Black Wood (7 page)

‘I’ll be in touch. Oh, and if you think of anything else – either of you – feel free to give me a call.’ He handed them both a business card before nodding a goodbye.

He waited until he was back in the panda car before swearing.

He knew exactly which cut-through they were referring to. It came out right next to Martin Brotherstone’s back gate.

The flat seemed to shrink in on me, stopping me from breathing. I ran downstairs to the car park, leant against the wall.

Breathe in … out … in … out …

One of those things that should be obvious. One of those things I sometimes forgot to do.

Eventually, I relaxed.

It was barely four o’clock and the day was still warm, and with nothing to do until I met Claire in the Rowan Tree at seven, I decided to go for another walk. Something was dragging me towards that cottage.

Walking had always been a favourite activity of mine. When I was a kid and everyone else was out on their new bikes – the BMXs, the Grifters, the Raleigh racers, and eventually the chunky-tyred mountain bikes – I’d bucked the trend and stuck with walking as my primary mode of transport. I don’t mean rambling or hiking or – God forbid – climbing hills. Just a leisurely pace, through the streets, along the burn. Sometimes through the woods.

Back in the late nineties, everyone used to head down to the beach, which was a good ten miles away from Banktoun. A fairly easy route to get there, mostly downhill. But coming back at the end of the day, fried from the harsh northern sun and stuffed full of greasy fish and chips, was a different story. I’d done it once, borrowing my dad’s racer. At the end of it my arse felt like it had been rubbed raw, my thighs cramped tight from the effort. After that, I’d walked, sometimes hitching part of the way on a tractor or getting a lift from some of the older kids like Barry Anderson, who had a Ford Escort Mark II and would pick up anyone as long as they supplied him with fags or let him cop a feel. He’d given me a can of cider one day. Told me I was gorgeous. I lost my virginity to him in the sand dunes on a summer’s day in ’95. I’d hated the way his hands pawed at me, but I’d let him carry on.

I saw him sometimes, down the pub. Twenty years of hard drinking, fighting and labouring for the local builder had taken its toll on his once boyband-esque features; the deep lines on his cheeks seemed as if they’d been carved from stone. He still liked me, though, and over the years I’d grown to crave the rough feel of his hands against the softness of my skin.

Before I knew where I was, I was at the bus stop on the bridge on Burndale Road.

Across the road, diagonally opposite me, was Rose Cottage.

I examined the timetable at the back of the shelter, as if I was checking the time of the next bus into Edinburgh, then I turned and sat down on the hard plastic seat. From my viewpoint I could see clearly into the wide bay window to the left of the door to the cottage. I didn’t know what was in there now, but it had once been a dining room, when the McAllisters had lived there. The smaller window on the other side of the entrance was where their living room had been. A poky room and with far fewer features, but the McAllisters had been more interested in entertaining with food, hence the apparent switch of the rooms.

I’d always thought Polly McAllister was a stuck-up cow, but Claire had met her at gymnastics and seemed to think she was all right. I’d never seen the appeal of star jumps or forward rolls or throwing yourself over a pommel horse, but Claire had been something of a child prodigy so I had to pretend to be interested. Maybe if someone had been bothered enough to encourage me to try it out, I might have felt differently.

It was the Friday of the last day of term and we’d been let out of school early. My parents were away at a trades fair, trying to hawk their horrendous gold-plated jewellery like a couple of cut-price Gerald Ratners, so I was entrusted to Claire’s mum and dad until early evening when they got back from Glasgow. We still weren’t exactly friends, but she was the closest thing I had to one. I think she liked me more than she made out, but she still liked to disown me in front of her ‘proper’ pals.

‘Polly’s invited us for tea and Mum says it’s OK, so we’re going,’ Claire had said, in a tone that beggared no argument. She was stuffing her ridiculous collection of multicoloured dog rubbers into her fluffy pink pencil case.

My bag fell off the desk onto the floor and everything tipped out. Pencils, felt-tip pens, the pack of neat new blue jotters I’d stolen from Miss Reece’s cupboard. I felt my cheeks grow hot, terrified that Claire had seen. She would definitely tell on me if she had. We were allowed one jotter per subject, but I liked them in their little shrink-wrapped packs. They were nicer than any of the pads you could buy in the shops. I got a buzz from taking them. Something that prissy Claire would never understand.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Me as well?’

‘Yes, you as well. What’re you moaning about? Her mum and dad have got a brand-new stereo and Polly’s got
New Kids on the Block
, and anyway, you’d like her if you gave her a chance.’

‘She’s a hippy bloody vegetarian!’ I said.

‘So? And don’t say bloody. You’re not allowed.’

I snorted. ‘You just said it. Bloody, bloody,
bloody!
’ I said the last one loud, right in her ear and she flinched. I had a bad habit of trying to wind Claire up, just to get a reaction. It always worked.

‘You’re a … you’re an idiot, Jo,’ she said, and her cheeks flushed crimson. Claire was such a goody-goody. Even
idiot
was a bad word to her back then.

‘OK. But I’m going to ask for sausages for tea,’ I said. ‘I’m not a rabbit.’

Claire rolled her eyes and we picked up our bags and left the classroom. We were the last to leave, and Polly was waiting for us at the main gate with her mum. Her mum had a curled-under fringe like Karen Carpenter and wore a garish, flowing kaftan. Polly had a similar fringe, but her hair was a bit too coarse so it always uncurled at the edges and looked like it was trying to escape off her head. She was wearing a purple hand-knitted dress, even though it was July. Claire blended in, with her dungarees, and I was pleased I’d decided to wear the short red double-frilled skirt that made me look far trendier than both of them.

‘Polly tells me you’re thinking of playing the trumpet, Joanne,’ Polly’s mum said.

‘Hmm,’ I said, trying to buy myself a bit of time. I’d forgotten I’d made that up and I was struggling to think what else I might’ve lied to Polly about to make myself sound more interesting than her. ‘Maybe. Or the double bass.’

Polly looked at me like she’d just scraped me off her shoe. ‘Ten-year-old girls can’t play the double bass,’ she said sniffily. ‘It’s
far
too big!’

Polly and Claire giggled and I felt a little knot of rage in my stomach.

‘Can too!’ I said. I kicked a stone and it flicked up and hit Polly’s mum on the back of the leg. She whirled round, her face full of anger, then the look slid off her face and she was Mrs McAllister the smiling hippy again and I muttered a quiet ‘sorry’.

‘It’s aubergine and sweet-potato pie for tea, Joanne,’ she said. ‘I hope that’s OK.’

‘My favourite,’ I said, and then we were there, at Rose Cottage, and all I could think about was how soon could we leave and go back to Claire’s, where her mum would have a freshly baked chocolate cake to celebrate the first day of the summer holidays.

I was vaguely aware of a change in the light. The sun making its way westwards to start a new day in another world. I was still staring at Rose Cottage when I saw the yellow hue of a lamp being switched on in the bay window, a shadow of a figure, then the curtains being drawn.

I wondered if it was Gareth Maloney.

On the other end of the bench, an old man was singing quietly to himself, and I turned to him with a feeling of mild alarm. I hadn’t noticed him sit down. Had he been talking to me?

‘Excuse me, have you got the time please?’

He pulled up the sleeve of a threadbare beige cardigan to reveal one of those watches with the elasticated metal strap. It looked about as old as him. ‘Ten to, hen,’ he said. ‘Bus’ll be here the now.’

‘Ten to six?’

He laughed, and it turned into a cough. I waited for him to recover himself, feeling panic rising in my chest. ‘Naw. Ten to seven.’

Had I really been sitting there for over two hours?

‘Thanks,’ I muttered, already off the seat.

I took off down Burndale Road in the direction of town.

Claire hated it when I was late.

I nodded at the barman as I walked in. He was slowly drying a pint glass with a blue and white dishcloth.

‘She’s up the back,’ he said. ‘You’ve got one in the tap, I’ll bring it over.’

His name was Gary and he’d been the year below me and Claire at school. He was all right now, but he used to be a nasty little shit at school and I hadn’t completely forgiven him. I ignored him and walked past a crowd of teenagers who were nursing a pint between them and methodically ripping up the beer mats. Next to them, an elderly couple sat, studiously ignoring each other, him with a half-drunk pint of something dark in front of him, her with a stemmed glass of clear liquid with a sliver of lemon drowning beneath the surface.

‘You’re late,’ she said and squinted up at me, taking in my latest follicular disaster.

‘Sorry …’ I let my voice tail off. ‘Was someone with you?’

To the right of her sat an empty pint glass, the foam still mobile on the inside, suggesting that it’d recently been finished. Her own glass had trickles of condensation running down the outside, her sauv blanc still icy cold.

Her eyes flicked to the right and she blinked a couple of times. I could always tell when Claire was about to tell me a lie. We joked about it. Sang the Eagles song about the lying eyes. I didn’t feel like singing it then, though; I felt a strange uneasiness.

‘Jake was here. You just missed him.’

Who else
.

‘Hmm. It’s almost as if you magic him away when I appear. How
do
you do that, Claire?’ I hadn’t meant for it to come out nastily, but when I played it back in my head, I realised it sounded bitter. As far as Claire was concerned, I had no interest in Jake, and the feeling was mutual. He was just the boy from across the road who, for some reason, she’d taken a shine to. Or maybe it was the other way round. Claire was good at collecting waifs and strays. Maybe I had more in common with Jake than I thought.

She opened her mouth to say something just as Gary the barman appeared. He slid a Belhaven Best mat towards me and placed my pint of Strongbow on top. Claire smiled at him and he walked off, stopping on his way past the teenagers to scoop up the ripped pile of beer mats they’d left at the edge of the table.

Claire took a sip of her wine.

I sat down. ‘What were you going to say?’

She sighed. ‘Doesn’t matter. How are you, Jo?’

I gazed at her and smiled. She looked lovely, as usual, her blonde hair twisted up neatly at the back of her head. She put her glass back down on her mat and the soft chiffon of her blouse rustled with the movement. I glanced down at my own scruffy outfit and felt grubby. I probably didn’t smell too fresh either, compared with Claire and her characteristic floral scent. She stared at me across the table and her eyes shone in that way that they did when she wasn’t really there.

When people met Claire for the first time they’d be forgiven for thinking there was nothing wrong with her. It was only occasionally, when it happened like this: when the light changed behind her eyes, like someone had flipped a switch. Then before you knew it, she’d blink, and she’d be back and her eyes would say silently,
Now, where was I?
I rarely noticed it any more.

‘So Scott dumped me,’ I said.

She blinked. Came back. ‘Yeah. God, that’s shitty, Jo. I thought things were going well. Didn’t you say you’d talked about getting engaged later this year?’

I picked up my pint and downed half of it in one. ‘Hmm. Yeah. I really don’t know, to be honest. I mean, he’d been a bit odd for a while, now that I think about it.’

‘Odd, how?’

‘Oh, you know. Distant. Like he had something to tell me but he didn’t know how to. I reckon there might be someone else …’

‘The prick! Who?’

‘Well, he didn’t actually
say
there was someone else, but … I don’t know. Really. I mean, what else could it be? I was still giving him BJs …’

Claire laughed. ‘So oral sex is the gauge of a relationship now, is it? Did you read that in
Cosmo
or something?’ She shook her head. ‘You’re priceless, you know.’

I stared at her. ‘I wasn’t joking. Don’t you do that with Jake? I mean, it’s probably one of the easiest things you
can
do, what with—’

She gave me a filthy look and I stopped talking.
Fucking hell, Jo. You do say the most inappropriate things sometimes
.

‘I’m going to the toilet,’ she said. ‘You should get yourself another drink. I’m fine with this one.’

She moved as she spoke, sliding her way along the wooden bench seat. She pulled the wheelchair in closer, then put her hand on the table and levered herself up. I leant forwards to steady her chair, then stopped myself and sat back. She hated it when people tried to help her like that. She hovered, half-standing for a second or two, before flopping into the wheelchair. She swivelled and spun it out of the alcove, then propelled herself along with her arms towards the ladies’. She rammed the metal kick plate with her footplate and disappeared inside.

The barman reappeared at the table. ‘Same again?’ he said. He looked at me pityingly.
Must be hard having a friend like that.

No
, I thought.
It must be hard having a friend like me
.

‘Just for me, Gary,’ I said and handed him a pile of coins.

He’d brought me the second pint and Claire still hadn’t come back. I contemplated going in to see if she was OK, but I knew she wouldn’t like it.

I tried to formulate the words in my head into an appropriate sentence.