Fault Lines Read online

  Her muscles burned as she pulled the boat and trailer round the back of Esplanade Terrace onto the cobbles of Joppa Park. She stopped at the back of her house and opened the boatshed doors, wheeled the trailer inside. She was panting as she dropped the trailer handle, hands on her knees, bent over to get her breath back. Eventually she stood up. From the small, cobwebbed window of the shed she could see into the kitchen at the back of the house. Halima was there, drinking and cooking, just as she had pictured.

  Surtsey grabbed a towel off a nail stuck in the wall and dried her face, hair and arms, then dabbed at the front of her dress. She left the shed and went back out into the street, closing the door as quietly as she could.

  She stood breathing for a few moments, trying to get her heart to slow, then lifted the latch on the back gate and walked through, clattering it shut behind her. When she turned round Halima was smiling from the kitchen, already pouring a glass of red wine for her.

  4

  ‘Hey, babes, you’re back early.’ Halima handed the wine to Surtsey before she was even through the sliding doors. Surtsey tried to keep her hand steady as she took it, then had three gulps, almost finishing the glass.

  Halima smiled. ‘Date didn’t go well, huh?’

  Surtsey shook her head. To cover for her and Tom over the last few months she’d sold Halima a line about trying online dating behind Brendan’s back. Since she and Halima lived and worked together, she needed something to explain her absences, and that was the perfect cover story. It made Halima into a co-conspirator with Surtsey, gave them a secret they shared, and made sure she wouldn’t ever blurt it out to anyone. Plus she knew Halima wouldn’t judge her.

  ‘So who was this dick?’

  ‘Just a hipster in a folk band. Loved himself.’

  ‘His loss.’

  Halima wandered over to the stove where a pot of something was simmering. It smelt spicy and sweet and Surtsey felt hungry, then disgusted with her body for carrying on regardless.

  ‘Ready in ten minutes,’ Halima said. ‘Get yourself settled and we can have a boozy night in.’ She waved her glass, the wine almost spilling over the side. ‘Drink our troubles away.’

  Surtsey finished her wine then filled both of them up from the bottle.

  ‘Sounds great,’ she said.

  *

  The stainless steel hash pipe seemed to glow as Halima handed it to her. It was the size of a credit card, small bowl at one end, fern leaf engraved along the edge. It was Halima’s twenty-first birthday present from her mum and dad. The Maliks didn’t conform to the strict Muslim parent stereotype, second-generation Scots-Pakistani hippies who ran a drop-in centre for troubled teens in Glasgow and grew asparagus and courgettes on their allotment.

  The warmth of the pipe in Surtsey’s hand sent a tingle along her fingers. She sparked the lighter, held the flame to the grass in the bowl and took a hit. The crackle of burning grass and the gas fizzing in the Zippo filled her brain. She felt thirsty and took a careful gulp of Shiraz, then placed her glass down and handed the pipe back.

  ‘I’m wrecked,’ Halima giggled.

  ‘Yep.’

  The news was on television in the corner of the living room. Surtsey blinked and looked round. All her mum’s stuff still here, despite the fact she didn’t live here any more. The whitewashed wooden bookshelves full of geophysics and earth science books, the saggy brown leather sofas, the worn Indonesian rug on the floorboards, the out-of-tune piano against the back wall. And the Celestron telescope set up in the bay window, pointing at the Inch. Surtsey had used it earlier today before she left for her rendezvous. She stared at it now.

  She turned and tried to focus on the photographs lining the mantelpiece. Her graduation picture in that stupid gown next to a snapshot of Iona taken when she didn’t realise, the only way Louise could catch her younger daughter on camera in the last few years. Then a holiday photo of the three of them squinting into the sun at Pompeii, Louise’s idea of a fun family trip, traipsing around hundreds of mummified people killed by a volcanic explosion.

  She tried not to think about Tom on the island. She should’ve found a blanket for him, taken the bedding from the hut, kept him cosy against the wind.

  ‘What you thinking about?’ Halima said.

  Her voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well.

  Surtsey took in Halima’s glossy black hair, dark eyes, sly smile. They’d been best friends since freshers’ week six years ago, meeting on a dumb Geosoc pub crawl down Cowgate and immediately clicking, bunking off halfway and pitching up at a shitty dive on Niddrie Street, an old man’s pub with bright strip lights, stuffed animals on the gantry and empty ashtrays still on the table.

  At first they bonded over mockery of the straighter students on the course, but that acerbic fluff gradually gave way to something deeper, a shared understanding of the importance of friendship and family. Hal was the youngest of six siblings and was forever heading off in a bright sari to some cousin’s wedding or aunt’s birthday, rolling her eyes at the conformity but also revelling in it. We all live multiple lives, Surtsey thought, play different roles as a daughter, friend, student, lover.

  Surtsey remembered that Halima had asked a question.

  ‘Mum,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, babes.’ Halima reached over and touched Surtsey’s hair. She ran a finger around the edge of her ear and Surtsey shivered, then she touched Surtsey’s loop earring, a tiny tug that pulled at the lobe.

  Now Surtsey really was thinking about her mum. They’d spent three years apart when Surtsey left school, the usual quest for independence. Surtsey split rent with Halima on a crappy student flat in Sciennes, five minutes from the action of George Square. But Louise got the diagnosis at the start of Surtsey’s final year and she moved back in to help out, tearful at first but some laughs along the way, Iona storming around as if their mum dying was a personal affront, something she still did. Surtsey could understand that anger, God knows she felt it too, but in the end what good did it do?

  Six months ago, with Louise deteriorating fast, they managed to get a place in the hospice five minutes up the road. Surtsey didn’t have it in her to keep changing grown-up nappies, cleaning up sick and helping her mum to the toilet. Louise hated all that too, ashamed of being babied by her own daughter. Through all this, Iona kept stomping around refusing to accept, a human storm cloud rumbling through life.

  So this house was Surtsey and Iona’s home now, and Halima was here too having moved in partly to keep Surtsey company, partly because it was rent free. Louise was never coming home, that was the truth. The only way she was leaving the hospice was in a wooden box. Surtsey felt sick thinking about it.

  She stared at the television, her stoned brain sucked into the glow of it. It was a news story about the earthquake earlier. 5.7 on the scale, no real damage done, a few minor aftershocks, a warning about future tremors. They were so used to it now it was barely worth mentioning unless it was a really big one.

  She wondered what time it was. They’d been drinking and smoking for hours, watching Kimmy Schmidt, Parks & Rec, old 30 Rock.

  Surtsey frowned and pushed herself up from the sofa. It took enormous effort, muscles straining. She stumbled over to the telescope and bent to look through the eyepiece.

  Halima laughed. ‘What are you doing? It’s dark, you can’t see anything.’

  Surtsey kept her eye to the telescope, staring at the blackness.

  5

  Surtsey was too wired from the grass to sleep, lying in bed imagining she was in a coffin. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Tom, the way the bones of his face weren’t quite right any more, the smear of blood on his scalp, the glassy look in his eyes. The birds would’ve returned to him after she left and she felt guilty about that. But she had to go.

  She heard an electronic ping she didn’t recognise coming from somewhere. She sat up and lifted her jeans from the floor. Fished her phone out the pocket and pressed the button. Nothing. She looked aroun
d the room for a few seconds then remembered. Tom’s cheap Nokia, the one he only ever used for her. She had lifted it from the Inch and brought it home. While Hal was cooking earlier she brought it upstairs and stashed it in the drawer of her bedside table.

  She opened the drawer, picked it up and swiped. A text message from an unknown number:

  I know you were there.

  She dropped the phone on the bed and her hand shot to her temple. She felt dizzy. What the hell? She stared at the phone lying on the covers then glanced out of the window, dark except for a lighthouse blip in the distance.

  She turned back to the phone, picked it up, gripping it tight in her fist, stared at the words until the screen went dark. She brought it back to life and sent a reply.

  Who is this?

  She pressed send and waited. Someone had Tom’s number and knew that she had his phone. They must’ve seen her take it from the island. So they were there. It must be the murderer, unless they were bluffing. Maybe it was someone who knew she’d been sleeping with him, someone putting stuff together, fishing for information.

  No answer.

  She tried to call but there was no caller ID and the phone just bleeped out. She tried again, same result. Then she texted:

  How do you have this number?

  She stared at the screen, the green of it the only light in the darkness. She checked back through the phone’s history, texts and calls, but the only other interactions had been with her own phone.

  Then she heard a noise coming from downstairs. A clattering about in the hall, the clomping of feet. She swallowed hard and took a long, slow breath. More thumping around, indistinct, then finally a familiar sound, girlish giggles and comedy shushing, two voices. Iona was back from her shift, and not alone. Again.

  There was the sound of a glass smashing, mumbled swearing, a thud against a wall. She was probably fine down there, whoever she was with. But … Surtsey arched out of bed, still holding Tom’s phone. The touch of her toes on the floor made her feel connected, like she was an ancient tree. Shit, that grass was stronger than Halima’s usual stuff. She checked the phone screen again, to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated it. The message and her reply were still there. She threw on her old green hoodie, put the phone in the pouch pocket and headed downstairs, peeling her feet from the floor then replacing them like a badly programmed robot.

  Iona was in the kitchen staring at bits of wine glass on the floor. She wore a tight Ramones T-shirt and black shorts, her legs long and tanned, that snake tattoo up her left thigh. Her dyed-red hair was in a mess across her face. Behind her was a guy, big and dumb-looking, sleeve tattoos and a black shirt, jeans hanging off his arse.

  Iona looked up and beamed a smile.

  ‘Sis,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’

  She waved at the floor of glass between them.

  ‘Fucking broke.’

  She put a hand out to steady herself. Surtsey looked at the clock on the microwave, 3:17am. If she’d finished at The Espy at one, that meant only two hours of drinking. How could she be this wasted? Unless she started earlier.

  The dumb guy nodded. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ Surtsey said.

  Iona seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘Sur, this is Jez. From Sydney.’

  ‘Sur,’ Jez said, ‘cool name.’

  Surtsey scoped the guy with a slow gaze while she stroked the phone in her pocket. She looked at Iona and widened her eyes. ‘Really?’

  Iona didn’t notice or ignored it. ‘Join us for a snifter, sis.’ She looked around and spotted a half-full wine bottle on the worktop. She stotted over to it, glass crunching under her Doc boots.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Surtsey said.

  Something occurred to Iona. ‘Hey, is the H-bomb still up? Wouldn’t mind a wee toke.’

  ‘She’s asleep.’

  Iona made exaggerated head movements, looking around. ‘Maybe there’s some shit around here somewhere.’

  Jez stood there filling up space, smiling like a chimp.

  Surtsey needed to get out of there.

  ‘See you in the morning,’ she said, leaving the kitchen. She walked into the living room, pocketed Halima’s pipe and grass then went to the front door. She pushed her feet into flowery wellies, pulled on her Parka and left the house.

  It was already the next day outside. The sky light behind Berwick Law, orange tracers into blue, high wisps of cloud glowing in the predawn. Oil tankers with their lights on in the mouth of the firth, the street lights across in Fife. And the Inch, a dark presence against the violet sky to the west, an absence of light like a miniature black hole in the sea. Surtsey stared at it for a long time, thinking about the message.

  She looked up and down the prom, but there was no one in sight. Eventually she climbed over the wall and jumped down to the beach. She kicked the wellies off, wanted to feel connected to the sand. Scrunched her toes into it then walked towards the sea, the tide well out, a hundred yards of squelching underfoot until the soft whisper of the waves. She stepped in up to her calves, the bottoms of her pyjamas soaked. She held her breath against the cold, felt her heart quicken, involuntary reactions, no thought required.

  She pulled the pipe and grass out, packed the bowl and lit it. Sucked, kept it in her lungs, imagined she was made of magma. She exhaled, tried to picture her spirit leaving her body along with the smoke, up into the atmosphere, circling the earth with the air currents forever.

  She was really wasted.

  Someone knew, that’s all she could figure out. Someone was there, had seen her, and knew. But who? How?

  She stared east. The sun would rise in an hour. She would have to get up, go to the office and pretend everything was OK. She closed her eyes and realised she couldn’t feel the coldness of the water any more. You could get used to anything, it seemed.

  6

  Surtsey stood outside the hospice and tried to clear her head. The small windows of the building’s observation tower were blazing in the sunshine, making her squint. She’d slept for four hours, crashing when the grass buzz wore off. She woke in a fug, then remembered. Ran to the toilet and puked in the sink, tasting grass and red wine. She spent a few minutes staring in the mirror, straightening her shit out, then got dressed and tried to anchor herself to the day.

  She had her back to the sea now as if she wasn’t speaking to it for what it had subjected her to. She took Tom’s phone out of her pocket and checked it. Nothing. She’d found an old charger cable in a drawer last night, charged it up overnight. She shook her head at the phone now, lifted the screen to her forehead, felt its coolness, then put it back in her pocket.

  She thought of Alice waking up this morning, frantic that her husband wasn’t home, that he hadn’t been in touch.

  Her neck was stiff and heavy, and she cricked it as she opened the gate.

  St Columba’s was one of four old, sprawling buildings on the prom, nestled between the Joppa terraces at the east end and the more modest buildings further west. In a previous life it had been a kids’ nursery, so had swapped one regime of nappy changing and cleaning up sick for another. Next to it were two privately owned Gothic homes, all steep turrets and high walled gardens, then at the far end was the scuffed up Dalriada pub, wooden pirate with broken cutlass standing outside and sit-in folk sessions most nights. Together, the four houses were like a huddle of dishevelled elderly ladies gazing out to sea.

  The hospice building was unique with its square observation tower jutting from the crooks and crevices. Surtsey didn’t know if it ever got used. Most of the inmates, as Louise called them, couldn’t get up the spiral staircase, Louise herself once abandoning an expedition when she couldn’t lift her drip-bag frame past the second step. You would get a great view from up there, East Lothian, Fife, the teardrop of the Inch between.

  Surtsey sighed and pushed the front door open.

  Effie on reception met her with a smile. New folk coming through the door got the professional face, but after you visited a w
hile Effie broke the mask and there was kindness in her eyes. She was well under five feet tall, with a thin face and large-framed glasses on a string of purple beads around her neck. Her long grey hair was always in some intricate arrangement, today it was plaits looped over her head like a pretzel, giving her the appearance of a Ukrainian matriarch.

  Surtsey touched a finger against the reception desk. ‘Hi, Effie, how’s she been?’

  Effie nodded with her mouth turned down. ‘OK.’ Which meant anything but.

  ‘Did she sleep?’

  ‘Not much. A bit like yourself, looking at you.’

  Surtsey lifted her finger from the oak up to her temple, where it fluttered. ‘I’m fine.’

  Effie smiled. ‘Candle at both ends, eh?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Surtsey looked along the corridor to the left. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Rec room,’ Effie said, nodding. ‘Away in.’

  Surtsey’s stomach was tight as she walked. She came to see Mum every day, twice if possible, but it was never easy, she had to steel herself each time. She understood why Iona stayed away, she would herself if she could.

  The rec room was quiet, two old dears bowed over knitting in the far corner. One of the disadvantages of dying from cancer in her forties was that everyone else in the place was twice Louise’s age. Louise sat at one of the large bay windows looking out to sea, thin blanket over her knees.

  This wasn’t her mother, but it was. On the one hand Surtsey didn’t want this wasted, six-stone shell of a woman to be the mum she remembered after she was gone. She wanted to picture the vibrant woman slipping off her shoes in the sand and dancing with Surtsey and her sister, kicking up her dress as she ran round the bases at rounders, cigarette hanging from her mouth.