When Mary got back from the park, around 4.30 a.m., Jimmy McKinley was standing on the pavement staring up at her windows. Being doxed was a serious pain in the arse.
‘Oi!’
He started walking away, but Mary caught up with him. ‘Get the fuck away from my house.’
‘I will when you give it back to me, Mary.’ Without his Zimmer he’d lost about twenty years and gained a whole heap of sinister.
‘Give what back?’
‘You’re enjoying it, aren’t you? Isn’t it incredible watching them grow? Little V’s my favourite. Don’t you love Little V? Nice to find a kindred spirit in you, Mary, but it’s mine, and I’d like it back now.’
‘I’m calling the police.’ Mary raced to her door and eventually managed to get inside. Little V? Who was Little V? Not Vanny, please not Vanny.
Having given up thinking for several hours now, she felt comfortable being drawn along by impulses, the strongest of which was to fashion twenty flyers, using flipchart paper and an assortment of felt-tip pens.
WARNING!
JIMMY MCKINLEY
WHO LIVES AT NO 2 MASON COURT IS A
REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER!
HE HAS A CHILD SEX ROBOT.
HE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED HIS FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER.
HE HAS BEEN DOWNLOADING CHILD ABUSE FOR YEARS.
PLEASE KEEP YOUR CHILDREN SAFE
She finished her glass of wine, drove to Mason Court and posted the flyers in his neighbour’s doors. Every second house had a dog, so Mary ran as fast as she could, slipping flyers into postboxes, sticking one on the bus stop and another on the community noticeboard. She drove four blocks to Vanny’s flat, and posted one in her door, just in case she was Little V. Everyone would start waking soon, and she felt confident the community would respond speedily. By morning, Jimmy McKinley’s house would be spray-painted Beast! Paedo! Keep your Children Safe! by the local vigilantes, who’d driven three of Mary’s Nasties out over the years. Bricks would be tossed through his windows. By lunchtime, he’d have packed his bags and snuck out the back door, never to be seen again.
To think, she was going to let him get away with it.
Jack was in the hall when she arrived home.
‘Mum, where have you been? This place is a mess. What have you been doing? Your tooth. Are you okay? Oh my God, did Dad do that to you?’ He burst into tears. ‘What’s that flipchart all about? You’re not doing anything stupid, are you? What’s happening, Mum, I’m scared.’
‘It’s okay, baby, everything’s okay.’ Nothing was better than hugging her son, comforting him, but her tears were not supporting her assertion.
‘Mum, I can’t find Holly.’
Good, a problem to sort. Mary wiped her face and blew her nose. ‘Is there any reason to be worried?’
‘Remember those unpublished letters you found the day of the launch? Well she hadn’t read them, till a couple of hours ago, that is. In most of them he’s just way less charming, but these two – read them.’ He handed her the first letter.
Dearest Bella,
In visits this morning, Holly offered to get us coffee at the kiosk. I was glad to sit alone for a moment and was already longing for the respite of my cell. Despite saying nothing, we had already run out of things to say. I was thinking about our first meal together, Bella. You asked me to book a restaurant, so I chose an expensive one. When the bill came, the waiter gave it to me, and you let him. It was ten pounds less than the total in my account, and my rent was due. I felt sick for a moment and smiled at you for help. You blushed and turned your head. It surprised me, Bella, that you made a binding contract at that moment, signed and tipped, when it was exactly what you railed against. But you never railed too hard, did you? You were a champagne feminist, and I had to buy the champagne.
Holly spilt coffee on the way back to the table and I was overcome with hatred. Your daughter was the exception to the rule. I was authentic with her. I trusted her.
You should never have asked her to keep a secret from me, but Holly should never have agreed. Her lie was worse than yours, Bella. I nearly threw boiling coffee in her face. Maybe next time I will.
Liam
‘This one’s worse,’ Jack said, handing her the second letter.
Dear Bella,
I shouldn’t be writing this now as I’m moody. Holly always leaves me feeling moody.
It’s the eat-it-too blast radius again. It has taken her in, as well as thousands of others. Some of the ripples have been so big they’ve made their own blast, and I am afraid Holly may be one of them.
She was always glum, was she not? Probably because we didn’t buy her any dolls. She reminds me of you, Bella, when you were at your worst, which was always, in the end. Crying one minute, laughing the next. Needy-whiney-needy then all don’t-mess-with-me. She wants me to live with her when I get out. The very thought! She visits every week, and I wish she wouldn’t. How can I look at her, Bella, when I also wanted her dead?
I’m having negative thoughts and Julie has warned me not to have these. It’s because of Holly. I might take her name off my visitor’s list.
Liam
Jack folded the letters with shaky hands. ‘She was supposed to go for oysters that day.’
‘Who?’
‘Holly. Her parents were fighting in the car, she got out at a red light and walked home. Her father yelled “GET IN THE CAR! GET IN THE CAR!” for ages but she kept walking.’
‘And…’
‘She hears him yell that in her sleep. She’s always blamed herself, see, thinks if she went like she was supposed to it never would have happened. But her dad didn’t snap. He made a plan, and the only thing that went wrong was that Holly got out of the car.’
‘The poor girl,’ Mary said. ‘I’m not surprised, though.’
‘It surprised Holly. She’s not answering her phone.’
‘We’ve got a few hours till court,’ Mary said. ‘You go to hers and wait in case she comes back. I’ll check the cemetery.’
‘Of course. Okay. I love you, Mum.’ Jack hugged her at the door.
They were talking! The wave of tingles! ‘I love you too, my baby boy.’
She heard the girl before she saw her, howling ‘Mum! Mum! Where are you?’ Her voice was coming from the spooky section, where gnarled trees had grown wild and now encased the gothic monuments. This place was cobwebby and shadowy; magical and scary; overgrown foliage in bright, jumping LSD greens. Mary, Roddie and Jack used to do ghost tours here, taking turns to scare the shit out of each other.
She walked past headstones that had toppled face down into the cloggy earth. No-one was alive to maintain the memorials of Archibald Jamieson and Margaret Thom and Eleanor McWilliams. Their names would be mud for eternity. Mary walked to the top of the hill, taking in the view of compact, sensible Glasgow, its mountain edges visible from every angle. There was Holly, running on the soft grass between the lines of the long dead, checking each name as she ran, frantic and sobbing.
When she spotted Mary, she howled: ‘I can’t find her. I’ve been looking for hours. She’s gone.’ She pushed an overgrown shrub off an epitaph. ‘I don’t remember where she is.’
It was raining, and Holly’s hair and clothes were drenched. Mary wrapped a jumper around her shoulders. ‘She won’t be here, hon. Come, the new part’s over there.’
They walked in silence across to the new section, a grassy woodland path encasing them then clearing to reveal a sea of new dead. Mary worked methodically, and they found Holly’s mother’s plaque in the eighteenth row.
ISABELLA DUFF
BELOVED MOTHER OF HOLLY
Holly fell to her knees, crying. She brushed mud from her mother’s name: ‘Beloved mother.’
Mary found herself crying too and knelt on the wet grass beside the girl. ‘What was she like?’
Holly always thought hard before answering a question, a skill Mary peddled but did not have. ‘I’m looking forward to remembering.’ She considered the question again. ‘Energetic. She was energetic. Always had to have five things to look forward to. That was her rule. Five things to look forward to.’ Holly had brought yellow roses, which she placed on the plaque. She stood again and wiped her tears. ‘Where am I supposed to bury him?’
‘You’re gonna get a cold. Come on.’ Mary took Holly’s arm and began walking back to the car. ‘You could cremate him – scatter his ashes on the Braes, above Castlemilk. In one of his letters he said he was happy there, as a child.’
Holly thought about it and nodded.
The heavens opened, huge thick droplets like the ones they get in nice warm places.
‘Wanna run for it?’ Mary said.
‘Not really.’ But Holly had taken off already.
When they arrived at Holly’s, Jack was waiting on the step. The two of them were still embracing when Mary turned the corner.