All the furniture had seen better days. An armchair with foam bursting through threadbare upholstery, a Seventies throw disguising the damage wrought by a long-dead dog on an ancient settee. A scarred old office desk stood pushed in beneath the dormer window, books and notebooks and well-thumbed reports accumulating in drifts around a computer screen, its keyboard and mouse buried somewhere deep beneath the disorder.
The bed was unmade, sheets and pillowcases long overdue a spin in the washing machine. He could see the impression of his head still pressed into the pillow, the grease stain left by his hair. It took an effort of will to get into bed at night.
There was a chipped porcelain sink in one corner with a mottled mirror above it. His shaving gear and soap and deodorant crowded a tiny shelf along with his toothpaste and brush and an aggregation of hair and whiskers.
It was only fifteen minutes from his family home, but a world away from the life he had known until just a few weeks ago, when Susan had finally insisted he move out.
He had his own toilet on the landing outside his room, which his landlady insisted he clean himself, and he shared the kitchen on the ground floor. Although he never used it. He had quickly developed a dread of being engaged in conversation by the couple, and came and went as discreetly as possible to avoid bumping into them on the stairs or in the hall. He had cornflakes and long-life milk for breakfast in his room, grabbing a coffee at Costa’s on the way to work, and bringing a carry-out home with him at night.
Home! He was unable to think of it like that. It was a space he inhabited, striving to avoid actual physical contact with it whenever possible.
It was dark when he got in, two hours spent brooding in a pub before summoning the energy to take a Chinese back to his room, tiptoeing up a gloomy staircase so they wouldn’t hear him.
He never used the overhead light. A gathering of 100-watt bulbs that predated the ban and somehow survived illuminated the room like floodlights in a football stadium. He remembered how his aunt and uncle had lived their latter years, too, under the insufferable burnout of overpowered bulbs. Mackenzie preferred not to confront the reality of life as it now was, and an old standard lamp and a bedside anglepoise splashed dull light among pools of darkness in his room.
He placed his carry-out on the desk and cleared away some papers and a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War from his armchair. He slumped into the seat to open the mail he had collected from the hall table on his way up. Circulars. And letters that Susan had redirected. A utility bill for him to settle. A letter outlining pension entitlements from his former employer. An envelope edged in black, embossed on the flap, weighty and silky smooth between his fingers. He didn’t have to open it to know what it was, and depression settled on him like dust.
He had never counted the years since turning away from his native Glasgow. Never wanted to. If life could be said to have chapters, then the first seventeen years of his were a prologue he would rather have cut from the text. For him, real life had begun on chapter one, with his arrival in London.
It was with a sick feeling in his gut that he ripped open the envelope. He ran his eye down the order of service. He had never disliked his aunt, or had much in the way of feelings for her one way or another. Unlike the hatred aroused in him by his uncle. She had always done her best in the difficult circumstances her husband created. He couldn’t say why, but somehow he felt obliged to attend her funeral. Or maybe, somewhere deep down that he didn’t like to admit, knew that there would be some satisfaction in going back twenty years on, just to stick it to the old man.
If only his career in the Met hadn’t come to such an ignominious end. Of course, there was no way that his uncle would know that.
Still . . . it would be a fresh beginning after the funeral next week. Another chapter. And maybe this would be a better opening to the book of his life. Although there was a limit to how many times he could fashion a new beginning, and he couldn’t help dreading the turning of yet another page. A new job, a whole raft of new colleagues to alienate. Life would be so much easier if it weren’t for other people. He remembered with a jolt that he had not yet informed HR that he couldn’t start until Wednesday, and made a mental note to call tomorrow.
And then, of course, there was the breakdown of his marriage. It would be only too easy for his uncle to point the finger of failure in his direction. But the old bastard didn’t have to know about that either.
Mackenzie and Susan had met during the early years of his career in the police while she was working as a researcher for a Member of Parliament who sat on the Justice Select Committee of the House of Commons. It had been lust at first sight. Six months of non-stop sex – or so it had seemed looking back on it. Brought to an abrupt halt by her first pregnancy, only to resume again soon after the birth of Alex. The arrival of Sophie, though, had changed everything, their appetite for sex diminishing along with the constant crying and sleepless nights. Family responsibilities had predominated, and it was only then, during long nights and weekends and holidays at home, that they had really started getting to know each other. Neither of them, it seemed, had cared much for what they learned.
Susan began to find fault with everything he did and said, as if only now noticing how socially ill-adjusted he was, counting up the friends they had lost, the people he had insulted, the senior officers who had promoted him sideways to claw him out of their hair. Where the children were concerned she had become increasingly possessive, coveting their affections and excluding him from the mother–children trio.
His response had been to retreat into himself, sitting up late at night alone in his attic office – when not on shift – immersing himself in study, as if somehow knowledge could fill all the empty spaces he had inside. It had become an obsession, from which only little Sophia was able to distract him. For some reason, she loved him, and Mackenzie knew only too well how love for a father had neither rhyme nor reason.
He felt his phone vibrate against his chest, and retrieved it from the breast pocket of his shirt with thumb and forefinger. It was Sophia on Facebook’s Messenger app.
– Hi daddy.
He wedged the phone between his hands and typed with his thumbs.
– Hi darling.
– Miss you.
– I miss you, too, sweetheart.
– Sorry mummy’s not speaking.
He paused on that one.
– Well, I’m sure she will in time.
She posted a sad face. Kids are not easily fooled.
– Will you be at my school concert on Tuesday night?
He hesitated, and almost as if she had read his mind, added,
– I’ll tell mummy it’s ok. Everyone else’s daddy’ll be there.
– Of course I’ll come, darling. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
– Got a whole song to myself.
– I can’t wait to hear it. Pause. Baby, shouldn’t you be in bed?
– I am. A happy face.
– Under the covers?
– Shhhh. Several happy faces.
– You put your phone on the charger, baby, and go to sleep, and I’ll see you on Tuesday.
– Okay, daddy. Pause. Love you.
– Love you, too, darling.
In so many ways he didn’t want the conversation to end. If he’d been at home, he’d have sat on her bed, running his fingers gently through her baby-soft hair until she closed her eyes and drifted off. He waited a long time, almost willing her to say something more. But the cursor blinked emptily, and finally he slipped the phone back into his pocket.