Keiko stepped back, uncomfortable, as Fancy bent over and knocked gently against the side of the bath, but when Viola opened her eyes she just smiled up at them and moved only to raise her head out of the water.
“Your bath’s great, Keiko,” she said. “Can I put some more salts in?”
“Yes, of course,” said Keiko.
“No, you can’t, you monkey,” said Fancy. “We’ll have to get a licence from the Environmental Health before we take the plug out anyway.” She took the towel from where it was warming on the radiator and tucked the middle of one edge under her chin. Viola stood and turned her back and Fancy lifted the child towards her with one hand under each skinny armpit. Viola felt for the hanging corners of the towel and pulled it around herself. She kicked drops of water from her feet as Fancy stepped away from the side of the bath and swung her round onto the floor, then she scooted off along the passageway towards Keiko’s spare bedroom, huddled in the towel and with her hair plastered in clumps to the sides of her face, already beginning to frizz again.
In Keiko’s future memories, this evening was the last innocent time. The sight of the small girl in the perfumed water, perfect little body and perfect unconcern when she opened her eyes and saw them looking down at her. The choreography of mother and daughter getting her out of the water and back on her feet, and the three of them in a row on the sofa later watching a movie together to make Viola feel grown-up, making Fancy and Keiko feel like little girls again. This remembered evening-even though the sick feeling had already arrived and even though there were times to come when briefly it left her-this warm, glowing evening was the last real moment before what was coming began.
twenty-six
Tuesday, 19 November
Dr. Bryant read slowly, pulling on his nose. Keiko watched him, unsure whether she was tensed against discovery or tensed against a go-ahead, permission to do it, having to carry out her plan after all.
“These look competent,” he said. “Where did you get them?”
“They’re original,” said Keiko. “A friend helped me.”
“An English speaker?” he said, looking up, ready to find incompetence after all. Keiko nodded. He rolled his fingers together, dealing whatever had come of pulling his nose, and then started flicking the pages over again. “Strange fillers,” he said. “Rather dramatic.” Keiko waited for something more like a veto, but nothing came.
“I sometimes think,” she said at last, “that filler questions are so bland and boring, it’s too obvious what they are. These will be much better at distracting the subjects.” She felt sure he would argue with such a definite opinion. He wouldn’t be able not to.
“You could be right,” he said.
Keiko felt her shoulders slump down a little. “You don’t think the fillers are too offensive? Or anything,” she asked.
“Good luck offending the first years,” he said, pulling at his nose again.
“I’m not using the first years,” said Keiko. “I’m using the members of the association who’re sponsoring my accommodation.” She paused. “I’m experimenting on the people who’re funding me.”
“Well, let me know how it goes,” Bryant said. This time he wiped his fingers on the underside of his desk.
Keiko took the papers from him, holding them by the opposite corner from where he had leafed through them with his nose-pulling hand. She kept them clear of her body until she came to a litter bin, then dropped them in it and went to get Viola.
It had been a first dress-rehearsal for the end-of-term show, and Viola came out overexcited and still in lavish feline make-up, with her hair sprayed dark and sticky into a little cake on top of her head. On the bus, she tucked herself under Keiko’s arm and was drowsing before they slowed at the next stop.
“Your wee one’s knackered,” said a woman opposite with a comfortable smile, when Viola’s arm flopped out of her lap and swung loose as they rounded a corner. Keiko looked down at the elongated sweep of her closed eyelids, the black sheen of her sprayed hair, then smiled at the woman, tucked Vi’s arm back into her lap, and held her a little more tightly.
Fancy lay on the waxing table in the back room of Janette’s salon, waiting out the pain before young Yvonne applied the next strip to her leg.
“How about your bikini line, Fance?”
“Bog off and die,” said Fancy. “Who gets their bikini line waxed in November?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” said Yvonne. “Loads of people’ll get it done next month for parties.”
“Yeah, well I don’t get invited to that kind of party,” Fancy said. Craig McKendrick’s face popped into her head, but a surge of pain saw him off again. She breathed in a gasp so sharp that the cold air hurt her teeth.
“You’re so polite,” said Yvonne, blowing onto the red area. “The first and last time I did Mrs. McLuskie-when she was off on that golf exchange with all the other old trollops-guess what she said?”
“‘Dearie me, how painful’?”
“She said ‘Ayabastard.’ Dead loud. She’s never been back since.”
Etta McLuskie, sitting in her car in the darkest corner of the multi-storey, was using all the wiles that had deserted her on the waxing table that day.
“No one’s going to put two and two together and build a scaffold,” she said, speaking loud enough for her voice to carry through the open window of her car and into the open window of the car pulled up beside her. “Your… problem was years ago. I wasn’t the Painchton provost, you weren’t the minister. Everyone has remarried, moved house, retired, or all three. We have no connection and there’s no paper trail.”
“I hope you’re right,” the voice came back from the other car.
“We just need till the new year,” said Etta.
“And you’re sure it’s not going to leak? Painchton’s not what it was, I heard. Incomers, folk with no loyalty. Troublemakers.”
“But none of them know,” said Etta. “There’s only five of us, Painchton-born and -bred, who know what’s happening. Of course, there’s newcomers in the town-there’s a vegetarian numpty in the Cat’s Whiskers, for one-but we keep them where we want them. Outside.”
Pamela Shand was in the Cat’s Whiskers with the shutters down, busy pricing stock. Marking down sale stock, actually. Putting half-price stickers on her rack of vegetarian cookbooks, to be more precise than she felt like being. She had got them in when the horse meat scandal took off (which was how she put it to herself, although she was careful to say struck to others). But the stream of neighbours seeking advice on mung beans had never started, and the Pooles were busier than ever. She heard the bell clank again and again every morning as she stood in the queue at the post office. Just once she had asked Mrs. Watson:
“How can you? You’re surrounded by all that bounty and yet you eat the flesh of the dead?”
“The Flesh of The Dead?” said Mrs. Watson. “It sounds like a movie. Dina always loved a zombie, and she left her DVDs for me. Anyway, Malcolm gets all his meat from Malone’s, what he doesn’t prepare for himself.”