‘Quit it!’ I yell. ‘God’s sakes!’
Travis gets another chair and Ryan goes, ‘We’re gonnae need our ain place for Bekki till we get Spain sorted. Flat’s fine aye, but we’re shitting money up the wall there renting. And Bekki might like a garden, eh? She’s been living out in that wee cottage with a garden and nature and that, how’s she gonnae like being stuck in a fucking flat in fucking Nedland? Naw. I’ll buy us a wee house with a garden, a wee newbuild someplace nice. Bearsden maybe. Plenty trees and that. I’ll put it through the holding company so there’s no any paper trail.’
Shannon-Rose is Ryan’s twin, eh, and her wee lassie means the fucking world to him.
‘But can you stretch to it, son, with Spain an’ all?’
‘Aye Maw, nae worries. Can sell it on after, eh?’
‘That’s barry then, son. Barry.’
Ryan’s eyeballing me.
‘Barry,’ I goes.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re thinking we’re no gonnae need heehaw for Bekki, and we’re no gonnae need to fuck off to Spain. You’re thinking we’re no gonnae get Bekki back?’
Ryan’s got my brains right enough. ‘I’m no gonnae lie, son, I’m getting a bad feeling about this bint Ruth. A bad fucking feeling.’
‘Aye?’
‘Why’s she never telt Pammie nothing about her childhood?’
Jed, Ryan and Travis gowp at me. The Three Fucking Stooges. ‘They’re best pals, aye? See each other every fucking day for five fucking years?’
Not a dickie bird.
‘She’s a fucking woman.’
Nada.
‘Every fucking woman on the planet tells her best pal about when she was wee. Every fucking woman. This Ruth bint’s a clever bitch, I’m thinking. Maybe she’s had it at the back of her heid that maybe we’ll find them, that maybe they’ll have to disappear, and she’s got an ace up her sleeve – she’s got somewhere to run to, somewhere she lived when she was wee, and she’s no giving away nothing about it to any fucker, not even her best pal Pammie. I’ll bet a million fucking pounds she’s no even from Australia.’
‘No bastard can stay off the radar these days,’ goes Ryan. ‘Dinnae you worry, Maw. We’ll find them. Torridon and they places, aye we’ll check them out, but if the bastards arenae there, we get looking into Ruth Morrison and where she was at before she was married. There’ll be records, digital footprints. We’ll get Connor on it. Get the wee fucker earning his keep, aye?’
I bite another bit wrap and take a swally ginger and say ‘Aye son,’ but I’ve still got that bad feeling.
There’s something no right about that bint Ruth.
There’s just something no right.
And she’s got Bekki.
9
Eighteen Months Later
‘Could it have been slugs?’ said Beckie, squatting on the path to poke at one of the holes that marked where the tulips had been.
Flora kept her voice light. ‘Would have to be very hungry slugs.’
Did Beckie do it? Did she sneak out here last night, when they thought she was upstairs asleep, and rip out all the tulips? To punish Flora for losing it at her yesterday? But then she’d have to somehow dispose of them. Maybe under the hedge?
Flora couldn’t accuse her, not without evidence. She mustn’t overreact. At least, she mustn’t overreact any more than she already had done. She mustn’t start blaming Beckie for everything.
This was probably just random bored kids intent on some easy vandalism. They always locked the gates at night, but the small one at the end of the path from the front door to the pavement was only three feet high. Easy enough to climb over.
And Mia had been staying next door with Ailish and Iain last night. Flora wouldn’t put it past that girl to sneak out in the small hours for some ‘fun’ making all the tulips mysteriously disappear.
She looked up, over the hedge that divided the front gardens, to the first-floor windows of Ailish and Iain’s house. Maybe Mia’s bedroom was at the front. If so, the tulips would have been in full view if she’d been looking around deciding on her next ‘project’, as Ailish called her niece’s schemes.
‘Is it time now?’ said Beckie. She’d been looking forward to this damn barbeque for weeks. A barbeque in early May, for God’s sake – Flora had been hoping for rain, but of course it was a lovely sunny day, perfect for an outdoor party. The thought that Mia was just next door was driving Beckie nuts – every minute they remained apart was a minute wasted, apparently.
When Flora had suggested to Neil that there might be a link between Beckie’s behaviour at school and her friendship with Mia, he’d laughed.
He’d actually laughed.
‘Poor Mia’s getting blamed for this as well now, is she?’
This. This. As if it was nothing.
She looked at Beckie.
What was going on in that little head?
Beckie didn’t seem in the least bit worried about the ‘mediation discussion’ Mrs Jenner had arranged for Monday after school, when Beckie and Edith and their respective parents were going to ‘sit down and talk through the issues and agree on resolutions’. This apparently was going to involve an ‘acknowledgement of wrongdoing and harm’ by Beckie and ‘restorative gestures’. In other words, she would have to say she was sorry.
But was she sorry?
‘Mum?’
‘What?’
Beckie bit her lip.
Flora made herself smile. ‘Sorry, darling, I was miles away. What is it?’
‘Is it time yet?’
‘Almost. Go and put on a fleece or a jumper. It’s not that warm out of the sun.’
Beckie ran off back inside and Flora followed her, looking up at the elegant sandstone façade of their own house. Or rather, the house they were living in. Despite all her efforts to make it theirs – the kitchen extension to make a ‘family room’, the frantic redecorating, the fact that they’d taken every single stick of furniture with them, even the things that really could do with replacing – it still didn’t feel like home.
It felt like somewhere they had washed up, the three of them: a strange shore.
Gardens Terrace was, of course, a wonderful place to live. It was one of the nicest streets in one of the nicest cities in the world: a single row of big Victorian and Edwardian houses looking across a quiet road to the Botanic Gardens and backing onto their own huge gardens, and beyond them the huge gardens of the street behind. The houses all had relatively generous front gardens too, most with mature hedges and trees.
They were very lucky to live here.
At certain times of day when there wasn’t much traffic, it was almost like being in the country. You heard bird song, and the wind in the trees, and squirrels chattering. Sometimes, to Beckie’s delight, ducks from the pond in the Botanic Gardens flew over the house.
They had only been able to afford Number 17 thanks to their inheritances, thanks to both sets of parents being dead. They had paid an obscene price for a semidetached house. But it had been worth it, she kept telling herself, for the location and the garden and the beautifully proportioned Victorian rooms with shutters on the windows and deep skirting boards and cornices, and a working fireplace to sit round on a winter evening watching Strictly or an old film or, when Beckie was in bed, a Scandi noir box set.
They were very lucky to live here.
Did Beckie think so?
Was she happy?
Or did she still secretly miss Arden, and their old lives, as much as ever?
The problem was that Beckie was always so eager to please, so concerned about ‘bothering’ them, that trying to get her to reveal her true feelings was always a challenge. ‘Yeah, it’s great here,’ she’d say, whatever she felt about it.