The Child Garden (22 page)

The sitting room, at the front with the big bay window, was stuffed with furniture. Good ugly post-war furniture, skinny chairs with wooden armrests and a gate-leg table with a matching sideboard. Mrs. Thomas settled me and went through to the small kitchen, shouting over her shoulder as she fussed about, making tea.

“What was the name, dear?” she said.

“Scarlet McFarlane,” I said. “But it was twenty-odd years ago.”

“Twenty years is nothing when you get up as far as I am,” she said. “Of course I remember. It's not every day you have two Scarlet women living underneath you. Ho! But, mind you, there was never a lad coming or going in the time they were here. Just the two girls and then the baby. And then the trouble and they were all gone.”

“Trouble?” I said, with a cold, sinking feeling inside me.

“Post-natal depression they'd call it these days,” said Mrs. Thomas. She was back already, as if the kettle was kept constantly on the boil and the tray set. I hadn't seen those brown smoked-glass teacups since I volunteered at the charity shop ten years ago, and even then we used to get stuck with them. “Baby blues it was when I was a young mother,” Mrs. Thomas went on. “Not that we had the time. Slopping around in a housecoat and letting the baby scream. When I had mine, I was up, curlers out, along the street with the baby in the pram for an airing. Cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner for Mr. Thomas and knitted every stitch they wore. I couldn't stand to live that laxadaisy way these girls go on now.”

“So the trouble was depression?” I said. I took a cup of tea and a biscuit, balancing it in my saucer.

“And if somebody had nipped in quick and had the kiddy away to a good home, it might have worked out just fine in the long run,” said Mrs. Thomas. The cold feeling was spreading through me. “But three times she left that poor mite lying and came home without it, until finally one day it was gone for good.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, it was all over the papers here,” Mrs. Thomas said. “I've probably still got the clippings from the
Courier
but goodness knows where, because I've been meaning to turn out that big cupboard since I put the tree away last Christmas and devil if I've got round to it.”

“But can you remember the gist of what happened?”

“She took the baby out in its pram, must only have been a month old the first time. Then she came back screaming and wailing saying someone had stolen it. Stolen the pram with the baby in it. There was police, neighbours out searching, the works. And then it turned out the poor soul was right outside the shop where she'd left it. She'd walked away without it and then caused all that stink to try and cover up after herself. You wouldn't credit it, would you?”

“Well, sleepless nights can leave you quite … ” I said, before Mrs. Thomas withered me with a look.

“So you can well imagine that the second time it happened, we were a bit more thingwy about it all. Oh, the police came back, but there were no neighbours out scouring the streets, and that time she got taken to the station and given a talking to. Got a social worker, if you don't mind, who—wait till you hear this—had the cheek to come knocking on
my
door.”

“What for?”

“Assessing,” Mrs. Thomas said. “Assessing the environs. Seeing if we were good enough for that piece to live beside or if she needed a shift.”

“I can see why that would be offensive,” I said, wondering how badly she was garbling what the social worker had actually said.

“The third time she left the kiddy out lying somewhere, she kept quiet, but there was letters stuffed down the folds of the pram hood, and the woman that found it lying there abandoned—away up the back of the swing park where it might have been hours before someone passed—anyway, she saw the address and brought it back again. Young Scarlet hadn't come back from her jaunt and it landed to me. She was a very nice woman, well-dressed and neat—a lot like yourself dear—and she knew it was safe to leave the baby with me.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“What could I do?” said Mrs. Thomas. “I phoned the police, of course. And the lot of them—all three—were gone within the week. The baby to Social Services and the two girls, I don't know and I don't care.”

“Heavens,” I said. “What a sad story.”

“I never saw hide nor hair of either of them again for twenty-two years,” she went on.

“Twenty-two?” I said. “Then what?”

“Then two years back I was in DE Shoes, just browsing,” said Mrs. Thomas. “And there she was. I knew I knew her, but I couldn't just place her at first. Then she saw me and
I
haven't changed much. Her eyes flashed and her face turned as white as a sheet, and it was then that I knew who I was looking at. There she was, bold as brass, helping a kiddy try on winter boots.”

“DE Shoes in Perth?” I said. “Two years ago?”

“It'll be two years come Christmas.”

“Thank you for the tea,” I said. “I'm going to have to rush off, but you've been very helpful.”

“Here's your hat, where's your hurry,” said Mrs. Thomas behind me. “You're as bad as the rest, madam, with those manners!”

She was still clucking and fussing after me as I pulled her front door shut behind me and trotted downstairs to the street, holding on to the banister, trying not to turn my ankle on my wedge heels, praying that it wasn't too good to be true.

Twenty-Eight

There was a DE
Shoes on every High Street in the country. Cheap trainers, vinyl boots, novelty slippers. When I was a child I'd have died for a pair of anything but brown Clark's sandals in the summer and black Clark's lace-ups in the winter. I was glad of them now, proud of my straight toes and high arches, although Lynne always said nice feet were wasted on women who earned them. She wore strappy stilettos all summer long and for winter parties, and her bunions made it look as if her feet were chewing gumballs. That made me think of Zöe and her pink and white toenails. She might wear pretty shoes now, but she must have been Clark's all the way when she was young to get that even row of little piggies.

I found the shoe shop sitting in between a Greggs and a Samuels, took a deep breath, and went in.

There was a woman in her sixties, with glasses hanging on a gold chain over the bust of her hand-knitted jersey, and a boy of twenty with that ugly, brushed-forward-and-gelled-to-death hairstyle that always seems to go along with very bad skin, as if the glop is creeping down from the scalp and blocking all the pores. But, as well as those two, there was a woman who could easily be forty and who had a well of sadness inside her deeper than any I had ever seen.

“Scarlet?” I said.

She nodded, squinting as if to work out where she knew me from, and my heart soared inside me.
Scarlet McFarlane.
I had found the last of them! One of the last of them anyway.

“I don't suppose you're due a break, are you?” I said. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee and have a word?”

“Do I know you?” she said.

“Friend of a friend,” I said, “from the old days.”

“Is it about Rosie?” she said. I thought about it for less than half a minute. I'm a registrar. I see fashions come and go, and I can guess a person's age from their name, like a party trick. The Lynnes and the Laurens and the Emmas in order. And the Rosies too.

“Your daughter Rosie?” I asked. Her eyes seemed to grow until they were half as big again and she leaned forward, searching my face for clues.

“Di?” she shouted, without looking away from me. “I'm going on my break. I'll work through later.”

She didn't say another word until we were sitting at the smoking tables outside a Caffé Nero.

“What can I get you?” I asked her. “The millionaire shortbread is really lovel—”

“Are you her mum?” she asked me. “How did you find me?”

“I went to ask your old neighbour round on Methven Street,” I said. “I got your old address from her birth certificate.”

“You're her mum, aren't you?” she said “Is she with you?”

“Scarlet, I don't understand,” I said. “I'm an old friend of a friend of yours from Eden.”

“Scar's friend?” she said. She lit a cigarette and sat back, considering me. “Huh,” she said. “I haven't thought about that place for twenty years and then it pops up twice in a week.”

“Oh?”

“It was on the news, in the papers. Someone who went there died again. April Cowan. And they're looking for one of the other kids to ‘help with their enquiries'.”

“Stig Tarrant,” I said. “What do you mean ‘died again'?”

“I mean another one. There was Alan Best. Do you know who that is? And Scar, of course.”

“Scarlet's dead?” I said. “The other Scarlet?” I felt my face prickling, and I knew I had paled. I put both hands on the table to steady myself.

“Hey,” said this Scarlet, putting a hand out and covering mine. “Sorry. I thought you would know. If you know Rosie. ‘My daughter Rosie'.” She smiled again. “It's nice of you to say that. But she's certainly not my daughter now.”

“How did Scarlet die?” I asked. “When?” I really had no idea when, but I thought I could guess how.

“She killed herself,” came the answer, just as I'd been expecting. “Jumped off the bloody bridge into the Dee when the baby got taken away.”

“I heard about that from your neighb—”

“If you heard from old Mother Thomas, then you heard a load of crap,” said Scarlet.

“I'll bet,” I said. “So. Your baby got taken away and Scarlet's dead. I'm really sorry. I know it was a while ago, but I'm sorry for your loss. Losses.”

She nodded a thank you.

“But why is there no record of her death?” I said. “I looked and there's nothing under Scarlet McInnes. Did she change it?”

“Ohhhh,” Scarlet said, sitting back. “I thought you were being kind saying ‘your daughter,' but really you're just mixed up.
I'm
Scarlet McInnes. And there's no records on me because I never did anything to record. Scar had Rosie and we all changed our names after.”

“You
all
did?”

“Yeah,” Scarlet said. “Rosie
was
our baby, but it was Scar who had her. Scarlet
McFarlane
. And when she was found unfit, I might as well have been … what's the expression?”

“Chopped liver,” I said. “You and Scarlet were a couple?”

She nodded, narrowing her eyes, waiting to see what I'd say next.

“And you had a baby at sixteen?” She relaxed a bit. “Deliberately?” Now she was almost smiling. “Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn't judge you. I waited until I was twenty-five and then married a complete wanker who left me and our disabled son.”

I spoke as if these truths had been lodged in my head for years, growing roots; not at all as if they had been sprung on me that morning in Rena Irving's kitchen.

“Rosie was a surprise, actually,” Scarlet said, “but a welcome one.”

I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but they were intrusive and probably offensive, so I left it. “About what Mrs. Thomas told me,” I said instead, wondering how to ask what I needed to ask.

“Nobody believed Scar except me,” Scarlet said. “She wasn't depressed and she wasn't confused. And she would
never
have done anything to harm Rosie. The truth is someone kidnapped Rosie. Three times.” She saw my look. “The first time was easy. Everyone left their prams outside wee shops back then. Not like today. And the second time was because Scar was trying not to overreact to the first time.”

“I can't imagine how you must have felt.”

“We were going out of our heads and the police wouldn't even ask around. They made up their minds Scar was lying, and after that they never followed up on anything. They never even asked that stupid old cow Thomas for a description of the woman who snatched Rosie and said she'd found her in the park. We were nowhere
near
the park. We were in the supermarket—I'd gone back to get something we'd forgotten in the fruit and veg, and Scar turned her back for a second—a split second. We were still searching the shop when that woman brought her back and knocked on our door. And it was nothing like the two hours she'd said. It was ten minutes at most. Only no one believed us.”

“I believe you,” I said. I believed that Scarlet McFarlane wasn't a neglectful mother, just like I believed that Alan Best wasn't a paeodophile and I believed that Cloud Irving couldn't be a drug dealer without her sisters knowing. This wasn't the devil's work, but it was just as evil.

“Thank you,” Scarlet said.

“And I'm sorry, because this must be very upsetting, but I'm going to have to ask you some questions.” She nodded for me to go ahead. “First, and please don't jump up and storm off, but I need to ask you where you were on Monday night. And Tuesday too.”

Her eyes narrowed again, but she nodded and answered. “That's easy,” she said. “I've got a bar job at nights. I was serving behind the bar at the Brig O'Dee. A hundred witnesses. I couldn't get down to Glasgow on Tuesday. What happened on Monday?”

“Someone was chasing April Cowan all over the countryside down by Eden,” I said.

She swallowed hard and looked away from me. “I don't like thinking about it,” she said. “It was a bad place. It was a bad place even before Mitchell died. It … It didn't make sense.”

“Why did your parents send you there?”

“My dad had some kind of business dealings with Jacky Tarrant that owned it,” Scarlet said. “I think he got a good deal.”

“And Scar?” I asked. “Was that the same?”

“No, she was connected to the teacher,” said Scarlet. “She was some kind of second cousin or something. That's right: Scar was Miss Naismith's cousin's daughter. Not a close connection, but Naismith must have put the word out that they could get discounted fees.” She stopped talking and stared into the distance, her eyes following the shoppers who were passing on the street. “Maybe Naismith thought she'd have an ally, her cousin's kid and all that. And Scar
was
kinder to her than the rest of us. Well, Scar was kind to everyone, always. But she didn't hold out at the end. When the hm-hm hit the fan.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That boy—Douglas, was it? Douglas Martin?”

“Duggie Morrison?” I said, and my heart was thumping the way it always did whenever the talk turned to him.

“He persuaded us to … what's the expression? Drop Naismith in it. She nearly blew a gasket. I really thought she was going to give herself a stroke.”

“Scarlet, I have no idea what you're talking about,” I said.

She quirked an eyebrow at me. “I thought you knew what happened that night.”

“So did I,” I said.

We had been getting filthy looks through the window from the Caffé Nero baristas, because we'd been sitting there for ages and hadn't bought a thing, so I left her lighting another cigarette and went to order. Two lattes and two pieces of the millionaire shortbread, whether she wanted one or not. She was strung out with all these painful memories and the sugar would be good for her.

“So,” I said, sitting down. “April the thirtieth to May the first, 1985. What really happened?”

“We cooked sausages,” Scarlet began. “They were really disgusting, and one of the kids—it was Stig, I think—had to make a run for the bogs but the rest of us just bedded down. All the weather girls, that's these three—”

“I know,” I said. “I spoke to Rain and Sun this morning.”

“Okay, well, they were all zipped into the same sleeping bag and Scar and me were too, and we were teasing the boys about being too macho to cuddle in together and keep warm. It was bloody freezing for a spring night, that I do remember. Then, about eleven o'clock, Naismith came and asked us all if we wanted to go back in and sleep in our beds.”

“What?” I said. “She
did
come?”

Scarlet looked into her coffee cup and swirled it around for a while before answering. “Yeah, she came. Once, though, not twice like she said. We lied, but she lied too.”

“Why?”

“It was Duggie Morrison's idea. When we realised that Moped had drowned, he said we would be blamed for it and that wasn't fair because it wasn't our fault. He said Naismith had left the gate open—we'd all heard a car—and then she'd gone and locked it. Covering up after herself. So we needed to make sure she was punished. So we all said she had left us out there. And she got done for it.”

“Wait!” I said. “Scarlet, wait! You're saying Duggie Morrison put together this whole story when you realised Moped was drowned? When you saw Moped's body on the way back to the school in the morning?”

“No,” she said. “When he fell in. It was about four o'clock, just getting light. We all woke up when we heard the car and then Duggie came back and told us that Moped was dead, in the water.”

My head was reeling. This was nothing like what Stig had told me.

“Why did you wait?” I said “Why didn't you go back to the school right then and raise the alarm?”

“We didn't want to get into trouble,” she said. “We knew it was too late for Mope. Alan Best was terrified. He thought his dad would kill him. We all thought if they knew Duggie was traipsing about the place and Moped was mucking about, we'd get blamed. So we decided to say we'd all been asleep, like little angels, and we didn't know when Moped left or why. And we said nothing about the car because we didn't think the cops would believe us. How can a car drive through a locked gate, you know?”

“But how did you know the gate was locked?”

“Duggie told us at four o'clock when he came back.”

“How did
he
know?”

Scarlet shrugged. “We were just getting our story all straight when Stig Tarrant came back from the bogs. So we all shut up and kept quiet and when it was a bit later, Duggie woke him up and tried the story out on him. He bought it hook, line, and sinker.”

“But why did you not trust Stig?” I said, starting to feel sick again.

“Because his dad owned the school,” said Scarlet, “and we thought he'd shop us.”

“So you said the teacher failed in her duty, when she didn't?”

“But she
did
,” said Scarlet. “She did. She let someone drive out and locked the gate behind them. And she said she came back out after the first time when she didn't. All
we
did was change the story of what she did wrong. So the cops would believe us.”

I couldn't help shaking my head as I listened to her, and her eyes filled with tears.

“You ruined a lot of lives,” I said. “People couldn't live with the guilt.”

“I know,” she said. Now the tears were falling. “Scar was one of them. When Rosie kept disappearing, she went kind of nuts. She started talking about the curse and about not taking care of Moped and how she was being punished for it. She even tried to get in touch with her cousin to say sorry. Can you imagine how that would have blown up?”