Exile (4 page)

“She wouldn’t leave these,” said Leslie, taking the photographs back from Maureen. “I know she wouldn’t.”

“Were you quite close?” asked Maureen, trying to catch her eye.

Leslie blew a brisk cloud of smoke at her. “No,” she said, rubbing her eye with the ball of her hand. “Not really.”

“Well, how do you know she wouldn’t leave the photos?”

Leslie dropped her fag end into a dry Radio Clyde mug. “I just know she wouldn’t. She’d only leave them if she thought she was coming back.”

The mug oozed smoke like a beaker in a crazy professor’s lab. “Maybe she just forgot them,” said Maureen, reaching in and stubbing out the butt, getting the sticky smell on her fingers.

“She wouldn’t forget pictures of her kids — she talked about them all the time.”

“Maybe she wanted to start a new life,” said Maureen, “and she just got pissed, snapped and fucked off. Loads of people do that. It was Christmas, that’s bound to be an emotional time.”

Leslie shook her head. “I think it was something to do with the card she got. It was delivered on the thirtieth of December and it freaked her out. She left an hour later.”

“Do women get mail delivered to the shelter?”

“Some women get application forms for jobs and things but hers didn’t look formal.”

“Did you see it?”

“I saw the envelope. Most of the mail we get is bills and stuff so it comes to me and I dish it out. She didn’t tell anyone what it was.”

“How do you know it was a card, then?”

Leslie thought about it. “The envelope was square and stiff and Christmassy. It was red.”

“And she disappeared just afterwards?”

Leslie nodded. “Hours afterwards,” she said, formal. “I’m worried about her. I’m worried something’s happened to her.”

Maureen looked at Leslie. She had the distinct impression of being lied to, of Leslie giving her limited information and herding her into a corner. “Well, other women have left the shelter without saying anything and ye didn’t worry about them this much.”

“But it’s not usually this sudden. There are usually signs that someone’s going to leave, like they drop hints or withdraw emotionally.” Leslie sounded as if she were giving a presentation. “Usually they leave the shelter for longer and longer periods, stay out an odd night, take some of their belongings, and then they just don’t come back. Ann didn’t do that. She was just there and then, suddenly, she wasn’t there.” She glanced sidelong at Maureen, gauging the impact of her speech, and went back to pretending to pore over the photographs.

“But Ann was a steamer,” said Maureen, “and steamers do crazy things.”

“How do you know she was a steamer?” said Leslie quickly.

“Because”—Maureen pointed at the row of plastic chairs next to her desk—”she sat next to me. She was there for an hour on and off while they filled out her forms and set up the camera. I smelled her.”

Leslie shrugged resentfully. “So, what does that mean?” she said. “We’re both steamers too.”

“We’re not quite in Ann’s league, though, are we?” said Maureen, thinking that Leslie might have been. Maureen didn’t know how much she drank anymore. “Did Ann drink when she was staying with you?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s against the house rules, isn’t it?”

Leslie glanced at her. “She never drank in the house.” She sounded defensive. “She’d say she was going to the shops and come back drunk.”

Maureen stubbed out her fag in the mug, compounding the smell on her fingers. She shouldn’t have to do this, waiting behind in the horrible office, trying to guess what Leslie really meant. If Leslie didn’t trust her anymore she should fucking find someone she did and bore them with it.

“I heard you asked for her as a resident,” said Maureen.

“No, I didn’t.”

“I heard ye did. I thought you were strapped for cash.”

“That’s utter shite,” said Leslie, belligerent and annoyed. “I didn’t ask for her, I just happened to have a space.”

Maureen looked at her and sucked a hiss through her teeth. “Leslie,” she said, “do you know Ann?”

“No.”

“Why are you so interested in her, then?”

Leslie paused and pulled another cigarette out of her packet, but Maureen knew she wasn’t a consecutive smoker. She was lighting up so that she’d have something to fiddle with, so she wouldn’t have to look at Maureen.

“I don’t know Ann,” said Leslie slowly, measuring her speech, “but I’m worried about her.” She pursed her lips tight around her cigarette, lifting the lighter to the tip. The orange flame cast her face in stark relief and Maureen saw a miserable tremor on Leslie’s chin. Whatever she was holding back wasn’t keeping her warm at night.

Leslie was looking at the Polaroid of the big man and the small boy. The boy had Ann’s fluffy yellow hair and pink skin. He didn’t look happy and Maureen could tell from the strain in his forearm that he was trying to pull his hand away His free hand clutched a handmade Christmas card decorated with glitter and gluey cotton wool. “Is that Ann’s kid?” she asked softly.

“Yeah,” said Leslie, her voice a little higher, a little uncontrolled. “She’s got another three, all boys.”

“He’s like her, isn’t he?”

Leslie nodded, clearing her throat, regaining her composure. Maureen sat next to her on the desk, pretending to look at the picture but letting their hips touch, staying by her. “I didn’t see her again after she left the office,” said Maureen gently. “Did her lip heal okay?”

Leslie nodded again. “Yeah. She got a scar on it but the swelling went down pretty quick.” The color rose in her face. “Mauri, I’m frightened she’s dead,” she blurted.

Maureen looked at her and snorted with surprise. “Where did ye get that from?”

“From these.” Leslie slapped the photographs in her hand emphatically. “They’re pictures of everything big that ever happened to her. She wouldn’t leave them. I think someone was after her.”

“Come on, Leslie, it’s a shelter for battered women — there’s someone after all of them.”

“This is different.”

“Why is it different?”

But that was exactly the question Leslie didn’t want to answer. “I think we should look for her,” she said, “see what we can dig up.”

“We wouldn’t know where to start.”

“We did it last time.”

“Yeah,” said Maureen, “but you weren’t lying out of your arse the last time.”

They sat side by side, looking around the office, as if the answer had been misplaced on someone’s desk. Maureen rubbed her eye.

“Winnie came to see me this morning,” she said, falling into the old way of telling Leslie everything at the forefront of her mind. “Michael’s got a flat in Glasgow.” She wished she hadn’t said it. She was opening up to Leslie through force of habit, telling her most intimate worries when Leslie wasn’t there and Leslie didn’t care.

Leslie looked at her aggressively. “If he bothers you at all,” she said, “I’ll kick his teeth in.”

“Aye,” said Maureen skeptically. “Right.”

Leslie had crapped it when they were chasing Angus. It was the one and only time Maureen had asked her to lift her hands but Leslie still talked like the world’s hardest gangster. Maureen had begun to suspect that she needed to feel hard in response to a deep, souring fear. Leslie had been working at the shelter for a long time and she needed to differentiate herself from the women. If Leslie couldn’t handle herself she would be a candidate for everything she saw there, a victim in waiting, as vulnerable as the rest of them, waiting to be raped and ripped, waiting for fate to ambush her.

“Are you hungry?” said Leslie, pulling on her leather jacket.

Maureen shrugged. She didn’t want this, spending an evening with new, distant Leslie, being lied to and feeling like a mug and pretending that it didn’t matter. She wanted to be alone, at home with a bottle of whiskey and the unquestioning companionship of the television.

“Well, are you coming, or what?”

Wearily, Maureen picked up her coat and her bag and followed Leslie down the stairs.

It was seven o’clock but as dark as midnight. A thin drizzle was falling, wafted up and down and sideways by the high wind, clinging to every surface. Leslie’s bike was parked across the street. She gave Maureen the spare helmet from the luggage box and kick-started the engine on the fifth go. Maureen held on to her waist, resting her head on her shoulder.

A slick of rain covered the road and Leslie was driving too fast.

She ducked between vans and cars, revving the engine angrily before changing gear. At the foot of a high hill she skidded on a sharp turn, bristled with fright and corrected herself, steadying the bike at the last minute. Maureen thought they were going to crash, that they might die, and the possibility left her feeling strangely elated. She let go of Leslie as the road slid away beneath her, holding on to nothing, feeling the wind push and pull her off balance. She swayed like a reed on the pillion as they drove through the dark, sodden city to the west.

Chapter 6

FOREVER FRIENDS

Maureen had always known that Leslie could be a cheeky bitch but she’d never turned on her before. She would never have believed that a boyfriend could come between them because they weren’t that sort of women. They were bigger than that, they had a heroic history, and they were too close. She wrongly assumed that Cammy would be just another blow-through. She went out with them a couple of times but afterwards she was always left with the uncomfortable impression of having been talked about, kindly perhaps, but still talked about.

They had only been together a couple of months but Leslie had changed. She didn’t want to spend time with anyone but Cammy anymore and was always leaving early to hurry home to him. She started talking about having children and had changed the way she dressed. She bought a new pair of leather trousers for casual wear, offense enough in itself, but she coupled them with low-cut sexy tops with a deep cleavage that made her look cheap and vulnerable.

The last time they had arranged to go out together Leslie stood her up. Maureen waited at the bar, drinking slowly at first, checking her watch every five minutes, every three minutes, every indignant fucking minute as she realized that Leslie wasn’t coming. She phoned the house. Leslie said she’d forgotten. Sorry. But Maureen said how could she forget? They’d only made the fucking arrangement the day before. Leslie giggled and whispered to Cammy to stop it and Maureen blushed as she listened to them, intimate and exclusive, sniggering at her. She slammed down the receiver and tramped up the road to her house feeling like a tit.

Maureen and Leslie had met through a mutual fear of the Slosh. It was a horrible wedding. Lisa and Kenny were barely twenty and had only been together for seven months of drunken fights and public sex acts. The food was bland, the bride was drunk and the groom spent the reception making faces into the video camera. The communal knowledge that the marriage was ill advised added a hysterical edge to the reception. Everyone laughed too loud, acted drunk before they really were, danced confidently. Maureen and Leslie were sulking alone at adjacent tables while everyone else congaed in an ungainly stagger around the room, whooping and yanking at one another’s clothes. Leslie scowled over at Maureen, tapped a fag from her and warned her that the band was threatening to do the Slosh. The Slosh is a graceless women-only line dance and nonparticipation is illegal at Scottish weddings, punishable by ritual dragging onto the dance floor.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” said Maureen, and they retired to the bar for the rest of the evening.

They drank whiskey and smoked cheap, dry cigars they bought from behind the bar. Maureen thought they were just big fags and inhaled vigorously. She could hardly speak the next day but that was down to the shouting as well; it was the most stimulating pub argument she had ever had. Leslie thought that women and men were born different but Maureen believed that gendered behavior was learned. Leslie made sweeping statements about the nature of men and women on the flimsiest of evidence: all men were bad drivers; all men were arrogant and bullish; all women were kind and helpful. It was like listening to a bigoted misogynist in reverse. Maureen said that if women did have an essential nature it wouldn’t only encompass good things; some characteristics would have to be bad, like being crap at sums or too simple-minded to vote. Leslie didn’t have an answer but got round it by shouting the same points over and over. They swapped numbers and stayed in touch. They went to Lisa’s divorce dinner together. By the time Maureen had finished her degree they had become so close that Leslie and Liam were her guests at the graduation dinner.

The art history class was not a representative cross section of society. It was an intellectual finishing school for posh lassies, a grounding for careers in auction houses and other jobs so badly paid and highly prized that only the very rich could consider them. Maureen wasn’t molding a career, she just loved the subject, and didn’t think she’d live to see twenty-one. The girls were mostly from London and Manchester, they all had long flickable hair, timeless clothes, family jewelry. The milk-fed girls were slightly afraid of Maureen and she enjoyed it. It was probably the only social group in Glasgow where she would be thought of as a rough local. Leslie, who actually was a rough local, took umbrage at the graduation dinner and tried to insult all of her classmates, picking on Sarah Simmons particularly because she had misjudged the evening and worn her dead mother’s filigree tiara. The girls conceded most of Leslie’s points, taking it all in good part, and suggested moving the evening on to a cheesy disco, looking for a gang of horny medics who were known to hang out there. Maureen, Liam and Leslie deferred the invite. Trying to spoil it for them, Leslie told the girls that the disco was known locally as “a pint and a fuck.” The girls got even more excited and left before the coffee arrived.

Maureen didn’t work hard for her finals. She knew that something was happening to her. The flashbacks, the disorientation and the night terrors were building to a pitch. All her time in the university library was spent on the sixth floor reading books and articles about mental illness. She thought she was becoming schizophrenic but she didn’t tell anyone what was happening. She was afraid that they would put her away, afraid that Leslie would disappear and take all the cozy, normal nights with her. It was almost a year later, when Maureen had her breakdown, that Leslie’s true nature became clear.