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When she glanced back he was smiling at the road, sucking his cheeks to stop his face splitting in half.
“Happy now?” she said seriously. “You’ve trapped me with your wiles and sexual trickery.”
Chewing his lip, he slapped her leg with the back of his hand.
Paddy threw her hands up in mock exasperation. “And now the violence.”
IV
Their headlights left the road and sliced, waist high, through the dark around the cottage. They could see that Callum had been busy.
The sturdy grass pressing up against the façade had been flattened, roughly cut away under the windows and the door. An orange-rusted rotary-action lawn mower stood indignantly upright in front of the house.
Dub parked and Paddy got out, looking around for Callum. She felt Dub behind her and his fingertips found hers, squeezed them, and then retreated. “He’s round the back,” he said and walked off.
Paddy took a step and the tip of the kitchen scissors needled her thigh. They weren’t very sharp.
She felt a front of cool air sliding up the hill from the sea, heard the bushes whisper beyond the orchard wall and the old house groan at the weight of its history. The crack across the front looked deeper in the dark. She followed Dub’s shadow.
The lawn mower’s last act had been to chew the grass off around the side of the house. Callum had cleared a path along the side wall, down to moss-covered paving slabs underneath. The thick, spongy surface was waterlogged and her trainers squelched as she stepped across them.
They found Callum sitting on the ground by the kitchen door, his back to the wall, looking out and enjoying the night view of the hills. He was eating dry white bread, squashing slices into hard dough and biting chunks off. “It’s so quiet here, I heard you two a mile away.”
“You’ve been busy enough,” said Dub.
Callum smiled and stood up. “I’m going to live in the country one day. Come on in.”
Though the light was failing outside, they could see that he had cleared the whole kitchen floor, found some cleanish water in the water tank on the far side of the house and used a bucket with a hole in it to drag it into the house. He’d managed to wipe the thick layer of dust off the worktop and the range, but he didn’t have a mop so the floor looked not so much cleaner as dirty in a different way.
Dub was at a loss. “Lovely.”
Glassy-eyed with pride, Callum gri
He planted his hands on his hips and waited for them to ask. Paddy didn’t have time for this. She needed to get him the fuck out before McBree turned up.
Dub obliged. “What other job?”
Gleefully, Callum made them stand by the back wall, clearing a space on the floor. “Ye can sit down if you like.”
“Callum, I need you to go with Dub. You can stay at his mum and dad’s tonight. I have to meet someone here.”
“Two minutes.”
He disappeared into the front room. Dub looked at Paddy and smiled the warmest smile she had ever seen. She took his hand, dropping it abruptly when Callum reappeared holding cardboard flattened like a pizza box, carrying it carefully in front of him, holding the lid down.
Callum looked coyly at Dub. “I did this for you. So you can sleep.” He lifted the lid.
Paddy was expecting a drawing, pressed flowers, something creative and asinine. But Callum hadn’t made a drawing.
Dub slid along the wall, rolling his shoulder to the doorway, half muttering “fuck” before staggering outside. They could hear him vomiting.
Paddy sat down.
Sitting in the base of the box were nine dead mice, their slender bodies lined up neatly. The fleshy pink pads on their feet looked too tender to have carried them through rough wall cavities and fields. Paddy could see soft brown hair on their bellies, and, from the low-down swelling, that one of them was pregnant. Their front paws were curled tightly up at their chests. Above the neck their heads were bloody tattered smears.
Callum looked sadly at the door. “I battered them with a brick. But it wasn’t for a laugh, I did it for him.” He dropped the lid and slumped to the floor.
Paddy couldn’t look away from the box. She could still see their feet, the skin on their toes, translucent as an embryo’s. She hugged her knees to her chest.
Callum slid along the floor to her side, his shoulder tight to hers. “Are you crying?” He looked at her closely. “You’re not crying about the mice.”
It wasn’t a question so she didn’t answer him.
She rubbed her face roughly. “Look, Callum, son, you need to go with Dub, go back to the city. It’s not safe here anymore.”
“Are journalists coming? Aren’t you coming?”
“I have to meet someone here.”
“Who?”
“A man.”
“A journalist?”
“No, a man. It’s not about you, it’s about another thing.”
“What other thing?”
“Nothing to do with you, just another thing.”
They looked at each other and she saw a spark of recognition in his eyes. “It’s not safe here. Who’s it not safe for?”
She shook her head, looking at her hands. “You need to go.”
He nodded as if he understood perfectly and wrapped his arms around his knees, mirroring her pose. “Can I come back here after? I could be happy here. If I had a radio and food, I’d be happy here. I could look after it, sort a wee garden out for myself.”
Her eyes welled again. “Sweetheart, you won’t want to come back here.”
He stared at her rudely for a long time, watching her cry. Embarrassed, she fumbled her cigarettes out of her pocket. Callum took them gently from her hand, opened the packet, and handed her one. He lit a match for her, but her whole body was trembling and she couldn’t dock the tip to the flame. Callum held the end of her cigarette steady so that she could light it.
He sat back, very calm, muttering so quietly she had to tease the words apart in her mind to make sense of them. “Gotaknife?”
She shook her head. “Scissors.”
“No gun?”
“No.”
“Plan?”
She inhaled and took Callum’s big hand in hers. “Son, you’re young. Go home and have a life. It’s time for you to have a life. Live in the country. Meet a girl. You’re handsome, did you know that?”
Callum blushed.
“You’re a nice young man, well-meaning, good-looking. You’re an Ogilvy. Have a family, go to chapel, that’s what Ogilvys do. You like families?”
He nodded eagerly.
“That’s what Ogilvys do.”
“You’re my family.”
“I’m not your family, Callum. I’m close to your family but I’m not your family.”
He sounded sulky when he answered, “Aye, ye are.”
Dub leaned back in the door, pasty ski
“I only did it for you,” Callum said to him.
“I know, pal, that was nice of ye. I’m a bit soft. Come on. Paddy needs to be alone here. Someone’s coming to meet her. He won’t come if we’re here. Pad, I’ll be back at ten in the morning to pick you up.”
“Take care on the road,” she said, keeping it light.
He left. They could see him through the side window as he stepped carefully across the moss on the paving stones by the house.
Callum stood up suddenly, staring down at Paddy sitting balled up on the floor. His voice was shaking. “Ye call me son. Ye look after me. Ye are my family.”
Paddy’d known Callum since he was eight years old, had been to his father’s funeral and fought for him before she ever liked him.
“Son,” she said, her voice a growl, “you’re right. We are family.”