Bluff, page 8
‘What makes you think that?’ Joanie asked, pushing in a chair. ‘Today was a one off, I …’
‘Well, you still mention Adam a lot.’
‘I’m fine, actually,’ Joanie replied, too quickly. She moved to another part of the room. ‘Does this place get busier, once the students are back?’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Erin. ‘And I’ve been planning some great evening classes. I’ve been meaning to ask you. During term time, I run a meditation workshop for students here on a Thursday night,’ Erin hesitated slightly. ‘I’ve been learning breathing techniques since I was in high school. People like to decompress after sitting in the library all day. It’s like lazy yoga. I was thinking it might be helpful to you.’
14
Cameron, Christmas 2023
I came home from midnight mass at two a.m. on Christmas morning to see a figure crouching in the dark hallway of my parents’ house. For some reason, the first person I thought of was my neighbour, Stuart Dunn.
As I scrambled to find a light switch, there came the deep whisper. ‘Son.’ The unmistakable rasp of my father.
‘Jesus, Dad,’ I murmured back.
‘Stay there.’
I could just make out his silver beard in the dim light from the kitchen. A far cry from Santa Claus. It had been so long since I’d seen him. Had he totally lost the plot? ‘Why?’ I hissed. ‘You scared the life out of me.’
‘There’s a mouse,’ he whispered back at me. ‘I nearly got it there.’
‘Well, surprise! I’m home,’ I muttered, shaking my head, as I switched on a table lamp and helped him to his feet. My words slurred together a little, thanks to the beers in the back of Tatey’s van. I sighed, filled with a sense of happiness and exhaustion. I was home for the holidays and here was my dad, even if he was skulking around in the dark. ‘It’s great to see you again,’ I said.
‘You too, son.’ Dad put a heavy hand on my shoulder, examining my face with a smile.
I gave him a proper hug, whether he wanted one or not.
‘Let’s get you a drink,’ he said. It was Christmas after all.
‘I was just wrapping some presents when I heard the bastard,’ my dad explained, pouring me a nightcap in the kitchen. Laphroaig. I perched on the countertop, like I used to when I came home from parties as a teenager, only now my father seemed happy to see me. He had a round, jolly sort of face, but could produce a scowl that would chill you to the bone. A man of few words, he was smiling to himself now, like we were sharing a private joke.
‘Daniel Tate still causing mischief these days?’ he asked gruffly, sitting down at the kitchen table in front of a plate of mince pies. He looked a little older, wearing a fleece I hadn’t seen before. Meanwhile his slippers were the same as ever, practically hanging together at the seams.
‘Tatey?’ I asked. ‘Pretty much, aye, by the sound of it,’ I said, trying the whisky.
‘Sandwich short of a picnic, that one,’ my father replied, with a mouthful of mince pie.
‘That’s a bit harsh.’
My dad gave me one of his chilly looks that said, You know I’m right. ‘Won’t Vanessa be missing you by now?’ he asked, holding out the bottle to top up my glass. ‘Your mum willnae like you sitting up there.’
I slid off the counter and, instead of answering his question, sat down beside him and picked at a small blue splatter on the table. My mum would use this surface to paint on when it got too cold in her studio. I had been starting to think of Vanessa much less often. There had even been one or two clear days when I didn’t think of her at all. London felt far away, physically as well as mentally. At some point, I should let my parents down gently. I would start by mentioning that things weren’t quite right between Vanessa and me, that we’d been having doubts about getting married. It was a sanitized version of what had really happened. I would leave out the cold silences and crying. Yet I was still looking at the blue paint without having said a word.
In my peripheral vision, my father gave a single nod. You didn’t always have to explain. Just then, something small pinballed from the kitchen, along the hallway, bumping against the skirting board.
‘That damn mouse …’ my dad grumbled, his eyes fierce beneath his bushy brows.
I thrust out my hand to stop him getting up and dropped my voice to a whisper, mindful of my mother. ‘It’s nearly three a.m. Probably time we turned in, eh?’
‘Oh, aye,’ he replied, running a hand over his beard. ‘Sleep changes when you retire. But you’re right. Your mother wants us to go and see Kirstin the morra.’
‘Dad …’ I paused, thinking of our neighbour Stuart skulking about the garden. ‘Is everything OK with you and Mum?’ My throat felt dry.
‘Of course it is!’ he said brusquely. Something flickered across his face as he took a closer look at me. ‘How?’
‘Just checking,’ I said, thinking of my mother’s strange reaction when I had arrived at the house this morning. Meeting Tatey at the station seemed like a week ago.
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘My grandfather would have said, Ye’ve got mair in your heid than the spane puts in, Cam.’
Whenever he said this, it wasn’t a compliment.
Upstairs, I crashed on to my freshly made bed, whisky still warming my throat. I pulled the duvet up to my ears and tried to drift off. While my body ached, thoughts raced around my brain like hungry mice. Maybe my dad was right. There was way more in my head than a spoon could ever put in. I had a tendency to over-think things. After a while, I texted my ex-fiancée. Merry Christmas, Vanessa.
Extract from ‘Who’s Afraid of the Dark?’ by Joanie Sinclair, 2012
I opened the door as quietly as I could, but it still made a loud creak. I stood stock still, my bare feet on the carpet. Downstairs was silent. I edged over to the banister and peered down into the stairwell. I thought I heard another bump. Too big for a mouse, or any such creature. Whoever was stumbling downstairs was stumbling in darkness. My family would have put some lights on. Then the noise became louder. Someone was walking towards the stairs. I felt around for my phone and started calling Mum. It rang off. Hello, this is Lynne Byrne’s phone. Please leave a message after the tone. I listened closely in the dark. A man was down there, I was sure of it. A chill rushed through my body. I wondered if this was the way I would die.
15
Joanie, September 2013
It was seven p.m. on the Thursday after Fresher’s Week and the lights of Hallowed Ground were off. Blinds had been rolled down over the windows, blocking out the waning summer light. Vik appeared silently and helped Joanie and Erin to move the tables and chairs to one side. He didn’t say much, as usual, but she kept finding herself looking at him. When he smiled back, she felt flustered. He didn’t seem to notice, just rolled out his mat while another student arrived, then two more. Erin left the door open for a while longer, eventually realizing that no one else was coming.
As she lay on the floor, Joanie eyed the heaped outline of the furniture merging with the bookshelves. She didn’t like a room to be too dark: it made her panicky. She could feel her breath start to stall in her chest. Like Erin had said, she needed to overcome her fears. The three large candles helped, burning in different corners of the room.
When Erin moved from body to body, laying a coarse blanket over each, it felt comforting, as though she were tucking them up in bed. For the first time in weeks, Joanie felt a small sense of joy.
A soft drone started to flow from the speakers, like friendly insects. All other thoughts drifted away. Erin spoke calmly as she walked around the room. ‘Quieten your eyes. Don’t fully close them. Let them drift in and out of focus. If any thoughts of the day enter your head, push them to one side.’
Mia. Joanie thought. Adam. Then she let the sound flush them out.
‘You can see waves, washing in and out on the shore,’ Erin continued. ‘Our beautiful rocky coastline that you see every day.’
The cave. It was there and then it was gone. Joanie bit her lip. The break-in. She let out a deep breath. Acres of empty sand filled her imagination.
‘The sun is warm and bright,’ Erin said. ‘You can see blue butterflies in the sand dunes. The air is still. If you listen carefully, you may start to hear the waves.’
The instrumental sound merged with a soft rush of saltwater, pushing forward and then withdrawing across smooth pebbles. ‘Listen carefully.’ Erin started to name different body parts sequentially, asking the attendees to relax. Joanie imagined she was lying on a warm beach as she listened to the pulse and rush in the darkened room. There was just this, nothing before and nothing after. Relief unfurled inside her like a flower.
The next evening, Joanie lay on her bedroom floor, illuminated by her night lights, and closed her eyes. Her phone played meditative music, the closest she could find to Erin’s playlist. She tried to get the feeling back. She imagined the empty beach again and the slow waves, but it didn’t look the same.
The door jerked open. ‘What are you doing?’ her mother hissed. ‘You’ll wake Elise.’
Joanie glared at her and picked herself up, embarrassed. She spent the rest of the evening staring out of her window at the street. She could see Graham’s house from here. She imagined his family enjoying a Friday takeaway and an action movie. She had been over there a few times when she was younger, but not any more. Her mother never had anyone over because it was ‘too much of a mess’, which was an understatement. Once a girl at school had joked about never seeing the inside of her house. ‘What are you hiding in there?’ she had asked.
‘Just a couple of nukes,’ Joanie had replied, in a way that had made everyone laugh. When she was thirteen, she had told her classmates that a poltergeist was terrorizing her home, messing everything up. She had wished it were true.
The best thing about the meditation class was that Mia hadn’t come to it. Every time Joanie passed Mia in the café, she wanted to grab her phone off her and read her text messages, searching for Adam. Except, of course, she never used it.
When Joanie was back at work, she asked Erin as much as possible about meditation and sound baths.
‘Thursday was so good,’ Joanie said. ‘I’m going to be there every week.’
Erin reached into her bag and pulled out a book titled Breath and the Mind. ‘This is how David and I hit it off,’ she said, holding it out to Joanie. ‘We were both interested in transcendental experiences.’
‘I thought he was into Latin,’ Joanie said, ‘and not having a phone.’
Erin laughed, shaking her head. ‘He studies rituals, like I said. Did you decide to come to his talk? I think you’d find it really interesting.’
‘I’m there,’ Joanie replied, taking the book. She wanted to know everything.
16
Cameron, Christmas Day 2023
I dreamed I was in the oubliette. The forgetful place. It was pitch black and I was looking up at a tiny circular grate, far above my head. Then I touched the walls and realized they were the metal shelves of Hallow’s Hill school library. I was standing in an aisle so narrow that my shoulders brushed against book spines. I could feel something or someone watching me. The aisles were like a dark maze. I thought I heard a mouse. I looked through a gap in the books to my right and saw Joanie’s legs lying on the floor.
Then something else flickered in my peripheral vision. It was a rabbit, bounding along the aisle to my left. I took one turn and then another, but couldn’t find a way to reach either of them. Up ahead, in the dark, I saw a figure in a Viking helmet. When I woke up my mouth was dry and I remembered it was Christmas Day.
My sister Kirstin and her family still had norovirus, so for the first time since I could remember, it was just my parents and me. I had borrowed a spare, scratchy dressing-gown that stopped at my knees. My parents sat at the breakfast table, drinking cups of tea. My mother without her glasses and my father with his unbrushed hair looked a little bewildered. They kept scrolling through their phones to show me photos of my nephew Finn. Unbelievably, he was almost four now and seemed to have grown in every photo. His hair was the same colour as mine.
‘Why don’t I make us waffles?’ I asked, thinking of the contraption I had spotted in the cupboard.
‘If you’ve got any bacon, I wouldn’t say no,’ my dad replied, wiping some toast crumbs from his mouth.
My mum tutted, in her well-practised way. ‘You know I’ve got bacon. Smoked salmon. Blinis. Let Cammy make what he wants.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Bacon to go with them.’ I wanted to show my gratitude. It wouldn’t be long before my mum got to work on a joint of beef and my dad would start making his beloved roast potatoes. Under the tree, I could see the presents my mother had rushed out to buy me yesterday. It had been very sweet of her, even though my dad had rolled his eyes. Whisking eggs in my wee dressing-gown, I felt an unfamiliar sense of happiness.
‘Mum, this is far too much for the three of us, my God,’ I said, grinning, when I saw the size of the roast. We were sitting at the table, right by the garden window. Things looked bleak out there.
‘Well, Cammy, it’s not all for us. I did say we’d nip down to Edinburgh and drop some off with Kirstin.’
‘Won’t it get cold?’ I asked, only half joking. A roast wasn’t a great idea when it came to gastroenteritis.
‘Come on, greedy guts, let’s get started,’ said my dad, holding one end of a cracker out to me. ‘Otherwise it’ll get cold for us all.’
After we had read out the terrible cracker jokes, we ate in relative silence, our cutlery scraping against the best china. I had missed my family’s Christmas dinner. Vanessa’s family would have mustard dumplings and red cabbage alongside roasted goose legs. Possibly the reason I had been there two years in a row. My parents hadn’t seemed to mind. Rather they sounded pleased we were getting on so well. My mother had been over the moon about the engagement, so I had no idea how to break the news to her.
Now was not the time, anyway. There was something special about this, as quiet as it was. As I helped myself to seconds, I started to wonder if there really would be enough for the others. As the meal went on, my parents became a little preoccupied, my father muttering about traffic on the Queensferry Crossing. I wished he would enjoy the moment instead of rushing through his roasted veg. I looked out at the garden and noticed small flakes of snow had started to fall.
By the time we had finished the main meal and begun to open presents, I could tell my dad was champing at the bit. He tore open the Raymond Chandler omnibus I had bought him, while my mum gave me a hug for her art-workshop voucher. ‘That’s so thoughtful, Cammy.’
They – or rather she – had bought me Fair Isle socks and a large, leather-bound notebook, as my bonus coming-home present. Maybe my taste was finally catching up with theirs, but I loved them.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come to Edinburgh with us?’ she asked. Perhaps it was selfish of me, but I couldn’t really see the point of the car trip. I didn’t know why we couldn’t just postpone the family gathering until Kirstin, Paul and Finn were feeling better. Everyone was going to be OK.
‘I’m not feeling great,’ I said. It wasn’t exactly true, but the previous day had exhausted me. ‘I think I’ll give pudding a miss, if that’s OK.’ A small sacrifice I could make up for later.
Once they had left, laden with presents, I lay on the sofa in front of Home Alone, managing to eat Christmas cake and scroll social media at the same time. Unlike some of my other friends, who were all sitting around tables heaving with food, Mia had posted a photo of the windblown South Sands. Spending this year with my flatmate, the caption read. I went on her profile page again. Book reviews and wild swimming. Once a nerd, always a nerd. At the pub the night before she had sounded worried that Joanie wasn’t there. I wanted to message her to ask her what she’d meant, but I’d make myself wait until after Christmas.
I heard the sound of something being pushed through the letterbox. A Christmas card from a neighbour. Perhaps Stuart Dunn, who seemed fond of stoating about the place in his fishing gilet.
The envelope was addressed to me in block capitals. Inside was a small Christmas card, with a wintry scene on the front. Written in a scrawl, it read: Dear Cameron. Kindly leave things be. This is a warning. Stop asking about Joanie.
I dropped the card on to the table, as though it were scalding hot. What on earth? The only person I had really spoken to at any length was Tatey. Maybe one or two people at the pub. It didn’t make sense.
I went upstairs and felt the urge to rip up the card and flush it down the toilet, but then shoved it in my wardrobe, just in case I needed some sort of evidence. My parents were too old to worry about something like this. I tried to lie down and zone out to a podcast, but I couldn’t relax. The bedroom no longer felt like mine. My throat felt dry. Leave things be.
I moved the shells to one side and climbed on to the deep windowsill again. The light was fading and the village was deadly quiet. All the evidence that I had once slept in this room had been relegated to two plastic boxes on top of the wardrobe. I lay there, trying to remember what was inside.
Then I had a brainwave. I hefted down one of the boxes and opened it to find my old yearbook. The inside cover was filled with messages from my former friends.
I studied Tatey’s: And if you gaze long enough into the abyss the abyss will gaze back at you. The man was a walking book of Nietzsche quotes. It was carefully written, spidery perhaps, but a different shape from that of the message I now held in my hand.
I studied the scene on the front of the Christmas card. It was pretty average, like the kind you buy in a multipack at a charity shop: a rabbit in a snowy field set against a night sky, a cosy cottage in the background. That wasn’t much to go on.
