Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

I feel like I’m gonnae piss myself, and my heart’s going like the clappers. What if I go and piss myself? What if I go and throw up? Like a right daft cow?

Mandy goes, ‘Gie them hell, Lorraine-hen.’

Connor goes, ‘Maw, dinnae swear, aye?’

‘Do it for Bekki, hen,’ goes Mandy.

Aye, do it for Bekki. Get a grip, Lorraine .

I get out from the row of seats and pull my jacket down over my arse where it’s ridden up. I’m in my funeral suit. Fucking appropriate, I’m telling myself. Fucking appropriate.

It’s gonnae be someone’s funeral if we dinnae get Bekki back.

You can do this, Lorraine.

You can do this for Bekki.

With a hold of my statement in one hand and Bekki’s Shrek in the other, I pull in my stomach and get my fucking arse in that sheep pen.

Ruth examined herself in the hall mirror. She’d dressed in the sort of clothes Deirdre favoured: beige jeans, boots, a long indigo shirt and two dangly necklaces with colourful glass beads and wooden elephants strung on them. Minimal make-up. The long shirt did something to disguise her fat hips and waist.

She would have to remember to mention to Deirdre that she was successfully losing weight. She’d lost a stone and a half so far on the Atkins diet, but needed to lose as much again to be down to a healthy size. Maybe she shouldn’t mention Atkins to Deirdre, though – it was a bit faddy, wasn’t it? And Deirdre was probably vegan and would be horrified by the thought of the vast quantities of meat involved. All the additional slaughter and environmental damage required to keep Ruth in steaks.

This was something Ruth worried about herself, although admittedly usually as she was passing the junk-food aisles in the supermarket en route to the raw animal section. And really, could eating so little carbohydrate actually be good for you? She was feeling a bit light-headed now, in fact.

Maybe she should eat just a little something sugary.

After she’d had another quick check round.

She stood at the front door and looked at the hall as if she were Deirdre: at the Victorian pew with their shoes lined up under it, the waxed floorboards, the new jute mats, the fresh off-white walls (she’d persuaded Alec to give the whole cottage a new lick of paint last week) on which she’d carefully arranged some framed photographs of animals and a watercolour of a tranquil river scene.

It was a little gloomy, necessitating the lamp on the table being on despite the bright sunshine outside. She should open the sitting room door to let in more light.

First impressions were important.

The sitting room itself was perfect. Every surface gleamed – the old bureau which had belonged to Alec’s parents, the coffee table, the TV, the little side table – with a careful selection of books stacked on it, on things like the Scottish Colourists and ancient Egypt – the windowsills, the bookcases. They’d gone through their selection of books last night, removing all the grimmer crime novels and Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. Just in case Deirdre hadn’t read it and got the wrong idea.

There were windows to the front and side, so although they were small, the room was nice and bright. She had lit the wood-burning stove and it was crackling merrily.

Perfect.

Leaving the door open, she crossed the hall to the study. She had made Alec have a major tidy-up in here and then had deep-cleaned it herself.

He had pulled the curtain across the window to shade his PC screen. She pulled it back. There were shelves floor-to-ceiling on one wall, crammed with books and folders. On top of a battered metal filing cabinet was a shallow glass tank filled with soil in which three bonsai trees grew, which Alec called Pinkie, Perkie and Podgie.

Three bonsai trees and Mimi the Mycorrhiza.

The glass sides showed the roots of the trees branching through the soil and the white threads of the disgusting fungus thing that was Mimi, a sinister net that looked as if it was smothering the tree roots, the soil, the tank itself, forming a fine, ghostly, filigree pattern on the glass, like something from a sci-fi nightmare.

Alec would have to explain Mimi to Deirdre. Tell her it was a mutually beneficial thing for the trees and the fungus. To grow successfully, in nature most plants tapped in to the network of fungal mycorrhizas in the soil which provided them with water and nutrients in exchange for sugars.

But Ruth found it creepy. She didn’t like to think of the soil under her feet being infected by thousands, millions, trillions of those ghostly white threads. A single individual fungus could cover more than two square miles, apparently.

Maybe better tell Alec not to say anything.

Poor Alec. She’d made his life a misery these past few days, obsessing and nitpicking and nagging and generally being an OCD nightmare.

On the wall above the desk were the grotty old prints of fungi that Ruth had banished in here, and the framed Gary Larson cartoon of two man-eating crocodiles relaxing on a riverbank. She imagined Deirdre’s wistful angel expression going even more wistful, disappointed wistful, if-only-Alec-hadn’t-been-a-bit-of-a-sick-bastard wistful.

She removed the cartoon and shoved it in the top desk drawer.

But the empty hook was a dead giveaway that something potentially compromising had hung there.

On the hall table was a collection of photos of their families. The biggest one in the A4-sized frame, of Alec and his sister Pippa and their parents, had a little metal loop on the back. Pippa at ten had already been taller than Alec at twelve. She was gangling in a short dress, long pale legs crossed self-consciously one behind the other.

Ruth took the photo to the study and hung it up.

Hmm.

Was it a good idea to remind Deirdre that both sets of parents were dead? That they had no extended family network apart from Pippa, who was currently backpacking in Nepal with two random men she’d met on a beach in Cambodia?

Both their fathers had died when they were children. Ruth’s mum had been killed in an accident when Ruth was at university – the driver of a milk float, of all things, had reversed without looking and run her over. A witness had testified that Mum had just stood there, as if in a daze, that she hadn’t seemed to see it coming, but how was that possible? What they’d meant was that she hadn’t tried to get out of the way. Quite apart from the guilt – because Ruth had no illusions that this wasn’t down to her – she hated telling people about it because of the comic element. Not everyone was able to suppress their natural reaction to laugh. Red faces and awkwardness all round. Sometimes even hysterical choked giggles, and the person having to make an excuse to leave the room. She always felt so bad for Mum, that her death should be a source of amusement.

Of course, for a candidate adopter, a parent dead in an accident was far preferable to a parent dead from a heart attack or stroke or cancer. No red lights flashing ‘genetic risk of early death’.

Alec and Pippa’s mum had died of lung cancer last year, but she’d been a heavy smoker, and Alec had never so much as taken a puff behind the bike sheds.

God.

She had to stop this.

It was going to be fine.

The study was fine. It said Alec is a clever academic .

She walked on down the little passage to the kitchen.

Hopefully it wasn’t too much of a cliché that she’d baked scones. They did smell amazing, six appetising cheesy hummocks cooling on the rack.

Or rather, five.

Alec, sitting at the table with his laptop, gave her a sheepish grin.

He hadn’t even used a plate. There were crumbs on the keyboard and on the table and, yes, on the flagstones under his chair.