13 Little Blue Envelopes(24)

Come on.”

He was right. There was no way she could have found her

way to Mari’s on her own. Keith could barely work out the bus map to get to her corner of the city, and it took both of them to puzzle out the exact location of her house. She lived along a large body of water that Keith identified as being something called the Firth of Forth.

Since they were so far from where they started, Keith couldn’t just turn around and go back, so he took it upon himself to come along with Ginny right up to Mari’s door. There was an intricate pattern painted all around the door frame—gold salamanders, a fox, birds, flowers.The door knocker was a giant woman’s head with a large nose ring. Ginny banged this once, then retreated down a few steps.

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A moment later, a girl swung open the door. She wore red denim overalls with magnetic toy alphabet pieces sewn onto them with thick, obvious stitches. Also, she wore no shirt—she’d just clipped the overalls up as high as they could go. Her scowling face was crowned by a head of hair that had been bleached to a crisp white. It was short and jagged on top and long and braided in the back—a mullet-dread crossbreed.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Um . . . hi.”

“Yeah.”

It was going well so far.

“My aunt stayed here,” Ginny said, trying not to stare at any one aspect of the girl’s appearance for too long. “Her name was Peg? Margaret? Margaret Bannister?”

An unresponsive stare. Ginny noticed that the girl’s eyebrows were almost as deeply chocolate brown as her own.

“I’m supposed to come here,” Ginny said, waving around the blue envelope as if it were a visa allowing her access to the houses of total strangers. One of the strong summer winds came along and snapped the thin paper around, almost taking it from Ginny’s hand.

“Yeah, all right.” The girl had a hard Scottish brogue. “Hold on.”

She shut the door in their faces.

“Friendly,” Keith said. “You have to give her that.”

“Would you shut up?” Ginny heard herself saying.

“Feisty.”

“I’m nervous.”

“Can’t see why,” he said, innocently examining the drawings around the door. “Seems perfectly normal.”

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Five minutes later, the door opened again.

“Mari’s working,” she said. “But she says you’re tae come in.”

The girl left the door hanging open, which they took as a sign that they were supposed to follow.

They were in a very old house, certainly. There were large fireplaces in each of the rooms with little piles of ash sitting under the grates. There was the lingering hint of burned wood in the air, even though Ginny suspected that the ashes were weeks old. The floors were all bare, with the occasionally furry white rug tossed here and there, with no apparent logic. Every room was painted differently: powder blue in one room, maroon in the next, bright spring onion green in the hall. The windowsills and edging around the floor were all egg-yolk yellow. The only piece of furniture in the first few rooms was a massive, ornate cherrywood table with a marble top and a big mirror. It was covered in little toys: chattering teeth, tops, little cars, a boxing nun puppet, and a windup Godzilla.

But everywhere—everywhere—there were paintings. Massive

paintings of women, mostly. Women with sprawling masses of hair with all kinds of things coming out of it, women juggling stars. Floating women, women sneaking through black forests, women surrounded by bright shimmering gold. Paintings so large that the walls could each only accommodate one or two.

The girl continued to lead them back, then up three flights along a rickety wooden staircase that was lined with even more paintings. At the top, they reached a doorway that had been painted a bright metallic gold.

“Here,” the girl said, turning and heading back downstairs.

Ginny and Keith stared at the big gold door.

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“Who are we visiting again?” he asked. “God?”

In answer, the door swung open.

Ginny wouldn’t have guessed that the girl at the door could have lost the “Unusual and Imposing Appearance Award” so

quickly, but Mari beat her by a mile. She had to be sixty, at least.

Ginny could see it in her face. She had a massive crown of long, teased-out jet black hair cut through with orange highlights. She was wearing clothes that were just a bit too small and tight for her plump frame—a vertical-striped boatneck shirt and jeans with a black belt covered in heavy studs. It gripped her belly unflatteringly, yet somehow she carried it off. Her eyes were completely surrounded by heavy circles of black eyeliner. There were what looked like three identical freckles along each of her cheekbones, right under her eyes. As Ginny stepped into the room, she could see that they were small blue tattoos of stars.

She wore flat gold sandals, and Ginny could see that there were also tattoos on her feet, words printed in tiny purple scrawl.

When she reached out to clasp Ginny by the face and give her a kiss on each cheek, Ginny saw similar messages on her hands.

“You’re Peg’s niece?” Mari asked, breaking the embrace.

Ginny nodded.

“And you are?” This was to Keith.

“Her hairdresser,” he said. “She won’t go anywhere without me.”