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  He minds abruptly the woman next door; him spying on her through the fence. His stomach starts racing. What was he doing? He feels pure scunnered at himself, and he screws the eyes closed but the thought of it won’t let up, the sense, somehow, that she knows.

  He realizes then that his forehead is stuck to the freezer.

  He tries to pull away but it’s joined fast, and the skin stings when he tugs at it. Bollocks, he cries out loud, and draws back again, slowly this time, but no joy, he’s too long frozen to it with sweat or tears or however it’s happened, it doesn’t matter – he’s glued on the freezer, is all that counts. Bloody eejit. He is laughing, and it jerks on the skin. Leave him alone two minutes and look what happens. He tries a new approach, damping a finger with warm spit and rubbing at the join, repeating the action over and over, hoping he might be able to peel away by fractions, but still it doesn’t seem to be working, the skin feeling scorched now and him beginning to panic. What a way to go: we found him starved in the kitchen with his head stuck to the fridge-freezer. Suddenly geeing himself up, he places his hands either side and rips himself away. He yelps at the sharp burning sensation. Then, stupidly, as it dies to an achy tingle, he checks if there’s any skin left on the ice. There isn’t. He shakes his head. What a fucking haddock, serious, and he turns to bathe the head with some warm water from the tap.

  Falling, again the sensation of falling. He rests his head, carefully, sideways on the kitchen table but he can’t get rid of the falling sensation even when he shuts his eyes, so he just stays there motionless, listening to his belly underneath the table away on a merry dance. He can’t see her now. Can’t picture her face. The various parts of her are there still when he tries imagining her – the hair, the jimmeny teeth – but he can’t pull back and get a sense of her, what she looks like, her face.

  Ingredients: cooked chicken (2%), sweetcorn (1%), bacon (1%), coconut fat, smoke flavouring, sodium ascorbate, sodium nitrate . . . Jesus. If it hadn’t been the asbestos killed her, it would’ve been the crispy pancakes. He turns the box over to read the other end, handling it carefully, like an old photograph. Fifteen minutes under the grill, simple as that.

  There isn’t any tinned tatties, or beans, so he grills up the waffles instead, and arranges them on a plate with the pancakes and a few thumps of tommy sauce. He sits a while looking at it. A familiar smell, and a good one, no like they potatoes. But it’s a smell just. And it doesn’t make him want to eat it. His stomach is bad still and he knows the second he puts a bite of this down, it’ll be coming straight back up. So he sits, staring, toying at it with his fork, pulling open a pancake and pressing out some of the shiny cream gloop. Wondering what in hell he’s doing. What, was he going to try and imagine that it’s her or something, stupit, fucking stupit, and he feels instantly sick at the thought of what he’s doing. He pushes the plate aside and stumbles over to the sink.

  Chapter 6

  He cannot sleep properly. Each of the next few nights he wakes in the dark, sweating, the settee hot and clammy against his skin. Staring at the display clock on the video player, waiting for it to be morning. When the dawn does come, and all the familiar shapes in the room start becoming visible, he is up quickly, a restless energy about him. He moves back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, getting the kettle on, both TVs, opening cupboards, then no minding what he’s looking for, shutting them again.

  By the afternoons, he’s tired out. No hungry still either. When it gets dark outside again he forces himself to grill up a waffle, but otherwise he doesn’t eat. He stays in front of the television in the living room, not so much looking at the programmes as at the set itself, how familiar it is: the dusty top of the video player; the wee carpet troughs just in front of the broken rollers where it used to stand years ago, before Robbie spilled a Coke bottle over the whole area.

  One morning, he gets up off the settee and goes straight upstairs. He strips the walls in the boys’ room of the few dog-eared photos stuck above the beds. Then into the bathroom for the framed one above the lavvy; the staircase; the lobby; the photo packets in the kitchen drawer.

  He begins piling them in rows on the floor in front of the television, like an audience.

  After half an hour, the collection has spread to the settee – a crowd of Cathys laughing and posing, the head always turned a touch the left of the camera. Himself in a lot of them too, stiffly smiling next to her. There are more still with the boys in as he selects through the packets: quite a few from when they were schoolweans, trips to the theme park, the pair of them tired and wet in their macs, or chasing about in their first Rangers kits. One of these, he takes out and puts on the floor with the others. It’s of the four of them all together, sat on a bench eating open bags of chips, Craig squeezed in next to Cathy, clung to her like a little demon. He can mind the day still. The first time they’d let the boys on the rides, Robbie biting his ear the whole afternoon for a handful of smash to go on the arcades, and some poor wee lassie boaking up on the rollercoaster, these long tendrils of vomit flying past their faces.

  He can’t get a fix on her. Even if he stares for minutes at each one, trying to mind what the occasion was, what she’d been saying as the picture was took, it’s no use. And anyway, all this, it’s just confusing matters, because these photographs cover years, decades, and she looks different from each one to the next. They are all of her, clearly – the pretty, smiling teenager, or here with the gelled fringe and blonde bubble perm – but when does the picture stop changing so that he might get a final hold on who she is? Not at the thin, sagging shape that she’d become, no danger. Even if he could pick out an image and say, aye, that’s her, that is her, it wouldn’t fucking be that one.

  There aren’t any photos of her like that though. The collection stops a few years back, when the camera seized up. The last one is Robbie’s wedding. Himself, Cathy and Craig stood in their best, sweating in the sun under this giant tree and looking pure uncomfortable, done up hot and greasy as fish suppers.

  It’s no doing any good, this. He should leave it by. Plus he needs to get something to eat. The stomach is spitting tacks, and he’s got to get something down him. Hard to move but. To get out the room and stop staring at all these pictures laid out on the floor. Each time he thinks he’s going to get leaving a new photo will catch his eye and he’ll crouch down in front of it trying to remember, trying to be inside it. One here that normally hangs in the lobby near where the coat hooks are. Port Melbourne. Cathy is knelt in her shorts battling on at the garden, her forearms stained up to the elbows in dark, red soil. She never could make anything grow. It was too hot and dry for all the wee shrubs and flowers that she fussed and footered over. In seven years, the only thing he can mind growing in that small, square garden was a single yellow dahlia. The rest the time it was full of balding lilac bushes and brown dead things. She is smiling but, in the photo, ever hopeful. Smooth plump arms. The tan line on her chest as she arches over, going at the ground with a trowel. Was it already in her then? Dormant. Waiting. How could you know? You couldn’t. She looks the picture of health here, that’s what anybody would think, and Craig’s babby toys are there in one corner of the garden so this is past thirty years ago, but it’s possible it was in her even then. Probably it was. They’re saying now it can be forty years, the incubation period, hidden away inside the body, inactive, until the moment it decides to crawl out and stiffen you. He peers in closer, even though he knows there is nothing to look for. And even if they had known, even then, would it have been any the better? Would the doctors have been able to stop it? Would they hell. Once it was in, it was in, like Thatcher. The end inevitable, no matter how long and hard the struggle. Better never knowing, is the truth. Better sudden and final.

  Stupit, but he studies the other photos, looking for signs, anything. Something they should have spotted at the time. Obviously there’s nothing but. Nothing. Only her getting older: smile creases around the eyes; the body a wee helping heavi
er; grey seams developing in the hair, until for a whole packet it’s brown again, and then she lets it have its way and the grey returns.

  Enough of this. He needs something to eat.

  He goes in the kitchen and keeks warily at the fridge-freezer, and he is about to go toward it, but instead he starts scanning round the shelves and the cupboard tops. He opens a drawer and takes out the cookbooks and then the messy pile of gossip magazines, putting the lot in a pile on the counter. Then he’s into the cupboards, taking out a mug, the biscuit tin, a handful of teacloths from another drawer, even a fish magnet from the fridge together with the faded offie coupon underneath. He brings it all through into the living room. He works quickly, too quickly to get thinking about what he’s doing and stop himself for being a complete fucking eejit. He goes up the stair to the bathroom. There are things in here too. Her books: she kept the Barbaras in here for some reason he’d never been able to fathom, stacked by the door next to the wash basket, the covers curling over at the corners from damp. He picks up an armful and hurries them down the stair.

  As he comes out of the living room again he sees the front door mat and pulls it out from under the post. He stares at it a moment. Then he puts it in the living room with the rest, and goes back up for her lotions and potions – all of it still there untouched – shower cap, lady razor, her bloody toothbrush even, dried out now as a thistle.

  He stands by the television and looks out over what he’s done. The settee covered with all this stuff, a wet patch on the arm under the shower cap. Nothing. It looks like a bloody jumble sale.

  He needs suddenly to be out of there, out of the house. The heart is going like the clappers and he can feel panic taking a grip of him, this sense that somebody’s going to come in any moment and see what he’s done.

  There is nobody about. Only the sound of his own feet on the pavement, as if the city is emptied from around him. A fine day but. A beauty. The highest windows of the multis glinting in the sun. He carries on along the road and he is going toward the cemetery, simple as that, it’s no a decision that he’s made, it’s just what’s happening. When was the last time he spoke to anybody? There’s a question. Robbie. No. Lynsey. The thought of it now, talking to somebody – a conversation – he can’t imagine it. What would they talk about?

  Still but it’s good to be out the house. And the sun, a bit of sun on the face, it does you good. He is feeling relaxed. When he gets there he might have a bit of a sit down – there are these benches that he’s seen, these old wooden ones that don’t exactly look the height of comfort, with three slats for the arse and another three for the back, but so what, who’s counting? See if there’s one in the sun. A sit down. Maybe a wee snoozle.

  It is quiet in the cemetery. The grass has been newly mowed. The smell of it is in the air, and there’s shreddings on the path as he walks through past the large older headstones, ruined and leaning like teeth. When he gets to her plot he stands there a while, looking down. The mound has sunk a little, he notices. An odd thing, the peace of it. It’s no as if she is here with him, he doesn’t believe that – a presence of her beside him – and no that he believes the other either, that she is gone with the Big Man. See if they’d both believed in that, then she’s more likely to be in the Bad Fire the now, the way they’d spoke about Him over the years. Anyway about it though, there is genuine a peace here, a slowing down of things, and it is making him calmer. He closes his eyes. Imagines the coffin, lowering slowly into the hole, the steady white-knuckle concentration of the pall bearers guiding it down like cargo. Until that point, there’d been nothing to associate her with this place. They never came here. She’s never stood here folding up washing, or eating her tea, or going through him for this that the other that he’d done. Maybe it’s because this is the only place she isn’t missing from, maybe that’s the peace of it.

  He sees then the flowers, white ones with egg-yolk centres in a wee pot plant placed where the headstone will be. They are new. The old ones actually have been cleared away, so somebody’s obviously come and spruced it up a bit. Craig. It must be. He’s been in before work then, or his lunch break – no, he’s too far away to get here and back that quick, so it must be after work that he’s come, that he’s coming. Keeping up his vigil and swerving on the idea of a visit to his da, who’s no been the grave himself even once since Craig left last week, as Craig is no doubt aware.

  He leaves down the path and out the cemetery, away down the street until he reaches the park. It is quiet here too, nobody about as he goes in through the entrance gate. It’s always quiet in here, that’s the best thing about it, and how they used to come in from time to time. No the worst park in the world. No the worst. No the best either but, don’t kid yourself. All you find in here is the occasional old guy on a bench, or a group of schoolweans having a smoke, or sometimes a scaffer or two smashed up on the superlager, pishing up a tree.

  There are plenty of decent-looking flowers in here. They are planted around some of the paths and the trees, and they’re no that dry and wilted either, even with the weather like it’s been. There is a bed of these nice red ones on the outside of a path that rings a chipped dribbling fountain. Just the job. He follows the path until he gets to the flowers, and he’s about to bend down to pick a few when, a short way ahead through the trees, he keeks the parkie, pushing his wheelbarrow of weeds and dirt. Mick carries on along the path. When he comes back round to the same point, the parkie is turned the other way picking something up off the ground, but it’s still too much a risk, so he keeps going round. The bastard’s probably trying to trick him. Pretending he’s fiddling at a plant when in actual fact what he’s up to is putting the surveillance on your man here, who to be honest must look like some kind of nutcase, now on his third lap of the fountain. Probably he looks the part too. He’s not shaved since the funeral, and also it’s fair to say he could maybe do with a wash and a fresh change of clothes but such is life, eh.

  The guy is still poking about up the way, so he moves right out of the parkie’s line of sight, hiding himself behind a good thick tree. He stays there, waiting, each now and then sticking the head out to check the lay of the land. The parkie’s got army shorts on, and a yellow high-vis bib, so it isn’t a problem keeping track of him. He waits. Before long the parkie gets moving on, going toward a wee brick outhouse type thing, and Mick takes his chance, stepping out from the tree and quickly across to the fountain.

  He kneels down, and starts nipping off the stems of the flowers. The blood is going, he can feel it throbbing in his ears. A grin coming on. Pretty daft, really, the way this has turned out.

  ‘Hey! No, hey, you can’t do that!’

  He’s been clocked. Sounds like an East Europe. He stands up and runs for it.

  The guy is still shouting behind him, but Mick doesn’t turn round, he makes for the entrance, the stomach cramping and his breath all over the place. Stupit, stupit, pure fucking ridiculous, but all the same there’s something of a thrill about having done it and as he gets to the road he holds the flowers aloft, punching them in the air like a baton. He starts laughing. Ye great bloody bampot, serious. He slows to a jog along the pavement and looks round over the palings, where the parkie is standing some distance off, watching him, probably confused at why some headbanger has just nicked his flowers.

  He lays the flowers down on the grave, a little way off from the others, and leaves.

  When he reaches the turn into his street, he is still breathing quite heavily. In fact that is probably the first exercise he’s had in years. Plus as well no having eaten. Nay wonder he’s a mess. He is turned into the street and it is quiet, but as he walks on he sees, further up the pavement, one of the drivers from Muir’s. Steve. Impossible to know if he’s spotted him yet, but there’s no turning around the now, it’ll be too obvious if he does. Panic starts immediately to tighten through him. He lowers the head and speeds up, staring down at the street, his feet scuffing the tarmac, dog-ends floating beneath
the grates of each stank he comes past. The heart is off again, beating wildly – look at the feet, look at the feet – but course that’s just going to make him look the more pitiful, isn’t it, but so what, so what, if it stops him getting noticed just, stops the possibility of a conversation, of being forced into the world of other people. He should have passed by now. Mick looks up, slowly, angling his head gradually to take in more of the pavement ahead. They’ve missed each other. He’s not been spotted. Relief pours through him, and he glances round to see Steve, a fair way past and crossed onto the other side the road, away with his carriers.

  The house. The front door. It opens with a wee stiff shove and there the lobby and the corridor, dark and cool after coming in from the sunshine. The silence of it. Where to put yourself. He comes in and goes through to the kitchen. Gets the kettle going. Mugs clinking out of the cupboard. What a bloody morning. Christsake.

  He has made two mugs. No point dwelling on it though. He tips one down the sink and takes hold of the other in both hands, letting it warm through the fingers. Something of a queer smell – probably the milk isn’t the freshest. It’s fine but, fine, he’ll drink it. And then the question again, where to put yourself? What to do now?