AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season (23 page)

“Can we talk to Nadia alone, please?”

He didn’t like that. Tried to think of a way around it and then pushed himself off the wall with his shoulders, stalked to the door, turned to say something and thought better of it, opened the door and walked out. The door fell shut.

Nadia pursed her lips, an echo of Fredrick’s gesture earlier. “He’s a very emotional pers—”

“Aye,” interrupted Morrow. “Nadia, I don’t give a fuck what’s going on between you two and I don’t give a fuck about what you do for a living, all right, hen?”

Nadia read her, took in her cheap suit and pregnancy bump, her neat hair and saw that they were so opposite there was no threat here. She nodded softly.

“I want to know two things: how did she get into it and what Lars Anderson was to her. Clear?”

Nadia straightened her dress. “He was a friend of hers, Lars, a gentleman friend.”

“A client?”

She shrugged a yes.

“He good to her?”

She widened her eyes. “Very good.”

“No, I’m not asking if he paid her well or gave her presents, I mean was he good to her?”

She shrugged again, ambivalent this time. “He’s a rich man, he’s not so good but not bad. You know men…what they are like…”

“Misandry,” said Morrow.

“Miss who?”

“Misandry. It’s the opposite of misogyny. A blind prejudice against men on the basis of their gender. It’s not healthy, Nadia. It makes for unhappy relationships.”

“Oh,” she said politely, “that’s interesting. I didn’t know there was such a word.”

“It’s the long-term damage of your profession, isn’t it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know—”

Morrow leaned towards her. “Will you ever trust a man again?”

Nadia saw that she understood her a little. “You don’t know how the money draws you in…”

Morrow sat back. “Miners get lung disease.”

They smiled at each other for a moment.

“Maybe you’re less damaged than me: I’m a police officer, we don’t trust women either.”

Nadia smiled, thought about it, huffed a little laugh. “Even girls who don’t do this…Not everyone’s happy in relationships. At least when I’m lonely I’m
rich
and lonely.”

“What was Sarah like?”

“Nice girl. Didn’t want to do it at first. Her choice, but she needed the money very bad. Her mother was ill, she couldn’t afford health care. She asked me how to start. I told her.”

“What did you tell her?”

A little regret flickered around her lips. “I invite her to a party, with party girls. She fuck a couple of guys there. Then she get into it.”

“Was she upset after? Howard Fredrick said she was in bits.”

“She wasn’t happy but it wasn’t rape. She wasn’t crying. She was fed up afterwards but we all are fed up afterwards, at the beginning. Is a hard job. That’s why everyone doesn’t do it. Is hard sometimes. A lonely job. And it affect you.” She looked at Morrow. “Mis-antry?”

“Misandry,” corrected Morrow. “Did she come into work afterwards?”

“For a couple of shifts. She talk to Howard about it. He very angry with me. Tell me to stay the fuck out of his bar after. It’s silly really because I didn’t meet her here, I met her in a party but after he says not more parties with the girls, he didn’t know who they would be meeting, so on.” She glanced at the door. “He thinks they are thoroughbred horses, the way he treats them.”

“The bar staff?”

“No, is just…he doesn’t like what I do for a living.” She touched her hair, a self-soothe gesture, and Morrow could tell she cared what he thought.

“You and Howard…?”

Nadia frowned quickly and nodded to her shoulder. “We were close for a while.”

“He’s very angry with you.”

She looked at the door to make sure it was shut. “They can fuck me,” she hissed, her face hard and angry, “but they can’t own me.” She sat back and smiled at Wilder, resuming her party girl persona. “Drive them crazy.”

The streets of the City of London were so quiet it felt like Glasgow during an Old Firm Game. A few tourists followed the brightly colored maps in their hands, snapping pictures, filming on their phones. What little traffic there was consisted mostly of buses and black cabs.

Morrow was glad to get to Heathrow, glad to be sitting in the departures lounge with the other Glaswegians heading home with sunburn and summer clothes on, talking to strangers and laughing with their mouths open, watched by the cabin crew in smart uniforms.

Wilder sat next to her, reading a tabloid newspaper as solemnly as the Bible, and she sat and imagined Sarah Erroll at a party, on her back and thinking about the money and her mum as a red-faced businessman rutted over her. It was an accident of fate: Sarah needed the money, she happened upon Nadia, she found that she could do it. She might have met a stockbroker and been good at that instead.

Kay wiggled the key in the door but it didn’t work. She tried jabbing it in and out of the lock and blowing on it. It had never happened before: the key did fit into the lock but it wouldn’t turn at all. She wanted to kick the door, punch it and shove it with her shoulder.

She stopped, took a breath and counseled herself to caution. She was tired from the night before. When they got back she’d gone next door to collect Marie and John, taken everyone home and made them go straight to bed. Then she sat up until five in the morning, smoking in front of the telly. She knew they were lying awake, blinking in the dark. She heard Joe and Frankie whispering when she went to the toilet at ten to four. She sat up smoking and drinking herbal tea, too embarrassed to go to bed, thinking about her family and how they looked to the police.

She knew they looked working class, herself looked a little disheveled sometimes but she always thought they looked decent. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they looked envious and covetous and low. Maybe she did look 45–60, Frankie seemed odd and John was a rapist in the making. Maybe Marie was fat and Joe was smarmy. She had never had a crisis of faith in her children before. It made her sick.

To prove to herself that she was decent, she rose after three hours’ sleep and made them all get up and eat breakfast and go to school in clean and ironed clothes. Then she dressed herself, brushed her hair and caught the bus to Thorntonhall. On the top deck she leaned her head on the rattling window, the condensed breath of strangers running into her hair, and vowed to listen to Margery without saying anything about the night before. She would pat Margery’s hand and tell her not to worry. She’d forget herself, do her work well and in good grace.

But Margery’s key wouldn’t fit. When she opened her eyes again she had taken several deep breaths and relaxed her body a little, twisting at the waist so that she was facing the French doors of the kitchen.

Margery was watching her. Her arms were crossed. She was wearing her yellow slacks, the expensive ones she regretted buying but loved. She wore them rarely, kept them for special. Banana yellow flares, thirty years out of date.

Kay raised her hand in a static wave, but Margery didn’t move. She stood perfectly framed in the windows, looking straight at her. Kay waited for her to gesture at the lock or invite her through the French doors. Instead, Margery uncrossed her arms and pointed back at the gate.

Kay glanced back. The gate was shut, she had shut it properly. Still Margery stood stiff, pointing at it, mouthing “No” or “Go.”

Someone was in there with her.

Dropping her plastic bag into the deep gravel, Kay rushed over to the French doors and rattled the handle, pulling when she should have pushed, trying to open it. Realizing her mistake, she turned the handle and shoved, banging the glass door against the worktop inside.

Margery fell back, clutching the sink. “Get out!”

“Who’s in here?”

Kay headed for the living room.

“No one.”

She stopped. She listened. She knew the sounds of this house and there was no one here but Margery.

“Get out.”

Kay was sweating, panting, felt vulnerable in front of Margery who was standing, cool against the sink. “Why?”

Margery stepped over to the table as if it was a matter of great urgency and adjusted the position of a small crystal vase with a single yellow rose in it, shifting it slightly. She looked at Kay, pulled her lips back in a pitiless smile. “The police have been back.
You know why
.”

For a moment Kay couldn’t hear anything in the world but the dull thump of her own blood. She felt the blood in her cheeks, in her eyes, across her face.

She saw Margery Thalaine, standing in her thirty-grand kitchen, baring her teeth at the help and she understood completely what Margery was seeing: a failure and a mess.

“You’re wrong,” she whispered when she meant to shout. “That’s wrong.”

“Get out.” Margery’s voice was flat and she meant never come back, not later or in a year.

Kay had things to say that could hurt Margery, she could cast up that she had been a friend to her, that she had been needlessly kind. She could cast up that she was owed money for mopheads and detergent. Even, in a weak moment, she could bring up Mr. Thalaine’s flight from Berlin in 1938 and ask how Margery could side so easily with the authorities.

But she did none of those things because she was too upset to speak. Instead she walked out of the French door and shut it gently behind herself, looking at the handle, not into the room.

Then she walked over to the front door, slid her hand through the handles of her poly bag, reaching up to her like a child. Kay walked out of the gate, keeping her head high until she reached the bin recess around the corner, and lit up. She turned to the hedge to hide her face as she smoked.

A deep scratchy breath halted the tears pressing behind her eyes. She had barely exhaled the smoke when she took another draw. The panic was not because Margery had been mean to her or belittled her. The panic was because she now didn’t have that job and she had four kids and they needed shoes and food and the rent needed paid and the fucking council tax. It was just about money. Just money. I can get another job, she told herself, knowing that they were few and far between, that she was being paid well and the hours suited her. Another job would be a night job at Asda, she’d be out all night and the kids would be alone in the house—she wouldn’t even know if they were in or out. Or who was there with them.

She took another draw. No. There would be other jobs. She still had the Campbells. Maybe they would know someone else here who needed a cleaner. Maybe.

She dropped the cigarette, quite impressed that she had managed to finish it in four draws. She stood on it, gathered herself, straightened her hair and walked around the lane to the Campbells’ house, slipping through the garden, keeping off the lawn, until she got to the kitchen door.

Molly Campbell was in the kitchen. She was waiting for her, watching, and Kay knew. Margery had been here, blowing off about her and Molly was going to ask for her key back.

Miserably, Molly smiled and opened the door.

“Hello, Kay.” She tilted her head to the side, sighing, stepped back to let Kay into the kitchen, pointed to a chair that she had pulled out from the table for Kay to sit on. Kay sat and tried to listen while Molly Campbell sacked her, went through the details of her tax, explained why it was better for everyone if Kay never came back here. It’s the tax: Margery had explained that Kay was “leaving” her employment and without that job this one just wasn’t worth it. Best for everyone. She’d put out a plate of biscuits.

Kay tried to listen but she felt the loss of Joy Erroll rise in her chest as a wave of warmth and sorrow. She felt a bony little hand in hers and saw Joy’s tea-stained teeth as she laughed happily. She had five teeth left by the time she died, little pegs. Her gums had shrunk and she wouldn’t wear her false teeth anymore. Kay felt the weight of Joy as she lifted her off the loo, both arms around her skinny body, Joy’s little arms around Kay’s neck, and Joy, startlingly appropriate, singing an old big band tune and pretending they were dancing together.

Kay burst out crying. She gathered her things and stood up, got the door open and stepped out into the garden.

“Oh, no.” Molly Campbell reached out for her. “Kay, I’m so sorry, please come—”

But Kay waved her away. “No, I’m fine.”

“Please come back in and sit for a minute.”

“No, no.” She fumbled in her bag, still crying, wishing for the warmth of Joy’s body against hers, for the deep love she had lost, and she found the key and put it in Molly’s outstretched hand. “It’s not this,” she said, feeling ridiculous because it was two mornings a week, for God’s sake, “it’s not the job.”

She scurried away, skirting the lawn again, desperate to get away and hide her face.

She smoked at the bus stop, something she never did. Margery Thalaine could be driving past and see her but she didn’t care anymore. She’d never see her again.

She managed not to cry, pushing to the back of her mind the realization that this could well be the last time she would ever come here. She didn’t have any jobs now and wouldn’t even get the Asda job without a reference. Maybe Molly would feel bad and would give her a reference.

As she waited, her face numbing in the wet, her phone rang in her handbag and she didn’t answer it but waited until the bus came and she was settled in a window seat.

Donald Scott wanted her to call him, please, regarding the settlement of the Erroll estate. She had to dredge her memory for the name. He was the Errolls’ lawyer. He used to come to the house to see Joy. Always asked for biscuits with his tea and never ate them. He sounded snooty in the message, and said something about the police and the bowl and the watch. Kay tutted at her phone. As if a watch and bowl were going to make any fucking difference to the final settlement of the estate. But it occurred to her, she could call Scott and get a reference off him. He’d known she worked well for Mrs. Erroll. Maybe she could get a good reference and get a job in an old folks’ home. She might even get trained.

The spark of hope snowballed: Scott was a lawyer too, that would be a good reference. Kay watched the road this time, seeing the familiar hedges and turnings and trees. Calmed, she could see what her mistake had been: Margery regretted confiding in Kay. Kay had listened to her and crossed the line from employee to intimate and it was easier to justify being mean to an intimate. Margery had probably been looking for an excuse to sack her, as if Kay could be tied up at the handles and thrown in the bin.

The job would have ended soon anyway. Margery was broke and the Campbell job would hardly cover her travel on its own, so she’d have left that too.

She sat back, feeling the burn of cigarettes and grief in her lungs. A new beginning. She felt able and competent again. A mother of four. The only shadow on her mood was last night. They would be brought in for questioning again. It could happen at any time of the day or night. The police could come to the boys’ school and whip them out. They could turn up at a friend’s house and whip them out, and smears like that stuck to a boy. She thought of the teachers looking at the boys differently, of them being asked not to come back to friends’ houses, being excluded.

Kay decided to do something about it because she had never learned the skill of being passive.

She was back at the house with Frankie and Joe, sitting squashed together at the tiny kitchen table. Joe and Kay had taken the seats, leaving Frankie to perch on a step stool that sat him too high for the table.

“Now, I’m going out for the afternoon,” she said firmly, knowing she seemed in charge and certain. “Does everyone know what they’re doing?”

Frankie looked at his list of tasks. “I don’t think you needed to drag us out of school to do these things, Mum.”

“Aye,” said Joe, looking at his list. “Most of these guys are in school. I need to wait until they get out before I can talk to them anyway.”

“Boys,” she said, “don’t tell the wee ones but I got a fright last night and I need to sort this out
today
. I’ve phoned the cops and we’re going back in at teatime so you need to be back here at four thirty to meet me to get the bus.”

Joe blinked at his list, looked at her, quizzical. “We know you got a fright, Mum.”

“We all got a fright,” Frankie said quietly.

“How are you not at your work?” asked Joe.

It hadn’t occurred to Frankie that Kay would normally be at Mrs. Thalaine’s.

Kay reached for a cigarette, changed her mind and looked back at them. “I’m going for a career change. I’m going to be a nurse.”

Kay got off the bus at the Squinty Bridge and walked across the river to Broomielaw. A brisk wind streamed across the river from the broad plane of Govan, rising up the boom of the flats. Even in the deep doorway, it lifted the tail of her coat and blew her hair up over her ears. Cars passed quickly, anticipating the motorway five hundred yards away.

Kay told herself that this was a mistake but she pressed the buzzer anyway.

The receiver was picked up and a woman spoke. “Who’s it?”

Kay said her name and the woman made her repeat it. She hung up and Kay waited. A bus passed and slowed, stopping a hundred yards down the road. Kay considered running for it but the receiver crackled to life again: “’Mon up.”

She looked at the glass doors, expecting a signal, but none came. She pressed the door with her fingertips and it opened in the lobby.

These were private flats, expensive, but the lobby was filthy compared to hers. She found herself tutting at the sticky floors and fag butts in the plant pots. They shouldn’t be smoking in there, not in a communal space. Someone had even burned cigarette holes in the leaves of the fake plants. The kids around theirs wouldn’t do that. They’d get chased.

She called the lift and stepped in, pressed the button, turned to face the doors and watched them close. As the lift took off she cleared her throat and straightened her hair, saw her reflection in the door and saw that she looked old and dowdy and worn, 45–60. The lift stopped, the doors hesitated before opening and she suddenly wished she hadn’t come.

At first she thought it was another lobby because it was as big and high as an airport.

A wall of windows two stories high looking out onto the river, facing down it to the sea. The surrounding walls were yellow sandstone and there was hardly any furniture, just a big settee. But then she saw the woman. She was standing ten feet away, diagonally across the room. It was a strange place to greet anyone coming out of the lift, not where your eye would fall. She wanted people to look for her.

Bleached hair, pink lippy, heels. She waved like a child, raising her arm at the elbow, hand nodding from side to side. “Hiya.”

Kay nodded and looked around for someone else.

“I’m Crystyl.”

“OK.” Kay didn’t have the fucking time for this. She just wanted to make a mistake and get out and get home and smoke in peace.