She came back to herself abruptly to find a florid-looking man in a football shirt standing over her table. He had a pint of lager in one hand and was looking down at her with glittering, too lively eyes.
“Cheer up, love, it might never happen.”
“What?”
He shrugged, glancing back at a crowd of mates, who were mostly watching the football. The pub had filled up quite a bit in the last hour.
“Got a face like a smacked ass on you, innit? Just saying, you’ll feel better if you have a little smile.”
Heather’s face grew hot all at once, and her heart skipped and stuttered. She stood up, and as she did something else seemed to flow into her, boiling up from the roots.
“I beg your fucking pardon?”
The man pulled his chin in, a ludicrously offended expression on his shining red face.
“No need to be like that, love, I was just —”
“You were just fucking WHAT?”
Heather threw her full weight into the side of the table, sending it crashing into the man’s thighs with enough force to scatter the empty glasses. There was a bright tinkling crash as two of them smashed to pieces on the floor, followed by the traditional cheer from the side of the pub that couldn’t see what was happening.
“Oi, you mad bitch!” The man staggered back, remnants of coke splashed brown against his cream-colored slacks. Heather walked around the table toward him, feeling like she was floating, filled up as she was with something dark and light. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up one of the empty glasses that was still standing, thinking to smash it against his giant, thick head.
“You’re fucking right I am,” she said, pleased with how calm her voice sounded. The bloke’s mates were all looking at her now, a few moving forward with their hands held up. “I am one mad fucking bitch, you hideous little prick.”
She lifted the hand with the glass, but then the brassy little landlady was there, hissing in her face to get out.
“None of that, thank you very much! Go on, get out, we don’t want that in here.”
Heather boggled down at the woman, and whatever had been inside her—some quick, calm, awful thing that had also been there on her last day in the newspaper offices—seeped away. She cast one more look at the bloke, who, with the landlady now safely in front of him, was calling her every name under the sun.
“What is it about men?” she said to the landlady, her voice soft. “Can’t even have a quiet drink without them ruining it.”
The woman gave her a sour look, and then Heather was back out on an unfamiliar street. It had been a bright afternoon when she’d gone inside the Red Lion, and now it was early evening, cold and dark, with a miserable light rain moving through the freezing air. Heather stood, breathing it in. As her temperature dropped, the adrenaline washed out of her blood, leaving her ashamed and tired and slightly numb.
Stumbling slightly, she made her way back to the bus stop.
Back at her mother’s garden gate, Heather paused to send off a final text to Nikki. They had exchanged texts all the way home; most of Nikki’s sounded worried, all of Heather’s were apologetic. She had promised, somewhat rashly, to make dinner for Nikki’s mum and Aunt Shanice in an attempt to say thank you for their kindness, and her head was full of how many people she owed apologies when she opened the front door. She clicked the hall light on and stopped, staring at the floor.
Petals, as red as droplets of arterial blood in the dim light, were scattered across her mother’s biscuit-colored carpet, leading across the hall and up the stairs. There was also a smell, a hot stench like old garbage or meat left in the sun too long. Heart in her throat, Heather made her way up the stairs, trying not to think of fairy tales where children followed a trail of breadcrumbs into the darkest part of the forest. Did Michael Reave have a version of that story? Of course he did.
The trail led into her mother’s bedroom, and there on the dressing table was a small crumpled pile of darkness. A bird—a starling, in fact. A very dead one. The small cavity of its chest had been split open, and inside it, glistening unpleasantly, Heather could just make out more of the petals. They were the delicate pink of dog roses, just like on the wreath at the funeral.
CHAPTER30
CATHY STOOD IN the entrance to the pub, for a brief moment uncertain what to do. Compulsively she took out her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen, just in case a notification there could poke her into one direction or another. There was nothing.
Okay, she thought to herself, a hand resting on the door. Turn around and go home now, if you want, get back on the bus and send her a message saying you couldn’t make it after all. But if you do that, you’ll always wonder what she was like. Forever. That’s not really a choice at all, is it?
The door opened and a man stepped out, pulling his collar up against the cold. He glanced at Cathy curiously, then he was past her. The glimpse she got of the pub interior was warm and cozy, so after taking a second to push her hair out of her face, Cathy stepped inside. Almost
