Twenty-Eight

There was a DE Shoes on every High Street in the country. Cheap trainers, vinyl boots, novelty slippers. When I was a child I’d have died for a pair of anything but brown Clark’s sandals in the summer and black Clark’s lace-ups in the winter. I was glad of them now, proud of my straight toes and high arches, although Lynne always said nice feet were wasted on women who earned them. She wore strappy stilettos all summer long and for winter parties, and her bunions made it look as if her feet were chewing gumballs. That made me think of Zöe and her pink and white toenails. She might wear pretty shoes now, but she must have been Clark’s all the way when she was young to get that even row of little piggies.

I found the shoe shop sitting in between a Greggs and a Samuels, took a deep breath, and went in.

There was a woman in her sixties, with glasses hanging on a gold chain over the bust of her hand-knitted jersey, and a boy of twenty with that ugly, brushed-forward-and-gelled-to-death hairstyle that always seems to go along with very bad skin, as if the glop is creeping down from the scalp and blocking all the pores. But, as well as those two, there was a woman who could easily be forty and who had a well of sadness inside her deeper than any I had ever seen.

“Scarlet?” I said.

She nodded, squinting as if to work out where she knew me from, and my heart soared inside me. Scarlet McFarlane. I had found the last of them! One of the last of them anyway.

“I don’t suppose you’re due a break, are you?” I said. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee and have a word?”

“Do I know you?” she said.

“Friend of a friend,” I said, “from the old days.”

“Is it about Rosie?” she said. I thought about it for less than half a minute. I’m a registrar. I see fashions come and go, and I can guess a person’s age from their name, like a party trick. The Lynnes and the Laurens and the Emmas in order. And the Rosies too.

“Your daughter Rosie?” I asked. Her eyes seemed to grow until they were half as big again and she leaned forward, searching my face for clues.

“Di?” she shouted, without looking away from me. “I’m going on my break. I’ll work through later.”

She didn’t say another word until we were sitting at the smoking tables outside a Caffé Nero.

“What can I get you?” I asked her. “The millionaire shortbread is really lovel—”

“Are you her mum?” she asked me. “How did you find me?”

“I went to ask your old neighbour round on Methven Street,” I said. “I got your old address from her birth certificate.”

“You’re her mum, aren’t you?” she said “Is she with you?”

“Scarlet, I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m an old friend of a friend of yours from Eden.”

“Scar’s friend?” she said. She lit a cigarette and sat back, considering me. “Huh,” she said. “I haven’t thought about that place for twenty years and then it pops up twice in a week.”

“Oh?”

“It was on the news, in the papers. Someone who went there died again. April Cowan. And they’re looking for one of the other kids to ‘help with their enquiries’.”

“Stig Tarrant,” I said. “What do you mean ‘died again’?”

“I mean another one. There was Alan Best. Do you know who that is? And Scar, of course.”

“Scarlet’s dead?” I said. “The other Scarlet?” I felt my face prickling, and I knew I had paled. I put both hands on the table to steady myself.

“Hey,” said this Scarlet, putting a hand out and covering mine. “Sorry. I thought you would know. If you know Rosie. ‘My daughter Rosie’.” She smiled again. “It’s nice of you to say that. But she’s certainly not my daughter now.”

“How did Scarlet die?” I asked. “When?” I really had no idea when, but I thought I could guess how.

“She killed herself,” came the answer, just as I’d been expecting. “Jumped off the bloody bridge into the Dee when the baby got taken away.”

“I heard about that from your neighb—”

“If you heard from old Mother Thomas, then you heard a load of crap,” said Scarlet.

“I’ll bet,” I said. “So. Your baby got taken away and Scarlet’s dead. I’m really sorry. I know it was a while ago, but I’m sorry for your loss. Losses.”

She nodded a thank you.

“But why is there no record of her death?” I said. “I looked and there’s nothing under Scarlet McInnes. Did she change it?”

“Ohhhh,” Scarlet said, sitting back. “I thought you were being kind saying ‘your daughter,’ but really you’re just mixed up. I’m Scarlet McInnes. And there’s no records on me because I never did anything to record. Scar had Rosie and we all changed our names after.”

“You all did?”

“Yeah,” Scarlet said. “Rosie was our baby, but it was Scar who had her. Scarlet McFarlane. And when she was found unfit, I might as well have been … what’s the expression?”

“Chopped liver,” I said. “You and Scarlet were a couple?”

She nodded, narrowing her eyes, waiting to see what I’d say next.

“And you had a baby at sixteen?” She relaxed a bit. “Deliberately?” Now she was almost smiling. “Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t judge you. I waited until I was twenty-five and then married a complete wanker who left me and our disabled son.”

I spoke as if these truths had been lodged in my head for years, growing roots; not at all as if they had been sprung on me that morning in Rena Irving’s kitchen.

“Rosie was a surprise, actually,” Scarlet said, “but a welcome one.”

I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but they were intrusive and probably offensive, so I left it. “About what Mrs. Thomas told me,” I said instead, wondering how to ask what I needed to ask.

“Nobody believed Scar except me,” Scarlet said. “She wasn’t depressed and she wasn’t confused. And she would never have done anything to harm Rosie. The truth is someone kidnapped Rosie. Three times.” She saw my look. “The first time was easy. Everyone left their prams outside wee shops back then. Not like today. And the second time was because Scar was trying not to overreact to the first time.”

“I can’t imagine how you must have felt.”

“We were going out of our heads and the police wouldn’t even ask around. They made up their minds Scar was lying, and after that they never followed up on anything. They never even asked that stupid old cow Thomas for a description of the woman who snatched Rosie and said she’d found her in the park. We were nowhere near the park. We were in the supermarket—I’d gone back to get something we’d forgotten in the fruit and veg, and Scar turned her back for a second—a split second. We were still searching the shop when that woman brought her back and knocked on our door. And it was nothing like the two hours she’d said. It was ten minutes at most. Only no one believed us.”

“I believe you,” I said. I believed that Scarlet McFarlane wasn’t a neglectful mother, just like I believed that Alan Best wasn’t a paeodophile and I believed that Cloud Irving couldn’t be a drug dealer without her sisters knowing. This wasn’t the devil’s work, but it was just as evil.

“Thank you,” Scarlet said.

“And I’m sorry, because this must be very upsetting, but I’m going to have to ask you some questions.” She nodded for me to go ahead. “First, and please don’t jump up and storm off, but I need to ask you where you were on Monday night. And Tuesday too.”

Her eyes narrowed again, but she nodded and answered. “That’s easy,” she said. “I’ve got a bar job at nights. I was serving behind the bar at the Brig O’Dee. A hundred witnesses. I couldn’t get down to Glasgow on Tuesday. What happened on Monday?”

“Someone was chasing April Cowan all over the countryside down by Eden,” I said.

She swallowed hard and looked away from me. “I don’t like thinking about it,” she said. “It was a bad place. It was a bad place even before Mitchell died. It … It didn’t make sense.”

“Why did your parents send you there?”

“My dad had some kind of business dealings with Jacky Tarrant that owned it,” Scarlet said. “I think he got a good deal.”

“And Scar?” I asked. “Was that the same?”

“No, she was connected to the teacher,” said Scarlet. “She was some kind of second cousin or something. That’s right: Scar was Miss Naismith’s cousin’s daughter. Not a close connection, but Naismith must have put the word out that they could get discounted fees.” She stopped talking and stared into the distance, her eyes following the shoppers who were passing on the street. “Maybe Naismith thought she’d have an ally, her cousin’s kid and all that. And Scar was kinder to her than the rest of us. Well, Scar was kind to everyone, always. But she didn’t hold out at the end. When the hm-hm hit the fan.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That boy—Douglas, was it? Douglas Martin?”

“Duggie Morrison?” I said, and my heart was thumping the way it always did whenever the talk turned to him.

“He persuaded us to … what’s the expression? Drop Naismith in it. She nearly blew a gasket. I really thought she was going to give herself a stroke.”

“Scarlet, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

She quirked an eyebrow at me. “I thought you knew what happened that night.”

“So did I,” I said.

We had been getting filthy looks through the window from the Caffé Nero baristas, because we’d been sitting there for ages and hadn’t bought a thing, so I left her lighting another cigarette and went to order. Two lattes and two pieces of the millionaire shortbread, whether she wanted one or not. She was strung out with all these painful memories and the sugar would be good for her.

“So,” I said, sitting down. “April the thirtieth to May the first, 1985. What really happened?”

“We cooked sausages,” Scarlet began. “They were really disgusting, and one of the kids—it was Stig, I think—had to make a run for the bogs but the rest of us just bedded down. All the weather girls, that’s these three—”

“I know,” I said. “I spoke to Rain and Sun this morning.”

“Okay, well, they were all zipped into the same sleeping bag and Scar and me were too, and we were teasing the boys about being too macho to cuddle in together and keep warm. It was bloody freezing for a spring night, that I do remember. Then, about eleven o’clock, Naismith came and asked us all if we wanted to go back in and sleep in our beds.”

“What?” I said. “She did come?”

Scarlet looked into her coffee cup and swirled it around for a while before answering. “Yeah, she came. Once, though, not twice like she said. We lied, but she lied too.”

“Why?”

“It was Duggie Morrison’s idea. When we realised that Moped had drowned, he said we would be blamed for it and that wasn’t fair because it wasn’t our fault. He said Naismith had left the gate open—we’d all heard a car—and then she’d gone and locked it. Covering up after herself. So we needed to make sure she was punished. So we all said she had left us out there. And she got done for it.”

“Wait!” I said. “Scarlet, wait! You’re saying Duggie Morrison put together this whole story when you realised Moped was drowned? When you saw Moped’s body on the way back to the school in the morning?”

“No,” she said. “When he fell in. It was about four o’clock, just getting light. We all woke up when we heard the car and then Duggie came back and told us that Moped was dead, in the water.”

My head was reeling. This was nothing like what Stig had told me.

“Why did you wait?” I said “Why didn’t you go back to the school right then and raise the alarm?”

“We didn’t want to get into trouble,” she said. “We knew it was too late for Mope. Alan Best was terrified. He thought his dad would kill him. We all thought if they knew Duggie was traipsing about the place and Moped was mucking about, we’d get blamed. So we decided to say we’d all been asleep, like little angels, and we didn’t know when Moped left or why. And we said nothing about the car because we didn’t think the cops would believe us. How can a car drive through a locked gate, you know?”

“But how did you know the gate was locked?”

“Duggie told us at four o’clock when he came back.”

“How did he know?”

Scarlet shrugged. “We were just getting our story all straight when Stig Tarrant came back from the bogs. So we all shut up and kept quiet and when it was a bit later, Duggie woke him up and tried the story out on him. He bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

“But why did you not trust Stig?” I said, starting to feel sick again.

“Because his dad owned the school,” said Scarlet, “and we thought he’d shop us.”

“So you said the teacher failed in her duty, when she didn’t?”

“But she did,” said Scarlet. “She did. She let someone drive out and locked the gate behind them. And she said she came back out after the first time when she didn’t. All we did was change the story of what she did wrong. So the cops would believe us.”

I couldn’t help shaking my head as I listened to her, and her eyes filled with tears.

“You ruined a lot of lives,” I said. “People couldn’t live with the guilt.”

“I know,” she said. Now the tears were falling. “Scar was one of them. When Rosie kept disappearing, she went kind of nuts. She started talking about the curse and about not taking care of Moped and how she was being punished for it. She even tried to get in touch with her cousin to say sorry. Can you imagine how that would have blown up?”

“Couldn’t she find her?”

Scarlet shook her head. “If only she’d been as hard to get in touch with when we were twelve as she was when we were seventeen,” she said. “Just think. Scar was from London. If it wasn’t for Eden, she would have stayed in London, and she’d still be alive.”

“But Rosie wouldn’t exist.”

“There’s no pain in not existing,” Scarlet said. “I’ve lost her anyway.”

“And where would you be?” I said. “If there’d been no Eden.”

“Well, not working in a shoe shop and a pub in this tinpot town.”

“Why do you stay?”

“I stayed until Rosie’s eighteenth birthday in case she came looking for her mum. I thought it was better to be near. And then the last few years … I’ve got a girlfriend here and her kids are settled in their schools.” She gave me another smile. “I’m okay. I’m a damn sight better off than Mrs. Best.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “Sure, Alan Best killed himself, but he wasn’t the only one. Why did you pick his mother?”

“Don’t you know?” said Scarlet. “He’s Rosie’s biological father. He’s on the birth certificate. You should see your face!” She was laughing at me, but it was so good to see laughter in her eyes that I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe Lynne, with her love of gossip, had missed it.

“Alan Best,” I said. “How did that happen?”

“Party,” said Scarlet. “We were young and daft. It could have been either one of us that got knocked up, actually.” She laughed even harder, and I couldn’t blame her; goodness knows what my face looked like as I took that in.

“You know what happened to him, right? The rumours?”

“Yes. It was one of the few times I’ve been glad Scar was dead.”

“It wasn’t true,” I told her. “No one who knew him believes it.”

“Of course not,” she agreed.

“The only person who even half believes it is his mum, and that’s only because she’s so miserable. I don’t think she knows about Rosie. I’m sure she doesn’t. I don’t suppose you’ve got pictures, have you?”

“Only baby pictures,” said Scarlet. “Better than nothing, though, eh?”

I said goodbye soon after that and walked away. I hardly knew where I was going, dizzied by the thoughts whirling around in me. They had made up stories, hidden the truth—hidden a lot of what the police needed to know to find out what really happened that night. And then what?

Did one of them finally realise the power they held? If one of them threatened to change their story, they could have blackmailed everyone else into—

I brought myself up short. One of them had started changing her story. April had finally told Stig she’d heard the car. When everyone else had been hurt beyond the reach of more pain—when Jo-jo and Alan and Nathan and Edmund and Scar were gone, when Sun and Rain had lost their beloved sister, and Scarlet had lost her first love and their baby—April had turned to Stig to back her up before she confronted … I had to face it.

Before she confronted Duggie.

Duggie, who knew what the other kids thought of him. Duggie, who masterminded the story of poor frightened children out in the dark and put all the focus on the teacher and the school. Duggie, who had managed to make the others say he was in his sleeping bag, when in fact he was somewhere in the woods when Moped died (and he knew about that first too, with plenty of time to make up a story). Duggie, my husband, who had fooled me into thinking I was lucky. Duggie, who was so far from the great guy he pretended to be that a son like Nicky was just a dent in his pride, not a blessing.

I was back at my car. I got in and sat staring out through the windscreen.

But Duggie had an alibi for Tuesday night when April Cowan was moved. He had been with Zöe. Could I trust that? I asked myself, and decided that I could. A wife might lie for her husband, but a new girlfriend wouldn’t tell a lie like that for a man she’d just met and hardly knew. Only she did seem to have fallen for him. And it hadn’t taken him long to get his hooks into me all those years ago. I lowered my head and rested it against the steering wheel. It pounded right behind my eyes when I leaned forward and deep in towards the back when I sat up again. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed Stig to help me.