As She Left It

Copyright Information

As She Left It: A Novel
© 2013 by Catriona McPherson.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First e-book edition © 2013

E-book ISBN: 9780738737409

Book format by Bob Gaul

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown
Cover image © Woman: iStockphoto.com/Jaroslaw Wojcik

Cover illustration: © Dominick Finelle/The July Group

Editing by Nicole Nugent

Neighborhood diagram by Llewellyn art department

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Midnight Ink

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

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Woodbury, MN 55125

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Manufactured in the United States of America

For Diane Nelson,
with love and thanks and no apologies,
because you’re not superstitious.

In a cottage in a wood,

A little old man at the window stood,

Saw a rabbit running by

Knocking at his door.

“Help me! Help me!” the rabbit said,

“Or the farmer will shoot me dead.”

“Come little rabbit, come with me.

Happy we shall be.”

—Traditional children’s song

The outhouse, the outhouse,

The hold your nose and shout house.

Grab thee by thy lug-hole,

Put thee down the plug-hole.

Grab thee by thy left hand,

Put thee down the muck pan.

Pull the chain, pull the chain,

Wash back up again.

The outhouse, the outhouse,

The hold your nose and shout house.

—Children’s skipping song

PROLOGUE

17 May 2000

There’s a line on the yard wall that shows where the outhouse used to be. Red bricks above it, white paint below it. That’s where the roof started. That’s where the jaggedy castle top was, where the arrows came from. Or the path along the fort walls to shoot baddies off of, or the top of the mast where the sail was tied to.

Except now it’s gone.

And here on the ground there’s another line too. That’s where the door was (or the drawbridge, or the gates where the stagecoach came galloping in, or the hole in the hull where the gangplank went through).

All gone now. So there’s nothing to do.

But outside this yard is the lane, and up and down the lane are all the other yards with their castles and forts and pirate ships still there. Only steps away. All the houses joined together in a big long row and easy to run and play at any of them. And then there’s the van. The van’s best of all. Sometimes it starts moving. And it’s a train, an army tank, a spaceship that goes to the moon.

In here, there’s nothing.

But if he stretches up as far as he can stretch and wiggles his middle finger under the little hook there and stands on his very, very tiptoes maybe … the gate swings open. Quick look back at the house. No one shouts his name.

So out he goes.

And all the other gates have handles he can reach. And when he swings on a handle, the gate falls open. And the outhouses aren’t locked. One’s been cleared, all the stuff piled up outside in the yard and inside the stink of new paint. One’s so full of boxes there’s hardly space to wriggle in there. The van’s not locked either. It’s empty today—a cannibal cave where his feet boom and his voice is like monsters!

Then he remembers what’s down the end. The canal! Full of sharks and submarines and shipwrecks.

So he’s limping on his peg-leg when an angry voice says, “Hey!”

Turn round, head down, ready to cry if it means less trouble.

But it’s not who he thought it would be.

ONE

21 July 2010
Tuesday

It’s all connected. Everything’s joined to everything. You think you can keep things out of your head, if you concentrate hard. You think your brain’s in charge. And then
blammo!
From nowhere, one little thread starts to fray, one little rock gets lifted, and the light shines in. That’s when you know it’s your blood that runs the show. Your bowels. Your guts and your glands. When you’re shaking so hard you can’t talk and you’re breathing so fast you can’t think and all of your careful stories have blown away.

“Tell me,” he says, as the van rocks along. There isn’t another car or a single house in sight. No sign of life. The moor fog’s coming down. “Start talking.”

“Dunno where to start. Dunno if there’s time.”

“Make time,” he says. “Talk fast. Tell me now.”

“Okay … Okay … Well, it’s all connected, see? That’s the main thing. I see that now. The mum and the dad and the boy and the girl.”

“Who’s this?”

“And the little old lady and the poor old man. The baby that’s lost and the baby that’s … ” Big breath. Try again. “They’re all the same.”

“Start at the start and tell me,” he says. “Keep on talking right till the end.”

“The start?”

“When does it start?”

“I suppose … I dunno.”

“So … once a upon a time,” he says, and the words make gooseflesh pop out on her arms.

“No! No more stories. No way. It’s … a month ago, I guess.”

“So,” he says, “once upon a month ago then.”

TWO

19 June 2010
Saturday

Opal came at the house the back way—old habit, that. Along the lane, over the waste ground, in at the yard gate, bolting it behind her. She put down her big bag and stretched her fingers, shrugged off her small bag, and fanned her tee-shirt, looking round. Of course it seemed smaller; she’d been ready for that. She hadn’t been here since she was twelve. But she wasn’t prepared for just
how
small: three strides from the gate to the back door, and nearly narrow enough to stretch her arms out and touch both sides. When she was little, she played here for hours. What did she find to do? And was it always this shabby? Flaking red brick walls, water-stained from blocked gutters, peeling paint on the door, the wood underneath cracked and greying?

Even still—she couldn’t help it—there was a little lifting up inside her, as if she was glad to get home. Maybe she’d have been glad to get anywhere. Her head still ached and stomach still churned from the journey—the train carriage getting to the end of its long, hot day, coming back from the coast, food and drink and bodies, everyone who’d dozed and sweated, slipped swollen feet out of shoes, tucked sandwich wrappers down the side of the seats and left them there. The bus up here from the station had been worse: still all the food and sweat but with perfume too, from the first of the Saturday-night crowd.

If the key wasn’t where it had always been, she would wrap her hand and smash the kitchen window. She would listen to make sure the neighbors weren’t out in their yards first, but then she would do it quick and confident and mend the glass herself. It wouldn’t be the first time. But when she wiggled the loose brick down by the side of the step, there it was the same as ever, and she fitted it into the lock and shoved the door with her shoulder as if she had never been away.

Inside, in spite of the heat, a shudder went through her and left her tingling. It was a smell. Or it was the ghost of a smell—cigarettes and old coal—just wisps of it that memory could fan until it grew and grew, strong enough to choke her. She reeled back out into the yard again, sinking down and pulling her knees up close under her chin.

It wasn’t empty! She’d thought everything would be gone. She’d imagined getting an airbed and sleeping bag to tide her over, taking the bus out to Ikea or scouring the charity shops. But there was the kitchen table with the stools that fitted under it, there was the arm of the big couch and the dark pattern of the carpet through the open living room door, and she’d seen dishes upside down on the draining board, the same brown Pyrex mugs and Nicola’s glass—a good heavy tumbler that sat square on its base no matter how carelessly you set it down, that never tipped over no matter how hard you knocked it, reaching out in the dark, your rings clinking against its sides.

For two pins, whatever that meant, Opal would have gone straight back to Whitby. Or if she’d had a car, or if it hadn’t been so hot and Saturday night … but the thought of lugging those bags back into town, through crowds of dressed-up girls clacking around on high heels, flipping their shiny hair at the boys in their shiny shirts, doused in cologne … the thought of finding the right train, and then Steph and Baz, and asking Jill for her job back …

And she had to pee.

Anyway, when she stood up and went inside again, the ghost had vanished out through the open door. She hauled herself up the steep box stair from the kitchen to the narrow landing and the sliver of a bathroom sliced off the back bedroom (which didn’t have it to spare), smelling nothing except the ordinary staleness of a house left closed too long.
My house
, she thought, putting her hand out and trailing it along the bumpy gloss of the bathroom wall.