“Are you serious? Are you playing the morality card?” She claps her hands, hooting with derision. “Fuck, you’ll do anything. I need ten, Rowan. Maybe another writer might like to pay it.”
“You said the contents were ‘dry’,” ventures Rowan.
“Yeah, they’re dry if that’s what you’d call a list of victims dating back to 1978 …,”
“And you have that there, do you?” asks Rowan, his whole manner changing. For a moment he’s back in the young offenders’ institute, back to the wall, baring his fangs as the bigger boys took their turn. His voice drops low. “Right there, in your dainty hand. What’s to stop me taking it?”
Vicky sits up straight, eyebrows raised. She seems scornful rather than shocked. “Are you threatening me? Over this? You’re going to get rough with me over something so pitiful?”
He sags, disgusted with himself “I’m sorry,” he says. “Truly. I’m at the end of my rope, here. There’s a lot riding on this for me. Professionally. Personally. I feel like it’s my last chance, I suppose, and you’re standing there brandishing a Holy Grail of stolen documents in front of me. But I can’t give you what I don’t have. My car’s a piece of shit but you can have that. I’ve got some books and albums and a guitar I could sell, or give you, if you like The Levellers and Otis Redding. And Serendipity might lend me something. But Christ, if I was you I would go and give them to somebody else. Maybe just go and hand them straight in at the nick. A know a lady. A good cop. Strategically scatter-brained and very fair. Give them to her and rest easy that you’ve done the right thing. Tell her you put the money in the church poor-box or something. I’ll pick up some journalistic work when it all comes out – whatever it is. And the police will do things properly - not blunder around in the dark ..,”
The door swings open and Snowdrop bursts in to the room, her cheeks pink, the torch held in a hand that protrudes from the sleeve of a bright yellow raincoat. Her mouth opens in a perfect O as she spots Vicky.
“Hiya Snowdrop,” says Rowan, affecting a textbook cow-eyed melancholy. “This is my friend. Hey look, you know the book I was writing, well, look, this is hard to admit, but I think I’m going to have to pull the plug …,”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” mutters Vicky. “Any more and I’ll be drowning in my tears. You don’t half lay it on thick. She brings her hands down on her knees. “I want ten,” she says, again. “But I’ll take the car and the books as a down-payment and the rest as soon as you bloody can. For that, you this much.” She peels off a centimetre of paper and card and places it on the sofa. Then she peels off a single page from the remaining pile. Glances at it and gives a nod. “You’ll need that, I reckon.”
The page shows a list of names and dates, written in a neater hand than the scribbled text of Derrick’s letter. There are 18 names on the list. At the top, are five words, deeply underlined.
The Missing and the Dead.
“I’ll see myself out,” says Vicky, as Rowan sinks into the chair and invites his niece to sit beside him. “I’m pleased that this weird shit is bringing you closer together. Or something.”
As she pushes out the still-open door, she mumbles something about ‘fucking weird family’.
In the chair, by the light of the fire, drinking the red wine from the picnic hamper, Rowan and Snowdrop start to read.
Neither notices the fire go out. By then, the chill within them has spread far beyond the reach of the flame.
36
January 23, 2020
Sun-Wheel Holistic Therapy Retreat, Monahdliath Mountains, Imverness
8.11am
The woman reaches down to pick up a stone. She wants to hold something solid: to fill her pockets with weight so she does not drift away. She starts to bend down and notices that her feet are bare. She thinks of her feet as ugly things. Trotters, her last man called them. Her little toe crosses over the next one on both of her feet. There is hard, calloused skin upon her soles. Like sleeping with a cheese-grater. That’s what he said, whenever she drifted from her side of the bed onto his side. Such teasing always served as a gateway. The insults would drift up and over her as if she were lowering herself into water. Chubby ankles, toddler legs, pudgy knees, dimpled arse. He’d reach over and grab her belly. Squeeze great handfuls of her. She’d be crying by the time he reached her nipples. Rubber-fingers, he called them. Pulled out his phone and shoved pictures under her nose; sows suckling their young: swollen purple teats, bruised and sticky with greenish milk. Her tears would stoke his temper. He’d call her weak. Tell her she disgusted him. That by 46 she should know her strengths and how to cope with a little banter about her appearance. Peevishly, fatly, he would turn his mass away from her, shaking his head into the pillow, muttering about how he was trying to have fun, to make her laugh, that she could take the piss out of him if she wanted and he wouldn’t fucking cry about it. It would fall to her to apologise: clinging to his sweaty shoulder like moss.
She’d been within her rights to do what she did. She’d imagined that it would be harder to do to somebody that she cared about what she had done to so many strangers. But it had been easier. If anything, she had taken more pleasure in the act.
She had explained it to him, at the end. Explained that she did not blame him, but that she needed to be cherished – to be venerated as a goddess the way a stranger had worshipped her for one perfect, exhilarating summer 30 years before. He had adored her feet. Had caressed every part of her. Had reached inside her and stroked her soul with the same expert caresses that he has touched her skin. He had seen what she truly was – what she was capable of. He had made her feel alive. Had made all of them feel alive. Her. Catherine. Violet. Under his guidance they learned to embrace their higher selves. They became one.
The memories are at once beguiling and painful. She has not allowed herself to think much upon what happened all those years ago. To do so would be to invite rage to enter her, and to do so would undo so many years of hard work. She has pieced her soul back together countless times. Has learned to journey into the place where he still exists. Where he waits for her. The place she visits each time she jockeys upon the soul of the strangers who surrender to her will. She has never allowed herself to think upon the girls who shared that dark space with her. The girls who left her there. She was in that dark, cold space for a very long time. Was there so long that when the voice started speaking to her, she was so grateful for company that she did not question her sanity. He was dead, yes. She had smashed his skull in like a spoon striking a boiled egg. But something of him remained. Something that spoke to her. Something that floated in the centre of her vision. He has been with her ever since. Has been witness to three decades of learning. Of discovery. She is a master of her craft now. She lives within two realms. She is a bridge between the living and the dead and often she nudges people from one side to the other. In such moments, she feels him. Feels Cormac. He spoke to her last night as she sat, half-smiling, in front of the computer screen. Violet was calling her home. Violet wanted to remember. Violet was ready to see …
She already kinows that she will return to the place where this journey began. He will be stronger there. stronger, near his bones. Near the bones of the man who tried to help him, and who paid with his life. She can already feel his excitement, eddying and swelling inside her. She can almost taste him. He’s always there, floating just out of reach. It used to be that he came to her in her dreams. She would see him in his entirety, his haunting eyes, that half-smile, the gentle lullaby of his syrupy voice. Now she carries him with her at all times.