Chosen (41 page)

‘Well done,' Dodie says. The snout of the pig is indented into the palm of her hand. Her skin has tightened with the cold of the air-conditioning. They find the boulevard without trouble and start to count the houses but the numbers aren't sequential. It's a long, rich road, houses set back from the street, behind trees, no two identical. Some are mock Tudor, or castle-like, and some are modernist boxes of glass and steel.

It takes three trips along the road until they find the house, one of the starkly modern ones. In front of it a bush is studded with pink blossoms big as human hearts. Rebecca pulls the car onto the empty drive. When they step outside they're met by a wave of heat, and the sound and smell of the ocean. A bird chips away regularly as if counting out the seconds. They get to the door and ring the bell but there's no answer and the house is still.

‘Sure this is the one?' Dodie says, although it clearly is.

Seth has a pee in the bushes. ‘Sorry,' he says, looking over his shoulder, ‘can't wait.'

It's like a film set with all the shining from the polished steel, the glass, the sea and the glossy leaves.

‘We'll get him,' Rebecca says. She hammers on the door. ‘Oi!' she shouts. ‘Anyone in there? Martha?'

‘What if it's a trick?' Dodie says. ‘We should phone the police.'

‘Not yet,' Rebecca says.

‘But what if . . . what if . . .' No, no, no, don't go there, don't think like that. She sinks down on the wooden step.

Seth squeezes down the side of the property. He comes back with petals in his hair.

‘I'll climb over and go round the back,' he says. ‘Might be able to get in.'

Dodie rattles and hammers at the door, searches under shrubs and stones for a key. And then the door opens and Seth is there, grinning, though his face is so pale that the grin is ghastly.

‘Back door was unlocked,' he says. ‘There's steps down to the beach. No sign of anyone though.'

Dodie swallows. She's almost reluctant now to step in. Better maybe to stay here in this spot and never know. A bright green insect climbs the doorframe, opens its leafy wings and zips away. Rebecca steps inside and Dodie follows. It's sparsely luxurious with so much white and wood and – she catches her breath – a childish scribble on the wall. A wax crayon. A little shoe. And then Jake, all alone, sitting in a vast white room among a drift of loose screwed-up and scribbled-on pages.

‘Anything?' Rebecca calls from upstairs.

Dodie holds herself back a moment and makes her voice come out smoothly.

‘Yes,' she calls, her voice an octave too high. ‘He's here. Jakey . . .'

‘Mumma.' He drops his crayon, pushes himself up on his feet and comes towards her, dribble running down his chin.

‘Hi, sweetheart,' she says.

Rebecca and Seth are there.

‘Thank fuck for that!' Seth shouts. His fist flies into the air.

‘Come on, Jake,' Dodie says. She scoops him off his feet and buries her nose in his soapy clean neck.

He giggles. ‘Mumma,' he says again, patting her.

‘Mumma's here,' she says.

‘Dink,' Jake says.

Dodie carries him back into the kitchen. There's an empty feeder cup on the floor. She fills it with water and he glugs it back, the whole cupful in one noisy go. She fills it again and he drinks half.

‘Oh, he's so
cute
,' Rebecca says.

‘Can I?' Seth holds out his arms. Dodie is reluctant to let go but she hands him over.

‘Watcha, mate,' he says, but Jake struggles to get down. He waddles about sprinkling water from his cup on the silver-flecked floor tiles.

‘So where the fucking hell is Martha?' Rebecca says.

Dodie spots half a cup of coffee on the counter. It's still warm. ‘Martha?' she calls, but they already know she's not in the house. ‘She must only just have left,' she says.

Jake trots through into the wide, glass-fronted sun lounge. Dodie peers through the window, but can't see Martha, or anyone, on the beach. It's starting to get dark, the sun swelling scarlet as it dips closer to the sea.

Rebecca kneels on the floor to gather the scattered pages. ‘She's written tons,' she says. ‘Jake's ruined some of it. Here, this looks like it's the start. It's for you.' She hands Dodie a splattery tattered page.

Written for Dodie
, it says.

Stella and Me
.

In May 1974, when I was sixteen, and Stella thirteen, our mother died of drink. Dad was in Saudi with his brand-new family. We nearly had to go and live in Peebles with Aunt Regina, but we convinced the social worker not to

‘It's about Mum,' Dodie tells Seth.

‘Let's see.' He takes the page from her and Dodie stoops to pick up another:

I don't know how long until we found Stella. We'd gone miles I think. We'd gone way past the places where it was safe and easy to walk. She was in the mud.

Seth picks up some random pages and reads, frowning. Dodie gives up. She'll read it later. The words make her eyes sting and she presses her fingers to her temples.

‘Martha is my aunt,' she mutters. ‘Doesn't make sense.'

‘
The dream was convenient, just as Stella said. It was expedient
,' reads Seth.

‘What does that mean?' Rebecca says.

Seth shakes his head and lets the papers flutter to the ground, then grabs Dodie and hugs her hard. She still finds it odd that her little brother is taller than she is; his chin rests on top of her head.

‘We'll be OK,' he says, that touching scrape in his voice, that fledgling manliness, ‘won't we?'

‘Up?' Jake tries to squeeze in between them, arms outstretched. Seth swings him into the air and he shrieks with joy.

‘Yeah, we'll be all right,' she says.

‘So what about your boyfriend?' Rebecca says. ‘Where's he?'

Dodie blinks and sighs. Yes, she'll have to think about Rod. ‘He went travelling,' she says, ‘but I could try him. He should know where we are. Seen a phone?'

They hunt about and find it and she sits, feet curled under her on the sofa – which is white, but grubbed with dirty little handprints – and keys in the number and waits. Rebecca brings her a glass of water. Jake stands beside her, gnawing on a biscuit. His fingers flex against her knee the way they did when he was tiny and breastfeeding, a kind of kneading. She tries Rod's mobile and gets the message:
Sorry, but this phone is not currently in use
. She finds international
directory enquiries and rings his mother's number. Jeannie answers quickly, in her neat, clipped voice:

‘Jean Stewart speaking.'

Dodie's mouth has gone so dry she has to take a sip of water before she can speak.

‘Hello there?' Jeannie says.

‘It's Dodie.'

Jeannie takes a breath. ‘Dodie, well hello there, dear.' The voice warms. ‘And how are you?'

‘I'm fine,' Dodie says. She smiles wryly at Rebecca.

‘Are you still in America?'

‘Yeah, me and Jake.'

‘I am glad you rang,' Jeannie says. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘Sorry?'

‘I do hope we can stay in touch? I hope you'll let me continue to see my grandson?'

‘Er . . .' Dodie begins, and then she understands. ‘Yes,' she says, falsely bright, ‘of course.'

‘It's been such fun getting to know the wee fellow.'

‘I'll bring him to visit,' Dodie says.

‘I am sorry about my son, dear; ashamed of him to tell you the truth. And I don't know about this new lassie. He's just, oh I don't know, he's got no sticking power. No sense of responsibility.'

‘No.'

‘I gave him a piece of my mind, you know. I said,
When are you going to grow up and be a man?
'

‘It's OK,' Dodie says, quickly. ‘Talk to you again soon.' She cuts off the call.

So. That's that, then. Rod has really left her for someone else. Inside her chest there's a sharp sensation, like the give of the final filament of fraying rope, and then she drops. But she doesn't drop far. After everything she's been through, this doesn't seem that much. She goes to stand with her face to the ocean. The glass is smeared with a blossomy frieze of handprints at Jake's height. The red-stained waves silently heave and flop. Someone is walking a dog in the distance. There's a tree in the sand, a whole tree, washed up as driftwood, silvery in the dusk.

Seth has found the remote and is flicking through the channels on a vast flat-screen TV; each hopping blurt and blare of sound makes Dodie jump. Jake gawps at the screen. ‘Let's find a cartoon,' Seth says.

‘Rod's left me,' Dodie says, as she turns. She scoops up Jake and holds him, warm and solid in her arms.

‘Shit,' Seth says.

‘No, it's OK,' she says. ‘Honest.'

‘Sure?' Rebecca says.

‘Yeah?' Seth waits to be reassured by her smile, and goes back to the TV.

Dodie's stomach growls. Her jeans are falling off her wonderfully, there's space between her thighs. She'll have to go shopping for new clothes. Skinny, at last. Will she be able to stay like that? She hitches Jake onto her hip and he snuggles his face against her neck.

‘We must eat,' she says.

‘Can we send out for pizza?' Seth asks.

‘Sounds good.'

‘I could handle a drink – like a
drink
, drink.' Rebecca puts the gathered manuscript on a shelf out of Jake's reach.

Dodie wanders round the house, murmuring nonsense to Jake, who submits to her nuzzling his neck and inhaling his smell, giggling at the tickle of her breath. The massive fridge, she finds, is full of cheese and cake, wine and cream and dozens of pots of organic infant food – though Jake's been on normal food for ages. She takes a bottle of wine and carries it through, just as Seth shouts: ‘Dodie! Holy shit! Look!'

The screen is filled with Our Father's face. Dodie puts Jake down and sinks onto the sofa to watch a helicopter-eye view of flames and firefighters. An excited newscaster, wind flapping her hair, talks into her microphone: ‘Tragedy strikes in upstate New York. The religious cult known as the Church of Soul-Life disintegrates after the death of leader Alan Robertson. Many of the followers appear to have entered into a suicide pact. This community has recently been the subject of an IRS crackdown as well as
numerous lawsuits from families who claim their kids have been brainwashed into abandoning their families . . .'

Speechlessly they sit and watch. A picture of Obadiah – the financial mastermind, they call him – and then there's Daniel, along with Hannah, being led away by a policewoman. Daniel's head is bowed, but Hannah smiles at the camera, blinks and holds her thumb.

Now the screen is filled with a picture of Martha, taken years ago when her hair was still brown. ‘This woman, Martha Woods, also known as Melanie Anna Woods, is wanted by the authorities to be questioned on several counts.'

‘Turn it off,' Dodie says.

‘What?' Seth is gripped, leaning towards the screen.

‘
Please
,' Dodie says.

‘But I want to watch.'

‘Me too.' Rebecca sloshes wine into glasses.

‘I'll be outside then,' Dodie says. She steps out, shuts the door against the news, humming to try and block her own scrambling thoughts. She carries Jake down the wooden steps onto the beach. The darkening sea roars, though it isn't rough. Jake squeals and struggles to be let down. As soon as his feet touch the ground, he's off, sand puffing up behind his feet. Dodie removes her boots and socks, leaves them by the steps and follows Jake, relishing the emptiness of the beach and the cool sensation of shifting sand under her soles, between her toes. And then she catches sight of a woman standing at the edge of the sea. The waves sweep over the woman's feet and run away again, surf hissing. She appears to have seen Dodie, but stands frozen, except for the flapping of her skirt. And then, tentatively, she raises her hand.

Dodie will go and say hello, say what else, she doesn't know. But first she takes a deep lungful of fresh salty air and tips back her head to see, floating high above her in the inky sky, a single star.

With thanks for their help to Bill Hamilton, Andrew Greig, Shirley Henderson and all at Tindal Street Press.