The Couple at No. 9(16)

The kitchen is small and old-fashioned, and as soon as Lorna walks in she heads straight for the window. Through the glass she can see the mess in the garden: the abandoned digger, the dug-up patio slabs, the huge hole in the ground, and the dense woods, a brooding backdrop. It gives her the heebie-jeebies. She senses Saffy at her shoulder but she doesn’t turn. It feels as though someone is gently blowing on the back of her neck, and she shudders. At the end of the garden, just before the woods, there is a large tree with purple flowers and a thick branch that looks like an arm reaching towards the house. She takes a sharp breath.

‘What is it, Mum?’ Saffy asks.

‘That tree …’ She shakes her head. The purple petals. She used to put them in her bucket and mash them with water. She remembers that. ‘I played in that garden,’ says Lorna. ‘It’s very familiar to me. I think … I think the tree might even have had a rope swing once. I used to pretend to make perfume with its flowers.’

She feels Saffy’s warm hand squeezing her shoulder. ‘Wow, Mum.’

Lorna turns to her daughter. ‘Are you happy to stay here? Knowing this happened?’

Saffy looks pale and a little tearful. ‘I … We haven’t got anywhere else to go. And before this I loved it here.’

Lorna swallows the sudden lump in her throat. ‘I know.’

‘And it happened a long time ago, didn’t it? Not as long ago as I was hoping.’ She flashes a watery smile. Then her eyes go to the window. ‘I wonder who they were.’

‘Maybe the police will find out through dental records. Can we go outside? I’d like to take a closer look.’

‘Now the police have finished we can. I’ll grab the back-door key. Hold on a sec.’

Saffy moves slowly, her shoulders hunched, and Lorna longs to wrap her in a cuddle.

‘Here we go.’ Saffy is back and Lorna moves out of the way so she can open the stable door. They venture into the garden together. The sun is going down now and the trees cast shadows on the lawn.

They make their way over the uneven ground to the gaping hole – it’s very deep, and as they get closer Lorna can smell the damp soil. ‘The police have checked there are no more bodies?’ she asks. She feels like she does when she occasionally visits a graveyard, aware of all those corpses below her feet even though she knows these bodies have been taken away.

Saffy nods. ‘They had special dogs here. There are no more, don’t worry …’

Lorna places her arm around Saffy’s shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s have that cup of tea and then you can show me my room.’

Later, after Tom comes back with Snowy and they cluster around the little wooden table in the kitchen for dinner – Saffy pulls it out from the wall so there’s room for Lorna – she broaches the subject of the baby again.

‘So have you thought of any names yet?’

‘Not really,’ says Saffy, through a mouthful of bolognese.

‘Will you find out the sex?’

Saffy glances across at Tom. ‘No. We want it to be a surprise.’

‘You do,’ says Tom, good-naturedly. ‘I wouldn’t mind finding out.’

‘I just think it will be a nice surprise.’

‘But if we find out, we’ll know what colour to paint the nursery!’

Saffy rolls her eyes. ‘Ever the practical one,’ she says fondly. ‘We can paint it a pale grey.’

Lorna tries not to grimace. What is it with grey? What happened to colour?

Saffy reaches across the table, takes Tom’s hand and squeezes it. Her daughter is more like her dad when it comes to being demonstrative but the love she has for this man shines from her. It slams home even harder what Lorna is missing with Alberto. In fact, with any of the men in her past, apart from maybe Euan. But they’d been so young.

Saffy puts down her knife and fork, a glazed look in her eyes. ‘I keep thinking about Gran. She should be here, with us.’

‘I know, honey,’ Lorna says gently.

Her daughter’s eyes well. ‘Do you think she’s happy in that place? I worry that she’s unhappy and doesn’t understand why she’s there. That she has moments when she’s scared. Do you think we could bring her here to visit?’

‘It might confuse her. And she’s well looked after there. It’s a good care home, I did my research.’ Saffy has always lived too close to the well, as Lorna used to put it. She was such a sensitive kid. Once on a holiday to Portugal when she was nine she burst into tears at a restaurant when she saw the lobsters in a tank ready to be eaten. It took her days to get over it. She’d worry for hours about a homeless man on the street, or a stray dog.

‘But … it’s not her home, is it?’

‘Being here must remind you of her.’

Saffy’s face crumbles. ‘It does. And I miss her.’

‘I do too.’ Lorna realizes, with a jolt, that this is true. When Saffy was born her mother doted on her only grandchild and the two of them have always been exceptionally close. Lorna was pleased they loved each other so much – and she tried, she really did, not to mind being the third wheel when they were all together. They were so alike – she could see that. But while her mother let their differences create a wedge between them, Lorna has always vowed never to allow that to happen with Saffy.