13

Randall remembered wanting to speak to his father about his late-night dance with his mother, but in the days that followed it he didn’t get the chance to be alone with him. The expression of disappointment on his father’s face stuck with him though, and eventually, unable to bear how much it troubled him, he sought his father out.

It was a Sunday afternoon and Dad was out in the garden pulling up weeds. Ranald watched what he was doing for a moment then fell to his knees and began to copy him.

‘None of your pals about, son?’ Dad asked, pausing in his task and looking over at Ranald.

‘John’s got the mumps and Stuart’s mum and dad are taking him somewhere.’

Sitting in his present, Ranald could bring no further detail to mind concerning either of these boys. When he pushed at his memory for more there was nothing but a vacuum.

‘Don’t pull on that one,’ his dad had chided next. ‘That’s a flower.’

‘And flowers are good, right?’

‘Right,’ Dad smiled.

Ran looked down at his father’s hands and forearms. Saw the strength coiled in their leanness; the soil clumped around his short dark hairs and embedded under his nails. He turned his attention to a piece of grass among the dark loam and pulled it out. There was just a tiny amount of resistance and then it lifted as easily as a bird’s feather.

‘Good man,’ said Dad and nudged him with his arm.

Ranald felt warmth fill his chest and head. Everything was okay. His father still loved him. He ducked his head to hide the smile that was spreading across his face and reached for another errant blade of grass.

‘Am I going to be mad like Mum?’ he asked, the words escaping his mouth before the thought occurred that he should stop them.

His father sat back on his heels and sighed a deep, long sigh. ‘Mum is just very, very sad, son.’

Which Ranald knew was true; she’d kept him awake much of the previous night, crying on the other side of the thin bedroom wall.

‘But sometimes she’s happy too, right?’ He studied his father’s face. ‘Like the night we were dancing?’

Dad took some time to answer. Ranald knew that he was trying to protect him by finding the right words. But he was clever, wasn’t he? He would be able to understand, whatever explanation Dad came up with.

‘Her brain works differently, son. Sometimes she’s just so happy she can barely hold it all in, but then, for no reason at all, her brain switches and goes the opposite way, and she feels … too much sadness for her to cope with.’

‘Will I be like that, then?’ He had to press the question now; now that Dad was prepared to talk about it. ‘Sometimes I feel really, really happy.’ An image of his mum came to him as she danced in the garden, her face turned to the moon, bathing in its light.

‘Nah, you’re a McGhie. We’re a sensible lot.’ Dad ruffled Ranald’s hair and he felt some soft pieces of soil crumble from his father’s big hand, through his hair and onto his scalp, as if Dad’s words were being sanctified by the very earth itself.

You’re saying that because you don’t want me to worry, he wanted to say. Everybody knew that Ranald, with his mother’s pale skin, dark hair and high cheekbones, was every inch his mother’s son.

All these memories. He stood up once more and looked out across the darkening landscape, the blue-grey clouds were closer than ever. Was the move to this big, perturbing house – the place his mother had grown up in – reawakening the fears he’d suppressed for so long? Was that what all his dreams were about? His apparent sleepwalking?

Something occurred to him. Perhaps he had come up to the tower room when he was sleepwalking the previous night? It would explain why he’d automatically headed up here when he’d run from the darkness of the corridor a few minutes before. Perhaps he’d found this notebook on his earlier visit, read it, absorbed the words and then regurgitated them a few hours later? That was a rational explanation, wasn’t it…?

But even he couldn’t believe the human mind was that convoluted.

So what, then?

He needed to speak to someone. Talk this over. Maybe if he heard the words said out loud that would chase his worries back into the shadows.

He tucked the notebook back in place, left the tower room and climbed back down the stairs, all the while acutely aware that in the massive space of this house he was the only living being.

Back in his bedroom he changed into some exercise gear and charged down to the fitness suite, set on using physical exercise to escape the turmoil in his head.

He started with press-ups, burpees and sit-ups.

Then chest press, shoulder press, squats and bicep curls. And back to body-weight movements that would get his heart and lungs working, and turn his thoughts off.

He realised that there wasn’t a decent pattern of movement to any of this and sat down, breathless. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worked out like that.

To finish off, he stepped under the shower to wash off his sweat, then, naked, jumped into the pool. He splashed about and then swam to the window end, and, leaning against the edge, gazed out.

He looked across the expanse of garden. All of this and no one to share it with. He thought about Martie. He’d had no word from her since she’d left the other day. Of course, there was the poor signal issue up here. Perhaps she was sending him messages and they just weren’t getting through? Or maybe it was deliberate. She wasn’t sending him any messages for fear of suggesting she was still interested in him.

Perhaps it was time to accept facts. It had been three years they’d been apart now. That ship had sailed.

Still, it would be nice to share all of this with someone – friends; or even with someone special.

He thought back to his time in the flat. He couldn’t remember craving company while he was there. Had the drugs anesthetised him to life? While he was on them they provided a numbness that meant he wasn’t concerned about, well anything really. He fed himself, worked and slept and didn’t care that was all his life consisted of. Didn’t even notice. Apart from the occasional visit from Donna, he was mostly alone, and he had been fine with it.

Was all of this empty space emphasising just how much he was on his own?

He could go down to the stables and visit the Hacketts, perhaps. Pretend he was just passing. Getting to know the place. Wondering if he could borrow some sugar?

What he should do was check his emails and see if his agent had sent him anything about the proposal he had been talking about. He rolled that thought across his mind a couple of times then decided be couldn’t be bothered.

He hauled himself out of the pool, collected a towel and went outside so the sun could dry his skin. As his head hit the back of the lounger, he heard a voice.

‘Helloooo. Helloooo.’

He sat up just as a woman came round the corner of the house. It was Liz. When she saw him she gave a broad smile.

‘Hey, handsome. I was just passing.’ Her eyes were sparkling. ‘And I wondered if you might like to repay the … compliment … I gave you earlier.’

They made it up to the bedroom. Eventually.

Afterwards, he rolled off Liz, chest heaving and slick with sweat.

‘Woman, you are insatiable,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘That’s what comes after twenty-five years of marriage to a man who prefers the entertainment at the nineteenth hole of his local golf course.’

She laughed at her statement, imbuing it with a humour it clearly lacked; Ranald couldn’t help but hear the pain behind it. He turned over onto his stomach and looked up at her as she propped herself up on the pillows.

‘Twenty-five years?’ he said. ‘What, did you get married when you were fifteen?’

‘You’re a charmer, Mr Ranald … you’re not a Fitzpatrick, so what is your surname?’

‘McGhie. But you can call me … I dunno … babes? Darling?’

Liz snorted.

Ranald coughed. Made a face of apology. ‘Too early for endearments?’

She cocked her head to the side and looked as if she was tasting the words. ‘You think too much.’ She smiled. ‘Right. A shower. You stay here and snooze.’

Ranald grunted in response and, burrowing into the mattress, closed his eyes. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

It felt like only moments later that he woke to Liz shaking his shoulder.

‘Ran, Ran, Ran!’

The note of fear in her voice roused him instantly. He sat up. She was holding a towel to her breasts. Water was dripping off her onto the carpet, and her hair was slick with shampoo.

‘I need to get the hell out of here.’ Her whole body was shaking.

‘What’s wrong? What happened?’ Ran jumped out of the bed and pulled her to him.

‘In the bathroom,’ she pointed, her fingernail almost a blur, so violently was she trembling. ‘There was this noise. Children crying.’

‘It must be a cat. Or a fox or something.’

She looked at him, pleading. Her eyes filling with tears. ‘It was coming from inside the walls. It was a child. A child was crying.’