting.
There’s an arsehole on every boat. And if there’s no, it’s prob’ly you.
Grandpa was vast sideburns and the smell of pipe tobacco, a loud laugh, grinning still-white teeth, and shrieking hearing aids that didn’t work. An Old Salty Dog. A salve for Mum’s indiscriminate terrors. A grandpa who liked the sun and orange Tic Tacs; who would spend whole summers making daisy chains in the back garden and forts under the stairs. Who could always be relied upon for comfort: a wink, a grin, a pat of our hands. Ye’re a long time dead, lassie. Nothin’ else ever worth greetin’ over.
But Bluebeard. Bluebeard was a tyrant. Bluebeard liked the night and dark rum. He told us that he hung his oldest friend, Irvine, from a hook just so he could be the one to let him go, to let him drown – for freedom, for money, for a house full of gloom and ghosts. And he hammered long nails into its windows – windows with small, thick panes and hardwood Georgian bars – so that everything in it would always belong only to him. Bluebeard ranted and raved and chased our mother through hallways and rooms with a stovepipe. Called us nasty wee bitches and shook the house with what he wanted to do, what he promised to do. Because Bluebeard loved to hate, loved to be feared, needed always to be everyone’s worst fuckin’ nightmare.
I stop. Look at those tiles in front of the Kitchener. I can’t think about Rafiq’s murder–suicide, not yet. But I can make myself remember how it was before. Not that night. Not even every night, but enough of them. And more and more. Until it was the quiet – the respite – that we stopped expecting.
I remember the heavy clunk and turn of the red door’s deadlock just like the
