Authors: Karen Campbell
He places the notebook on a side table, then crouches obediently. ‘My mummy is called Hannah.’
Ross reminds her of her wee brother. Anything to do with hidey-holes, Chris loved. He had that same adult way of talking too, where everything is enunciated precisely, the new language you’re learning so unfamiliar that you taste it slowly, offer it with care. Chris will be . . . She tries to calculate in her head. Six? Eight? It frightens her, so she stops thinking.
‘Why don’t you help me put the other end of the blanket on to the table. See if we tie it round the table leg?’
By the time Michael and his wife return to the lounge, Justine and Ross are in Samarkand. Billowy fabric conceals them, you can taste oranges and spice, the cushions are camel-humps and they are going faster and faster, diving now in blue-jewelled seas and—
‘Hello?’
Under their woolly canvas, Ross stiffens.
‘Right, King Rossino. I’ll handle this.’
With a single sweep, they emerge. ‘Ta dah! Did you know we were invisible?’
‘Is that right? Well, you’re also very red, both of you.’ Michael smiles, and it makes him look different, boyish in a way.
‘Daddy, I was flying underwater!’
‘Were you, son? Can I try?’
Hannah remains impenetrable. ‘Right. So. Justine. Bit hectic at the moment, with Euan and . . . Ross – pick up that blanket please.’
‘Mummy—’
‘Not now, Ross. I realise we’d be interrupting your holiday—’
‘It’s a sabbatical.’
‘—but, it would be good, actually, if you could help out for a bit—’
‘Mummy—’
‘Ssh,’ says Hannah. ‘Two weeks, tops. You get bed, board and forty quid a week, yes?’
‘Aye. Sure. Great.’
‘Good. If I know you’ll be here with Ross, I can be up at the hospital every day. And, when Euan gets home, an extra pair of hands will just be . . . We can make up a guest bed in the basement room. Of course, we’ll need to see some references.’
This is the last place on earth Justine should stay. She has put their child in hospital. Which leaves more room for her. She will make it up to him. Them. She will be A GODSEND. For years after, they’ll go ‘Wasn’t that Justine a
godsend
?’ She imagines how comfy the bed will be, how big the bath. Roll-top most likely. The jangly woman has taste. She doubts it’s mad Michael who chooses the flowers and plumps the cushions.
‘Well, I don’t have anything with me . . . but I can send for stuff. Last two employers, that kind of thing?’
‘That would be fine. Thank you.’ Hannah presents a set of neat straight teeth, perfectly bricked together.
‘It would be so good if you can help us, Justine.’ Michael shakes her hand. ‘I’ll write and thank Myra myself.’
Justine blinks at him; it isny coy as such, but he blinks back. Such a neat lie. They are an excellent double-act.
‘Michael. Why don’t you put Justine’s um . . . boots away?’
‘Sure.’
No wonder he’s cracking up. He is apologetic to the point of submission. Justine could teach him secrets. Tell him how even the most craven of worms can turn. No one realises that, see. How they stitch you up. They think you’re blind, that you feel no pain, so they run dull wires right through you, and pull you and pull you, tight until you burst. Yes. She and Michael could gang up against the snippy wife. They could be a team. Except teams are total lies.
C’mon doll, we’re a team
means
do what I tell you and don’t ask why
. By the looks of Michael, there are several million tense wires to unpick. Man. She canny stay that long. Then she sees him wink at Ross, pretend to do a salute. Ross giggles. He is a total cutie. Maybe she’ll take him with her, when she goes.
‘Here, I’ll take them.’ She holds her boots so the heels stick up. ‘Sorry. I didn’t want to get your carpet dirty.’
‘No, it’s fine—’
‘Mummy.’
‘What
is
it, Ross?’
Ross hands his mother the black notebook he’s been clutching. ‘Here is your story that came out. I was
telling
you. You did not zip up your bag.’
Michael takes it first. ‘Hannah. Honestly? You were writing up at the hospital?’
‘I told you, he was sleeping most of the time. At least I was bloody there.’
Hannah snatches the notebook from him. Goes to say something; clamps the words down, then exits the room. A fat vacuum of no-sound surges in her wake, holds itself tight as their separate glances meet. Solidify. There is a flurry of
wells
, like the beginning of a bad joke.
‘Well,’ says Michael, clearing his throat.
‘Well,’ says Justine. ‘Will we finish our game?’
‘Well,’ says Ross. ‘Am I allowed?’
He loves it. Pure fucking loves it with the wind-slap on his face and all those sour smells, kind of damp rotten earth when you wallop up the leaves. A wee slider of mud or shite and your boots slip through, spraying up all the crusty colours, how they’re all slimy underneath. Fucking
loves
it. The dog tries to jump in too – or it would if Charlie Boy let it off the lead. Good as gold so it is since he kicked its cunt in – walks to heel and everything. But he keeps it tight. That feeling of it straining. He wraps the dog’s chain hard round his knuckles and it’s just him, his forearm with the veins up, his hands and sinews pumping, just the fucking force of him holding back this slevery big shite-monster with no neck and reams of teeth. Fuck. Folks’ faces when you’re walking by. Cunts never look you in the eye. Leather so it is, the lead. A leather strap with a big fuck-off chain – which is also an excellent chib, should the occasion call for it.
The dog’s called Askit, like the medicine. Funny as fuck. He aye gets some prick trying to sook up to him, know? Usually once you’ve got out the car, maybe slipped off your shades and they can see it’s you, it’s Charlie Boy and not some cunt like daft Ally or the Teapot Twins with their squinty noses and skelly eyes. Fucksake. Nae luck, Mammy Teapot, to get two such identical plug-uglies. But, sometimes, people stare just when he’s walking by, doing that pumpy kind of walk with his shoulders up and his hips all loose, kind of Liam Gallagher, only hard, know? You’re not even wanting to talk to these plebs; you’re all loose, the dog lead’s round your wrist and some cunt’ll whine:
Awright, big man? Whit’s your dug calt
? Because they all know Charlie Boy. And he’ll just give them a look, know? Just stop and give them the look, or sometimes he’ll draw up a big grog, then plug it out so it lands at their feet. And he’ll go, ‘Askit.’
Not a glimmer of a smile. That is the joke, see, that’s the joke that they don’t fucking know it’s a joke at all.
He loves it, man. Dog’s got three collars. One for daytime, watching telly and that. It’s blue. One for paying visits, which is black leather, same as the strap on its lead, with tiny wee cones of brass. Like a row of wee bullets. And one girly red one that’s all padded inside
in case his neck gets sore
. He hasn’t thrown it out. No yet. Still stinks of her, so it does.
‘Fucking
ho
, you. Slow down.’
Dog’s pulling again. He thinks it’s seen a squirrel, or it’s maybe got wind of a lady dug. Horny as hell, that dog. Humps anything – dogs, cats, cushions, legs. Not Charlie Boy’s legs, but. He gives it a wee tug. It yelps. ‘That right, pal? You’n me both. Both hump bitches, eh?’
He never talks to it if there’s folk around. But it’s nice to have someone to – More like a mirror to bounce your words off, because nae cunt gives you a straight answer anyroad, so you’re as well talking to the fucking wall. Or the dog. They always had dogs when Charlie was a wean. His maw gave them all these Spic names, like Alberto and Perro (which means ‘dog’. No imagination his
madre
). You think that was a brass neck, shouting for them in the park? Try being called Carlos in a housing scheme in Arden. Then she remarries and he becomes Carlos McGinty. Or ‘Carol’ as his new step-prick liked to say. Said it one too many times, but then they had a wee chat. Good as gold after. Since Charlie Boy kicked his cunt in.
Oh man. Fuck, he canny contain this fury. If he finds her . . . if he starts kicking, he won’t be able to stop. No that it would bother him, crushing her fucking face beneath his boots. But it wouldny be enough. Nothing will be enough. He can’t take this humiliation; they all know she’s done a runner. Doesn’t matter how many kneecaps he breaks, or pubs he torches, he’s still the sad sack whose hoor cleared him out and ran away.
Justine. He cannot say her name.
‘C’mere you!’ He yanks the dog’s neck away from a pile of crap.
Dear Green Place
my arse. Glasgow’s over seventy parks, and they’re all full of glass and shite. A jakey lies comatose, sprawled out on one of the benches. He
hates
jakies. Manky cunts. Two wee toerags kick a football through the empty flower beds, fouling the air with their language. Every second fucking word’s a curse. You get lovely roses here in summer, but.
He broke a guy’s nose last night; real beautiful job, because he did it from the inside. Rammed a corkscrew right up, one of they ones where the handles come out like wings. Aye, so it was more of a mangling, but the septum snapped, eventually. Boy’d already paid him all the money he owed, but so fuck? Charlie Boy shouldn’t have to ask, not even the fucking once. Shouldn’t have to ask for fuck-all. So he breaks and he terrorises and he shags his way through the whole fucking stable and it never goes away. It’s not the money. He’d have given her all the money in the world. You can aye find some cunt to give you more money. But he canny get another
her
. All that sleekit scarlet hair, how her skin tastes of cream and her wrists are that fine you could splinter them, easy. Why he thought she’d be a good earner.
Charlie Boy and Askit skirt past the boys. One of them goes to kick the ball; just for a sliver, time stops and he and Charlie are framed, floating, and the kid could strike the actual ball, and it would soar up, hang like a moon . . . and then smash into him; the boy is considering this very option as Charlie saunters past. He does not halt or hesitate. Does nothing other than continue to own the ground he walks on. The child deflates, swears something at his pal as he skliffs the ball across the park, in the opposite direction from where Charlie Boy walks.
He cannot get his hands to quit trembling. He has fucking bile, not blood, shooting up his arm. The dog squats for a shite, right in the middle of the rose-bed. He takes out his mobile. Holds it tighter and tighter till his jaw hurts. And he tries her number again.
Hot. Late. Damp breath. Too many layers, Justine has piled on every blanket, piles them up every night. Curtains tight so air is precious, the heat a breeding ground for dreams. Sleep naked. Cannot bear constriction on her joints. Been tied been tried been seen and done and push it off. The blankets fall. Cold-breath, draught-breast. Cold breast.
Her nipple is hard. Is aching.
Soft door slips. In the shadows. Do not move.
Unfamiliar bed. She knows unfamiliar beds. Lie still. Don’t feel. Someone standing there. Is watching. She closes her eyes tighter. Turns over and waits till morning.
*
In Hannah’s cream-tiled utility room, Justine folds the ironing. Dirty laundry; piles of the stuff: feels like all she’s done since she got here. She has built two towers: one of whites and woollens, the other a wobbly mass of jeans and tops and sheets. Do folk iron sheets? She reckons Hannah does, so has given them all knife-edged folds. It even smells of flowers in here. Flowers and the seaside. Carefully, she balances Ross’s socks on top of the second heap – she’s balled them into pairs – and lifts it up. Through the kitchen, with the slatted, filtered sunlight, the big square quarry tiles on the floor. Upstairs to Ross’s room, where she stows his ironing, straightens his bed so the cartoon face of the robot thing that’s on it is no longer distorted. Into the echoing bathroom, with its fat pastel towels and the funny loo which has an overhead cistern like from school. But not the scratchy paper. Hannah doesny have an airing cupboard; she has an ‘armoire’.
Just put them in the armoire, Justine
. Then pausing. Waiting for Justine to go: ‘What’s an armoire?’ Before she made a tit of herself, started looking for a suit of armour or something, Michael said: ‘It’s the big wardrobe in the loo.’
She still has an hour and a half before it’s time to collect Ross. He is in the afternoon nursery class, which gives Justine a wedge of time between one thirty and four that nobody’s thought to fill. Hannah has kindly given her a list. Chores in the morning, making Ross’s lunch, taking Ross to nursery, making dinner or clearing up at night;
we’ll take this in turns
is written in helpful brackets, but with no indication of who’s to do what when. Justine tries to do it all, keeping her head down and herself to herself. She senses that the more she makes herself indispensable, and the more she disappears to her room when not required, the longer she can eke this out. Poor Euan will come home soon. A week more, tops, she reckons, to root herself a little deeper in.