Shortie snaps her window open and sticks her head out on the other side.
‘I have a delivery for you as well,’ I say, and I undo the knot on my shoelace with my teeth. Swing a parcel along to her.
‘You are saving my life, I thought I was gonnae end up straight for fucking ever. I’m gonnae skin up.’ Shortie’s head disappears.
‘What can you see?’ Isla asks.
‘What?’
‘Out there, fucking look.’ She gestures across the lawn and she’s almost shouting.
It’s the Prozac that’s making her aggressive and weird and totally non-Isla-like, and the police still haven’t found the car that took Tash.
‘All I can see is the dark,’ I answer.
‘The lawn,’ she points.
Look down, but all I can see is dark, and fir trees silhouetted against the sky. Bare oak trees. There’s a frost out, and there’s been snow. Our lawn sparkles.
‘Tash used tae see clocks there, on the lawn. She’d say the whole lawn was full of them. Big old grandfather clocks and grandmother clocks, and that their hands were spinning and they were all tick-tick-tick-ticking away.’
‘I remember you saying that when I moved in.’
‘She said it so often, Anais, that I began tae hear them.’
I light a match and it goes out. Light another one and it goes out as well. Curve my hand around the third and it catches.
‘Then, today, they just stopped.’
Tash is still not home and it’s been four days. I saw her photograph on a poster at the train station tonight. Click, click, click. Car engine. Door. Locks. Trying the handle, fan heater on hot, a porno on the floor, the man’s hand reaches out. Tash turning to try and get a blade out of her pocket and stab him.
‘Yup, they’ve gone now. The clocks have stopped ticking, Anais.’ Isla strains to hear something.
‘Tash’ll come back, Isla.’
‘Dead people dinnae come back.’
That’s true, dead people don’t come back, not even for a second, not for one word or one whisper or one tiny bit of human touch. They go and it’s cold, and it stays cold and you cannae ever change it.
‘The clocks have fucking stopped, Anais.’
My heart stops, then it thuds back in.
‘They put a poster up, in the train station, it’s got her name and photo on it. She’ll see it, Isla, she’s just — getting wasted. She wouldnae leave you.’
‘I know she wouldnae, you know she wouldnae, we all fucking know she wouldnae, so where is she?’
I dinnae know why I’m lying, and trying to say Tash’ll be alright and she’ll be back soon. This night is too big and too strange and too dark, and it unfolds out around us, all the way out there — dark streets and dark fields and dark car parks. I cannae take this.
‘When my babies were born, Anais, they came quick, just like that. No big fuss. No drama. My mum had them in my arms before she even cut the umbilical cord. I put them right on the breast. Fed them myself. That’s how they fucking got it.’
‘It’s not your fault, you didn’t know. You have tae think of them, Isla. They need you.’
‘The first thing I said tae my babies was, I love you.’
The trees rustle. It’s so cold out that it stings your skin. Winter’s come to claim the world again, the sky is clear and the stars are bright.
Isla disappears in her window. Look down at the lawn. Imagine all those grandfather clocks there? Tick-tick-tick; cuckoos and big old white ones and skinny brown ones and tiny ones. Grandmother clocks, and shiny brass bits and cogs to make the pendulum swing. I can almost see them, but I cannae hear them. Isla pops her head out again and she is holding a half-empty bottle of vodka.
‘D’ye want a drink?’ she asks.
‘No, I just want tae smoke myself fucking senseless. Ta, though. I could come through tae your room?’ I say.
‘Night-nurse won’t let you, the doors are locked.’
‘Aye. She’d only go on about my fucking dilated pupils!’
We giggle. It’s so good to hear her laugh. She downs almost the rest of the bottle. I light another joint. I dinnae know where the fuck Shortie’s got to. Maybe she’s tried to sneak downstairs to see John. We all know she doesnae want him to leave.
‘There’s soul-stealers out there, Anais. My old man’s like that, even before the Aids, he’d sell my mum. He once sold her tae the guy upstairs. He would have sold me; that’s why she wanted me in care, it’s safer.’
Her hands are shaking.
‘I’m gonnae get the night-nurse tae come and see you, Isla.’
‘Dinnae. I’m just gonnae crash. Tomorrow I’m gonnae ring up, ask for a visit to see the twins.’
‘Are you sure?’
Shortie pops her head out her window — with a humongous spliff clamped in her gob.
‘Ladies!’
She brandishes the beast, sparks her flame-thrower. We laugh at her. She grins and double-drags it. Isla downs the dregs of her vodka and lobs the bottle across the lawn — it thuds on the grass.
‘Tae absent friends, may they soon return,’ she says.
‘Absent friends,’ we echo.
‘Pass the joint then, Shortie.’
She swings it along to me.
‘What did the old guy say at the hospital?’ Isla asks me.
‘Nothing much.’
‘He must have said something.’
‘He said I was the daughter of a cigarillo-smoking Outcast Queen, one of only three cigarillo-smoking Outcast Queens. He said she flew intae the nuthouse on a flying cat.’
They’re both silent for a full minute.
‘Sounds about right,’ Shortie says.
We smoke and listen as fields rustle in the quiet. A crescent moon sits all lopsided above the forest, leering at us in the sky.
26
THE DARK IS too dark.
Sleep won’t happen.
Clocks won’t tick, no matter how much I wish they would. The night is sinister. For some reason I’m remembering ski-slope Julie who cried in primary One, cos I told her the social worker brought me, not the fucking stork.
Ski-slope never swore; I did, I was five but I swore. I bit. I kicked. I didnae sleep, hardly ever. She called me a liar and I smashed her apple off the playground, then I ate her strawberry rubber — while she stood crying her eyes out. She told everyone I was evil and they believed her.
She had a gym outfit and could do a cartwheel. I was three weeks late for school; I was always arriving from somewhere. I had a wee suitcase, and my teddy. It’s manky, that teddy; it’s no wonder, though, I always kick him under my bed wherever I live. I wouldnae speak at first, whenever I went anywhere new to live. I just watched. Waited to work out who the people were that I’d moved in with, and then if I thought I could relax, I’d start gabbing away and probably never shut up. Teresa said when I did start speaking she cried in the bathroom for half an hour.
There are long low hoots from outside. It’s one of those nights, where all you can do is watch the shadows on the wall — until it gets light.
Extra-big bowl of cornflakes. Icy-cold milk. Perfect. The chef’s voice grows louder and louder from the kitchen.
‘It was a big bar!’
‘Maybe someone ate it?’ Joan asks.
I can see him through the hatch. He’s looking at Joan’s big belly and wondering.
‘Noh, it was a great big fuck-off bar,’ he says.
‘Please try not tae swear in front of the clients!’
‘They only speak in swear-words, Joan! Those wee pricks are fucking feral.’
‘Aye, well — they dinnae get paid tae be here; we do.’
Go, Joan!
‘That chocolate bar was big enough for twenty sponge-cakes, Joan. I only got it in the last delivery.’
She sticks her head out the hatch into the dining area. I keep eating my cornflakes. They’re covered in sugar and drenched in milk. Shortie’s over by the telly with her feet up, watching cartoons.