A Small Death in the Great Glen (31 page)

“No, it's fine. I was hurt. But looking at you, I understand. And I have Peter.”

This was not said to offend Joanne. Chiara was just stating a fact. Joanne hugged herself in envy, the prickly plaid of the dressing gown making her eyes water.

“I don't think walking out to my car in your boss's dressing gown is a good idea.” Ever-practical Chiara smiled. “Think what the neighbors will say.” She said this in a pretend-shocked broad Scottish voice. “Give me your keys and I'll fetch something from your house. It'll only take me half an hour.” She held out her hand. “I'm presuming Bill's at work?” She didn't fancy running into him. She thought she might kick him in the goolies. Not that Joanne had told her anything.

“He's gone to the west coast for a few weeks.” I hope.

“Good. When you're ready, come back to our house. Papa always says ice cream is the best remedy for falling off your bike.”

That did it. Joanne started to cry. She put her arms on the table, leaned over and sobbed and sobbed. Chiara stood by, patting her on her shoulders crooning, “I know, I know,” almost in tears herself.

“I'll make you tea before I go.” Chiara waved the kettle at her. “I don't suppose there's coffee in this heathen household.” She was banging the cupboards open and shut. “Tea it is then.”

In the warm solitude of the kitchen as she waited for Chiara to return, she understood what her friend had meant. It doesn't really matter what story is told, it's a matter of saving face. Everyone knows but no one wants to confront a battered wife; look the other way, pretend it isn't happening, sweep it under the carpet, and worse, worst of all because this came from women, and usually from the woman herself, “She must have done something to deserve it.” But her complicity in her own fate was shifting.

She looked around, aware of the silence and the warmth and the clean sparse kitchen. She got up and wandered into the sitting room. Again, there was little furniture besides a deep comfortable armchair and a reading lamp, but hundreds and hundreds of books. No bookcases, but books stacked all along the walls at a height just below toppling point, leather bound, cardboard bound, Penguins, manuscripts, notebooks, an atlas open on the floor at the map of countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, the
Oxford English Dictionary
—the complete set making its own stack—bird books, nature books, paleontology, history, philosophy (at least that was what she thought, because she only recognized a few of the names), journals, magazines, old newspapers. She examined the titles, picked up a volume here and there; she had never heard of most of them and many were in French, some in Spanish.

John McAllister, I hardly know him. She was grateful to and
fascinated by the man. He was an enigma. And she wished that long ago, in another lifetime, she had had the chance to meet a man like him—a man who could be a friend, whom she could respect.

When Chiara returned it took almost an hour for them to sort everything out, to make their confessions, to make amends, to forgive and then recover from the rift in their friendship. Chiara was never one to hold on to a grudge. Not like us Scots, Joanne thought, we hold on to grudges as though it was character forming never to forget a grievance.

“The worst thing for me,” Chiara told her, “is watching Peter. He is so confused. He can't bring himself to believe his fellow countryman, Karl, could do something so awful as to kill a child. Even accidentally.”

“The worst thing for me will be facing McAllister in the office,” Joanne confessed.

“Tell him you were drunk and fell off your bike, that's what everyone else does.” They giggled.

“Don't make me laugh, Chiara, it hurts.”

“Stop fussing,” Chiara commanded as her father rushed hither and yon, getting in everyone's way and exasperating his sister, who was trying to serve brimming bowls of soup to the gathering around the table.

“But I like fussing over two such bonnie lassies,” Gino protested. The Scottish phrase sounded so funny in Gino Corelli's Italian accent that Joanne didn't mind. Normally she hated it when non-Scots put on a cod Scottish accent. It made her cringe.

“Peter, you help. Gino, you sit,” Aunty Lita commanded.

Although not yet married to Chiara, Peter was a full-fledged member of the household, so Aunty Lita could boss him around as much as she did the others. For which Peter was grateful.

“Maybe I fetch your wee girls from school, no?”

“Thank you, Mr. Corelli, but they can walk home by themselves again. It's quite safe now that this maniac is locked up.” Joanne caught the wince on Peter Kowalski's face. “I'm so sorry, Peter. I've put my foot in it, haven't I?”

They all turned to their soup and for a good few minutes the only sound was of spoons chiming on china bowls and slurping.

Peter thought about Joanne's assumptions as he walked back across the river to his office. He had spent some considerable hours at Porterfield Prison with Karl. They had conceived of the simple strategy of Karl's pretending his English was almost nonexistent and for some reason, Inspector Tompson had allowed Peter to act as interpreter. Now that Detective Chief Inspector Westland had joined the inquiry team, the inspector had become almost amenable. The senior detective was watchful but quiet. The new turn in the questioning had Peter extremely perplexed; questions about Karl's past—his marital status, his sexual habits, did he like boys, distasteful questions, nasty, murky, insinuations that worried Peter, as he had no inkling what the policemen were referring to. This particular piece of information had somehow managed to remain secret.

“Papa! Delivering Halloween lanterns in an ice-cream van. Honestly!”

“Grandad and the girls loved it,” Joanne told her. “Mind you, Granny Ross looked as though she'd swallowed a soor ploom when she looked out the window.”

“Then the chimes going off! And all those wee ones coming with their pennies, and no ice cream.” Chiara rolled her eyes.

They sang in unison the van jingle that Chiara had insisted her father install. When Gino played the chimes, children came running as though summoned by the Pied Piper of Hamelin himself.

“It is good to see you laugh again, my beautiful Scotch friend.” Gino beamed.

“Scots,” Joanne said automatically.

“Scots, Scotch,
sí, sí.
Beautiful all the same. But we got all the lanterns delivered—twenty-eight of them.”

Joanne stopped laughing.

“I'm sorry I won't be there—no party this year for me, not with this great keeker.”

Chiara looked straight into her one open eye and the other, half-open.

“You'll have to be more careful and not go falling off your bike in future.”

Aunt Lita broke the awkward pause. “Do you dress up for Halloween, like the little children?”

“Every year, except this year …”

“I have an idea.” Lita always wanted everything to be perfect. “We make you a … I don't know the word, a man in a boat, from old times, with one eye and a big sword and a hat and feather.”

“A pirate.”

“
Sí, sí.
Wonderful. We make a frilly for a shirt and I find a hat and—a one-eye mask?”

“An eyepatch. The sword?” queried Joanne.

“I've my Highland dancing sword,” Chiara offered.

“Perfect. Now all we is need a big feather,” ordered Lita.

“Margaret has feathers,” cried Joanne, “but I'll have to hurry, there's only a few hours to the party.”

Leaving the chatter and laughter of the Corelli household, Joanne realized what a good idea it had been to invite them to the Halloween party. Gino so wanted to be back as a member of his adopted community. As she neared the double-story council semi, to see the girls before dashing off to borrow feathers from Margaret McLean, Joanne remembered again the look on her mother-in-law's face when the ice-cream van had arrived. Hilarious. And at the sight of her son's handiwork—Joanne's eye was still purple in parts, shaded with a bilious yellow green—at least she had the decency to look embarrassed.

Joanne had not been back to the office. Yesterday, a quiet day at home, no work, no husband, children at school, had given her thinking space to wrestle with two puzzles in urgent need of resolution; a Fair Isle pattern in twelve colors for a jumper for Annie, and the perennial dilemma of her marriage. The knitting had resolved itself. The soft bright shades of Highland Glen wools, now unfankled, were framed in their traditional rows, formed a clear pattern. The puzzle of her marriage was harder to sort out. Leave? If I could, I would. Of this she was now sure. But where
to
? There was no solution to that.

Grandad Ross was taking Annie and Wee Jean to the party. He loved all the Halloween rigmarole. Granny Ross was delivering baskets of tablet and toffee apples, as well as lending a tin bath for dooking apples. She was waiting for her church friends to pick her up in their car. She greeted Joanne's news with a face like a disapproving duchess. But the girls had cheered.