Jenny was dazzled by the low sun as she drove over the Queensferry Crossing. Behind her Edinburgh was in twilight but here the sun hunkered on the horizon, light shimmering off the Forth like a sea of fire. The bridge supports strobed the light through the van and she had a sudden flash of being pilled-up at a club with Craig half a lifetime ago, Josh Wink throbbing around La Belle Angele, an overwhelming rush of chemical love for him. Now she was middle-aged and drinking too much, trying to keep her shit together, and he was an escaped prisoner, murderer, and now a kidnapper. Good times.
She looked at the rail bridge and the old road bridge. Combined with the Queensferry Crossing support struts it was like a game of kerplunk, wires, pillars and cables like a mesh strung between Edinburgh and Fife. The car in front slowed and she slammed on the brakes, she was too close but she got away with it. Her heart raced as she glanced in the mirror.
She looked at the satnav, 4 Liberty in Elie was thirty miles away, it would be quick on the A92 at this time. It was five minutes’ work to get the address for Charlotte Cross’s holiday home from the landline using an online reverse directory. Jenny had called the number a couple of times, no answer. She pitched up at the Win Energy office but was told Ms Cross wasn’t there, then went to Charlotte’s house in Murrayfield, having got the address from Fiona’s files. She was met by a cleaner who said she spent weekends in the East Neuk, so here was Jenny on her way. She didn’t really know why except there was nothing else. Seb and Karl led nowhere, and Cross Holdings’ apartments were a bust.
She tried Hannah’s mobile, went to voicemail. She remembered Hannah was doing a memorial for the miscarriage couple, didn’t leave a message. She called her mum, voicemail too. She tried Fiona’s number, voicemail for a third time.
‘Hey Fiona, it’s Jenny. I’m on my way to Elie to talk to our friend Charlotte again. I don’t expect anything but it can’t hurt to confront her one more time.’
She took the exit from the motorway and headed east. She passed Mossmorran, the eyesore of a natural gas plant that Charlotte was involved with. She’d bought a swanky holiday home a few miles along the coast from where she was polluting the air. Sometimes we don’t give a shit about causing trouble on our doorsteps. Jenny thought about her family, they didn’t cause trouble but it always seemed to find them, iron filings to magnets. She felt as if she would never be free of trouble and live a normal life. But she was kidding herself, there’s no such thing as a normal life.
She had to try to keep cynicism at bay. Hannah’s generation seemed to have an optimism based on awareness and positivity. And Dorothy wasn’t cynical despite seven decades of life, losing her husband, dealing with death every day. All the untimely strokes and heart attacks, car accidents and murders, diseases they haven’t even found a name for yet, suicides and miscarried babies. Yet her mum kept positive, never succumbed to the bile that Jenny felt lapping at her mind.
She passed old mining villages and golf courses and thought about how much she’d spent the last two years following people and getting nowhere. Not completely nowhere, she met Liam that way. She remembered fucking him yesterday, how it felt right to be with him again. She wanted him but a big part of her distrusted that urge, she’d fallen in love before and look where it got her.
She took the road through green fields into Elie, turned at the main road, drove slowly. She passed a couple of lanes down to the beach, sand piling up against walls, blown into the crannies.
There were no house numbers on the outer gates. She checked the satnav, realised she’d gone past it. She parked and locked the van, walked back and found number four. It was an old fishing cottage but it had recently been refurbished. She was about to walk up the path when she paused. Thought about how it was sometimes better not to announce yourself.
She went back along the road, turned left down the lane. After a few yards of scrubby dunes she was on the beach, a huge expanse of sand that curved from the harbour on her left to the Earlsferry headland. The sun had set now, gloominess across the water, the lights of East Lothian beginning to come on in the distance. Behind the headland would be Edinburgh. It was strange to be this distant, to have perspective.
The tide was out, a light breeze running down the firth. Low skeletal rocks hunched in the shallow water, a marker sat on the biggest rock out to sea.
She turned to the houses behind. Some had lights on, some not, maybe unoccupied holiday homes. Jenny trudged through the dry sand then she was up on the grassy dunes. The houses had old low walls around their back gardens, sunken compared to the build-up of sand on the beach. One day they would all be buried.
She counted the houses, found number four, an old cottage with a large extension over two floors, balcony upstairs.
She climbed over the wall into the garden. There were wetsuits, paddles and paddleboards stacked in a corner. A collection of shells and smoothed stones by the back door. The light was on in the main room but the curtains were closed.
Jenny went to a gap in the curtains and looked through.
There was Charlotte, large glass of red wine, bare feet tucked under her on the sofa. She was wearing a thick sweater, tight jeans, light makeup. She was smiling as she looked at the little girl playing with her Sylvanian family figures on the rug.
Sophia.
Jenny’s throat tightened and she struggled to breathe. She watched as Charlotte took a drink, picked up her phone, scrolled through. Sophia was arranging her little mice in a domestic scene.
Jenny swallowed hard and stepped back from the window, pulled her phone out.
‘Nice to see you again, Jenny.’
She thought she would vomit.
She turned to see Craig smiling at her. A small terrier was sniffing the grass at his feet, and he had a dog lead in one hand and in the other a gun, pointing at her.