Jesus!
He’d done this? He’d hurt a gorgeous wee innocent bairn? What had he done? Hit her with something? Oh Jesus, she couldn’t even think about it! She’d been telling Isla, ever since she first knew she was pregnant, that she would keep her safe, that no one would ever hurt her, and now this had happened and Maggie had been downstairs happy as Larry doing her Mrs Mop act while up here in this room, Nick . . . Nick . . .
She was sobbing again, her hands shaking like an alkie’s. She needed to get a cold compress on that bruise, but she didn’t want to leave the room in case Nick was out there.
‘Oh, my wee one,’ she crooned. ‘It’s okay. Your ma’s here now.’
She had to get ice.
She eased open the door and crossed the landing to the stairs, whispering to Isla all the while. On the stairs, every few steps she stopped and listened, but the house was still. In the kitchen, she got an ice pack from the freezer and wrapped it in a tea towel, and held it against the bruise for ten seconds at a time.
When she was just a wee lassie, Maggie had discovered this was the best way to take the nip out a bruise.
Another sob rose in her throat.
She was never letting Isla out her sight again.
It took over an hour for Isla to stop yowling, a sound that went right through Maggie to the place inside her that wanted to call Liam and tell him to do it.
Get some Glasgow ned to wipe Nick out.
Instead, she called Nick’s school. He had PE that morning, she remembered – she’d had to wash his kit. She made up a story about wanting to check that he was okay because he’d had a sore foot and she’d suggested giving him a note to excuse him, but he hadn’t wanted to miss the lesson. Could she speak to his PE teacher?
When the man came on the phone, she was expecting him to be all confused, to say that Nick hadn’t been in the class that morning, but he breezily reassured Maggie that Nick had had no problems and had, in fact, easily outdistanced the rest of the boys as usual.
How had he done it?
She was sitting on the bed, the door bolted, when she heard noises on the landing, in the corridor. Quick footsteps. Nick’s cheery voice: ‘I’m back, Mags!’
The doorknob jiggled.
‘Mags? Are you okay in there?’
Maggie put her hand to her mouth to stop the huge sob that was rising up.
‘How’s Isla been?’
‘You fucking wee monster!’ Maggie choked. ‘I’ve got evidence now. I’ve taken a photo of the bruise –’
‘The bruise? Oh, Mags, what’s happened? Let me in! What have you done to her?’ A little chuckle. ‘Do I need to call social services?’
11
Lulu - June 2019
Lulu sighed, and stood, and stretched. She was too restless to sleep. While Nick worked, she’d come out to the little summerhouse with the intention of snoozing in the big wicker chair, but sleep wouldn’t come. She was too worried about Nick. This was their third day at Sunnyside, and the ‘therapy’ had ground to a halt because Nick had asked for a break from it which had somehow dragged on for two days.
She’d had another nightmare last night about the house, and this time it had been more recognisably Sunnyside. She’d been running through the rooms looking for Nick but had known, sickeningly, that he wasn’t there, that somehow he had never been there.
She walked back across the lawn towards the house. Nick would still, presumably, be working in the study. He had arranged with his boss that he could have two weeks off at short notice provided he clocked in at the vital times, at the beginning and end of the trading day, early in the morning and from three to four-thirty in the afternoon, so he was going to be closeted away in the study at those times on weekdays.
Lulu had wanted to take the car for a drive but hadn’t been able to find the keys. Presumably, Nick had them, and she hadn’t wanted to interrupt his work.
As she walked into the hall, she wondered if it had been a mistake to try to take him through the events of that night chronologically, starting in here – confronting him not only with his family’s absence but with the memories of finding his mother’s body.
It had been too much.
How could she have made such a stupid mistake?
That night, Lulu expected Nick to make some excuse to postpone the therapy session yet again, but come ten o’clock it was Nick himself who said, ‘Are we going to do this or what?’
Lulu took his hand and led him into the kitchen.
‘I searched the back rooms,’ he said, pulling her with him as he marched down the flagstone corridor and started opening doors to storerooms, a larder, a laundry room. ‘There was some chicken defrosting in the pantry. Then Carol called me, and I went back to the kitchen . . .’ Now he stopped.
‘Okay. What were you feeling at this point?’
‘Scared. Scared of what she had found.’ He took a deep, slow breath as Lulu had told him to do. ‘And now I went back into the kitchen.’
The two of them walked back along the corridor.
‘Carol showed me that one of the rings was on, on the cooker. And then I saw the pan – with water in it – and the bag of oatmeal open next to it.’ His chest was heaving. Suddenly, he wheeled and stared at the table. ‘Three mugs. Three bowls. Spoons. Carol found . . . she found Isla’s toy rabbit.’
Lulu had no real warning. One second, he was upset, yes, but controlled. The next, he was flinging her hand from him and running at the table and gripping its edge, hauling it up and over, overturning it so everything on it slid to the flagstones. Flowers tumbled from a vase, spilling water, and the vase shattered. Cutlery clattered.
And then he was at the worktop, snatching up a mug and hurling it to the flagstones. Shards of china hit Lulu’s legs.
‘Nick!’ She grabbed his arm. ‘Nick, stop! Nick!’