Chapter 10
“Oh my God. Kill me now,” I say. “I thought you were my friend Chloe.”
“From this morning? Pretty close friends then.”
I start to laugh and then remember why his wife left him and turn it into a cough. “Nice to hear from you,” I say. “How’s your evening going?”
“Well, my boys are watching the stupidest film that’s ever employed five hundred animators in the service of galactic destruction and I’ve burnt the dinner. How about you?”
“I’m sitting in a bedroom decorated with those same destroyers—I’m staying at my brother’s house and it’s his son’s taste in stickers—but my dinner was pizza.”
“Mine too. I put the box in the oven to keep warm and set it on fire.” He heaves an enormous sigh and I think I hear the sound of ice cubes in a glass. “They still ate it. I could serve them toothpaste and toenails on a pizza base and they’d wolf it down.”
I find myself laughing again. Then I find myself leaning back against the pillows with my legs tucked up, which I haven’t done during a phone call since the last time I slept in this room.
I get up and go to look out the window instead.
John is on the wander through the back sections of the yard, headed goodness knows where.
His phone rings too, lighting up his pocket, and I watch him fish it out and listen to whoever’s on the other end.
Then the way he swings round to look straight up towards this room makes me think whoever called him is talking about me.
I lift a hand to wave, but he ignores me.
“So anyway,” David Minto is saying when I start paying attention again, “I was wondering: Do you like the theatre?”
“Going to see plays, you mean? I suppose so. Not musicals, and I wish so many of the other ones weren’t so depressing.”
“You don’t like musicals? How about opera?”
“Makes me giggle,” I say. “Especially the death scenes.”
“So I’m guessing you don’t think much of ballet.”
I spin round so John can’t see the smile that breaks out on my face. “Wrong,” I say. “I love ballet! I cried buckets when I got too big to keep doing it but I still love watching it.”
“That is amazing,” says David Minto. “Because I told you I was divorced and I told you why. What I didn’t say was that it was pretty acrimonious.
I was pretty acrimonious. It’s no joke when two lawyers divorce each other.
And one of the things I screwed out of Aileen was our season tickets for Scottish Ballet, who are currently doing A Streetcar Named Desire. I’ve got two seats for Thursday night.”
I turn to face out of the window again. I might need the moral support of family to navigate this, even if it’s only my brother gawping at me. But John has disappeared. “Do you mean you’ve got two tickets you can’t use and you’re kindly offering them to me?” I ask. “Or . . . ?”
“Or,” says David Minto. “Definitely or.”
“Well, then I’d love to. Although it would be quite funny to hear what Chloe made of modern ballet too. But I’d love to. Thank you.”
“It’s in Glasgow,” he says. “So we could have something to eat as well and make a night of it. Are you . . . Look, I know you’re younger than me but are you so young you’d prefer a late supper afterwards or an early dinner precurtain?”
“Oh, before!” I say. “I’m not that young. If I tried for late supper after, I’d be face down in the soup.”
“Thank God for that,” he says. “I’ll book somewhere nice and text you details about picking you up. Okay? Lord’s Yard on the main road through Menstrie?”
As I hang up, I think to myself that I’m pretty sure I didn’t tell him where I lived, so the acrimony has died down enough for him to have asked his ex-wife to tell him what she knows about me.
I go to brush my teeth, then get into bed and have a serious, silent discussion with Kai to find out how he feels about this development.
As far as I can tell, he’s fine with it.
Leastways, I go off to sleep quicker than I have since I got here and don’t wake up until eight dreamless hours later.
I skip out of the door the next morning and down the steps to where Chloe’s waiting for me in the car. John seems to have opened the gate for her. He’s hanging in the driver’s window chatting.
“Lindsay,” he says, coming round and opening the passenger door for me, like a doorman.
“I know, I know,” I tell him. “Don’t let her talk me into anything.” He doesn’t know Shelley blabbed about talking me into taking on this place.
“I changed my mind, remember?” he says. “What I was actually going to tell you was: Go for it. Knock yourself out.”
“Yeah, why was that?” I ask. His face shuts down so entirely, I’m immediately convinced I should know why and I’ve forgotten.
So when Chloe leans past me and says, “Yes, John, why was that?” I’m flooded with love for her. I kiss her on the cheek while I’m fastening my seat belt. “So where is it anyway, this not-a-caravan?”
“Wait and see,” Chloe says, twisting round to see where she’s going as she reverses—always dicey in the front apron of Lord’s Yard.
There could be anything, anywhere. But she gets the car turned without any scrapes and puckers up to John as we go by.
He’s still glowering. For so many reasons, I’ll be happy to get away.
“You know something,” I say as we emerge onto the road. “You were so shy around John when we were kids, it’s weird to see how chummy you are with him now. With both of them, really.”
“Chummy,” says Chloe. “Is that what you’d call it?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I say, giving it a bit of thought. “It’s not even chummy. It’s beyond that. Intimate.”
“Puke. No offence.”
“Shut up. I mean intimate like family. Or like workmates. Past politeness.”
Chloe says nothing for a minute. “Yeah, you turn your back for ten years and anything can happen” is what comes out in the end. I decide to change the subject.
“So, can we stop and get coffee for the road?” I ask.
“Not worth it.”
“Must be close.”
“Oh my, Lindsay,” she says, all singsong sarcasm. “You nearly tricked me into revealing the location.”
At the Wallace roundabout, she stays in the left lane and slows down for the first exit that would take us to Cambusbarron.
I feel a slump. I’m sure there are nice bits, but you’ve got to look for them.
Then I realise Chloe has swept on right past the second exit too and is indicating for the third.
“Ha ha! Fooled you,” she says, taking the road to Dunblane. “Oh piss off, lane Nazi,” she mouths at a van driver behind her.
“I’m glad it’s Dunblane,” I say. “I—”
“Don’t prejudge,” she says. “You might still hate it.”
So I don’t react when we skirt the motorway and come into town on the dual carriageway, or when we peel off to the left at Saint Mary’s Episcopal, not even as Chloe slows down and starts to peer in through the gateposts, even though there’s a feeling of inevitability beginning to creep over me.
A fixer, she said. Complicated sale, she implied. She definitely told me it was big.
“Here we are,” she announces, at the open gates to Saint Helen’s. “We’ll park on the road and walk in.”
I manage to get out of the car but I walk nowhere. I grind to a halt and stare from the gate.
“Linds?” Chloe’s frowning at me.
I’m ready for the scene in front of me to thin and flatten, wheel and tilt, shatter into shards even.
This can’t be happening. But the shadows stay dark and the peaks and points on the roof stay light where the sun hits them.
And actually . . . when I get a hold of myself .
. . I suppose it is an empty house. And a small world.
But there’s still one very good reason why this can’t be real.
“What are you playing at?” I say and, although my face feels numb, my voice comes out in a hiss as if I’m clenching my jaw.
Chloe gapes at me and takes a step back.
“Wh-What do you mean?” She looks at the house and back at me. “What have you— What did— Who’s been—?”
“I know this is a bit of fun for you,” I say, cutting her off, “but it’s serious for me. I need to buy a house, to live in, to recover in. What’s the point of showing me something I couldn’t afford in a million year— Wait. Is it subdivided? Is it half the house? Or one floor? Sorry!”
“Th-That’s what you’re so upset about?” says Chloe. Her throat sounds dry, and although she went pale when I laid into her, her face is flushing now. Her cheeks have gone a bright, familiar red that makes me want to hug her.
“Sorry,” I say again. “Bit of an overreaction.” I give her a smile she doesn’t return. “Are you seriously telling me I can afford this house?”
“I don’t want to tell you the price before you’ve seen round it” is all I get back from her.
“Why?”
“Because that’s how they do it on those stupid shows. I thought you liked all that.”
“Well, for one thing, this isn’t one of those stupid shows,” I tell her. “This is my stupid life. What are you up to, Chloe? And why isn’t there a sale board?”
“Nothing!” She blinks. “I don’t know. Bylaws, maybe?” She pauses. “Seven dead.”
Which of course she can’t have said, can she? Now shave. The North Wind and the Sun.
“What?” I ask her.
“Seven hundred thousand on the nose,” she says.
I let out a laugh that’s half a gasp too. “That’s not a way you say— I thought you were telling me I could afford it because the last seven owners all died! Or . . . seven people died in there and that’s why it’s a bargain!”
“Jesus Christ, Lindsay.” She’s not laughing.
“Or that seven must die to break the curse that means no one wants to live here!”
“Stop it!” she yelps at me. “What is wrong with you?”
“Me? When did you get so jumpy?” She’s still not laughing. “Okay, so what is wrong with it?”
“You tell me once we get inside,” Chloe says. “I thought it was okay.”
I really want to tell her I’d rather look at a house I can afford than daydream my way around this one, but she’s been the boss of our friendship since the day we met and it’s too late to change now. And, if I’m being completely honest, I’m a bit nosy too.