Gone Again Read online

  Back out the window. No cars. The television aerials on the flats up the street were wobbling in the wind. The sound of each new gust outside made Mark tense his shoulders. He wondered if it was possible for their window to blow in.

  He went through to his and Lauren’s bedroom. The bed was still unmade from this morning. He went to her side of the bed and glided his hand over the sheet. No impression of her body, of course, that would be too dramatic, too symbolic. He bent down and put his nose to her pillow. Coconut and fruit, whatever that shampoo was she used. And something else lurking underneath, something undeniably her, a smell only he knew, a smell he had known for eighteen years.

  They’d met in Smuggler’s Tavern at the start of the nineties. It was a stupid name for a student pub, and neither of them were students, her pouring pints behind the bar, him drinking with a band he’d been photographing across the road at their Niddrie Street practice room.

  He’d noticed her before, been in the pub a few times but never had the bottle to ask her out. Finally, after the band had bought him enough Aftershocks, he plucked up the courage. She told him later that she never went out with punters, but had made an exception for him. Cute eyes. They both had shoulder-length hair back then, grunge was just catching on in Edinburgh, and the band Mark had been snapping earlier were apparently courting interest from a handful of labels, despite being a thin Pearl Jam rip-off.

  Mark had come to Edinburgh after his dad died of a heart attack. His dad had raised him alone from the age of five, after his mum was diagnosed with aggressive Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Mark was younger than Nathan was now when his mum died. He only had the tiniest fleeting memories of her, and he wasn’t sure if they were even real, or if his mind had adapted them from old photographs or stories his dad told. Meeting a scary Santa in a shop while holding his mum’s hand, sharing an ice cream on Broughty Ferry beach in a cold wind.

  His dad had tried his best with Mark, but he wasn’t a natural father, prone to anger easily, and Mark’s teenage years saw the two of them drift into becoming more like flatmates than father and son, avoiding each other as much as possible.

  When his dad died, Mark wasn’t left with much, enough to buy his first decent camera and keep him afloat for a few months while he tried to make some money out of it.

  He had no ties left in Dundee and wanted to see some action, so moved to Edinburgh, began touting for work with bands, artists, magazines and newspapers. Showed some talent and got work as a freelance, all the while doing his own more artistic photography on the side, landscapes and seascapes mostly. He even toyed with the idea of applying to study at the Art College at one point, but by then the work was coming in, and he’d got used to having drinking money in his pocket.

  Lauren had similarly drifted. Maybe she saw a kindred spirit in him. Another only child, too. She was brought up in Upper Gray Street on the Southside, in the shadow of St Columba’s, where she was dragged to mass every Sunday morning until she was old enough to refuse. Her parents had scraped together fees for her to go to St Margaret’s Catholic girls’ school, despite living in the catchment area for Gillespie’s, one of the best comprehensives in the city. She hated it. The privileged posh girls looked down on her for only living in a flat rather than one of the bigger Southside houses. She left with no Highers despite being good at maths and English, and with no direction either, slipping from one side of the bar to the other, her tight body, beautiful smile and sharp brain perfect for working in the late-night haunts of Cowgate and Grassmarket.

  After a first drunken date, and a fumbled snog up against the rough brickwork of the mortuary building at the bottom of Infirmary Street, they were inseparable, spending the days sleeping in Mark’s tiny boxroom in Sciennes, the nights drinking, taking speed, smoking dope, shagging for hours back in that windowless room.

  Thinking again about it now, it seemed to Mark like two other people in a parallel universe. Who were those lusting kids? How had the pair of them got through life, almost doubled in age, with their own kid now and all the stuff that went with that? And the problems. The depression, the disappearance, the therapy, the abuse, the bust-ups.

  And now this.

  He took a deep breath and stood up. Went to the wardrobe. More cheap Ikea, they were keeping that place in business. Went to his underwear drawer and dug both hands in. Pulled out his dad’s old tobacco tin and opened it. A tiny knot of grass, left over from years ago, kept for old times’ sake. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled. Then he closed the tin and replaced it. He rummaged right to the back of the drawer and pulled out a plain wooden box the size of a shoebox. Took his keys out his pocket. On the keyring was a small key that fitted the lock on the box. He unlocked it, opened it and lifted out a familiar object wrapped in a fawn shammy leather. Sat down on the bed and unwrapped it.

  His grandfather’s Browning hi-power 9 mm semi-automatic and a handful of bullets. A Second World War relic, passed down from his dad. Both father and grandfather were Dundee cops in their day, Mark had been the disappointment, not following in their footsteps. He checked the gun. Took the magazine out. It was empty. He ran through the trigger mechanism. Thought about squeezing the bullets into the magazine for a moment, but didn’t. Then he replaced the empty magazine and sat holding the gun, flicking the safety on and off, feeling comfort in the easy slide of oiled metal.

  Lauren hadn’t taken it. That was a good thing. It was locked away for Nathan’s sake. Mark wasn’t sure why he kept it. That wasn’t true, he knew exactly why he kept it, one of the few remaining links to his dad and grandad. No family left on his side, just him and Lauren starting again from scratch. There were only relics left from the past, the Browning and the tobacco tin linking him tenuously to what had gone before.

  He and Lauren had argued about it. She didn’t want a gun in the house, and he understood that. But he couldn’t let go. Nathan didn’t know about it, of course, and it was never loaded. And then there was the whole safety mechanism and the locked box, so it was as safe as it could be.

  He almost threw it away last time she disappeared. She hadn’t taken it with her then either, but when she returned, everything as fragile as rice paper, he’d hidden it amongst his camera equipment for a while, knowing she wouldn’t think to look there. Terrible that he’d had those thoughts, that she might use it on herself. Or worse. Terrible but necessary thoughts.

  ‘Daddy?’

  Mark flinched. He had his back to the door, and he scrambled to wrap the Browning and bullets up in the shammy, then stuff them under the edge of the duvet.

  ‘What is it, Big Guy?’ He tried to keep his voice normal as he turned.

  ‘I can’t get back to sleep.’

  Nathan’s hair was tufty and his eyes half closed as he stood there in his Clone Wars jammies. Mark went to him and lifted him up, felt thin arms wrap around his neck.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed.’

  ‘Is Mummy home yet?’

  Mark felt his heart thumping against Nathan’s chest, the two of them pressed so close together. Felt the boy’s bony spine against his fingers.

  ‘Not yet.’

  They got to Nathan’s room and Mark lowered him into bed, tucking him in.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ Nathan said. ‘Mummy was eaten by whales.’

  ‘It’s just a silly dream, Mummy’s fine.’

  ‘Can you stroke my head, Daddy?’

  Mark kneeled down, smoothed out the stormtrooper bedspread. That iconic white mask staring up at him, hollow eyes.

  ‘Of course, ten strokes.’

  ‘Yeah, ten strokes.’

  One of their infinite private confidences, tiny routines they’d worked out over six years of intimate living.

  Mark stroked across Nathan’s forehead and up the temple, through the hair behind the ear.

  ‘One.’

  Nathan was breathing deeply by four and asleep again by eight but Mark went to ten anyway. Then just stayed there on his knees, watching the boy
breathe.

  5

  ‘Daddy, can I watch CITV?’

  He felt the boy’s hands shaking him and opened his eyes. He was on the sofa, a handful of empty beer bottles on the floor, kicked over. Still dressed from last night. The television was on, showing the Scottish news. Footage of the pilot whales this morning, very close to land, tumbling waves churning up against the shore, fins and snouts dipping in and out.

  Mark straightened up. ‘Sure.’

  Nathan went for the remote as Mark headed out the door. Almost Naked Animals came on behind him.

  Mark darted to the bedroom. Nothing had changed. No Lauren. Of course. He stumbled through the flat. Nothing. Checked the time. 7.04 a.m., Nathan up on the dot. Mark never understood how he did that. He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets then slapped himself on the cheek to wake up. He checked his phone. No messages, no missed calls. He tried her number, knowing full well he’d get nothing.

  He went to the kitchen and stuck the kettle on, then the radio. Local news. The storm had blown trees and power lines down. The pod of whales still wasn’t pushing out towards open sea, and the experts were worried. A local councillor had finally resigned after a corruption scandal. Crime figures had dropped thanks to more police on the streets, according to a government talking head. Mark thought about his conversation with DC Ferguson last night as he made himself a black coffee.

  What now? Get Nathan to school, that was the first thing. Then head to the Caledonia Dreaming office, find out when they’d last seen her. Then what?

  He stood there looking out the window at the trees in the back garden throwing themselves around in the wind, his mind churning. Eventually Nathan came through.

  ‘Can I have breakfast now, Daddy?’

  He snapped out of it. ‘Of course, what do you want?’

  ‘Cheerios. And Rice Krispies. Together.’

  Mark made a face and smiled. ‘Sit up at the table, then, I’ll get it.’

  He checked her Facebook and Twitter accounts again as he sorted breakfast. No activity. Logged on to her Gmail. Nothing new.

  ‘Did Mummy not come home last night?’ Nathan said between mouthfuls.

  Mark had to make a decision. He hated lying, hated it, but sometimes it had to be done. What good would it do to tell the boy he had no idea where Mummy was? That she’d abandoned them when Nathan was a baby, and it looked like she’d done it again.

  ‘She did come home, but she had to go to work again very early this morning.’

  ‘Did she kiss me when she got in last night?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Another mouthful of combo cereal.

  ‘Mummy works really hard, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah, she does.’

  ‘I don’t mean that you don’t work hard, Daddy.’

  Mark liked that about Nathan, he was considerate of others’ feelings. Good sign he wasn’t going to grow up into a sociopath.

  ‘I know, Big Guy.’

  ‘Even though you don’t work in an office like Mummy.’

  ‘Just eat up, OK? Then we can start getting ready for school.’

  *

  The walk along the prom was a struggle, gusts knocking them sideways, sometimes stopping them in their tracks, Mark having to grip Nathan’s hand.

  It was bin day, and large green bins were scattered all across the prom, a few of them tipped over, seagulls hanging in the wind and eyeing the spilled contents.

  Mark and Nathan walked along, making Star Wars blaster noises at the bins. Another of their games, pretending the bins were battle droids and blasting them to smithereens, Nathan totting up the points equivalent from his DS game. Mark had invented it one morning in P1 as a distraction technique when Nathan was being a pain about going to school.

  ‘That gets us an extra life,’ Nathan shouted over the wind, as they tag-teamed on the large communal bin at the bottom of Bath Street.

  Mark looked out to sea and tried to spot the pilot whales. There was no boat on the water to guide his eye in the right direction, maybe it was too rough out there. And no one watching from the beach either. Perhaps the story had lost its appeal. He thought he saw a couple of fins, but the waves were so rough he couldn’t be sure, and anyway, it was taking all his concentration to keep walking forward in this crazy weather. How long could it stay like this? Apparently it was the remains of an American hurricane. The joke doing the rounds was that the hurricane had been upgraded to a typical Scottish summer. Boom boom. But this was no joke, avoiding rolling bins and stopping your six-year-old from taking off.

  The shoreline was littered with flotsam, broken trees, barrels, pieces of boat, swathes of bladderwrack. Mark had never seen so much crap washed up before.

  ‘Keep shooting, Daddy,’ Nathan shouted. ‘You’re six levels behind.’

  Mark pointed his finger at a bin and did his best blaster. Nathan had got into Star Wars backwards, from the Lego Star Wars game on the DS to the Lego figures to the real films, the dreadful later ones first, of course. And don’t even mention The Clone Wars. It seemed like there was a never-ending stream of cartoon DVDs to be bought and watched and dissected. Not that they made any bloody sense to Mark.

  But the original films had their problems for a six-year-old too. All that stuff about Luke and Darth. How Darth is Luke’s daddy, and he’s evil, and they try to kill each other, then Darth saves Luke in the end. Take that, Oedipus. And don’t even get started on Luke fancying his own sister.

  It’s amazing how your brain can soak up all this shit and birl through it in thirty seconds flat, thought Mark. Anything to stop worrying about Lauren for a moment.

  They arrived at the playground, full of kids trying not to get lifted off their feet.

  Mark knelt down. ‘Kiss.’

  He felt Nathan’s dry lips against his. Forgot to put Vaseline on them, they’d be cracked by home time. He did the hair tousle thing. He could still get away with that. Pretty soon Nathan would be rejecting all physical contact, in that way older kids do to assert their independence. Mark hugged the boy and felt him wriggling to get free. He handed over the obligatory Clone Wars lunchbox, straightened up and stepped back.

  Nathan shuffled over to where the boys from his class were huddled. No interaction between the sexes – had it been like that when Mark was a kid? He couldn’t remember. Nathan barely even seemed to realise girls existed. Another thing that would change soon enough.

  Nathan was chatting to Keiran, a full year older than him and much taller, a good kid though. The bell went, barely audible over the whipping wind, and there was some argy-bargy between Nathan and one of the bampots, Lee, as they jostled to get in line. Nathan never normally got involved in all that aggressive boy shit, another thing Mark loved about him. But he could be provoked like anyone.

  Back when they started P2, the oneupmanship was much worse, some of the boys seriously violent with real behaviour problems, but Miss Kennedy seemed to have sorted all that out.

  She appeared at the classroom door, hair swirling into her mouth as she ushered the kids in. Nathan waved as he jogged in, Mark waving back in exaggerated fashion.

  As soon as Nathan was inside the door, Mark turned and strode away.

  On the walk back along the prom, he looked out for the whales again. Couldn’t see anything in the churning wash.

  He thought about how many times he’d walked up and down this bloody promenade. Thousands. He knew every inch of it, from pounding along pushing Nathan in his buggy when he wouldn’t sleep, which was all the time for the first few months. Those terrifying days alone with the boy, wondering if Lauren was dead, where she was, what had happened, walking mile upon mile to get Nathan to go over to sleep, scared to return to the silence of the flat, knowing the baby would start crying again as soon as the motion of the buggy stopped, walking himself into a trance, a fretful, crushing mess of fear, anger and panic.

  He reached the bottom of Marlborough Street and turned to the sea. The vastness of it normal
ly helped Mark get perspective on the stupid little worries of everyday life. Not today.

  6

  As he swung the Peugeot into Circus Place, Mark got a familiar feeling that he was lowering the tone of the neighbourhood. He’d been this way plenty of times to pick Lauren up for lunch or go shopping after work, and he could never shake off the idea that his sort wasn’t supposed to sully the regimented Georgian streets around here.

  He parked outside the Caledonia Dreaming office and shuffled up the steps, eyeing the luxurious sculpted shrubbery that flanked the heavy front door. He slunk through the glass and brass vestibule, scuffing over the marble floor, then he was into the reception area.

  They were clearly doing all right for themselves. Caledonia Dreaming was a high-end estate agency that specialised in snapping up rural plots of land, dilapidated mansions, top-of-the-range city properties and even country estates, then flogging them on at a profit. They seemed to have been completely bulletproof during the recent recession, the richest of the rich unaffected by the slump and as keen as ever to buy up Scottish real estate and the history that went with it. In fact, the company had positively blossomed in the last few years, as the old moneyed gentry of the upper classes struggled to hold on to their legacy, and all the usual oligarchs and bankers bought up property, eager to invest in their own Highland havens.

  Mark didn’t recognise the receptionist, but he recognised the type – posh Edinburgh, impeccably groomed, barely out of her teens but already assured and entitled. This was a classy little stepping-stone gap-year job on the way to investment analyst or rich housewife depending how the cards fell.

  She glanced at him, looked him up and down, then returned her gaze to a sleek Mac on the huge mahogany desk. Obviously realised he wasn’t rich enough to bother with. Tap, tap, tap. Making him wait.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said.

  ‘I’m Mark, Lauren Bell’s husband?’

  Blank look.