Maggie made sure never to leave Isla alone with him.
Duncan had taken time off work but had been called in a couple of times for ‘crisis meetings’ about Dean. The rat-faced wee bastard was trying to blackmail Duncan into giving him ￡1000, saying that if he didn’t cough up, Dean would tell the police that Duncan had hit him. Maggie had persuaded Duncan to go to the police himself. ‘That has to be nipped in the bud pronto,’ she’d insisted. ‘What if he does make allegations? You’ve got to get in there first. And let the other mentors know what’s happening. Chuck the wee bastard off the programme.’
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. There were meetings to be sat through and boxes to be ticked. The final meeting with all the ‘stakeholders’ involved in wrangling Dean had been fixed for this afternoon, a Friday, and Duncan had promised this would be an end to it – he’d be at home all next week.
When he’d left for the meeting, Maggie sat in the lounge – the drawing room – in her favourite wee purple chair with Isla, looking out over the lawn to the fields and the scabby hill, praying Nick wouldn’t be back from school before Duncan – Nick got the school bus the four miles to and from Langholm – when the door came open and there was Yvonne, a big shopper over one arm.
Did the woman not know how to use a doorbell?
‘Brought you some meals,’ she said briskly. ‘I don’t imagine you’ll be up to cooking at the moment, catering college diploma or no. And Duncan’s repertoire is what you might call limited. I’ve got mince and tatties, spaghetti Bolognese and two home-made quiches.’
Maggie hated quiche.
Did Yvonne think she couldn’t even cope with making the dinner, now she had a baby? Had Michael and Yvonne decided they had to rally round because Maggie was liable to fall apart and have a nervous fucking breakdown if she didn’t get help?
‘Thanks,’ she managed.
Yvonne looked down at Isla, who was snuggled in a soft yellow blanket in Maggie’s arms looking pure adorable. ‘Nice little thing, isn’t she?’ she said, almost reluctantly. Then she backed off, maybe worried that Maggie might suggest she hold her. ‘Right, I’ll put these in the fridge.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Yvonne, that’s good of you to take the trouble.’
Yvonne nodded in agreement and left the room.
A few minutes later the door crashed open again and this time it was Nick, barging in and whacking his schoolbag down on the couch.
‘Hi, Mags!’ he half-shouted.
Isla stirred.
‘God, it’s still so tiny. Failure to thrive, they call it, don’t they?’
‘Keep your voice down!’ Maggie hissed. ‘You’re going to wake her.’
‘Sorrreee!’ he mouthed in an exaggerated whisper.
‘She’s fine,’ Maggie murmured. ‘The midwife says most slightly premature babies soon catch up.’
Nick nodded. ‘I’m sure that’s the case, normally. But, Mags – I’m sorry to bring this up, but there are a whole load of studies showing that abused children make terrible mothers. A small percentage repeat the abuse. A much larger percentage are merely neglectful. Their babies fail to thrive, have health problems that go unnoticed, don’t get proper nourishment, fall into deep-fat fryers, et cetera, et cetera. Wouldn’t it be terrible if something happened to it because you couldn’t look after it properly?’ He grimaced down at Isla.
‘You little bastard!’ The words shot across the room, and Yvonne came striding in. ‘You poisonous little bastard.’
Nick, Maggie was glad to see, had gone pale. ‘I was just trying to help,’ he muttered, looking off.
Yvonne didn’t bother responding to this. She just stood there until Nick had collected his bag and slunk from the room. Then she puffed out a breath. ‘Maggie. I’m so sorry. I had no idea it was that bad.’
‘He’s only like that when he’s alone with me.’ Maggie put a catch in her voice, gazing up at Yvonne and blinking. ‘Duncan doesn’t think there’s a problem. He thinks Nick’s just a bit tactless, not in any way . . . threatening.’ She blinked again and was pleased to find she could still cry on cue, a trick she’d mastered in the young offender institution when she needed to play the victim.
Not that she was playing the victim now. She was the fucking victim.
Yvonne’s gaunt face was grim. ‘Well, that’s going to have to change.’
Duncan, as usual, was a right wetty with Nick, sitting him down at the kitchen table with Maggie and Yvonne to put to him the ‘suggestion’ that he ‘see someone’. Duncan had been leaning towards a counsellor who worked with the kids on the programme, but the woman was shite. Maggie knew this from personal experience and had shut this idea down pronto. So Yvonne had got the name of a psychiatrist with a private practice from Carol and Steve Jardine, who had tried to take Andy to him once. Andy had refused to go – which was a surprise to Maggie. She wouldn’t have thought he had the gumption.
‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, obviously,’ Duncan assured Nick. ‘But I think talking things through with a professional might help.’ He looked at Nick across the kitchen table with a little smile, as if he was sure his darling boy wasn’t going to let him down.
Nick looked from Duncan to Maggie to Yvonne. ‘I was only trying to help Maggie. She’s not looking after Isla properly.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ said Yvonne calmly.
‘Maggie’s a great mum,’ Duncan said at once.
Maggie lifted her eyebrows at Nick and said gently, ‘It’s perfectly understandable that you resent me, and maybe Isla too. This isn’t about blame.’
The fuck it wasn’t.
As she’d hoped, this provoked the real Nick to rear his ugly head. His lips curled away from his teeth like a mad dog someone had poked with a stick.
But it was Maggie who should be raging here. Duncan had ignored what she was saying about Nick until Yvonne had put her oar in. ‘Maggie feels threatened, and she’s every cause to,’ Yvonne had rapped out at her brother. ‘Nick’s bullying her. How you’ve let it get this far, I don’t know. Apparently you haven’t believed Maggie.’