The Child Garden (19 page)

Twenty-Five

Friday

When I opened my
eyes again, a thin, cold light was seeping in around the edges of the curtains. I knew what that meant: it had snowed in the night. I groaned and slumped onto my back to stare up at the ceiling. But where the bed should have been behind me, cold and blank, there was a warm bulk stopping me from rolling all the way. I turned. Stig was propped up on one elbow watching me.

“Morning.”

“What time is it?” I asked him.

“Half seven,” he said. “I'll go and get some coffee now. I didn't want to wake you by thrashing about like a walrus getting off a rock.”

He eased himself out without lifting the covers or making any drafts, and then shuffled off across the room and out into the corridor. The cats leapt down and followed him with their tails high and waving at the ends.

“You shouldn't do that,” I called after him. “You're always putting yourself down.”

“I know,” he called back. “Oprah would have me across her knee for a good thrashing. I've written to her and asked, more than once.”

“She's old enough to be your mother!” I shouted to him.

“So she's old enough to spank me then.”

Walter had heard him and started barking, and Stig switched his attention forward to the closed kitchen door. I lay back and smiled. It was the last easy laughter between us, the last morning when we'd wake up finding comfort in our togetherness in spite of all the trouble we were in and the dangers we were facing. When Stig came back with two cups of his rolling-pin coffee, opened the curtains on the snowy garden, and got back into bed beside me with a long groan like an old man, it was the happiest moment I'd had in a lot of years and happier, in a way, than any moment I'd ever have again.

He took one sip of his coffee and then stopped dead as though he'd been turned to stone.

“What?” I asked him. He set the cup down on the bedside table, swung his legs out and got up again—leapt up, no old-man moving noises this time. He went back to the window and peered around the edge of the net curtain.

“What?” I said again, jumping out of bed and going to stand beside him, ignoring the cold of the floor under my bare feet. Outside, the garden lay under a good fall of snow, at least for Galloway. The longer tussocks of grass were poking through, but all the flat places and the paths, the steps, and the tops of the hedges were blanked out. Stig pointed, and I followed his finger, then gasped. Footprints. Footprints leading to the rocking stone and away from it, and a jumble of footprints all around it. Stig swept out of the room and downstairs with me following him.

“I'll go,” I said grabbing his arm in the porch. “In case someone's still there. They mustn't see you.” So I slipped on my Wellingtons and put a coat on over my nightie and opened the front door. The snow was crisp under my boots, as though the temperature had dropped since it fell, freezing it to a crust. I took care climbing the steps to where the stone sat, scared that my trembling legs would betray me and I would slip and crack some part of myself on these chunks of cold red sandstone. But I made it and stepped onto the rough grass where the daffodils grow. I stopped a few feet from the nearest print, then took one more careful step forward and bent to examine it. Like the virgin snow all around, it had frozen in the hours since it was made.

“You can come out,” I called back down to Stig. “They're long gone.”

He took no care at all, bounding up the steps and skidding a little, but, like me, he stopped well away from the prints and studied them.

“Not cloven anyway,” he said. “That's something.”

I tried to laugh, but he shushed me.

“I'm not kidding, Glo,” he said. “When I saw them I thought,
That's it then. There's the proof.
Steps leading away and steps coming back again. It took me until just now to realise it could be the other way. Someone came and then they left.”

“But where did they go?” I said. I walked over to the front gate and studied the footprints disappearing along the drive to the lane. “They must have parked quite a way off for us not to hear them.”

“Dunno,” said Stig. “I'm quite a deep sleeper. How about you?”

“Not usually,” I admitted, and I thought I could feel my cheeks warming.

Stig gave a small half smile. “Yeah,” he said. “First night we've both felt safe to fall asleep completely. Bloody typical, eh?”

His words had started off another worry. I sprinted around the stone and peered across the garden to the locked byre where his car was hidden, but the snow was as smooth as a counterpane. Whoever had been here hadn't gone snooping. I looked back at the front of the house and felt my shoulders drop with relief.

“Your bedroom curtains aren't shut,” I said.

“I never shut my curtains,” said Stig. “Why? What's the problem?”

“No, that's good. It means whoever was here wouldn't think there was anyone else in the house but me.”

“Whoever was here,” echoed Stig, and he turned to the footprints in front of us again. He put one of his own feet down beside the nearest one. “I'm size nine,” he said. “This looks like a ten to me. It's not quite a
walking boot, but it's not just a shoe. What do you think, Glo? A rock
ing-stone enthusiast with the worst timing in the history of the world?”

“Not at night,” I said. I thought for a minute. “You know who's a size ten? Duggie. And we were talking about this place—or the huttie anyway—at the home last night.”

“Gloria, plenty of men have got size-ten feet.”

“But how many of them were at Eden with you?” I said.

“My brother's a ten,” said Stig.

“And your brother knows that I'm involved,” I said. “It wouldn't be too hard for him to find out where I live.”

“I didn't mean that. I meant my brother,
for instance
. My dad's a ten too.”

I swung round and gave him a hard look. “What are you saying? You think your dad's involved?”

“I'm saying,” he said, in a loud, slow voice, “that ten is a really common shoe size.”

“Stig,” I said, nearly as slow but not so loud, “we need to talk about your family sometime. They owned the school where this happened and nobody understands why. Why they opened it.”

“They didn't open it. It was my dad. Just him on his own. Nothing to do with my mum. She hated the idea from the start, and she's never shut up about it since.” He started to say something else, but bit it off. “Anyway, why would my dad or my brother be here in the middle of the night looking at the stone? Why would
Duggie
be out here looking at the stone, for God's sake?”

“Because he's the only other boy from Eden who's still alive.” I walked around the stone, peering at its base.

“That makes no sense,” Stig said, following me. “Mind you, at least Duggie or whoever it was didn't come out here to rock it thirteen times and release Armageddon. There's no break in the snow at the base.”

“So what was the point?” I said.

“To frighten you,” said Stig. “A woman alone with all of this going on.”

“But who knows that any of this is going on?” I said. “And knows that I know? It must be Duggie, or who else?”

“But he doesn't know everything,” Stig said, putting an arm around me. I was shivering badly and he felt warm even though he was only in a sweatshirt. “Come in and I'll make some fresh coffee. Duggie can stuff himself, trying to frighten you, because you're not alone, are you?”

The Irvings' place wasn't so very different from Rough House, or any other of the endless Galloway farmhouses made on the same design, like a child's drawing of a house with two windows either side of the front door and three windows in a row above. It even had the same bumpy track with tussocks of dock and dandelion growing up the middle. The frozen stalks scraped the underneath of my car as I trundled along. The view was different though. Where I had the rolling hills outside my back windows and the solid bulk of the Milharay wood outside my front windows, Low Borgue farmhouse sat in the middle of endless blank fields, cruelly exposed, not so much as a hawthorn bush to protect it from the biting wind coming at it off the sea. Maybe in the summertime that arc of sky with the sun rolling gently across it all day and the stars scattered like spilled jewels all night would be a blessing, but now, in the winter, the house seemed naked and tiny, huddled in the inadequate shelter of its low garden walls and showing the stress of standing against the battering wind in its lopsided chimneys and leaning gateposts. Even the very stone it was built from was starting to crumble from the wind and rain, the smooth facing slipping off in flakes, leaving soft pockmarks, exposed to let the rain seep in and begin the work of killing the house from the inside too.

I couldn't help my spirits sinking as I climbed out of the car, shouldered open the gate (tied with twine where the hinges should be), and trampled over the few feet of dead weeds and slushy gravel to the front door.

There was no bell or knocker, so I just rapped on the blistered wood and waited.

Before long there came a scuffling inside and a rough voice, dark and guttural: “Who is it?”

I had considered a couple of different plans on the drive over. The Church of God again, a true crime article in the making, even the truth. But by the time I had got to the Dumfries bypass and the big Tesco, my nerve failed me; all I could think was that I had been to Mrs. Best's door, to Mrs. Jameson's, to Glasgow where that shopkeeper had clocked me, and up to Barrwherry asking questions of an obvious nosey parker. And I couldn't stop remembering the neighbour in the physio's uniform, looking at me and saying,
Don't I know you? Didn't you live here? You look exactly the same.
Could I really go to another family touched by Eden and ask my questions again? What if the police were putting it together and doing the same? They'd soon have an APB out for someone who looked like me. They'd have their prime suspect and a great description of her: hairdo, wardrobe, and all.

Only if they suspected that a woman could do these things, I told myself, and women don't do these things, except in books. Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca, Snow White's stepmother, Lady Macbeth and her unwashable hands.

Right then I almost thought of something; I saw it whisking away round the corner as I turned towards it, but when I tried to follow it, it was gone.

Better be on the safe side, I decided, so I pulled into Tesco's car park and went shopping. It was remarkably easy, and not even all that expensive. I chose high, wedge-heeled boots in plum-coloured suede and black trousers that skimmed the top of them. They were made of some kind of very sturdy elasticated fabric I had never come across before. I pulled it in every direction, wondering what it must be like to sew seams into, then I put the trousers over my arm and went looking for tops too. Standing in the changing room, I looked at myself in the pink and black leopard-print chiffon blouse and the black fake-leather jacket; in the sturdy trousers, balanced on the not-quite-sturdy-enough wedge heels. I clipped on the earrings I had chosen and then set to unwinding my hair. It was longer than I thought. I don't look in mirrors much and the small one in the bathroom that I use to make sure my parting is straight only shows me from my scalp to my chin. I had no idea that my hair would cover me to the elbows.

After I had wrenched off the price-tags to go through the check-out, I walked carefully back to the accessories stand and chose a big clip like a monster's jaw. I scraped some hair back, let some fall out, pulled some into tendrils and, even though I felt as if I'd been dragged through a hedge, I looked similar to how some other women look, and that was all I wanted. I helped myself to some testers of rouge and lip-gloss and then went to pay for what I was wearing and get a bag for my dress and mackintosh, my warm tights and flat shoes.

It was a marvellous disguise, but it didn't help me come up with a story. Even when I was standing on the doorstep at Low Borgue and that harsh voice behind the shut door demanded to know who I was, I had no answer.

“Rain? Sun?” I said. “I want to talk to you about Cloud.”

“Are you one of
them
?” the voice shot back.

I considered whether a yes or a no would be more likely to open the door, but before I had decided, she went on. (I was sure it was a she now; the more she spoke the reedier she sounded, although there was still a gruffness that made me wonder if she was ill.)

“Look, you'll have to come round the back anyway,” she said. “This key doesn't work.”

Walking round the house gave me a bit more time to come up with something, but then seeing what was round there put it out of my mind. The yard at Rough House is no beauty spot, but the yard at Low Borgue was in another league.

There were two cars, one with flat tyres and one with no tyres at all, and at some point the Irvings had given up dragging their wheelie­bin to the road-end. There were black bin bags, some ripped open with their contents strewn around, piled up half-under an open hayshed. The green tinge on the lower bags told me that this mountain had been underway since summer at least.

Making my way to the back door I passed a television set, one of the big old heavy ones, and a Hoover, one of the new grey and purple ones, and right by the back door there was a burnt-out frying pan sitting on the step, the congealed fat showing where birds or rodents had pecked out scraps. I knocked softly on the back door, but it was already moving, already opening.

“Hi,” I said.

The woman who stood there told a story that matched the tale of the farmyard in every particular. I could believe she was my age, but her life had been harder than mine. She was rail thin, her bony chest poking out in the middle, her chicken-bone legs looking too frail to support her. Only her swollen fingers and the bags under her eyes—both purple—weren't wizened. Her face—a once-beautiful face, I thought, with enormous dark eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and an arching jaw—was blotched and yet also sallow. She took a deep drag of her cigarette, and the way her cheeks hollowed told me that she had lost at least some of her teeth. She coughed richly, covering her mouth with the crook of her arm, and stood back to let me enter.