‘I’m turning it off now,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Your wife again?’
‘No, Victor.’
‘What does he want?’
‘That envelope he gave me. He’s asking me to look at it right now. I’m sorry, but I have better things to do. It can wait till the morning.’
With that, he turns to Lucy, his gaze intense.
The phone does not buzz again.
OUTSIDE
Your wife
Is fucking CHEATING
That man came round – your so-called FRIEND – they’re in the garden kissing and laughing, his hand on her belly . . .
Like it’s his child inside.
You shouldn’t have to put up with this, you shouldn’t have to put up with this at all.
I’m going to have to fix this. I won’t allow anyone to walk all over you.
Let alone that BITCH and her horrible baby.
Part 3
30
The first year, that was the hardest for Marie. The most shocking, for sure. The weather was terrible – the weather is always terrible – and it was cold when they arrived, bitterly cold, and the holes in the walls not yet filled. Cameras she could see, cameras she couldn’t, but they knew all right, they knew everything she did, wherever she went. Pretty much all she thought, too.
The air chilled, the days short. Woodsmoke smouldering from the low stone building she’s still learning to call home. Electricity from solar panels, water from a nearby burn, a cesspit for waste – all the basics – but miles from anyone else, a long walk or a boat trip away.
It’s safer this way. That’s what she’s always told herself.
Now it’s all she knows.
She’s built muscles cutting logs, building fires, rebuilding the walls and patching the roof. The grey has gone from her skin, the softness gone of all those hours confined, motionless, nothing but an endless maw for the processed shit they fed her. Now she’s brown, strong, weather-beaten, her hair hacked out of her eyes by blunt scissors.
She’s become attuned to the seasons, the rise and fall of the sun. A time to till, to sow, to harvest. To preserve against the winter ahead before spring comes again and the thaw.
That first year was the bleakest, yes. The larder bare, the wood store too, once the few logs that were left for them ready-chopped were burned. It was a long week until a pile of logs appeared at the pier. It took days to chop and carry them back to the house.
Janice didn’t help.
Janice never helps.
Other than Mondays – or rather, the days they call Monday, every seventh sunrise. That’s when Janice gets up first, paces the kitchen until Marie’s ready to go. They walk down to the loch together. She forces herself to think that Janice is being friendly, but she knows it’s because Janice wants to get to the whisky first. If they send it. It’s not always there, but if it is, Janice isn’t going to risk losing it.
Five winters they’ve been here, the days bleeding into one another, no idea of time or the world outside of this; the movement of the sun and the stars is how she moors herself now. In the spring, the leaves start to appear on the few, bent trees, the scrubby hawthorns that surround the croft softening under a fuzz of green. The days slowly lengthen and, for one month, maybe two, it’s as close to peaceful as she could ask, before the midges arrive and render it unbearable.
There’s a pattern to her days, a pattern to the months and years, outside of any human control. She’s learned to wait, to watch. To expect nothing; to be prepared for anything.
Like Mondays. The delivery always comes, but that’s the only certainty. She never knows what’s going to be delivered, whether they’ll eat well that week or if they’ll need to live off the reserves she’s managed to build up over the years.
