Carrion Comfort Read online

  Latterly, though, Gabrielle just seemed to lose the place. She’d been utterly devastated by Pat’s death and maybe she hadn’t given herself enough time to grieve. There was a lot of talk about that fire, and then the tragedy of her losing the baby, but Ailie had seen the signs of problems even before that – always neurotically double-checking on everything, panicking that something vital would be missed. She hadn’t been surprised when the breakdown came.

  She could only hope that a rest would do the trick. But if Ailie had Gabrielle’s income she’d have been thinking about relaxing by a pool with a sun umbrella and a glass of chilled Chardonnay somewhere warm, not Caithness. She’d only been up there a couple of times herself and it seemed gey bleak. Still, maybe she was wanting to be near her mum – though she’d never seen any signs of Gabrielle wanting that before.

  Ailie sighed as she walked back to her office. She still was a wee thing worried about Niall too – funny that he hadn’t answered her messages all week, but with Michie ready to take her head off if she brought it up again she’d better leave it till Monday.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gabrielle came out of sleep reluctantly, her mouth thick from last night’s sleeping pills. The familiar feelings – misery, fear – swept in like a tidal wave, worse than ever today. She gasped at the onslaught, but she had a choice – stop thinking, stop feeling. Just – exist. Breathe, in and out. No more than that. Think automaton.

  She sat up, swinging her legs out of bed and standing up far too quickly so that light-headedness forced her back down again for a moment. But then she was up and in the shower, the force of water beating on her head drowning out everything else.

  She spent as long there as she could, but when she came out and looked at the clock it had only taken ten minutes of the long day that lay ahead. Ten minutes – was that all? It had felt much longer. She towelled her long dark hair and left it to dry in its natural tousled state – no more hair straighteners for her, ever again, and she pushed the memory fiercely out of her mind as she struggled to drag her comb through it. It just looked a mess now; she’d really have to get it cut, she thought, as she dragged it back into a ponytail.

  She’d have to get her own breakfast today. David had gone offshore for a couple of days dealing with a computer problem on one of the rigs, but when he was at home he always left out her breakfast before going to work – Dorset Cereals honey granola, a pot of natural yoghurt and the cafetière primed with coffee so she had only to pour in the boiling water, almost as if he didn’t trust her to do it for herself. She’d got a bit tired of the honey flavour but he’d stockpiled several boxes in case she couldn’t get her favourite out here in the sticks. Well, it had been her favourite, but it was like that old joke of Paddy’s: ‘Monday you like baked beans, Tuesday you like baked beans, Wednesday you like baked beans, Thursday you like baked beans – how come all of a sudden on Friday you don’t like baked beans?’

  It made her smile, then the tears came to her eyes. Oh Paddy, Paddy! She’d always thought of herself as so independent, tough – ruthless even, when necessary. But she’d been kidding herself. She’d been dependent on her father all along and when he died she’d fallen apart and could barely function. And David had been there, so calm, loving, utterly loyal, somehow holding the pieces together. He’d never reproached her; for that she owed him a debt she could never repay. It wasn’t his fault that day-to-day his too obvious concern and protectiveness was driving her—she clamped her lips shut before she could say ‘mad’.

  She mustn’t, even as a joke. The memory of early onset Alzheimer’s claiming her gran was always in her mind; she had watched with an aching heart as the clever, lively woman slipped with terrible inexorability into a demented twilight. It ran in families, sometimes.

  She gave a little shudder. She felt as if her nerves were strung on a rack being pitilessly stretched tighter and tighter. One day they would snap, unless she did what David said to do: blank out the past and live only in the moment.

  When she was working it had all been so different. The big diary open on her desk would be crammed with meetings, visits to suppliers, lunch dates with possible new clients. She’d lived on adrenaline, relishing every minute of it. Paddy used to laugh at her enthusiasm, telling her to pace herself a bit better, but she knew he was pleased.

  She had met David, not in Aberdeen, oddly enough, but at a drinks party her mother had given when she was up here for a duty visit. His best friend had at that time been working on the decommissioning of the Dounreay nuclear plant and David was a regular weekend visitor. Their attraction had been immediate; he’d called her the following day and it had gone on from there.

  Paddy had taken to him at once and given his blessing to the marriage. When they’d told him she was pregnant, he’d been moved to tears. Gabrielle had never been so happy.

  The shattering suddenness of his coronary had destroyed her too. She hadn’t quite realised it at the time, though, being too busy taking over the reins. Bruce Michie, the junior partner, was both vain and feeble, which was a bad combination; she wasn’t going to let him sideline her and take control of Paddy’s company. She thought she could cope. Oh, she had the will, all right, even now. It was her mind that was betraying her.

  The trivial memory blanks like forgetting where she’d left her mobile became bigger mistakes, like finding her wallet in the freezer or the milk in the cupboard under the sink. She couldn’t seem to get even simple arrangements, like appointments, clear in her head.

  Her doctor had soothed her with talk of hormones and ‘baby brain’ combined with shock and grief. ‘Take proper time off,’ he said. ‘No emails, no phone calls. You’ll be fine.’

  She had promised to keep her weekends work-free and on that Saturday morning she’d got up late, had a long, leisurely, self-indulgent pampering session and took time to choose what to wear for lunch with friends after David’s golf foursome.

  She’d joined him as he finished breakfast in the conservatory kitchen they had built onto their small terraced house. She looked at her watch.

  ‘You should be getting ready to go,’ she said, then realised he was hesitating about leaving her alone.

  ‘Will you be all right? They won’t mind, you know, if—’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ she said robustly, though it chilled her that he should be concerned. ‘I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘All right, then. If you’re sure.’ She had shooed him out to sort out his clubs and then waved him off from the doorstep.

  He should have stayed. If he had, it wouldn’t have happened. But she mustn’t think about that.

  It seemed to be hardest in the morning. She was so infinitely weary, so vulnerable to the confused, despairing, frantic thoughts that still kept piling in. It was like throwing her whole weight against a door while violent forces kept battering it and battering it. Someday, she knew, the hinges would give way and it would fall over and crush her.

  The waiting room at the doctor’s surgery in Forsich was busy this morning and at the reception desk Francesca Curran was out of temper, a not uncommon occurrence.

  ‘No, Mrs Macintyre, the doctor can’t fit you in today and there isn’t a free appointment until next Thursday.’

  Mrs Macintyre seemed inclined to argue and Francesca’s lips tightened. ‘No, I told you, Mrs Macintyre. There just are no spaces and it doesn’t sound urgent—’

  Mrs Macintyre wasn’t impressed by that. Her tirade went on for some time and Francesca waited until it eventually ran down, tapping her fingers on the desk. ‘If you’ve managed to convince yourself that you need immediate attention, I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Accident and Emergency at Wick. Goodbye.’

  She put the phone down and said tartly to her colleague, who was working at the computer, ‘You can take the next call, Cathy. It’ll probably be Mrs Macintyre arguing the toss and if I take it I’ll be rude to her.’

  Cathy made a non-committal sound that could have been
either sympathy or a comment on the politeness, or otherwise, of the previous response. As the doctor’s stepdaughter, Francesca could be as unhelpful as she liked without running the risk of being sacked. And now here was the other stepdaughter coming in from the door that led into the doctor’s house, the one who was allegedly ill though no one talked about what was wrong with her.

  Francesca greeted her sister without enthusiasm. ‘Ah, the prodigal daughter!’ She knew there was an edge to her voice; somehow it always crept in when she was confronted with her younger and prettier sister, who was skinny with thick wavy dark hair, where she herself was definitely bulky and had fine straight hair of a shade that Gabrielle had once maliciously described as ‘animated mouse’. And now her sister was wealthier too, thanks to their father’s gross favouritism – and that hurt, that really hurt, especially when she needed the money for a home of her own. At her age she shouldn’t still have to be living with her mother and stepfather.

  ‘Where were you this morning?’

  Gabrielle looked at her coldly. ‘Aren’t you getting tired of that particular joke? And what do you mean, where was I? I was to meet Mum at eleven-thirty but she’s not in the house.’

  Francesca gave her a pitying look. ‘According to her it was ten-thirty – she came in here at quarter to eleven and said she wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. God, you’re in a bad way, Gabby!’

  She knew how her sister hated the name and she knew, too, that Gabrielle was making a big deal out of being stressed out, but it was an attention-seeking ploy, in her opinion. Admittedly losing the baby had been sad but this was all about Pat’s death, really. Fran had lost her father too, but somehow only Gabrielle was entitled to make this sort of melodramatic fuss about it. The way she had poor David dancing attendance on her was positively disgusting too. All that was wrong with her was not having Dad around to tell her every five minutes that she was wonderful.

  He’d never bothered telling Fran she was wonderful, had he? She’d hated him for that – at least, that was what she told herself; loving him when he made it so clear he was only interested in his other daughter was too painful. Of course, she hadn’t sucked up to him like Gabrielle had. It had always set her teeth on edge when Gabrielle called him Paddy, her cutesy mixture of Pat and Daddy. What was wrong with Dad?

  A flicker of reaction showed on Gabrielle’s face, but she only said airily, ‘Oh, Mum must have got it wrong. Can’t think why she didn’t phone me. I’ll catch up with her later. Not to worry, Fanny.’ She walked out.

  ‘Fran’ was fine, but Francesca hated Fanny just as much as Gabrielle hated Gabby, so now they were quits. Somehow their conversations always ended up back in the nursery. Every so often when she saw other sisters who were friends as well she felt a pang of wistfulness, but with Gabrielle it simply wasn’t possible. Thanks to Pat Curran, their relationship had always been dysfunctional and now what she felt for her sister was something close to loathing.

  How like Fran, trying to get her on the raw. Gabrielle hoped she’d managed not to show what a jolt it had given her, being told she’d got the time wrong. She had written it down carefully last night on her list to herself, but the arrangement had been made in the morning when she often felt a bit woozy, so she could have got it confused at the time – or else, as she had claimed, her mother could have got it wrong. She wouldn’t put money on that, though.

  Still, it was odd that Lilian hadn’t called her; it would only have taken Gabrielle ten minutes to drive in to Forsich. She fished in her bag, but even as she did so she remembered that she hadn’t switched it on this morning. Her stomach lurched; something else she’d forgotten. But that was quite normal, she told herself firmly; everyone forgets to do that sometimes. Even so, her hands were shaking as she checked it.

  Sure enough, there was a missed call and a couple of texts from a presumably irritable Lilian. She didn’t want to read them, and she didn’t want to respond to David’s ‘All right, love?’ right now either. She switched it back off again and drove on to Thurso alone for her groceries, just to get out of Forsich. She spent as little time as she could in the place; even when you’d learnt long ago not to care what people thought, it wasn’t pleasant to get hostile looks – and worse.

  Fran’s constant sniping didn’t help. Admittedly, they’d never been close. Perhaps the small age gap had meant that Fran had resented her right from the start, for usurping her position as the baby. They’d bickered their way through childhood until, when she’d been fourteen and Fran sixteen, their parents had separated. Fran had chosen to stay here with their mother – and still lived at home – but Gabrielle had insisted on going to Aberdeen with vibrant, exciting Pat.

  Oh, maybe he’d made it a wee bit more obvious than he should have that she was his favourite, but you couldn’t blame him. Fran had been such an infuriating, whiny child, forever nursing a grievance, and it was no wonder he couldn’t disguise his irritation with her. Jealousy had corroded the girls’ relationship long, long before the business over Paddy’s will. And then there was Gabrielle’s sin in marrying David – unforgivable, apparently, despite ‘I saw him first’ not really applying to adult relationships. Fran seriously needed to grow up.

  That childhood decision hadn’t done anything for Gabrielle’s relationship with her mother, either. She’d been labelled a traitor, even though it was Lilian who’d been unfaithful and broken up the marriage. Just when Pat’s drainage business was collapsing, Lilian had embarked on an affair with the local doctor – the rat deserting the sinking ship, in her teenage daughter’s eyes. She hated, she truly hated disloyalty and she’d never been able to forgive her mother for this betrayal at the time when her father needed all the support he could get. Malcolm Sinclair was good-looking, certainly, but prosy and pompous and Gabrielle was convinced it had a lot more to do with Lilian making sure of a comfortable lifestyle and status in local society than it had with any sort of illicit passion.

  Whatever the locals might have said it hadn’t been Pat’s fault that environmental theory changed and the draining of bogland to plant trees stopped being the way to save the planet and became an ecological crime. He’d been a local hero before that for bringing work to the community, and if some of them had lost money by investing in the business, so had he. It was only because he’d had the guts and vision to pick himself up, work flat out to start another business and prosper that they hated him.

  That, and Gary Gunn’s death …

  She refused to accept the burden of guilt for that; it was an accident, that was all. Death and sore loss were the story of her life just now and if she didn’t shut her mind to all of it the darkness that lurked about her, so close now that she could almost see it out of the corner of her eye, would sweep in.

  Thirteen was hideously young to die, though. She never failed to put flowers on his grave when she came up to Forsich.

  ‘That all right for you, Mrs Sinclair?’

  The hairdresser held up the big round mirror behind her. She was fussy and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be impressed by his handiwork. She only came in when she needed a trim; it had to be a posh hairdresser in Aberdeen for her blonde highlights.

  He heard a tiny sigh and noticed the brief compression of her lips, but she only said, ‘That’s fine, Dennis. You’ve done your best,’ and gave him a little, gracious smile as befitted a doctor’s wife. She’d got a lot grander since the days when she was married to an Irish navvy made good. She’d worked in the local Spar then, but now it was all voluntary work in the Shelter shop and charity committees in Aberdeen.

  She was a good-looking woman, though. What age was she now – late forties, fifty, even? – but she was slim and toned-looking, with delicate features and clear blue eyes, and if the unwrinkled complexion owed something to Botox, it had been skilfully enough done for it not to be obvious.

  He was just brushing the hairs off her shoulders when she raised her hand in greeting to a woman walking along the pavement who had stopped, peer
ed in and then opened the door. Lilian gave a little worried sigh.

  ‘That’s my daughter Gabrielle, Dennis, late as usual! She can’t seem to remember the simplest arrangement these days.’

  Dennis smiled. ‘She’s not the only person with that problem. Ask any hairdresser!’

  As her daughter came over, her face was reflected in the mirror above her mother’s. There was a resemblance between them: they had the same shape of face with well-defined cheekbones and a clear, arching brow line, but in the daughter, you could see the Irish heritage – the pale skin, the dark-blue eyes ‘put in with a sooty finger’. Terrible hair, though. Scraped back from her face into a ponytail like that it did nothing for her and inheriting Pat Curran’s determined jawline hadn’t done her any favours either. She looked strained, with dark circles under her eyes, and he remembered there had been rumours about a breakdown.

  ‘Can’t believe you’re her mother. Sister, surely?’ Dennis said, knowing his client.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ She was laughing up at him when Gabrielle reached her. ‘What happened to you this morning?’ she said.

  Gabrielle coloured. ‘I was positive we said half past eleven. Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake?’

  ‘Of course not. I’d been thinking we could have a quick coffee before my appointment and that was for quarter past eleven. I wanted to speak to you, anyway. I texted but you didn’t reply.’

  ‘I know. Sorry – I forgot to switch on my phone.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She gave her daughter a sharp glance, then said, ‘Well, I suppose we all do that from time to time,’ in a bracing sort of way.