Chapter 25
EDINBURGH
Sylvia Green had told her friend, Karen Blair, that she wouldn’t be in tomorrow.
She had a date and she would be out late.
Karen was only too happy to take over the duties of opening the shop and running it.
Karen’s husband had left this earth with the same amount of money he had come into it with, absolutely zero.
Like everybody else who dies. The money he left behind was another story.
It was enough to keep Karen comfortable, so she only had to work part-time.
‘Just for something to do,’ she had told Sylvia.
Now that that was sorted, she could relax.
Sylvia didn’t get dolled up very often, so this was a treat for her.
Peter, her date, was married; he had told her.
He had been coming into the shop off and on for years now, and they had always hit it off.
Then one day, he told her that his marriage was over and that he had moved in with his mother, just as a temporary measure.
He was working with an estate agent to secure a rental place until he found the right property to buy.
The divorce was going to wipe him out, he said.
She hadn’t been sure at first, thinking that maybe she would have to spend a fortune on him, but no, he had been the perfect gentleman, not letting her put her hand in her pocket once.
He was good fun, witty and charming, and Sylvia thought she felt something a little more than friendship stirring.
This afternoon had been perfect; they’d had a walk along Portobello Beach, eating an ice cream and enjoying the views over to Fife.
Of course, they couldn’t walk too far, what with Peter having to use the walking stick to get about, but it was far enough.
Then they had taken the bus along to Leith. The air was salty and a nice cool breeze came in off the sea.
‘That’s a historic boat,’ Peter said, nodding to the Ocean Mist, permanently berthed at Shore, sitting in the Water of Leith.
‘Really? It looks amazing.’
‘Maybe we could come down for a drink one night,’ he said, smiling at her.
She looked at him, the short-cut beard neatly trimmed, knowing his blue eyes were watching her from behind the sunglasses. He even suited the Panama hat he wore.
‘I’d love that. Maybe I could even meet your mother.’
The smile slipped a little bit and he was silent for a moment.
‘That might not be possible. You see, I’m separated from my wife, but we haven’t been to a lawyer yet.
If she finds out I’ve been out and about with a woman, my wife could use that against me.
But rest assured, we will after I’ve signed papers. ’
‘That would be great, Peter.’
‘Maybe I could meet the group of friends you told me about,’ he said.
‘Group of friends?’ she said, a puzzled look on her face.
‘Yes. The ones you were going on about the other night when you were a bit tipsy.’
‘I… I can’t quite remember who I was talking about.’
He smiled at her. ‘You mentioned some friends. Let me see.’ He pretended to think about it. ‘Marianne. Ivy. Alice. And some others, I can’t quite remember either.’
‘Ah. Yes. I haven’t seen Marianne in ages. A long time. She was a customer whom I got to know well, then she started coming out with my friends and me. Ivy is Alice’s sister. She’s a missing person, Peter. She went out one day and didn’t come back. I miss her so much. As we all do.’
‘What would make her take off, if you don’t mind me asking?’ he said.
‘Something happened. Something terrible. We were out drinking one night and a terrible accident happened.’
‘Oh my goodness. That’s awful. What about the other friend?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘We don’t see her now.’ She touched his arm. ‘If you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
‘That’s fine.’
The Reader turned to her and smiled. He was used to her calling him Peter, because that was what he had told her his name was, years ago.
First a customer, now more as they had got to know each other.
He had made her start to fall in love with him, with his charm, good looks and splashing a bit of cash.
He had never worn a beard before, but had grown it so he wouldn’t be recognisable.
The red glasses helped, and the hat he wore, although he had to take that off now and again.
He had worked at it over time, and it had worked like a charm, and now here they were, on their fourth date and he hadn’t made a move on her, except for kissing her at her doorstep. And he wouldn’t.
‘Look, I know this is an imposition, but would you accompany me somewhere?’
‘To the ends of the earth?’ she said, laughing.
‘Not quite as far. But my sister died two years ago today, and I would like to take flowers and put them on her grave. I do it every year.’
‘Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry. Of course we can go.’
‘It will mean a bit of a hike. After we get off the bus.’ The Reader smiled inwardly; he thought Sylvia must think he was a tightwad, getting a bus everywhere, but he had told her he didn’t have a car at the moment.
The truth was, he didn’t want anybody to see him with her in his car.
‘First though, let’s grab a cuppa. There’s a flower shop nearby and we can get a little bunch.
It doesn’t have to be a huge thing. My sister loved flowers.
She would have appreciated any flowers she got. ’
He tried to make the tears come into his eyes, at least make them look glassy, but nothing came. He felt like laughing, but that would have been strange.
‘That would be nice,’ Sylvia said. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘There’s a nice little place along here. Called Isobel’s. I’m a regular there.’
‘Really? I thought you lived in Stockbridge?’
Shit. He did tell her that, didn’t he? ‘Sorry, I meant to say that was the marital home. My mother actually lives here on the Shore.’ Technically, the street was just called Shore, but everybody he knew called it the Shore.
They crossed Commercial Street and continued walking along the Shore.
‘Which one?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Hmm?’
‘Which flat does your mother live in?’
‘In one of the new ones.’ He pointed to a block of flats that looked modern compared to the others on either side.
He felt a stab of anger now, wanting to pull out a knife and just stick her with it.
If she thought his mother really did live here – God rest her soul – then what was to stop her from just appearing at the door one night?
Then he laughed inside. There would be zero chance of that, after today.
She wouldn’t be popping in on anybody ever again.
He stopped outside Isobel’s. ‘This is it.’
‘They know you in here?’ Sylvia said, smiling. ‘Maybe I’ll ask them all about your secrets.’ She giggled like a fucking schoolgirl.
That was another annoying thing about this bitch: she’d suddenly started wanting to hold hands in the street. But he went along with it. It would be ending shortly.
They stepped into the café and the woman was behind the counter, on her own. Was the husband behind the scenes through the back? No way to tell and he wasn’t going to ask.
‘Hello there,’ Isobel said, smiling at them.
‘Hello,’ Sylvia said.
‘What can I get for you?’
‘Two coffees, please.’
‘Coming right up.’
The Reader was looking at the paperbacks on the bookcase. Sylvia stood beside him, the books attracting her.
‘Doesn’t this just give you a buzz, standing in front of a bookcase?’ she said.
He looked at her and smiled. ‘It does. And it’s a book exchange; bring one, take one.’
‘What a great idea.’ They looked at the titles for a few minutes until the coffee was made.
‘I’ll get this,’ Sylvia said, ‘since you bought the ice cream.’ She walked up to the counter and paid for the coffees. ‘I love the idea of the book exchange,’ she said. ‘I own a little bookshop on the southside.’
‘That’s great. Our book exchange has been a big hit,’ Isobel said.
They sat at a table by the window. There was a bowl with single-serve creamers in it, and packets of sugar.
Sylvia took three packets, shook them and poured them in.
That was another thing he hated: she kept a sugar plantation on demand single-handedly.
It was a wonder she didn’t have false teeth. Give it time, he thought.
They chatted about Leith and how it was a wonderful place to be brought up.
‘Where were you brought up?’ he asked Sylvia, although he knew everything there was to know about her.
‘Gilmerton. It was a great community.’
He tuned her out while pretending to listen and smiling. Now she lived in a flat in Marchmont, a million miles away from Gilmerton. Her parents were dead, she had no siblings, never been married but didn’t discount it.
He stifled a yawn and looked out the window at the Water of Leith.
He loved it down here. A friend of his had lived in the block of flats he had pointed out, the one where his fictitious mother lived in.
The old woman had departed this world years ago, but she had actually lived in Lorne Street, further up Leith.
‘…going?’
He realised his mind had wandered just a little too far. ‘I’m sorry, I was miles away.’
She smiled. ‘Is my conversation that boring?’
‘No, of course not. I was just thinking about my sister.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She reached a hand out and put it over his, and put on that little sad smile that people do when they’re trying to show empathy but silently thanking God that it wasn’t them on the receiving end of whatever disaster had struck.
That phoney look of sympathy they gave, just before they told you that if you ever needed anything, just call.
Which they didn’t mean and the thought of getting such a phone call made them shudder.
‘Thank you,’ he said, looking into her eyes, and imagining shoving a fork into one of them. He slipped his hand out. ‘I need to use the facilities,’ he said, getting up and going into the gents.
When he was in the toilet, Sylvia got up and took a paperback out of her bag and walked up to the bookcase. ‘This is a great thriller,’ she said to Isobel. ‘I finished it on the bus.’
‘Well, help yourself, sweetheart. There’s a John Sandford there, his latest in paperback.’
‘Oh, nice. I haven’t read that one. Thank you.’
The Reader came back out and Sylvia waved at Isobel as they left the café.
‘The new John Sandford was in there,’ Sylvia said, waving it in front of him.
‘Great. I’ll need to read it after you.’
‘Absolutely.’ She put it in her bag.
After grabbing a little bunch of flowers and sitting on the bus, listening to Sylvia drone on about things he wasn’t interested in but had to pretend to, he made it to the bus stop without taking his own life. They stepped out into the heat, the sky empty and blue.
The walk was a fair distance, but he promised her they would get a taxi into Stockbridge where he knew a great little coffee shop.
‘My dogs are barking,’ she said when they got to the cemetery gates.
He looked at her like she was daft. ‘What?’ he said.
‘My dogs are barking.’ She laughed. ‘My feet are killing me. Haven’t you heard that expression before?’
He felt an explosion of anger inside. He hated it when people talked shite. ‘That’s a new one on me, Sylvia.’
Her smile dropped. ‘I’m sorry, here I am, laughing, and we’re going to your sister’s grave.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Honestly. My sister would have loved you.’
‘Really?’ Sylvia said.
‘Of course.’ If she had been alive. And not made up.
They walked through to the other side of the cemetery, to the old part. Through the archway and into what was almost a jungle.
They walked a short distance and The Reader stopped. At the outline of a gravestone. A big, heavy one that looked like it had been flipped over by a Bobcat.
‘You know what that is?’ he asked, pointing to the bare dirt.
Sylvia wasn’t smiling any more. ‘Is that where your sister is buried?’
‘No. My sister isn’t dead.’
‘What… what are you talking about?’
He could see the fear on her face now.
‘You remember Nancy, don’t you?’
He watched as Sylvia started to panic. He could see it on her face.
‘No… I don’t know anybody called Nancy.’
‘Of course you do. Think hard.’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘I want to go now, Peter.’
‘My name’s not Peter.’ He told her his real name. Watched as her eyes went wide as realisation kicked in.
‘That was where Ivy Jack lay. With that huge gravestone on top of her. I dug the ground out a bit so she wouldn’t be noticed.
See that gravestone shape in the wall? That was where the marker lived until I brought it down on her.
She wasn’t dead when it hit her. But she was after.
’ He looked and saw that Sylvia had peed herself, the front of her jeans darker than the rest.
‘I’m going now,’ she said, starting to turn away, but then The Reader punched her on the side of the face, knocking her down.
She moaned as he dragged her in front of a tall, heavy headstone.
‘I didn’t have time to prepare like I did for Ivy, but you have to work with the tools you have, am I right?’
He kicked her bag to one side and the paperback peeked out. He smiled and picked it up.
‘This will do nicely.’
Sylvia lay on the dry grass and flinched as he put the paperback on her chest. He disappeared round the back of the large gravestone and she thought for a moment that he had gone, until she looked up and saw the large stone toppling. She just started to scream when the weight cut it off.
The Reader stood and looked down at the back of the stone. There was no sign of Sylvia now. For all intents and purposes, she had disappeared.
He walked along past more toppled gravestones. They weren’t an unusual sight in this cemetery. Nobody would blink an eye on seeing these stones lying on their front.
He looked at the headstones, their inscriptions underneath.
The temporary resting places of Ivy Jack and Marianne Taylor.
And now Sylvia Green. They had recovered Ivy, but they didn’t know the whereabouts of Marianne yet.
No doubt they would, one day. Maybe, maybe not, he thought, considering Ivy had lain under a stone without anybody finding her until it had been pointed out to the police.
He stood looking at the black polished headstone. Read the names from top to bottom.
Albert Simpson.
Below, his wife Olive Simpson.
Below that, their daughter Nancy Simpson.
His wife-to-be. His beautiful fiancée, Nancy, her life snuffed out before he had a chance to marry her. He could feel himself shaking as the sobs started to overwhelm him. The one woman he had ever loved enough to spend the rest of his life with. Gone, buried in the ground. Waiting for him.
Now, those other women were lying alongside her. Where they belonged.