A Dark Matter Read online

  She searched amongst the papers on the table and found her old Nokia, thumbed through the handful of contacts and stopped at Thomas. She looked at his name for a few seconds then called, pushing her glasses onto the top of her head. She drank whisky and sat back in her chair, then pinched the bridge of her nose and listened to the ringing.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Thomas, it’s Dorothy.’

  ‘It’s a little late.’ He sounded sleepy. ‘Are you OK?’

  She glanced at the clock on the wall, 1 a.m. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘What’s up?’

  They’d been friends for five years, since he came to her yoga class. He’d attracted everyone’s attention, any man at a yoga class gets attention, especially a tall black man with an accent drifting between Scotland and Sweden. When the women discovered he was a police officer it was too much. Dorothy liked him straight away, he was softer than the Scottish men she knew, despite being a cop. Two months after that first class she bumped into him on Chambers Street and they went for coffee. It felt good to be talking with a man who wasn’t her husband. Nothing more than that.

  Then two years ago Thomas’s wife Morag died suddenly. A heart attack while riding her bike through Southside traffic, she hit the kerb and bounced into a parked van. The Skelfs did the funeral. Wasn’t too much of a reconstruction job, would’ve been much worse if she’d fallen into an oncoming vehicle. Thomas and Morag didn’t have kids and all his family were in Sweden, so Dorothy helped out and they became close. Jim knew they met for coffee and maybe he thought it was strange but he never said anything.

  Thomas’s grief gradually subsided, a scenario Dorothy had seen a hundred times before. She wondered about her own grief. It was so individual for each person, she knew that well from the business. After the initial shock of finding Jim she’d wallowed for days. Arranging the pyre had focused her, but it also made her kind of numb. Again, she’d seen that so often with clients. She wondered when the waves would hit, how bad they would be, how deep she would go. But she would survive, everyone did, and the pain would reduce with time. That was almost as unbearable, the knowledge that the grief, along with her memories of Jim, would fade.

  ‘Jim’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Dorothy.’

  She rubbed at her forehead. ‘Heart attack.’

  The words hung between them, giving them a link to each other, both their partners killed the same way.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Thomas said.

  ‘It happened a week ago,’ Dorothy said, swirling the whisky in her glass. ‘During the night, while he was on the toilet. I found him in the morning. Where’s the dignity in that?’

  She hadn’t told anyone the details of how she found him. She’d removed his piss-stained pyjama trousers and put them in the wash basket. Grabbed a new pair from the chest of drawers and pulled them up his legs, then dragged him into the bedroom and heaved him onto the bed. He’d been dead for hours, skin cold, a feeling she was used to in this business. She lay down and held him for half an hour, tried to clear her mind. She didn’t phone a doctor for another hour, because once she did that, Jim wasn’t hers anymore, his death was everyone’s. She wanted to keep it to herself as long as she could.

  ‘A week ago?’ Thomas said.

  There was a slight reprimand in his tone. Why hadn’t she told him sooner? He could’ve helped.

  But how could he?

  ‘We cremated him today.’

  ‘If you’d told me, I would’ve come.’

  ‘We didn’t tell anyone.’

  She heard him shift his weight and wondered if he still used the same side of the bed as when Morag was alive. She hadn’t spread herself out in the last week, to use Jim’s side of the bed seemed an insult to him.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ Thomas said.

  Dorothy lowered her glasses to her eyes and stared at the paperwork on the desk.

  ‘There is a way you can help,’ she said, lifting a bank statement. ‘I want you to look into something for me.’

  5

  HANNAH

  Hannah was properly worried. She stood in Mel’s room feeling like an intruder. It was dark outside now, the sodium lights from the street making the room feel seedy. She ran a finger along a bookshelf, opened a drawer of the desk and found stationery, not much else.

  She’d checked all Mel’s social media, once earlier this evening, then again twenty minutes ago. No activity. She’d called round all their friends and no one had seen Mel today. As far as Hannah could work out, she was the last one to speak to Mel, at breakfast. There was a full day of classes, fluid dynamics labs in the morning, two lectures and a tutorial in the afternoon, and Mel wasn’t at any of them. And she had specifically said she would take notes for Hannah.

  Hannah had called Xander first, who said he hadn’t seen her since lunchtime yesterday. He was an astrophysicist, a subject even more complex than the stuff Hannah and Mel were studying. She tried to think what she knew about him. He was in the Quantum Club with Hannah, Mel and a few others, and his parents had something to do with the military and lived abroad.

  She called a few other names in Mel’s phone, but no one had heard from her. That included her brother Vic who worked at the Fruitmarket Gallery in town. He was close to his sister and said he’d spoken to her yesterday, just small talk about her meeting their folks for lunch. He was shocked when he learned Mel hadn’t turned up.

  Hannah posted on the third-year physics undergrad message board, asked if anyone had seen her, tried to keep it low key. She checked Mel’s WhatsApp and text messages, nothing that would raise an eyebrow.

  She went over this morning’s breakfast in her mind. She hadn’t exactly been focused, thinking about Jim’s cremation. Had Mel seemed a bit off, a little nervous or anxious? Maybe Hannah was superimposing her current frame of mind onto her memories.

  She looked at the time on Mel’s phone, almost 2 a.m.

  Indy was behind her now in the room. ‘What are you thinking?’

  Hannah shook her head, pulled out her own phone and dialled 101. She shared a look with Indy as she waited for them to pick up.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’d like to report a missing person.’

  6

  JENNY

  Jenny felt the edges of the single mattress under her with her hands and was confused for a moment, then she remembered and opened her eyes. She was glad the room had been redecorated since her childhood, it gave her a little distance. It would’ve been too much to be back here as a middle-aged woman in the same bed she lay in as a teenager, thinking of Kurt Cobain and touching herself.

  But there were still one or two reminders. The creaky floorboard next to the bed had never been fixed, and the noise it made as she stood up was overpoweringly nostalgic, sending her hurtling back through the decades to when she was a child. On the wall next to the door she could see the dent in the plaster where she’d punched it several times, furious that Susan Wilson was going out with Andy Shepherd, even though Susan knew Jenny liked him. And in the bottom corner of the window her initials were still scraped into the glass, as clear as if they were tattooed on her chest.

  Being back here, Christ. Mum needed her but Jenny wasn’t kidding herself this was temporary. At forty-five years old Jenny had nowhere to live, no assets, no job, no marriage. She might as well be here, where better to end your days than in a funeral home?

  She looked at the open suitcase on the floor, her clothes spilling out in a mess. The rest of her belongings were in a handful of boxes in the storeroom downstairs. Archie had helped her do a moonlight flit from the Portobello flat last night. Packing up all her stuff had taken a depressingly short time, and she left the crappy furniture as part payment for her rent arrears.

  She couldn’t fathom how it had come to this. Twenty years ago, when they started renting that place on Bellfield Street, she was married, pregnant and in love. She and Craig were skint, both freelance journos, her doing cultural commen
tary, him covering politics. There was no chance of getting on the housing ladder with no steady income, but they’d presumed things would look up. Instead the journalism industry collapsed, Craig left her, only then starting to make money in PR with the business he set up with Fiona.

  Dorothy and Jim had offered to take Jenny and Hannah in. Jim especially was incensed at Craig leaving, furious at the idea of any man betraying his family. He, more than Dorothy, tried to cajole Jenny and Hannah back into the fold, long play sessions and ice creams with his granddaughter, late-night phone conversations with Jenny, pleading with her to come home. But something about that rankled her. The idea she couldn’t provide for her daughter. Which was stupid pride, looking back. Plus she didn’t want Hannah growing up around dead bodies, the way she had. So she redoubled her freelancing efforts, busted herself trying to pay rent, perhaps at the expense of her relationship with Hannah. Maybe it was the wrong decision, one of the millions of wrong life decisions that had brought her back to the Skelf house.

  She imagined the thousands of bodies that had passed through this place, pictured them rising from graveyards across the city, hordes of zombies marching towards Greenhill Gardens to reclaim their links to the living. Maybe she was doing that too, trying to get her father back, reconnect with Mum.

  She pulled on a dressing gown from her open suitcase and padded through to the kitchen. Schrödinger was perched on a battered leather chair by one of the windows, face turned to the sun glinting through the trees. He didn’t acknowledge her. Jenny grabbed a mug, poured some coffee and water into Dorothy’s large stovetop pot. She could only ever be bothered with instant at home so this Columbian roast would blow her head off.

  She walked to the window.

  ‘Hey, cat.’

  Nothing. She stroked the nape of his neck. ‘Look, we need to get along, I’m going to be here for a while.’

  Schrödinger stretched away to the other side of the chair, his claws digging into the leather.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Who are you swearing at?’ Dorothy came through the door looking surprisingly fresh-faced.

  ‘Your cat,’ she said. ‘He hates me.’

  ‘He responds well to being sworn at, just like humans.’

  Jenny smiled and returned to the stove, started making coffee. ‘Want one?’

  Dorothy shook her head. ‘I’m going out, meeting a friend.’

  ‘Who?’

  Dorothy stopped. She was wearing loose cotton trousers and a maroon silk blouse, open at the neck. They both suited her, she always knew how to dress well. Jenny was envious, her elegant mother gliding through life. Her calm air gave the impression that nothing fazed her. Jenny couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem more upset about her dad.

  Dorothy put her hands on her hips. ‘Thomas Olsson.’

  Jenny had heard his name mentioned before but never met him, a Swedish cop friend of Dorothy’s. The Skelfs had buried his wife, and Indy said he was a bit of a silver fox.

  ‘You’re off to meet a handsome widower the day after cremating your husband?’

  Dorothy raised her eyebrows at Jenny’s tone. ‘I can do whatever I want.’

  ‘Just like you did in eighty-seven.’

  Dorothy froze. Eighty-seven was shorthand for what came to be regarded within the family as ‘Dorothy’s episode’. A solo trip to visit her mum in Pismo Beach, supposedly for two weeks, turned into almost two months. Jim and a hormonal Jenny were left in Scotland wondering what the hell was going on. Turned out Dorothy was hooking up with an old school flame, recently divorced, the pair of them trying to grab on to their disappearing youth one last time. In the end, Jim had to fly to California to talk Dorothy into coming back. Jenny never really understood how, but her mum and dad managed to put it behind them. Jim forgave Dorothy and she was clearly full of remorse, but Jenny never properly got over it. A germ of an idea about the possibility of betrayal and deceit sprouted in her mind, then years later, when Hannah was almost the same age as she had been, Craig went and did the same thing, only much worse. That reopened the wound, made it hard to accept her mum’s comfort and support through her own separation and divorce. And now this, Jim’s burnt remains downstairs on a slab, and Dorothy dressed nice and heading out to meet an eligible widower.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Dorothy said. ‘You have no right to bring that up.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘Your dad was the love of my life. What happened back then was a mistake, one I’ve always regretted. And to bring it up now, my God.’

  Jenny held out her hands. ‘OK.’

  ‘I don’t need permission to live.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The coffee pot burbled on the stove as Schrödinger wandered over to Dorothy and ran his tail round her legs. She stroked him and pointed at the doorway.

  ‘I need you to cover the front desk for a while,’ she said. ‘It’s Indy’s day off.’

  Jenny felt a bubble of anxiety rise inside her as she poured the coffee. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Just answer the phone if it rings and take down details. You’ve seen me do it often enough.’

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’ Dorothy lifted her cardigan from the back of a chair and put it on. Jenny smelt the smoke on it from yesterday, imagined her dad’s spirit in the wool.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No,’ Dorothy said, not unkindly. ‘Neither of us is OK, and I don’t expect we will be for a long time. But we need to carry on, don’t we?’

  ‘Do we?’

  Dorothy took Jenny’s hand. ‘What else can we do?’

  The phone rang.

  Jenny was in the embalming room staring at the pile of dust that was her dad when she heard the ringing from reception. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, could’ve been seconds or weeks.

  She walked through to reception. Such a contrast to the embalming room, here were plush carpets, carved oak fixtures, bouquets of flowers in a corner waiting for the next service. Egg and dart cornicing around the ceiling, a stylish desk with a laptop and telephone. From reception she could see the whole customer side of the business on the ground floor – the small chapel to the left, the arranging room to the right, and the three viewing rooms along the back.

  She sat in the chair and stared at the phone, then picked it up.

  ‘Hello, Skelf’s?’ She remembered not to say funeral director or private investigator, because it could be either.

  Sniffling down the line.

  ‘It’s OK, take your time.’ Jenny pictured her mum saying the same thing thousands of times over the years.

  ‘It’s my William.’

  Jenny heard her mum’s voice in her head. Just be there, you don’t have to say anything. People want to feel connected to someone, to anything.

  More sniffing. ‘I need to arrange his funeral.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  The woman burst out crying and Jenny felt helpless. If they’d been in the same room she could’ve offered a tissue or patted her hand. Or given her a bear hug like she needed herself, maybe share some tears, break out the single malt and drown their sorrows together. How fucked up was it to be sitting the day after your dad’s funeral listening to the worst moment of someone else’s life?

  ‘What’s your name?’ Jenny said.

  A while before she answered. ‘Mary. William and Mary Baxter.’

  As if they were still a couple, as if she hadn’t just had her soul ripped out. Jenny heard Mary breathe and try to regain control.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. It wasn’t OK, it was a stupid thing to say, nothing was ever going to be OK again. ‘Tell me about William.’

  So Mary did. She talked about her dead husband, how they met at the dancing on Lothian Road in the 1950s, he’d been in the navy, dashing in his uniform, seen the hydrogen bomb tests over Christmas Island in the Pacific but lived a long l
ife despite that, worked at Ferranti building cockpit instrument panels for fighter planes, raised four children, one of whom was dead already. That made her pause. Jenny couldn’t bear it, she wasn’t cut out for this, didn’t have what Dorothy and Jim had, or Indy. She kept thinking about her own dad in a heap on a metal tray in the room through the back.

  Mary was still talking, about her grandkids, William’s pacemaker and plastic hip, how he loved gardening and walks in the Meadows, still held her hand on the way to the shops, always a romantic. Jenny wrote it all down, although it mostly wasn’t pertinent. Mary mentioned pneumonia, pulmonary something, then she ran out of steam, couldn’t bring herself to talk about the end.

  ‘And where is William now?’

  A long pause while Mary composed herself. ‘He’s in St Columba’s. He passed in the night. They said it was peaceful, he wouldn’t have felt anything.’

  How did they know? Maybe he spent an hour tortured by pain, unable to breathe, panicking to stay alive, grasping at his sheets in terror at the black hole coming for him.

  Jenny really wasn’t cut out for this.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘We can look after him for you, don’t worry. Would you like to come in and speak to one of our funeral directors about arranging things?’

  No answer.

  ‘We’re on Greenhill Gardens, do you know it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When would suit you?’

  Jenny imagined her sitting at home, alone, nothing to do.

  ‘This afternoon?’ Mary said.

  ‘Let’s make it two o’clock.’

  ‘Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.’

  Jenny wondered if she was being sarcastic. ‘You’re welcome.’

  Mary hung up and Jenny sat looking at the phone in her grip, felt the sweat on her palm. She swallowed hard and began tapping the handset against her forehead, gently at first then harder and harder, until she could really feel the pain.