Cat Step, page 20
Fuck them all: the social workers, Ruth, June, Paul, Georgia, this whole village. If anyone wanted to ask me about my daughter, let them fucking ask me. If anyone wanted to tell me my dead partner was a drug-dealing thieving bampot let them tell me and see what I did to them. Liars! Come and judge me, come and tell me why I’m not welcome here, why our luck is so bad in this gloomy, cloud-covered village. I was pure raging, as Robbie used to say. Not a friend. Not a soul to go to.
I saw John smoking beside a tree fresh with blossom and new leaves. ‘Go and get June for me, will you?’ I said to him.
He looked at his feet as if to wonder why he wasn’t wearing his ballet shoes.
‘There’s no class today. I need to speak to June. Go get her for me. Please,’ I said.
‘She’s away,’ he said. ‘Two minutes ago. She’s away to meet her son.’
I started to run.
‘Liz!’ John called after me. ‘I think your man was innocent. I think he was forced onto the wrong tracks. We were saying that after you’d gone—’
‘Too late now, John.’
‘Good to see you on your feet.’
I ran up the road and looked towards the bus stop. There she was, June, her small figure in her pale coat, carrying a handbag and a pink gift bag. The bus approached the stop as I was running to get there and I felt a surge of something – adrenalin, panic, I’m not sure.
‘June!’
She turned when I shouted but looked away from me and stepped onto the bus.
‘June, I need to talk to you.’
There were other people at the bus stop and I had to wait for them to get on.
‘Where are you going?’ the driver said to me as I tried to barge my way past.
‘Nowhere. I need to speak to someone.’
‘You need a ticket if you want on the bus.’
‘June, where are you going?’
She shouted at me from inside the bus, her voice louder and better than mine. ‘Glasgow!’
I paid by my card, there was money in my account for now, took my ticket and found June.
‘Where are you going?’
She didn’t answer me.
‘Are you going to see your son?’
‘He wanted to meet me in Glasgow.’
‘I thought I was coming with you.’
‘I don’t think that’s suitable now.’
‘Oh, it’s very suitable,’ I said. ‘I have much to say to him.’
The bus went through the housing scheme, stopping to give way to cars when the road was narrow. June seemed annoyed with me, gathered up her coat and patted it onto her legs, put her arms over her handbag.
‘I don’t want you to come,’ she said.
‘It’s gone beyond you now,’ I said. ‘I’m representing Robbie. I have some questions for Michael McDermott.’
‘I want to see him on my own.’
‘This is my only chance.’
‘You’re bullying me.’
‘I’ll bully him.’
I loosened the zip on my jacket. It was hot on the bus.
‘You look as if you’re about to commit murder,’ June said.
‘I will if you want me to.’
‘Calm yourself.’
The driver cleaned his windscreen at the traffic lights and I watched the wipers swipe the dirt and water in a great arc across the glass. More people got on the bus. June waved at a woman. I thought the woman may have come to sit near us so I shook my head and glared at her and she sat elsewhere. God, I was awful.
‘I heard from my social worker today,’ I said to June.
‘What did she want?’
I told June I’d been reported, that I’d lost my job, that Paul had betrayed me.
‘Your generation do some stupid things,’ she said to me. ‘Time out. What a waste of time.’
Two women with a pram came on the bus. One pressed her foot on the pram’s brake and they both sat down.
‘We’re coming into Lenzie now. You know it doesn’t stop when it’s on the motorway.’
‘I’m not getting off.’
We drove through the fields and crossed the roundabouts.
‘He’s been in jail again, hasn’t he?’ This struck me as we turned onto the motorway: the gifts in the bag, the years they hadn’t seen each other, his history. ‘What did he do?’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘Fraud. It was a low security prison but they told him if he does anything again he’ll be put away for longer. He has a thing. A compulsion. My daughter-in-law kept in touch with me. She sent letters and photos.’
‘I know about the prescriptions. I know about the boy who died.’
‘I heard. Alice decided to speak for once.’
‘I know what he did to Robbie. And to you. Why are you even seeing him?’
I saw that a tear cut a path along her cheek to her jaw. I watched her wipe it away with her fist.
‘I’ve been enjoying your company, Liz, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want you to find out. And your wee Emily. How is she?’
‘She’s starting school in August.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes. Campsie.’
June raised her eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it for a girl like you. But there are worse places to bring your children up, I suppose.’
We both knew the truth and the lie in what she’d said.
‘Please don’t change the subject, June.’
She took a slow breath in and I heard it come out through her nose.
‘You know he was a nice wee boy. His teachers loved him. He wanted a brother or a sister but his father left me quite early on. He met someone else. I think he suspected all along. You know, don’t you, when someone is half-hearted about you. So there’s one of Michael’s excuses right there. No father. I’m sorry Liz, I know your wee girl has no father, but she’ll use it against you, even though it wasn’t your fault.’
All I did was sniff and shake my head. Emily has more to use against me now and it has nothing to do with Robbie.
June swiped at another tear. ‘My heart broke for Robbie. He was a gullible boy. His own father had just died and he got taken advantage of. I was devastated when he took off. I couldn’t look his mother or his grandad in the face again. I told Michael to disappear. Well, he had to disappear. They jailed him.’
‘So I hear.’
She looked at me and her face was plain. She clasped her hands together and held them in her lap. I couldn’t tell her it was all right. I couldn’t bear to think of Robbie being hurt. Of someone’s fists coming into contact with his face. The shame. The talk. These things stay with a person. No wonder he didn’t want to come back to Lennoxtown.
June spoke. ‘It’s both kept me going – that encounter in my kitchen – and given me reason to give up on everything. A son who hit his own mother, who took medicine from pensioners, who dealt drugs to schoolchildren and a young boy who put his body between me and the blows. Funny, how a moment can hold both things. I didn’t deserve it. But it’s kept me alive until now.’
Funny how a moment can hold both things. I sat with June in silence, listening to her weep, knowing that a single word of mine might console her. And part of me wanted to console her because she’d been my friend. But I couldn’t.
At the bus station I stepped aside to let her out of her seat and I followed her off the bus, walking next to her or behind her through the crowded streets to the place she’d arranged to meet her son.
He began by offering to drive her home, squeezing first her hands then her arms. ‘How did you get here? Did you get a return? Bin it, Mum.’ He spoke quickly. He looked at June – then me – then June – then settled on me. Perhaps he was waiting for an introduction. He didn’t get one.
June said, ‘Son, the bus station is across the road. The bus takes me to my door. Sit yourself down.’ She didn’t seem cowed or scared, she was her usual self. I’d never heard her speak any differently to anyone else but I’d expected her to be more hesitant with him. He didn’t sit down.
‘I’d like to see your flat,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing to see.’
‘I know where it is. I looked it up on Google Maps.’
‘Speak English, Son.’
And they laughed. I saw affection. I saw their similar chins, their identical face shapes. His hair was blonde and the same texture as her grey. He was hers, there was no denying. He must have used the gym in prison because he was lean. June handed him the gift bag and he put it on the floor next to his chair.
‘Presents for the children,’ she said. ‘And chocolates for you and Julie.’
‘You didn’t need to, Ma.’
‘It’s a while since I’ve seen you all.’
I pictured Robbie and this man mowing lawns and tidying the gardens of all those neat white-walled houses and flats. Robbie, barely out of boyhood. Michael, so much older, he could have been Robbie’s uncle. I looked at Michael’s eager face and tried to imagine him skimming diazepam from bottles.
He must have felt me staring at him. ‘Who are you?’ he said to me.
‘She’s not staying,’ June said. ‘She used to teach me dance.’
June and I hadn’t spoken since we’d got off the bus.
‘Dancing?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve never met a dancer.’
We stood by the table we’d found him at.
‘I didn’t know you did dancing, Mum.’
‘Aye. There’s a lot to catch up on.’
That galvanised him. He rubbed his hands together, pulled the chairs away from the table and told us to sit down. He asked if I had time for a drink before I went on my way and without looking at June I said yes and asked for a coffee. He seemed surprised at my accent.
‘You sound like my wife,’ he said.
‘Do I?’ I said.
He took his wallet from his pocket, hung his jacket over the back of one of the chairs and walked to the counter. I was irritated at June for being besotted with him, for showing none of the guard she should have shown, for not pushing her finger into his chest and telling him that the boy who hit his own mother should not be allowed anywhere near her, should never be allowed back. Instead she leaned towards me and said, ‘Please don’t start anything. I haven’t seen him in seven years,’ as if it was me who had the problem.
There he was, returning with our drinks on a tray, smiling and full of business.
‘One for you, Mum, and one for you – what’s your name?’
‘Liz.’
He set down the coffees and sat down himself, grabbing two sticks of sugar and tearing the ends off.
‘What brought you to these parts, Liz?’
‘My partner died. So I moved back to the village where he was born.’
‘What village is that?’
‘Lennoxtown.’
I was wondering if he would work it out, somehow, that I was Robbie’s, that Robbie was mine, but apart from a moment of recognition – Lennoxtown was where he was from – he treated me as if I was just a normal woman.
‘I’m sorry about your partner,’ he said, and he actually seemed kind.
A bus passed by the window and an elderly woman with a walking stick struggled in the doorway. Michael bounded towards the door. It was as if he was atoning for everything he’d ever done, and as he held the door open for the woman with her stick I caught him looking at his mum.
‘It won’t do you any good going over it,’ June said to me.
‘It will,’ I said, and I was sorry that I would cause her anguish, and I’m still sorry for what she heard, but he needed to be told and I needed to say it.
‘Pictures, Mum,’ he said when he came back. He pulled an envelope from his coat pocket and took out some photos. ‘That’s their most recent school photo.’
‘Very nice.’
‘That’s Chloe’s prom last year.’ His children stood on the doorstep of a house. The girl wore a dress. Her brother, younger, in a tracksuit, held a book in his hands.
‘She’s at college now. And Adam’s in year nine at school.’
‘Clever weans. Can I have that one? I’ve got the school one.’ She pushed it across the table to her son. ‘Julie sent it.’
‘I forgot Julie would have sent you things.’ He didn’t seem to know what to do with it so he passed it to me.
‘Good-looking children,’ I said. ‘I like their curls.’
That animated him. He held his own sandy hair between a finger and a thumb and said, ‘God knows where they get it from.’
Robbie’s brother has curls. So does Emily.
He put the photograph in his coat pocket and we sipped our drinks.
After June put her cup on its saucer and wiped her lips with a napkin she said in a steady way, ‘What are you here for?’
Michael seemed embarrassed. He rested his wrists on the table’s edge. He laughed, looked at me and then his mum.
‘She’s here,’ he said, meaning me. ‘I feel a bit stupid talking in front of her.’
I said nothing but watched him lean in towards his mum. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. In a quiet voice he said, ‘Leave it for now, eh?’
‘No,’ June said, her voice strong and loud. That’s better, June, I thought.
The woman behind the counter shouted ‘Toasted cheese and ham!’ and Michael looked away from his mum.
‘Shall we get some food?’
‘No,’ June said.
The woman carried the sandwich to a man who sat by the window.
‘I take it you want money,’ June said.
He squeezed the table edge, looked at me again then said, ‘Yes.’
‘That wasn’t so hard.’
‘I do want money but I want to apologise first.’
‘For what?’
‘For the whole lot. I’m sorry.’
For all that she’d said to me, I sensed that June had forgiven him years ago.
‘I had counselling in the jail. They were really good. I had to face up to everything.’ He glanced over at me again.
I spoke now. ‘What did you go to jail for?’
There was a small beat before he spoke. I watched him turn his head from June to me.
‘Tax fraud.’
I nodded. ‘What do you mean by tax fraud?’
‘I told a few lies on the tax return. We were quite a big outfit so they were quite big lies.’
He looked at me plainly and I carried on. ‘It’s not your first crime is it? Did anyone come to harm this time?’
He didn’t like that. ‘Fraud is a victimless crime. I was greedy. Not bad.’ I saw the underside of his tongue as he spoke. His diction was good.
‘We can come to a loan arrangement,’ June said. ‘I’ve got an amount put aside for the children when they’re twenty-one and I’m not touching that. But if you want a small loan I’ll come to an arrangement with you.’
She should have said no. She should have told him he had a fucking cheek even being in the same space as her.
‘Do you have a thing about money?’ I said to him, goading him.
‘Who even are you by the way?’
‘You’re about to leave, aren’t you, Liz?’
‘Robbie Watt was my partner. Do you remember him? Because you say fraud is a victimless crime but you’ve had victims before, haven’t you?’
He leaned back in his seat and if I was to be kind I’d say he had distress and remorse in his face, but I’m not kind and I never wanted to be kind. He shat it, as Robbie would have said.
‘Your mum was one of your victims wasn’t she?’ A worry about saying that lasted for about a second in my head. ‘And Robbie was a victim too. And those old people you deceived, they were victims weren’t they? And what about the schoolchildren whose lives you fucked up? What about the boy who overdosed on your stolen pills?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
June looked worried and I didn’t like to see my strong and stubborn friend take a tissue from her handbag and hold it in both hands as if waiting for tears, but it didn’t stop me. I had to attack him, I had to.
‘You’ve made a lifetime of thieving and bullying,’ I said.
I was pleased, finally, to see anger in his face, to see it change from benign to hostile.
‘Your thing isn’t about money is it? It’s about deceit and manipulation and power and you can’t control yourself. Is that what your counsellor told you? Did you tell your counsellor you beat up your own mother? Did you tell her you beat up a teenager? You weak man coming all the way up here to swindle your mother out of her money.’
I wasn’t afraid of him. I leaned towards him. I met his finger pointing at my face and I stared full at him when he said, ‘Robbie was every bit as involved as I was. He loved taking the kids’ tenners and spending them on his weed and his birds.’
‘No.’
‘Aye. He knew what he was doing. His eyes fucking lit up when he talked about dealing at the school. I said no!’
‘You manipulated him.’
‘Oh no. He got a whiff of the money and the power and he fucking went for it.’
‘You groomed him. You ruined his childhood. He could never go back.’
‘Nope. He groomed himself. He was all about expanding the business, getting some younger lads to work for us.’
June touched her son on the arm and said, ‘That’s enough now, Michael.’
‘He’s dead now, so you can’t ask him, but believe me, he was every bit as involved as I was. And that’s why I hit him. Because I knew he’d play the innocent little shite if we ever got caught. And that’s exactly what he did. It’s true isn’t it, Mum? The police made him lie to stitch me up.’
‘There might be some truth in that, aye.’
