Rise (31 page)

Unsettled air about her as she drives. She can feel the molecules she disturbs, feel them form behind her. Hannah clicks her jaw back and forth; it’s always her neck where she carries tension. She parks on their cinder path. Very quietly, she makes her way into the manse. This is her home, and Justine is the guest, but there is something furtive in Justine’s sclutterings, like a little mouse inside their walls. It makes Hannah uneasy. It smacks of ownership, as if their house is Justine’s; a space through which she can pass without permissions or explanation. She wants to see Michael on his own, so she can tell him about the bodies and he can hold her. And she wants to have Ross to herself. She checks her watch. Eight thirty. Shit. Did someone give Ross his tea? Carefully, she creeps upstairs to check. Yes, her baby is there, asleep. Hannah’s heart aches. He’s so pretty. Her selfish, splintered heart. She sits on the edge of Ross’s Transformers duvet, wipes some pink stickiness from his mouth. Fair hair fanned across the pillow, one arm thrown behind his head. He’s always slept like that, from the moment he was born. On his back, fists balled. Until recently, he’d sleep through Armageddon. Unlike Euan, who would thrash and scream and feed-vomit-feed, Ross would acquiesce to bedtime. Whatever way you laid him in his cot, he would swivel into place, flat out and neat. As if he had read all the leaflets about putting baby on their back.
Look Mummy. I am being a good boy.
Yes you are, baby. She leans in for a kiss, absorbing the soft warmth that’s part her, part Michael. There is evidence of baked beans on his chin too, so that’s good.
Thank you, Michael.
You don’t let our children starve. He and Ross and Justine will have had a quiet kitchen tea. If she goes downstairs, Hannah will probably find a half-tin of beans covered with clingfilm and some cold cooked meat set aside for her. She should go, sit. Ask her husband how his day’s been. Share a glass of wine. Hopefully Justine’s out, or in her room.

Hannah returns downstairs, stands for a minute in her muted hallway. Light pools from the lounge, forms a triangular slice across the hallway’s wooden floor. But there are voices coming, definitely, from the kitchen. Which is in darkness. One is agitated, the other soothes.

‘But don’t you see?’

‘I have no good energies, padre.’

‘You do, you do.’ Is that Michael? ‘You don’t judge me.’

‘Ssh. You’ll wake Ross.’

Through a chink in the door, Hannah observes her husband. He is on the floor, with his head on Justine’s breast. His hands are hungry, kneading at her. It is the rooting of a newborn about to suckle. His eyes are closed, otherwise he would see her. Justine is mostly shadow, although there is a steady flash of skin as her hand moves over Michael’s hair.

Hannah feels her bones crack. A fissure splits from her heels to her skull, finding all the little weaknesses, and shattering them. Her skin keeps it all in place. Her mother’s clock in the hall ticks on. She continues to watch her husband and this woman as they stroke. Both fully clad, but there is a nakedness about them. A desperate yearning which is killing her.

Justine speaks. ‘Just tell her. Why not?’

‘I’m frightened. What if it’s
me
?’

‘Well, there you go. If that’s true, it’s coming from you. Which means
you
can control it.’ Her fingers linger on Michael’s brow. Caressing, pointed nails. ‘Unless . . .’

‘What?’ he whispers.

‘Is it because of her, d’you think? Fucking with your head?’

‘Who?’

‘Hannah. Have you really, truly forgiven her?’

And then Hannah’s skin falls away, and she is flayed. Alone. She bangs her arm against the door. The door strikes the tiled wall, stutters back.

‘What the
fuck
is going on?’ Words rolling low from her belly, scattering like buckshot into the darkened kitchen. The pair of them flinch.

‘Hannah!’

‘I let you stay in my house, look after my child, and you try to fuck my husband?’

Justine jumps to her feet. Her hands are up and open, her scratchy nails all pink, that’s
Hannah
’s nail polish.
Hannah
’s husband.

‘
Jesus.
I am not fucking your husband.
Man.
He’s just upset. Do you have any
idea what he’s going through?’

‘Get away. Get away from him.’ A thing, a creature grabs at Justine’s face; it’s Hannah; isn’t that strange, she thinks, full of the need to scratch off flesh, her nails want to rip out Justine’s hair; it’s not a cliché at all. Justine is yelling: ‘Don’t blame me. It’s not been Michael that’s doing the fucking, is it? It’s
you
.’

Hannah cannot breathe. She holds herself tight, hands cupping elbows, and she is rocking, rocking. ‘What have you been telling her?’

‘The truth.’ Michael’s arms are over his head; his own human shield. ‘I had to tell someone the truth.’

Justine moves behind him, soothing like they are the couple and Hannah is the assault. With chill clarity, she realises this is true. And that it’s too late to care.

‘Then what’s the point? What is the point of moving here and smoothing it all over and pretending
we still have a marriage?’

‘Because I love you.’

‘And you show you love me by sleeping with someone else?’

He unwraps his arms from his head. ‘You did.’

There will always be that, wedging in between them. Her body is singing wires; she has to get out.

‘Where are you going?’ says Justine. ‘You’re in no state to drive. Look, why don’t we all get some sleep and talk about this in the morning. Hannah, I swear to you—’

Hannah addresses her husband. ‘You are supposed to be the dependable one. If you can’t even be that, what is the point?’

‘You don’t have a bloody clue. I try, and I try, and you keep on. Shafting. Me. It’s like you enjoy it.’

‘What do I enjoy? Christ, you don’t even speak to me, you never
talk about
anything
, then when you do you talk in riddles. I am
not
a bloody sermon.’

‘The protests, the snide remarks. That letter in the paper? Do you even care—’

‘Ach, Christ. Stop your bloody
whining
. It’s always hand-wringing and whimpering with you; I cannot stand it.’

‘Hannah. You need to stop shouting at him. Trust me—’

‘What did you say?’

The girl shakes her head. She is thin and wiry, and packed, packed, packed with sparkling energy. She is a force-field round Hannah’s husband.

‘Get out, Justine. Get out my bloody house.’

‘No! For God’s sake. Where can she go at this time? Hannah, baby. Be reasonable.’

A stupid, happy song is spinning round her head, about not calling me baby and cars and going far. If Justine won’t leave, Hannah will. She will go and see her son. There is a chair there, he is in a single room. And in the morning she will feed him breakfast, help him wash and she will think about an ending for this story. There’s no space inside her brain to think. She considers waking Ross, but he will be sound till eight and regular as clockwork, and there will be the explaining, and the tears. She cannot deal with that. There’s no need to disturb her baby; she will get him in the morning.

‘Hannah.
Please
.’ Michael is all touching her and sobbing; it is a dribbling grope, she can actually feel his saliva, that is all there is and snot and prising-off fingers and GETTING OUT. She runs for the car, Michael hobbling after.
Go then!
Screaming
If you go, you are never coming back!
and Justine has disappeared; shame that, because in all the excitement she could have run her down but there it is, a missed opportunity probably for the best oh—

Michael, my love. How could you?

The car is clean and cool. It will drive her straight on sleek, empty roads to the hospital . . . no, it’s too late, they won’t let her in; to her mother then . . . no, too far, and she wants peace not lectures. Mhairi. She will go to Mhairi’s house where it perches, apart from the village, by the Nether Meikle stones. To Mhairi, who will care and has a warm empty room and would have made an excellent mother, she is a bad mother to leave her boys, but if Ross is sleeping and he has not slept . . . Did the car that crushed her son glide like this? Did the driver have no real consciousness of what they were doing? Did the road have an unedged fineness about it, where the corners bled away to nothing and you could be skimming earth or air? Hannah parks by the side door of Mhairi’s cottage, presses her forehead on the lintel. Then she pushes her finger into the bell, keeps ringing and ringing until a light comes on.

Chapter Twenty-four

In the kitchen of the manse, the Radio 1 DJ witters to himself in a plastic accent. A crow caws outside. Lorraine is on the telly in the lounge, saying
Really?
and
Och, wee
soul
. The walls are thick, the ceiling cracked. A spider’s web trails from the starry skylight.

‘Want down now, Justi.’

Justine lets Ross slide, his feet connecting with the bench-thing in the hall they keep their junk in. She turns so she’s facing him, then lifts him to the floor. ‘There you go, wee man. I think Caribou needs a drink.’ She has tried everything to keep him amused at home, but they are both stir-crazy.

Ross is a weary old man in pyjamas. ‘I don’t want to play at horses any more.’

‘OK.’ She gives him a hug. ‘You go on up and get dressed, and I’ll be up in a minute, yeah?’

‘Is Mummy coming today?’

‘Not today, baby.’

His face falls.

‘We’ll see her soon, I promise. Will we have pancakes for breakfast?’

He stops, partway up the stairs, and rubs his eye. ‘If you want.’

Enough. They are not in purdah. Michael is slowly losing it. He hasn’t shaved for days, and jumps when she or Ross enter the room. She has a sense he’s continuing a conversation, and that she has interrupted it. Friday night keeps spooling in her mind, it’s like the heartbeat start of
Casualty
: spikes of drama then a dip, drama, then a dip: Frank, running into the pub to fetch her. Michael in the kitchen, on the floor, Hannah coming, a storm of shouting.
Hannah going for the (literal) jugular; Michael sobbing like a girl. Her heart, breaking for him.

Now he just irritates – and frightens – her.

Michael is being pathetic. He is refusing to let Hannah see her son. Bolted the storm doors when Hannah came back, wouldn’t let her in. When she phoned the house from outside, again and again, he made Justine answer. (And that was only after Hannah threatened the answer machine with the police.) He has flipped from woose to belligerent fuckwit. To crazy, if you ask Justine.

At first, all she could hear was a muffled swallowing sound on the end of the line.

‘Is Ross there?’

‘Hannah.’ She glanced at Michael. ‘He can’t talk right now.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. Look, d’you want to speak to Michael?’

Michael’s rabbit-eyes, skittering. When Justine held out the phone, he shook his hands, wild semaphore signals of
No.

‘I want my son.’

‘I know.’

A broken sob. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s upstairs. Playing Angry Birds. Fuck, I’ll go and get him.’

‘No you bloody won’t,’ said Michael, grabbing the phone off her. ‘You left us,’ he shouted into the receiver. ‘I told him. You left us.’ Slamming it down.

‘Michael! You can’t do that!’

‘I just did.’

Immediately, it rang again. Justine got there first. ‘Hannah, I’m
sorry.
’

‘You tell that bastard he’d better get himself a good lawyer.’ She was crying.

‘Hannah, please, please believe me. There is nothing going on between us.’

Some breathing. A gulped: ‘Just put Michael on.’

‘He won’t speak to you. Michael is . . . he’s really hurting, Hannah—’

‘No I’m not! Best thing ever. I should have chucked you out ages ago!’ He yelled, seizing the phone from her –
you do that again, and you’re fired. Understand?
– and a bawling match ensued, ending only when Michael marched out to hide in his study. He’s been doing a lot of that.

‘Hannah?’ She’d picked up the discarded phone. ‘You still there? Wait and I’ll go and get Ross.’

‘Just bring him outside. Now!’

‘I can’t. Michael . . .’ She checked behind her. ‘He’ll chuck me out too. What if I get Ross to the window, though? So he can see you?’

‘
No
. No.’ A little sliding descent. ‘Don’t upset him. Oh Christ.’ She could hear muffled panting.

‘You OK?’

‘I don’t want him to see me . . . like this. How is he?’