Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

Even The Cornerhouse was decked out with tinsel and paper chains, and a row of orange fairy lights ran along the optics, giving out a glow that could almost be described as welcoming. Although an effort had been made with the decoration, the place was deserted. The usual crowd of old men was missing, and a weary silence hung over the rough tables and chairs. The pull of the cubes had left David completely. He wondered if the other men felt the same.

David was about to leave when he heard a cough, and realised Arnie was still there, in his usual seat at the back by the fireplace. At the next table along was Geoff, the perennial loser at the cubes, still wearing his striped tie and nursing his pint with a bruised expression. David’s eyes caught a movement behind the bar, and Mags came forward, and leaned against the pumps with a raise of her eyebrows. She wore a black blouse, her hair loose, her breasts hanging low. She looked older and smaller without her usual audience.

David felt her watching him as he crossed the room to Arnie, tapping the envelope he held against his leg. He stopped in front of the table, not knowing how to begin.

‘What now?’ said Arnie, as if picking up a conversation from minutes earlier.

‘Marianne asked me to give you this.’ David held out the envelope. Arnie reached over without enthusiasm and took it, breaking the seal, sliding the Christmas card into view. It was the expensive type, stiff cream paper, with a picture of a holly leaf embossed with green and silver glitter, golden calligraphic greetings of the season surrounding it.

‘Nice,’ Arnie said. He didn’t read the message inside. ‘She’s still not keen on seeing me, then?’

‘She explained it,’ said David.

‘Yeah, it was a lovely telephone conversation. To be fair, I think she covered everything. Not a word was wasted. A talent she got from her mother.’ He put the card down next to the dregs of his pint of beer. Mags came over with two full pints, and said, ‘Pay me later,’ before stomping away with the old glass in hand.

What had Marianne said to her father? The night after her mother’s funeral she had taken the phone upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom with it. From downstairs, all he heard was the soft rumbling of her serious tone of voice. No shouting, no shrillness. Had she told Arnie that she couldn’t ever forgive him for his refusal to come to the funeral? Or was it the secrets he had kept from her that had led to this break from him? Did she tell him she never wanted to see him again? But no, David was certain that Marianne would never say anything so permanent. Right now, they were living their life here in Wootton Bassett as if it were only a temporary arrangement. Besides, the giving of a Christmas card suggested nothing so extreme.

After Christmas, that was when she wanted to talk about facing the past and constructing a future. Until then they were all just treading water. The metaphor made him think of Inger. David wondered where she was now. He hoped, for her sake, she wasn’t alone. She was the kind of person who needed someone to be strong for.

‘You been down the gym?’ said Arnie.

David shook his head.

‘I hear you pulled them out of an earthquake.’

‘A house collapsed.’

Arnie nodded, as if such things happened every day in his experience. ‘I’m not such a bad person, you know. I would have done the same thing. I would have pulled Marianne out of an earthquake. And Vanessa, too. Even Vanessa. So a house fell on her.’ He took a sip of his new beer. ‘Like the Wicked Witch of the Wotsit. Did her toes curl under? I’m just joking. It’s dead here tonight.’

‘No cubes?’ said David. He kept his voice as casual as he could.

‘Given up doing that,’ said Arnie, glumly. ‘Haven’t we?’

Mags called, ‘No more cubes, you bloody lot,’ from her usual place behind the bar. ‘Bloody men.’

Geoff stood up, and wobbled over to their table. He sat and scraped his chair right up to David, so close that David could smell the mustiness and old, dried sweat of his clothes.

‘What are we gonna do?’ he said. ‘Hm? What? She’s taken the cubes down. They’re not on the shelf any more.’

‘They stopped production,’ called Mags. ‘No more barrels. No more cubes. Not anywhere. Besides, you lot don’t need it any more. Busy making your own plans, aren’t you?’ She muttered something, then picked up a tea towel and ran it up and down the bar, forlornly, like the proud owner of a failing vintage car.

‘And no more favours for poor old Mags,’ said Arnie. ‘We all knew she was rigging it, a bit of sleight of hand to get her favours. She had us all cleaning her windows, getting her shopping, anything she wanted, just so she’d let us win every once in a while and have a taste of the stuff.’

‘But now you don’t want the stuff.’

Geoff shrugged. ‘It doesn’t seem so important any more. We don’t need to pretend, do we? We just… are.’

It was a difficult thing to take on board. The cubes had been bigger than The Cornerhouse, than Mags or Arnie or the old men who had based their lives around it. David thought of the pub in Allcombe, on the quay, with the fisherman sitting so still, and the cubes on the mantelpiece, the only decoration not covered in dust. How many pubs had played the game of the cubes?

‘What do we do?’ said Geoff. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come back. I knew you’d know what to do.’

‘So why did Marianne run away, then?’ said Arnie.

‘I don’t know,’ David said.

‘It wasn’t because of that attack? It was in the paper about it. Some bloke’s been hanging around the library.’

‘When was it in the paper?’

‘Four or five days ago. Mags, have you still got it? I read it and thought – I wonder if that’s Marianne. But I’m always putting two and two together and making fifty-eight. Mags, the Gazette , it was, have you got it?’

‘On the pile,’ she said, pointing to the small round table next to the slot machine. Geoff got up and wobbled over to the stack of papers upon it. He riffled through them with surprisingly quick flicks of his fingers.

‘Got it,’ he said. He came back to them, and put the paper in front of David. Arnie snatched it up, licked his thumb, then turned the first page and pointed to the top of page three. It was a small article, only one column, with no picture.

Wiltshire police are asking for witnesses to come forward regarding an alleged sexual assault that took place outside Wootton Bassett library on the night of Thursday 15th October.

If you were in the vicinity or have any information that you think might be relevant, please contact—

David stopped reading. ‘No. That’s not her. She wasn’t assaulted.’ He worked backwards in his head, checking the dates. This attack had happened while Marianne was away on the island. The man she had faced down had escalated his game. He felt a strong urge to tell her. ‘I have to talk to Marianne.’

‘You sure it wasn’t her?’ Arnie folded up the newspaper.

‘Certain. Look at the dates. She was attacked the week before. But she stood up to him, and he ran off.’

‘Ahh,’ said Arnie. ‘I knew it. I knew it. Same bloke, then. That explains why she ran away. All these poor women getting raped right here in our town.’

‘She wasn’t raped,’ said David.

‘Rapist living in Wootton Bassett and nobody tells us, do they? You’d think they’d give men the chance to deal with it themselves, protect their women. He could be out there, doing it again, right now, and he loves that library, doesn’t he?’ There was a malicious enjoyment to Arnie’s voice.

David stood up. Marianne was in the library, the quiet, bright library, a shining beacon in the darkness. The ugliness of the world was becoming so very clear to him. It had been moving into focus since he talked to Hamish at the funeral.