‘And so because of that I wanted what she’d had. This is where I should have had a word with myself. Donald was adamant that he didn’t want to impose himself on me, to compromise me. No he wasn’t. He was delighted. He resisted for all of five minutes and then we too were at it like a newly married couple, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘It must have been three weeks since she was out of hospital and she was up and about and telling him she wanted to see the new flat he’d finally told her about. I said to him he couldn’t bring her to the flat. If he did that a line would be crossed. So he said, give me a day, and I’ll take her for a walk and tell her. And then an awful thing happened. Her mother took ill very suddenly, she nearly died, and Audrey asked to bring forward their wedding so that her mother could be alive for it. He should have said no there and then. There would have been the pain, as I said, and worse pain now, and the humiliation and the disgrace, but everyone would have got over it. Life is long.

  ‘But the wedding preparations continued and he married her in Campsie Parish Church. The only thing he couldn’t, shouldn’t, oughtn’t have done, he did, and it meant that us, our plans, our lives together were ruined.’

  June stopped talking and looked at her hands.

  ‘I should have gone away and boarded at nursing college but I didn’t. I married Jim. I gave up my course. And I don’t know whether my son is Jim’s or Donald’s. I like to think he’s Donald’s but he’s always looked too much like me to be sure and I suspect he’s Jim’s. What I do know is that I have never stopped thinking about Donald and I have lived my whole life in jealousy.’

  There was a sigh from Emily’s room and we both looked towards the door to see if she would come in, half asleep, but she didn’t. I stood and drew the curtains and turned to June. Her face had regained its fatalistic set and when she wiped her tears she frowned and looked about the room and I expected her to say something sharp or bossy like it wouldn’t kill you to tidy up once in a while.

  Instead she stood up slowly. I tried to take her elbow but she shrugged me off.

  ‘I would have had our bed on this wall and at the foot of the bed I wanted one of those blanket chests. An ottoman. I wanted a dressing table with a mirror. I do believe that would have happened if her mother hadn’t fallen ill. He never liked her anyway. He shouldn’t have gone through with it.’

  ‘Does anyone else know? Does your son? Is that why you don’t—’

  ‘Oh no. My mother took my secret to her grave. I couldn’t even tell the priest so I stopped going to mass. It was a mixed union anyway. Who knows how that would have gone.’

  She bent down to pick up her empty cup.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I said.

  She seemed worn out, spent. It must have pained June to keep her secret, to see Donald in the street and not rush to him. Her body must have responded with pain, it surely must have put a strain on her heart, her head. It made me glad of Robbie and what we had. It’s a cliché and I’m not afraid to say it: we were halves of each other, we knew each other completely.

  I touched her arm. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better now you’ve told someone. Now that you’ve been back in the flat. It’s quite a story.’

  ‘It gets worse than that.’

  ‘Does it? Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘No, that’s that,’ she said and stepped in front of me, out of the door towards the living room.

  ‘Your wee one’s a good sleeper,’ she said as she went.

  ‘Yes.’

  I asked her if she wanted another cup of tea. Then, because we seemed to be passing stories between us and sharing a little of our lives I said, ‘I found out Robbie was in a trial. Quite serious, I think. You’ll know what happened, won’t you? He never told me. It doesn’t fit with him, you know?’

  June pulled her gloves from her pocket and said, ‘It’s too late and I’m too tired for that.’ She took time over her gloves and I thought she might relent and speak after all. But she didn’t.

  ‘Sit down. Do you want me to call you a cab?’

  ‘The bus is no bother.’ That familiar defiance in her face.

  The on-off blue light of an emergency vehicle lit up the room. I walked to the window and saw two policemen coming up the path. I thought they were coming for me but when I opened the door they said ‘June?’ and looked past me at June who was holding tight to the banister and walking down the stairs.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want a run home? We’ll take you up the road.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We were having a wee look for you,’ one said to her, ‘and now we’ve found you we don’t want to lose you again.’

  They talked to her as if she was a child. ‘That’s Ruth, that is,’ June said and she went grudgingly with the policemen into their car for a lift home. June was right. When I telephoned Ruth after June had gone, she told me she’d called the police at eight-thirty instead of nine, not being able to bear the wait and the not-knowing and fearing the sharp wind and erratic spring temperatures. Even though she called the police to say June was safe, the search was already on, police time was committed, and these things have a habit of carrying on until their conclusion so they offered to collect her from my flat.

  ‘How was she?’ Ruth asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer. ‘Agitated,’ I said.

  It occurred to me that June hadn’t used the toilet before she left and I hoped she wasn’t uncomfortable on her ride home.

  6.

  At the next dance class June chaperoned two new dancers into the lounge and collected their money. She turned the radio off, pulled the curtains across the big windows to give the new and shy dancers privacy, then asked me how I was and told the class to hurry up and stand at the chairs, there would be plenty of time afterwards to chat.

  Agnes and Senga had bought ballet shoes and wore them over tan pop socks and they were keen to come to the barre. Their feet were neat and elegant.

  ‘Now I’m jealous!’ June said and took orders from the others for shoes, saying she would buy some from the dancing shop when she next went into Kirkintilloch.

  She tried harder in the class and I could see that she was developing as a dancer, they all were. It was easier for them to lift up through their spines and keep their shoulders down. Their movements were less jerky, their faces less strained. I tried them with a slow pas de bourré – two steps on their toes and a third step ending with a bend of their supporting knee and their pointed foot tucked behind their supporting ankle. They held on to their chairs with two hands. As long as they didn’t over-balance and pull the chairs on top of them they would manage, I thought. They all did except for Charlie and Agnes. I told them to practise their relevés and pliés.

  After the class June and I didn’t speak about either of our losses. There was no need; our conversations seemed held like a pact between us and there was little point returning to them.

  Only once, making tea in the kitchenette, she said to me, ‘I considered buying Audrey’s flat when she died. It hasn’t sold yet has it?’

  ‘Oh my God, are you nuts?’ I said.

  ‘But I couldn’t afford it anyway, and yes, it would have me committed wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Stay here with your view, June.’

  If I’d had any doubt before, her words showed me how much this man, Robbie’s grandad, lived in her head. She’d never got over him or got rid of him. Whatever she’d needed to do to have a life beyond their brief and intense affair, she hadn’t managed. We were similar in many ways. I told myself I ought to see Paul again soon.

  I was keen to wonder about her son, but wary of asking. If it was true he was Robbie’s grandad’s son, he would be related to Emily. It would make him some sort of uncle. This revelation, this lucky nugget, was why I’d come to Lennoxtown, I realised, and I could go home satisfied after all. I’d leave with more knowledge than when I’d arrived and that would be the point of Lennoxtown.

  Eve slapped the sole of Senga’s ballet shoe on the table. She sniffed the leather. ‘Takes me back to my daddy’s cobbler’s! Oh!’

  ‘Sniffing shoes, I’ve seen it all now,’ Agnes said, and Charlie asked to sniff the shoe too.

  Alice watched quietly, her eyebrows raised, her lips mouthing unspoken sentences.

  ‘What size are these?’ Eve said. She held out her hand for the shoe and put it against her foot. ‘Too small. I’ll need a couple of sizes up, June.’

  ‘Come with me,’ June said.

  ‘I don’t want ribbons on mine,’ John said.

  ‘You don’t get ribbons on these ones,’ Senga said. ‘You get elastic.’

  ‘I want ribbons on mine,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I guess you could sew them on.’

  ‘Who sewed your elastic on, Senga?’

  ‘Me. Four shoes. I couldn’t let my mum near a needle with her eyes.’

  We turned to look at Agnes’s blue eyes. She widened them for us, better to see. Their chat was nice. Still want your painting class, Eve? I thought.

  June walked me to my car and I was surprised by the look of the Campsies. Only their top ridges were visible. The sides of them were covered by cloud that had dropped almost as low as the trees and houses at the bottom.

  ‘The sun will fry it off,’ June said.

  ‘You’re very optimistic about the sunshine,’ I said.

  She shook her head then bent to pick up a crisp packet and cigarette butt. When she returned from the bin she told me that even though no date had been set she could feel her meeting with her son gnawing at her stomach. ‘He’ll be after money,’ she said. ‘He’s not interested in me. But it pains me all the same. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I shouldn’t be.’

  ‘You don’t have to meet him,’ I said.

  ‘He’s my son. It’s hard to switch that off.’ That stake in the ground again. ‘I’m not afraid of him,’ she said.

  ‘Will you give him money?’

  I was prying and she didn’t like it. She asked about Emily and I said she was doing well, which she was, that day. ‘Would you like to see her again?’

  ‘Aye, I would,’ she said.

  Perhaps we would go to the swings, perhaps we would go to the Campsies and climb through the clouds.

  ‘You just let me know. I don’t have much on at the moment.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  One thing I wanted to do was to put some flowers on Audrey and Donald’s graves and Robbie’s parents’ too. Paul came. He waited in the Co-op car park while I jumped in for some daffodils.

  ‘Do you know where they are?’ he asked when we parked at the cemetery.

  ‘I came here a few years ago,’ I said. ‘I should remember.’ We walked through the rows of graves and read the head-

  stones. A woman kneeled at one grave and dug with a trowel. There were miniature roses in plastic pots next to her. She looked up as we passed and Paul said hello.

  ‘Here,’ I said.

  Someone had put flowers on Audrey’s grave but they had no life left so I gathered them up and put the daffodils in their place. I put some daffodils down for Donald too. They shared a plot. Such a long time to keep a secret from his wife. Such a long time to miss someone, if he missed June at all. I suspected he didn’t.

  I looked for gravestones for Robbie’s parents. I searched up and down the paths, remembering the time Robbie and I had come, but I couldn’t find them.

  ‘Maybe the headstones go in date order,’ Paul said. ‘When did they die?’

  ‘He was fourteen when his dad died and twenty-two when his mum passed away.’

  ‘Poor lad.’ Paul shook his head.

  We passed the woman tending the grave. She patted earth around a rose plant, pressing firmly, wearing thick gardening gloves.

  ‘How’s your mum?’ the woman said to Paul when she looked up.

  ‘Aye, she’s grand.’

  ‘Tell her I was asking after her.’

  Paul raised a hand. He pushed his hat over his ears.

  ‘Does Robbie have a gravestone?’ he said.

  I was unable to speak. Any words I wanted to say seemed to stop in my throat so I shook my head. We walked in silence to his car.

  Robbie’s ashes aren’t scattered or buried. They’re safe at my mum’s and I’m happy for them to stay there.

  7.

  Emily’s birthday was approaching. She would be five. Poor child. She asked me each bedtime, How many sleeps? and I counted down the days with her, trying to find a voice to match her eagerness. I dreaded and longed for her birthday. I wanted the day to come so I could plunge into the past, into memories of when the three of us were alive. Today five years ago, I would think, you were born and we three were alive and within a breath of each other for the first time ever. Today five years ago Robbie and I emerged shattered and near-broken from a brutal labour and you too Emily were damaged from the delivery and smuggled into special care but you were out and breathing and we three were alive. Today five years ago you were a day old and Robbie was at my side as I stood over your incubator, touching you through a hand hole in the side. Today five years ago we were on the ward and Robbie was watching me learn to breastfeed, or holding you in the crook of his arms like a poke of chips, he said, and passing you to my mum. Today we were home with the curtains closed. Robbie was taking pictures of my milk-filled tits, I was smearing cream on my stinging nipples and he was walking with you on his shoulder patting your back for burps and trying to settle you as you wrestled with colic. We were sleep deprived, my body was fizzing with hormones that made me manic and overwhelmed but we were alive and together. Today five years ago the midwife came to check my stitches. Today five years ago we put you in the car seat and drove to register your birth and the street was alive with people who didn’t know us or realise that our time was running out. Today I told you I missed you. Today we had our last day, with little sleep the night before other than a stretch between three and six, and we walked, I think, to the shops and back and Robbie got his university books out and I slept whenever you slept so our last day wasn’t full, it was patchy, with me desperate to close my eyes and get away from it all for half an hour, whatever it took to rid myself of the tiredness. Then, today five years ago you died. I would plunge, wanting to be alone to grieve, and every day onwards would be me and Emily, no longer a three, only a two.

  After he died I used to wonder as I went to sleep if I would wake in the morning. I would feel acute fear for Emily who might be left with no parents. But sleep came so quickly and heavily, from exhaustion, from the tablets I took, that I had no time to worry before I was out. And then I would be hurled into consciousness by a snuffle or a cry from Emily. I would wonder how I never heard Robbie that night, if he struggled before his heart stopped. It sickened me that I could let him die next to me in my bed and not hear it or feel it or stop it.

  We got through those weeks each year, Emily and I, and we would get through them again. I don’t know if it gets easier. It’s not seeming so.

  It took a rendition of ‘Five Currant Buns in a Baker’s Shop’ to pull me up from underwater. Emily was learning songs at nursery to perform in front of parents and grandparents a week after her birthday, during that murky sad time I was dreading. A Scottish song called ‘Allyballybee’, another one called ‘Three Craws’. Keep singing, Emily, I said, and she sang her nursery rhymes for me, her voice holding a sweet tune, taking on a Scottish accent, just like her dad’s.

  One day I emptied the vase in which I’d stuffed notes and pound coins from the sale of Audrey’s things and took the lot. It was nothing compared to the tens of thousands Aidan would get for her house, and the cost of converting it to dollars would halve it so it was dead money, really, useless. I considered it mine, without a qualm.

  I rang June and said to her, ‘Jump on the bus to Glasgow with us.’

  ‘I’m not dressed.’ Her voice was as stroppy as mine.

  ‘Get dressed then. I’ve come into some money. I’m taking us to the food court.’

  I’d wanted to take Emily out of nursery but she’d insisted on going in because she needed to practise her songs. ‘All right, we’ll go after nursery,’ I said and, as promised, I was waiting for her, on time, with snacks and a carton of juice and I walked her to the bus stop and we sat on the bottom deck on the left-hand side looking out of the window for June to get on a few stops later. When we found her waiting at the bus stop I banged on the window to get her attention. She looked at us as if we were her weans and shook her head.

  Emily sat on my lap and we made room for June to sit next to us. She offered Emily a mint and Emily hesitated because she’d never had a mint before.

  ‘You can have it but don’t choke,’ I said, so Emily sucked the mint. She took it out of her mouth from time to time to check on it.

  ‘How was nursery?’ June asked.

  ‘Good,’ Emily said. She widened her eyes as she sucked her sweet.

  ‘June, I’ve got the money from Audrey’s things. Over a hundred quid. Come and we’ll get you some perfume or something. It’s on Audrey. There’s justice in there somewhere.’

  She didn’t appreciate my words. We passed through the well-to-do streets of Lenzie and then along the roads of forest and fields and when we reached the roundabout for the motorway to Glasgow Emily dropped her mint. She cried out and tried to slide off my legs to pick it up from the floor. ‘Here,’ June said and gave her another one.

  ‘She’s a lot like Robbie,’ June said. ‘Not just because of the curls, but something about her mouth.’