‘I don’t even want to picture that. They wouldn’t come anyway. Vicars can’t leave their vicarages or they shrivel up. Mind you, Dad already looks like a guy who left his vicarage.’
‘Would you come, though? Just to feel safe? You deserve to feel safe, Stevie.’
‘I’m probably getting too cranked up. And there’s good news – now I’m not radioactive, at least I can go ahead and get married.’
A knot of puzzlement and fear tightened in Kim’s stomach. ‘Sorry? Wait – you’re still going ahead with the wedding?’
‘Kim, I know this will surprise the knickers off you, assuming you are wearing some – yes, you probably are – but would you say we was friends, the two of us?’
Her ‘of us’ sounded like ‘oz’. Kim pictured Stevie, talking quietly into the phone at her end so her parents would not hear. Short but mighty, with a face full of acid scars but a spirit unbroken. The single gleaming undamaged eye, the shock of brown-blonde curls. The foster child who stayed small but became a kind of giant. She remembered a particular moment when there had been forty people in a pub and Stevie had walked in wearing a pink cowboy hat and bellowed, ‘NO PARTY TILL STEVIE GETS HERE, AND HERE I FUCKING WELL AM.’ Her language was appalling, and it did not surprise her that Stevie’s IT job at the council seemed to have been designed to keep her well away from the public. But that was, Edward had told her, some kind of Tourette’s. And the Tourette’s, she was fairly sure, had been exacerbated by her troubled life as a little girl in Glasgow. It probably had not helped that her parents’ existence revolved around a little Anglican parish, their horizon too narrow to encompass all the wrongs done to their daughter.
‘Absolutely we’re friends, Stevie.’
‘Okay. Truth now. I’m getting married, but not to Roddy.’
Kim felt the sun on her face and a gorgeous inner warmth as the knot inside her untied itself. ‘You’re not getting married to him on Saturday, but there’s still going to be a wedding?’
‘No flies on you,’ said Stevie. ‘Since it was too late to cancel anything, even the church, I decided to marry myself. We’ll be thin on the ground, but I was hoping you’d still come.’
‘Marry yourself?’ Kim laughed. ‘Stevie, my love, I’m sorry, I’m not getting it.’
‘I mean I’ll get married to myself instead of getting married to him. I saw on the BBC a story once, someone in Felixstowe did it. She got to forty-two, no one wanted her, so she had her big day on her own. Obviously we’ll have a lot of gaps, because Roddy’s family and friends won’t be there. But I figured, why cancel everything just because he’s a wart on the arse of the world?’
‘Ha! I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘I’m sure Edward will feel the same, if he’s not busy. He’s still invited?’
‘He’s the team leader, of course he is. He’s been all over the radio with this bloody thing.’
‘Yes. Thank God it’s over.’ Kim had a sudden jolt of memory, of conscience.It is not over for the family of Nina Lopez, and it never will be.‘I don’t mean “over”, that’s wrong, I mean at least it’s not as bad as we feared.’
They took a breath, as if not sure where the conversation went now.
After a beat Stevie said, ‘I can’t remember if I told you, but I went part-time at the council. I know the IT job back to front but it’s fifty per cent “I forgot my password” and the other fifty is getting AI alerts that someone’s accessed porn. Half of all the porn accessed in the past year was on one computer, and ofcourse it was the guy responsible for council standards. He went on a website called DANISH WOMEN GARDENING more than a thousand times.’
‘That’s porn now?’
‘Apparently the word “gardening” means something else in Denmark. Roddy kept saying it was his dream job, checking other people’s computers.’
‘What are you doing with your extra time then, if you’ve got fewer hours at the council?’
Stevie hummed at the other end of the phone. ‘Er … I’ll tell you sometime. I think you’ll like it.’
Kim volunteered a confidence of her own. ‘If this is our first girly chat – Edward asked me to move in. He was gutted when I said a flat no.’
‘Just tell him the truth.’
‘What is the truth?’
‘You’re asking me?’
‘I guess I am,’ said Kim.
‘Tell him you’re like the girl who got mugged in a dark alley, and now you’re scared of all alleys, even light ones.’
‘Meaning?’
