Bluff, page 17
‘Our present should arrive just in time,’ my mother said. ‘I sent it to her parents’ house.’
‘No! What?’ I couldn’t keep the alarm from my voice as I fumbled with my phone to try and warn Vanessa.
‘No? What’s going on, Cameron?’
Nothing good ever came from those words. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ I asked. My face was growing hot. I looked around me. The aisle was busy. I could bump into someone I knew at any second.
‘It’s just a small gift …’ She squinted at me from behind her large glasses, shopping basket in hand.
I didn’t hear what she said next. Rows of discounted Christmas cards stood in front of me. Towards the bottom there was a small multipack, with the same design that had been pushed through my letterbox. The rabbit in the snowy field, the cottage against the night sky.
‘What’s up, Cameron?’ my mother asked.
I was already striding towards the checkout.
‘You could at least have told me you were going to the car,’ my mum said, when she joined me, clearly displeased, as I lifted the last of the shopping bags into the boot. ‘Always so dramatic. What’s happened?’
‘I’m not dramatic,’ I said, thumping the boot lid down and shoving the empty trolley across towards the others that snaked along the store front.
‘Cameron,’ my mum hissed, making me feel like I was sixteen and drunk.
I got into the car and yanked on my seatbelt. I was going to say it. Then she would leave me alone.
My mum slammed her door. This was not a good start. On the other side of the windscreen, the sky was threatening to rain.
‘We broke up. OK?’ I wanted out of here. This wasn’t fair.
She looked at me, her expression changing to sympathy.
My voice dropped to a mutter. ‘We’re not getting married.’
My mother nodded calmly. ‘And when did this happen, Cameron? You should have said something.’
‘It doesn’t matter when it happened. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘OK. I’m just trying to understand. So this is maybe why you’ve come home.’
Maybe nothing. ‘I can’t give you a reason, OK, Mum? If I could, I would!’ An empty void stretched out before me. Then I felt a pang of rage. ‘While we’re on the subject of relationships, anything going on that I should know about with you and Stuart?’ Skulking about the garden, inviting my mother to his stupid party. Something was up. Maybe he was even the letter writer. Maybe they had been getting it on in the garden shed. It was too much to bear.
‘Cameron, no. No! Don’t be ridiculous. We’re just friends, that’s all. Gosh, you have a wild imagination. You always did. We both like gardening and doing the crossword and …’ Already her tone was giving her away.
‘Mum. Look at you, you’re practically blushing.’
‘Is it so bad?’ she said. ‘To have a friend? I get lonely, you know, sometimes.’
I spluttered. ‘Not too lonely, I hope. What does Dad think of all this?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, come off it. “All this”? You’re being ridiculous. What do you take me for? You’re my son. You’re meant to trust me.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I sat in silence in the parked car. A blur of assignations ran through my head at top speed. Secret meetings in one another’s cars after work. Dinner reservations far from home. Hotel rooms. These images, these memories, they weren’t between my mum and Stuart. They were things I had done with a colleague at work. Another teacher.
My mum started the car engine. God knew what must have been going through her head.
My fiancée Vanessa wasn’t stupid. Eventually, she had become suspicious about the number of times a fictitious friend called Brian had been texting me or that my department head had called me out of hours. One evening Brian’s name had flashed up again and again when I had left my phone in our bedroom to take a shower. I had told Naomi, the colleague I was seeing, to be careful, but by that point we were in too deep, now I looked back. I had thought Naomi was someone significant in my life. She wasn’t. She was just a hot English teacher. Maybe I had been scared of getting married. Maybe I had thought Vanessa and I weren’t right for each other and didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe I had simply liked the attention. Whatever I had been thinking, it had happened. And I had lost a woman who had cared about me. The sex with Naomi hadn’t even been that good. But I refused to cry about it. It was my fault.
My mother did what she always did in awkward situations and put on the radio. The silence was filled by one of those polished, inauthentic voices of an easy-listening station. An eighties track started playing, its title on the tip of my tongue.
I looked out of the passenger window and fought back tears. I was pathetic.
Extract from ‘Who’s Afraid of the Dark?’ by Joanie Sinclair, 2012
I tried to sleep in the car, as my dad drove, but I couldn’t. I was still awake when the sun started to rise on the motorway. We stopped at a service station for petrol and bacon rolls. I was still awake when my mum’s number buzzed on my phone. I could hardly tell her what had happened, because my dad was shouting so loud.
33
Joanie, September 2013
Joanie lay wide awake in her dark twin bed, tense with fear, thinking of her friend lying in the living room. She wanted to turn on the light, but for the first time in her life she felt safer this way. After an hour or so, she heard a door slam and raised voices. She strained to listen.
‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ It was Erin, high-pitched and wild.
The drone of music stopped. There was another crash, the sound of something clattering to the floor.
‘Don’t look at me like that. I know everything!’ Erin was yelling. ‘I know how much you’ve lied. You’re losing touch with reality. You are! You’re not translating that thing. It’s made up! You’re making all that stuff up. You don’t deserve that money, David.’
‘For the love of God. What are you talking about?’ That was David’s voice, confident and calm, but belittling.
‘I’ve started reading it myself. Your translation. It’s not real. Aiden’s predictions of the future? Bullshit.’
‘Ah, for one thing, you can’t possibly have read it. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve told you before. The words I translate are sacred. Sacred. He is speaking through me. Through my work.’
There was a deadly silence until Erin spoke again, quiet, reasoning. ‘You’re aware of how, um, insane you sound?’
‘Then why are you the only one who doubts me, Erin? This is years of knowledge and research. It’s even more than that. I don’t know what I can say to convince you. I’m probably the most rational person you’ve ever known.’
‘David.’
‘You’d better have a long, hard think about what you’re saying.’
Erin muttered something inaudible.
‘I know she’s in the next room. I gave her some too. Clearly, I didn’t give you enough.’
‘David, no.’
There was a clatter.
‘David, get away from me. No. I don’t want any more.’
A scraping of furniture, then another excruciating silence. Joanie tried to get up, but her body stayed frozen in the black of the bedroom. She tried again, but she couldn’t move. She began to feel sick, a headache pinching at her temples. Back in the garden, when David had shoved the open flask in her face, she had swallowed some of the liquid.
As she tried to listen to more, the words became muffled and her eyes became heavy. She lost track of time, her brain drifting on the edge of consciousness, between reality and dream. Gradually, the dark walls became those of her teenage bedroom. Then they were the stone of a monastery. She looked down and the earth was far beneath her bare feet. She was outside, she was sure of it, looking down from a great height. She could see the patchwork of dark fields, trees and the ocean, with the tiny lights of boats floating on its surface like stars. Then, like a witch, she was flying through the night sky.
34
Cameron, New Year’s Eve 2023
After the scene in the car with my mum, there was no way I was hanging around for New Year’s Eve drinks with my parents and their small group of friends. I left just after they switched on the BBC’s Hogmanay Live, to play in the background, with its folk bands and studio crowd and the lights of Princes Street. The show wasn’t the same without Jackie Bird.
Tatey had said he would meet me at a new bar, the Auld Bothy, that had opened in St Rule on Martyr’s Street. The inside was modelled on something between a gastro pub and a hay barn. The place started filling with students, back from the Christmas holidays down south with Ma and Pa. You could hear them a mile off. They looked so young and self-assured. It was funny; I would often find myself thinking about St Rule and my schooldays, but I barely remembered university in Glasgow. Maybe it was because I was a secondary-school teacher now and had to think about it every day. Granted, the London boys I taught were very different from my group of pals over a decade ago in our scruffy black uniforms. When I started my current job, I marvelled at the pupils’ ironed shirts and clean, combed hair. I could imagine some of them coming to this very bar in a few years’ time.
‘Hey, man!’ Tatey waved as he came to sit beside me at the table. He was looking surprisingly well-groomed. As we chatted, I realized how little I knew about him, given how much time we had spent together. I had no idea, for example, what he did for work.
‘Stage technician,’ he said, when I asked him. ‘I thought you knew. Lighting, set building. Pyrotechnics occasionally.’ He grinned at me. ‘Local theatres, a few football matches, concerts, that kinda thing.’ I remembered him helping Adam with the equipment for band nights. That van had come a long way.
Inside my jacket pocket was the book, Plant and Ritual, that I was planning to return. ‘Mia might be along later,’ I said. I had taken up her offer of a drink. The blog and its revelations had floored me, though. I remained more confused than ever.
‘Oh, aye?’ Tatey asked. He didn’t seem pleased about Mia.
‘Yeah. I bumped into her yesterday. She’s actually really nice.’
He nodded disapprovingly. Then he pointed to the stage, by the bar, where a ceilidh band was scheduled to play. ‘I don’t like the way they’ve rigged that.’
‘I’m sure they know what they’re doing,’ I said. ‘It’s interesting. Mia’s also tried to find out what happened to Joanie.’ The news story flashed back to my mind and, just as quickly, I pushed it away.
‘Have you got those cameras set up on your house yet?’
‘Nah.’ No more Christmas cards had arrived, but I had actually raised the idea of getting a security system with my dad. He had laughed at me, saying I had spent too long in London. Nothing like that was needed in Monypenny. I would figure out something, I knew I would, but part of me hoped the letters had stopped for good. I was leaving the day after tomorrow anyway. I just wanted to make sure my parents didn’t get any nasty surprises.
Four musicians walked on to the stage and started tuning their instruments. The bar had filled since we had first sat down, under the string of bare bulbs and bunting that adorned the timbered ceiling.
‘Isn’t it weird how no one knows where Joanie is, though?’ I asked him. ‘Even her stepdad couldn’t tell me. Not that he doesn’t know but …’
‘Hang on, you’re telling me you actually – what – doorstepped her family?’ Tatey asked, aghast. ‘Maybe just take it easy with that. You never know, eh? Something could be going on with the family.’
‘Like what?’ I asked. That had sounded like quite an informed opinion.
‘I don’t know. That’s the exact point I’m making,’ he replied.
‘Alright, calm the ham,’ I muttered, talking like I was at school again.
Tatey snorted and took a mouthful of his beer.
I fixed my eyes firmly on the band. The accordion player was wearing a tweed bunnet and a waistcoat. They looked like they might be shite. These students wouldn’t know the difference. Just something to post on social media.
We stayed silent and stormy-faced as the group started with a jaunty folk song. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Maybe this would make us feel better.
Tatey looked around the room, then spoke aggressively in my ear. ‘I’m gonna be honest. I think you need to move on a bit. I don’t know what you’re hoping to find. We don’t know where Joanie is. She was our friend back at school, so that’s sad, that’s awful sad, but you have a great life, you’re gonna get married. I’m sure she’s fine. Just put it behind you.’
I felt my jaw tense. I didn’t need a motivational speech from Tatey of all people. ‘OK …’ I started awkwardly. ‘If we’re gonna be honest, mate, I feel like you’re not exactly being straight with me.’
‘What?’ he asked, over the noise of the folk band. Everyone but us had started having a whale of a time.
I pretended I couldn’t hear him and picked up the flyer that lay on the table. Scooby Dhu, the band was called. Of course it was. I looked around the room at the different faces, mostly younger, wondering if I might spot the guy I had seen on the beach. Had he really been following me? Or was it just a coincidence? There weren’t many places to go in this small town.
‘Cameron, why?’ Tatey asked again in my ear, with a grab of my shoulder.
I shrugged him off. This was rubbish. Tatey had been a good, solid friend and I needed one of those right now. And yet. ‘You know something,’ I said. ‘I know you know something and you’re not telling me.’
Tatey knocked back his drink and looked me in the eye. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. Some things are better left alone. OK? Chill the fuck out.’ Those were the strongest words I had ever heard from him. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘do you ever even think about your behaviour? What you did to her?’
‘What I did to her? What did I do to her?’
‘You know,’ he said. ‘School.’ He put his glass down on the table and, with that, I watched him walk out into the final night of the year. Tatey was talking nonsense. He wasn’t telling the truth. I had seen him play pranks over and over again. He could hide things. He could keep a poker face. I sat there in a daze as preppy twenty-somethings started making their way to the dance-floor, while the band played a cover of ‘In A Big Country’. Probably the first time they had heard it. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. As people rushed past me, laughing and singing along, I could feel myself drifting further into a state of mental isolation.
I sat there, nursing a pint, people-watching, until two delicate hands squeezed my shoulders. Finally, there she was.
Mia leaned over my shoulder, grinning like a pixie. She looked different without her glasses. She dragged me to my feet, without a word, and pushed me to the dance-floor. It was Hogmanay. I had now drunk enough to think I was a good dancer. A fresh year lay ahead of me. Think positive. I could make things work. It seemed clear now, as I danced, that London wasn’t for me any more. It had served its purpose. As I looked into Mia’s face, I felt happy. I twirled her tightly around the dance-floor. Her dark curls fell over her face and her eyes sparkled. There was barely room to move. We kept knocking into people, but that didn’t bother me. We became breathless with laughter. I knew there were things I wanted to ask her, badly, but I didn’t want to break the spell.
Finally, we went outside, pink-cheeked, for air. People had started to gather further down by the fountain, for the Bells. My eyes watered in the bitter cold.
‘I read that blog,’ I said, still a little out of breath, as we leaned against the wall of the stone-flagged entrance to the bar. There were artfully placed crates filled with plants at our feet and wooden shelves decorated with terracotta pots, like the outside of an expensive shed.
‘What it describes is the reason I left,’ she replied. ‘I know it sounds mad. I started to work at Hallowed Ground. I needed some money and heard about the job through my dad’s friends at the university. I got on OK with the manager, Erin. Then she wanted me to hang out more and more with her and David Henderson, whom she was in a relationship with, it turned out. He wanted me to help him with his research and planned these meet-ups, even when I was still at school, with me and some undergraduates in his department. We were told not to mention it. At first it was just academic stuff. Photocopying some journal articles, proofreading an index. Sometimes we had dinner at his house. I have to admit, he made me feel quite special. One day, when school had finished, just after Joanie started, we all went to the Isle of Maeyar. I thought he was going to ask us to do mushrooms, in the name of research. I had heard him talk about it. But this was something else, the drug they talk about on the website, henbane. It’s a hallucinogen, basically a poison. The book I gave you goes into more detail.’
‘Yeah.’ I said emphatically. ‘I read it.’ I handed her back Plant and Ritual from my jacket pocket.
‘Well, he was really persistent, in this persuasive manner he has, and in the end … I tried it. Not too much, but enough.’
‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘Was Joanie there too?’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ Mia replied, a little dismissively. ‘She wasn’t invited. It was one of the most awful experiences of my life. I felt like I was going to die. He remained sober, of course. It was just the students who started hallucinating. He had people who loved him, though, in academic circles. I think that was how he got away with it, somehow. Or they were too intimidated to make a fuss. Scared they would be blamed or get into trouble. Maybe they even believed in what he was doing. It looks like that’s still happening, even worse.’
