Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

When Yeni went upstairs to her room, I told Trisha that Yeni had been a rock during the whole bloody episode. She stayed with us throughout the trial, I said pointedly. Trisha pursed her lips. She said that was fine then, as if Yeni were an unsuitable friend who would lead me into smoking and the use of slack grammar and tube tops and other modern evils.

I gather that Susie didn’t really send Trisha here. They’ve been writing to each other, and Susie agreed that it would be nice for Margery to see other members of the family. It was Trisha who decided she was needed; whether she was wanted here or not is of no concern to her. She knows I hate her and doesn’t seem to care. I wonder how she now feels about taking Susie aside before our wedding and telling her she thought I was a drinker. I was a student then and it was a friend’s graduation. I wasn’t even that drunk, I’d only had about four pints. How unforgiving can you get?

She drives me insane with her endless pronouncements. She seems never to have mastered the art of interaction, and her conversation, which cannot be discouraged or stopped (not even dammed to a trickle by food), consists entirely of her imparting information. Social acceptance is still important, apparently. Having a daughter is a great responsibility, especially for a man alone. Nutrition is the starting point for intelligent growth. I asked, intelligent growth, Trisha, what is that? Is it growing intelligently, i.e. upward, and not diagonally like all these malnourished young ones with their fancy ideas today? Or is it growing in intelligence during the course of normal physical development? She doesn’t have a sense of humor and knew I was conversing obliquely but couldn’t quite put her finger on the meaning. But she didn’t give up. The government will have to improve the education system or lose the next election. These and many other sparkling gems were cast before Yeni and me, swine that we are, over the macaroni on toast. Yeni smiled and nodded, trying to be friends with everyone, as usual. I sighed and tutted just enough to make Yeni finish eating quickly and stare uncomfortably at the table until pudding came.

Mum phoned later and was horrified to hear that Trisha had arrived. She demanded to know what she was doing, had I asked her to come? I said of course not. Mum gave the phone to Dad, he asked all the same questions over again, and then she snatched the receiver back from him and asked them again herself. There’s a serious danger of their coming over, even though I told them that there are no spare beds now.

I want to teach Margie to say “Great-aunt Trisha is a bastard,” but she’d be taken off me by the social workers.

So I’m up here after everyone has gone to their respective beds, smoking in a sulk, making this nice room smell horrible. I’ve opened the skylight, and the November air’s fresh outside. It floats down the chimney-shaped room and nibbles at my fingers and forehead and bare ankles, keeping me awake.

In the past twenty-four hours I’ve been emasculated, violated, snubbed, and invaded. To cap it all off, I’ve got to go and visit Susie tomorrow. I don’t want to go. I want to be back at the nursery surrounded by sympathetic, pitying mums. I want to press my face into their big warm tits and stay there forever.

WORSE. AN EVEN WORSE FUCKING DAY THAN YESTER-FUCKING-DAY was. I’m up here, hiding in my own home, so I don’t have to talk to Trisha or tell her about Susie and the visit.

Today started out okay. I got a letter from Susie that didn’t say much but did make me think it would be quite nice to see her. I went to the shops to buy the batteries she asked for and found my picture in one of the papers. Margie has been cut out of the photo, which is good, though you can just see her little hand. I actually look quite attractive. It was windy (you can see the wind-ruffled trees behind me), and my hair was brushed back off my ears. Also I had an overcoat on, which covered my belly. Instead of fat and afraid, I seem angry, defiant- even, at a stretch, a little handsome.

(I’m wondering if we could make anything of the press coverage for the appeal. It feels as though we’ve never been out of the papers. Surely one of them must have broken the rules?)

I put three copies of the paper in my cart, right side down, and walked around the shop in a flush of excitement. I thought the cashier would recognize me, but she didn’t. I’d drawn myself up, ready to explain that I was gathering material for a case I would be presenting to the Press Complaints Commission, but she didn’t even notice my buying three copies because they scan them in upside down. I was a bit disappointed.

The story itself is horrible, all about me struggling on with my pathetic devil-spawn child. There’s no mention of me as an independent person, just Susie’s unemployed husband this and that. They’d never say that about a woman. She’d be a housewife, an attractive housewife maybe, or a stay-at-home mum, but not unemployed.

I half wanted to cut the picture out and take it to Susie, to show her I’m not a complete loser dog, but the story would upset her, and I thought she might have other things on her mind. When I came home from the shops, I took the picture up to the bathroom and used Susie’s hair spray to flatten the hair at the sides of my head. I look cool, whatever Susie says. I know I do.

I keep going back to the picture and looking at it. I may feel like a neurotic fool, but when I look at that picture, I’m a tragic hero. I can see the story from the far distance for the first time, and I come off rather well. I’m tall, not at all bald (a major boon at twenty-nine), and I’ve stuck loyally by her. If I were slightly thinner, I think I’d cut quite a dashing figure.

Trisha’s being here was good for one reason only: she agreed to take Margie out for the day. I’d rather do that than leave her with Yeni. That wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

I turned the car radio on to keep myself from thinking and drove onto the motorway. It’s a long time since I’ve been out of the city. It was windy, and all the high-sided vehicles were leaving the road or stopping on the shoulder. I could feel the car being blown sideways on exposed stretches. When I got all the way out into the flat Leven Valley, the traffic was backed up to a complete standstill, and I was afraid I’d miss visiting time. I was cursing whatever feckless bastard was causing the obstruction when I saw an ambulance weaving against the traffic. It passed, and the cars began to move again. Two hundred yards farther on a large truck lay on its side in a field like a big dead beetle, down a sharp slope from the motorway. It was at such a crazy angle from the road it must have tumbled over several times before coming to rest. The ambulance had been attending here, and I realized that the driver might actually be dead.

I was making good time, so I stopped in the local village and bought a big bag of toffees. I sat eating them in the car, one after another, chomping and slurping the toffee juice, unwrapping another before I’d even finished the last. I tried to remember all the lovely times we’ve had together. My Susie. My Susie-suse. But all I could see was the back of her head in court and the death-trap truck on its side, and all I could hear was my jaw grinding the hard toffees, my saliva sloshing glucose onto those hard-to-reach surfaces of my teeth.

I could have claimed that the conditions were too bad for me to drive out. It was the perfect excuse. There were bad accidents everywhere; it would be confirmed on the news. But I couldn’t do it to her. Whatever she had done, I couldn’t leave Susie Wilkens sitting in a women’s prison waiting for a visitor who wouldn’t come. I thought about the real reason I didn’t want to go. If she admitted she was having an affair with Gow, I’d sob. In front of everyone.