BEFORE THE FRENCH RESTAURANT, its hanging tasselled shades pouring dimmered light onto untranslated menus, where Carol and Mac would dine at the window table and both choose Tournedos Rossini (Carol choosing first) and Mac would point out for her over the road a King Street corner jewellers that he meant to rob the following week with her son and Rodney Westlake and God knew who else from the old days who could be found reasonably alive and local and out of Strangeways. Before this meal which was not unlike the Golden Garter specials, only dearer, the portions stingier, they went for a drink at the Midland. It was about to shut for a refurb. There she’d had him order her Buck’s Fizz in a faded lounge of gilt edges and grand paintings. A pack of short businessmen, its youngest peacocked and lacquered, milled at the bar with six tall fragrant tarts in shoulder-padded frocks. Each gripped a plastic purse and a finished G & T, ready for a theatre show. Pinched toes and varicosed calves under fishnets; their weight shifting from hip to hip to ease boredom or pain. And all blinking attentively, clench-jawed, while the men prattled. Carol didn’t recognise herself in these women at first with their wardrobes and hairdos. Her own do unbunned, misshaped and misstyled. In their presence she felt rusted and ancient and unfit to be out the house, amazed to be sitting neatly, sharing the same tired, magnificent room as these tired, magnificent girls; Mac content to drink Holsten Pils and watch her watch them, squinting at her across their booth with watery strain through that old speckled flesh like shaved granite. Handsome and stupid. A statue guardian too stubborn to fault and crumble. His was a fearful and dim devotion. That squint maddening in its tenderness – asking for her like the shattered mule asked for the rod.

‘Another?’ he said.

‘Yeah, go on.’

Thank fuck she had on her daughter’s perfume, a fake Fendi off Wythenshawe Market scenting her wrists and throat and pubic hair, the last squirt between her toes. Right before Mac had picked her up, Vern had appeared in the bathroom mirror beside her, wiry and pale, pretending to give himself a cut-throat shave with her toothbrush.

‘Well?’ she’d said.

Vern had parked her toothbrush behind his ear, taken Jan’s shampoo bottle from between the slimed sink taps and pointed it at Carol like a tape recorder. ‘Ms Lollobrigida. Vern Jenkins for Vanity Fair. Bogey claims that when it comes to sex appeal you make Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple. Do you sympathise or would you like to press charges?’ Then, in the mirror, Vern had backed up to admire her footwear and whistle ‘Here Comes the Bride’.

She had kissed Vern ta-ra and breathed in his old-books smell, his useless cleverness and the rest: hopeless and daft, clinging to his forever-thirty years. She had let Vern’s love sluice through their daughter’s hair that spidered the clogged sink. His last joke delivered well. And her body’s shadow, firmly reattached, following her again.

Vern had breathed her too, said she was smelling of spring woods. But an hour later she knew the cheap perfume hadn’t taken, only curdled. Left a putrid rind across her pores. Carol knew this was a trick of light but couldn’t help believing she smelled off. She only half-remembered what this was: to care enough to care. It was in her teeth and bottom ribs, a hunger-cramp, a pit of hope in her gut and between her legs.

And in the Midland were Mac’s florid hands on the table for her to open and hold. His, like a retired boxer’s or butcher’s, swollen with talent, history and death. Carol wanted those true things inside her.

Trust his hands –

his squint.

The trendy tarts at the bar –

to resurrect her vanity.

Carol shredded a drink’s serviette in her lap and wondered who could see her scalp sweat. That was until another tart arrived wearing Carol’s lipstick shade; and as she joined the rest Carol smiled at her hard enough for her to notice and give a quick blank stare. In it was the hum of telepathy; an exchange of airs and sadness both women took to be funny.

‘What’s up?’ Mac glanced round.

‘Nowt’ – Carol still smiling wide.

‘You know her?’ He looked again and a stocky ancient waiter in matching waistcoat and dickie bow brought Carol’s first Buck’s Fizz. Mac paid for each drink as it came. Like Sefton he seemed to carry no wallet just clipped banknotes. Mac produced them from a loose, taupe, double-breasted jacket; his gestures swift and careful and almost embarrassed which made the glary waiter more nervous – bowing his thank you after mouthing it.

When the waiter went Mac said to her: ‘What my doing wrong?’

‘No use asking me. Nedra’s always said I make folk uncomfortable.’

Mac’s hands closed huge as he carried them off the table to think about this, his squint sparkling. ‘Aye, well, you can never tell what Carol Dodds’s thinking.’

‘If you wanna know just ask.’

‘I know I’m best not knowing.’

Bloody ask and I’ll tell you Mac I’m thinking about food about how I’m getting hungry but don’t wanna eat and bloat up like a whale and have to take me kit off later and see meself through your eyes and I’m thinking how many glasses will allay me sad terror when you feel the weight I’ve put on as I take your lap and you compare me to what you saw and what you had more than eight years gone in your Minnie’s bed with me husband Sefton hours’ warm in his grave and I’m thinking what was I worth that night and what am I worth now to any man not least some shade of Dodds man and even though I’d had two kids by then and was never some ageless beauty like your Minnie and that even to a pining cuckold like you I wasn’t worth a stolen fuck you having waited like a coward to fuck me only when I had twice been widowed with the first widowing of the heart and the second official but to me a footnote in a book nobody right-minded would ever read because let’s not forget we’re scum even to our own kin but let’s not forget also that I had once been worth killing and burying a man over and it is this that has me thinking worth as in mine or female worth if you like isn’t a currency that can be staked or disinherited like property or male pride and I’m thinking about whether you will want me after tonight which I know you will but what good is it to know until it’s happened and I’m thinking maybe I’ll get to keep me kit on although I don’t deserve to but you might let me and if you don’t it doesn’t matter and if you do I will show you the lot just the same and I’m thinking about how I’ll feel when you seep from me as my first living shag since, well, since you, and I’m thinking who I won’t be tomorrow if you take me home empty of you instead of full because then I will be alone in a spring-cleaned ghostless house without answers for the living and without the dead to talk to and to talk for me and to heat and halve my half of the bed and I’m thinking how long Mac before I can taste your muck and the salt of its truth and have I remembered its taste wrong as brinier than Sefton’s and Vern’s now see I told you I was hungry and I’m thinking you have come back up North as pathetic and unmoored from reality as me and no matter what you think I never was no wife or mother I was just a whore princess and your Minnie a whore queen and as wicked as she was at least Minnie could not accept we were whores of men who would take our lives from us and live them for us in death like it were us women who had died and not them, and that has me thinking what might have been if you hadn’t told her that we’d met at the Posthouse and what might have been if she hadn’t brought Kelly to the library but you’d brung him instead as planned and what might your hand have done if it’d shaken Vern’s that day and what did your hands do later after they buried him and have they forgotten where they buried him and tonight when you are buried in me and I beg you not to stop but to dig and dig till you remember and find him for me trapped under earth without flesh, my poor Vern having had his life stolen by us lot, will you tell me then where his broken bones lie?

Had Carol said some of this, or had she glanced instead at the woman with the matching shade and gone: ‘See her? Like you she’s thinking that I look escaped.’

Mac began to rotate to see the bar. He hadn’t clocked that Carol was fishing.

Carol so wanted to see his hands. ‘She’s on the game, isn’t she?’

Holding the table, he turned the rest of the way. ‘They all are.’

‘Any of them Rodney’s?’

He shook his head. ‘Too healthy.’

‘Say hello to Rodney for us, won’t you?’

‘He’s still got a scar your Sefton give him in the sixties.’

‘What was that over? Your Minnie used to get her speed off him, didn’t she?’

‘Aye.’

‘D’you know Rodney’s youngest cousin was me first? Lee Westlake of Brownley Green. Used to go about in velvet and espadrilles. I was about our Jan’s age. Took me to Rippleton Road when his mam went chip shop to fetch his tea. Put me in the washhouse and had me up against the slop stone. He couldn’t get his drainpipes down they was that tight.’

‘Dead now, Lee.’

‘I’ll never forget his face. Rodney though? Can just remember that reedy voice and them wandering mitts on Friday nights if he got you in a booth. Tried it on with me even after I got wed.’

‘Then you know why Sefton scarred him.’

‘I know it wasn’t our Sefton, that. It was you.’

Mac held her in his squint, then finally he showed his hands.

She reached for and squeezed one and found out hers was clammy only by contrast and withdrew it. ‘I need to go touch up me lippy.’

‘You’re fine,’ he said, too tenderly for it to be true.

‘Then I’ll have another.’

He got her one; the twitchy waiter brought it; Mac seemed in no hurry to catch her up. ‘We still scrub up well, don’t we?’

‘Even if you’re getting on and I’m getting fat.’

Mac’s cautious, rumbly laugh. ‘We’re not doing so bad.’

‘Been losing me figure, I think, ever since I first got on the pill.’

‘Sefton know you were on that?’

‘Never asked, never had to lie to his mam.’

Mac let her giggle and drink.

Then she said: ‘Remember the night your Minnie wet herself? We was watching the wrestling up at Belle Vue. D’you remember? Jim’d left Nedra at home like always but she didn’t mind so much after Kelly was born since then she could be minding him. Anyway, Minnie got absolute blitzed and accused them Gorton lads at Beyer-Peacock of nicking her purse.’

‘Her engagement ring.’

‘That’s right. She had you fighting one after another in the carpark. But then later we found it in Jim’s Triumph. And this was dead funny to Minnie. It was like she was having a fit. She couldn’t control it. Just laughed and laughed and then she pissed herself. I remember it running down her stockings. Ruined her fur. And she didn’t care. She sat in his passenger seat pissing and cried laughing. Jim had to drag her out. Only time I ever saw him lose it with her. She had to hide from him behind you.’

‘Minnie were pregnant again then.’

‘What?’

‘It always give her a weak bladder.’

‘She lost them?’

‘Each time.’

‘Whose were they? D’you know? Was it Jim’s?’

‘Who cares? Not then. Not now.’

Carol was turning a lipsticked, empty glass: ‘Aren’t you good.’

Mac supped his lager; it’d gone flat. ‘When we left. . . was there talk?’

‘Gossip, you mean? Over Minnie and Jim?’

‘About you and me.’

‘You’d have to ask Nedra. Hope so. I’d gone deaf to all that by then. Ay, what time we on?’ she said, collecting her bag off the seat.

‘Booked the table for ha’past.’

Carol shuffled out the booth, graceless. ‘Come on. We’re late. Me stomach thinks me throat’s cut. Finish that first. That’s it. Big gulp.’

*

He lapped her in the French restaurant: sank four lagers and had half a bottle of red to himself. Carol was already drunk, her being so out of practice, and she liked the feeling of falling as much as she liked being out the house and if not free of ghosts then knowing that her ghosts were free from her. Seeing Mac trying to decode his first course (they’d chosen the same starter too, which turned out to be fish, not potato: ‘Mind out for bones,’ he’d winked) and seeing him this drunk and this old she recognised how easy it would really be to leave her life of sad perplexity and to love him; to shrug off all waking responsibilities she had foggily acquired, sustained or neglected and done so out of conceit or caprice; and she knew full well that tonight could damn her to satisfaction, could unmartyr her. She had no votive candle to burn, no true sacrifice to make. Her soul was worthless and as unlovable to the good and the living as her body. She belonged to monsters. She and Mac would be happy enough, together. To Carol this was true. But then she found her guilt raw again and from its meridian she could not feel herself let alone the guilt and this was the same mindless relief that she had known once before, on the Sunday in ’69, when she had knelt to scrub Vern’s blood off his doorstep. But as they ate and drank it was like she and Mac were dangling together over the Hellmouth and the fires below giving forth no light, just heat enough to free his hideous hands and her delicate feet from glaciation. Carol could cast him in but she would be lonely without her guilt. Without the lies and company of the lovesick gravedigger. All this shit came for the length of a thought quicker than a wine-gulp. Carol was dizzy now with the drink, when their second plates came identical.

‘How’s yours?’ he said before she’d even taken a bite.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘You wanna swap?’

‘Aye. Yours is bigger.’

So, giggling they did.

‘Must be costing you a bloody fortune to get us both merry in here.’

‘Not that dear. Not after London.’

‘What was London like?’

‘Our Minnie took to it more than I did. We had us a flat in New Cross. Chaps I worked for, they had a club that did well. For a time. Same rubbish you get everywhere. Tell us about your baby grandson?’

‘What’s Kelly said?’

‘Not even his name.’

Carol peered at the jewellers through the window. ‘He was born in the house. He’s never left the house. Neighbours know of course but nobody’s grassed on us yet. Nedra’s claiming that one.’

‘How’s she squaring it with her priest?’

‘If Father starts asking questions Nedra’s teeth start whistling and then she says it hurts too much to think about it. Then she’ll feed him a second supper with a drop of that good stuff she hides under me sink.’

‘Your Jan, though. Saw her briefly. Still a bloody kid herself. Not that you can always tell nowadays.’

‘Sound like our Nedra.’

‘How’s your scran? Any good?’

‘Dunno. Let me try yours. . . What d’you reckon?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ve not done bad.’

 

‘“Had Adam conquered the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of obedience to God, his reward would have been the pardon and reconciliation of Eve, together with her restoration to innocence.” What do we reckon to that, love?’

‘Sounds Mancunian.’

‘Might just be how I read it.’

‘Hmm.’

From the radiator Vern winged his book over Carol’s bed. Its white pages fluttered like seraphim static in infinite motion with the book above her suspended without any sound or wind or shadow before descending quick and landing gently and open on her, drawing up her thighs.

Carol read the words again, to herself.

Vern said: ‘To you that sounds Mancunian?’

Carol said: ‘To me it sounds too sure of itself. So yeah.’

‘Love you.’

‘Come here and kiss me.’

‘Sun’s nearly up.’

‘Then get a move on. Can leave this book out for our Nedra. We’ll see what she makes of it.’

But always Vern’s books flew away. . .

 

‘Mac?’ she said.

‘What, Carol?’

‘Who did we belong to? I get mixed up.’

She was matching his squint over the restaurant table. Both leaning in to catch whispers.

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘Can’t you remember?’

‘Remember what?’

‘And how many bloody jewellers you’ve robbed. . .’

 

They kept the table till closing after which Mac drove her drunk past Deansgate, past Castlefield, loosely following a Manchester of waterways and wreckage. He got them closer than roads and laws could: to the clogged black arteries which either fed or fled Pomona Strand. Here was their city’s broken heart. It was a place invisible and unreachable to the waking and the living. To the winged worker-bees clubbing a kiss away. Town of a Friday night: dancing to the pulse of its mongrel blood. Unreal then to find a Manchester at its centre so quiet it was theirs. Mac parked up for confession. Food and fresh air sobered them somewhat. But at intervals Carol would burst into cackles at Minnie’s engagement ring.

Its heavy rock weightless on her finger.

They walked linked along the Irwell towpath under a milk light from stretches of dying hooded lamps. Between them there was just Carol’s lit cig to trust, like they were following a faerie into the city’s untethered shadow, a shadow teeming and festering, alive and vacated, dank and sweet. In it and through it they could see but did not need to see. The water began to purl. It sent unnatural things past them – bobbing items exposed in absurd and bloated dimension, shared like dirty secrets.

 

‘But why didn’t you take your Kelly away then, that weekend we all went up Saddleworth Moor?’

‘The bleeding moors.’ Carol was sleepy and wet. Slurring: ‘You buried him on the bleeding moors. It was your idea?’

‘It was your chance. To take your Kelly and go somewhere.’

‘That moon,’ she said.

‘Carol. . .? You cold? Want this?’ – offering his jacket.

‘Nedra told us she’d hated the cottage. . .’ Mac was rubbing her gooseflesh anyway; he could cover most of her thigh with one hand; dozily she kept trying to strip off for him. ‘. . .She said your Minnie did some of the cooking.’

‘Carol.’

‘Where did you put him?’

‘Can’t remember now.’

‘Then it doesn’t matter.’

‘. . .We came off the Isle of Skye road. Carried him to the old quarry. Above Alderman. Way off the track. Near where them big rocks join over the valley. Dug him a deep hole somewhere.’

In Jim’s Triumph she had returned pregnant, with Vern folded in the boot, wearing a coal sack over his smashed head. She had brought young Kelly home only to be left there with him, with the front door unlocked like an insult. She had opened it onto her street, her overgrown privets, her neighbours’ kids playing kurby with no coats on in October. They had looked at her in her faded polka-dot frock, asked her if Kelly was back, if he could play out. And she had smiled at them and told them yes he was, and yes he could, until came time for his dinner.

*

But when Mac rocked drunk on the towpath, preparing to recall his dinner, Carol, drunker, hurled herself blind at his size and felt next to no resistance – only heard the air fill the vacant space like a sea replacing a sunken continent. And alone she could return to his car ready to drive it to Vern’s place of rest only she hadn’t the keys and couldn’t drive and so would sleep it off instead.

 

But when Carol looked she found Mac stood exactly where her hands and the lamplight had lost him. She had hyaline wings buzzing weightless on her back. And she was talking to him over the sound. About allsorts. Listing the things in this world that the two of them redeemed might still come to know. And together they could return to his car and sleep it off instead.

 

But when Carol woke in Mac’s car, her seat tipped, she found him gone. She felt a surge of blood and scrabbled to catch the door handle and fell out in a tangle of limbs and undone clothes. She palmed chilly earth, wet grass stained yellow by the car’s overhead bulb. Her old black cotton briefs were hooped tight round her left wrist and thumb. Her first thought was Did he not watch me sleep? Had any of her Dodds men ever stayed up watching her sleep? Carol shed what was left to shed to run. And when she reached the river she lowered herself in, sitting for a moment in the plants on the worn bank with her bare legs missing in the dingy water. Its temperature amazing. From there she stared out at the river judging how far from her he had got. Then she slipped into the Irwell and went under – even her arms which were pointed straight up. She had forgotten to close her mouth and she kicked to the surface and choked up the terrible water. When she was certain the cold wouldn’t kill her she began to paddle further out. Mac was hidden, vertical, only a glittering crown of hair bobbing gently. She reached it and tore out some with her teeth. Then she emptied her chest to hug him, below. She was content sightless underwater and by touch she found his huge hand and held it like a child at Sharston Baths. The river had taken one of his shoes. She came up, drawing breath to the sound of crazed splashing behind her, off the bank, a bloody rescue. There was a light too and a big dog’s spaced barks. Her eyes burned with icy grit and slime and when she touched him again he started to sink lower, having given her some peace in the end, having taken nowt but their meals to his grave.