When Will There Be Good News? (Jackson Brodie, #3)

by Kate Atkinson

The village was a place to which people drove in their cars in order to get out and walk. He never did that. If he walked, he started from where he was.

You should be able to rent dogs. Now there was a gap in the market.

Ms. MacDonald claimed to have read every book that had ever been written. Reggie didn’t dispute the claim, the evidence was all over Ms. MacDonald’s criminally untidy house. She could have started up a branch library (or a spectacular house fire) with the number of books she had piled around the place.

You could have fitted the whole of Reggie’s Gorgie flat into it and still had room for swinging a few elephants if you were so inclined.

“Women cook food because people need to eat,” Dr. Hunter said. “Men cook to show off.”

The Advent calendar had chocolates behind every door, and Dr. Hunter said, “Let’s put it up in the kitchen and you can open a door every day and have the chocolate.” Which is what Reggie did, what she was doing now, holding the melting Santa-shaped chocolate in her cheek to extend its life while she dipped the baby’s Bunnykins dishes in the sink, squirting Ecover washing-up liquid into the hot water.

Some mornings when Reggie arrived, Mr. Hunter behaved like a runner in a relay race, handing the baby over to Reggie so quickly that the baby’s little mouth and eyes went completely round with astonishment at the speed of the changeover.

Jackson had passed through his teens without ever being aware of them. He had been a boy at twelve and then he had joined the army at sixteen and become a man. Between the two he had walked in the valley of the shadow of death, with no comfort to hand.

The walking woman had no distinguishing marks. No dog either. Her hands were thrust into her cardigan pockets. She wasn’t walking, she was strolling. From nowhere to nowhere. It felt all wrong. He came to a stop and rolled down the window.

He wasn’t police but it wasn’t like marrying out. He understood.

Whoever invented the wheel had a lot to answer for.

Sea bass on a bed of Puy lentils, twice-baked Roquefort soufflés to start, a lemon tart to finish. Why make it easy when you could make it as difficult for yourself as possible?

In a former life, before her beauty was measured in the size of a diamond, she would have wound down with a (very large) drink, ordered in a pizza, taken out her contacts, put her feet up, and watched some rubbish on television, but now here she was, running around like a blue-arsed fly, worrying about delphiniums and cooking Delia recipes. Was there any way back from here?

The therapist, a hippie-ish, well-intentioned woman called Jenny who looked as if she’d knitted herself, told

And now she was subscribing to it because the greater good wasn’t an argument she was going to deploy when it came to her own flesh and blood. “What about your principles?” someone said to her, and she said, “Archie is my principles.”

Did he want a baby? She couldn’t ask him in case he said yes. Was he going to seduce her into it, like he’d seduced her into marriage? She already had a child, a child who was wrapped around her heart, and she couldn’t walk on that wild shore again.

the woman on the other end of the phone went through all the standard questions—age of the building, how many rooms, is there an alarm system in place—before asking, “Do you keep any jewels, furs, or shotguns on the premises?” and for a moment Louise felt an unexpected thrill at the idea of a life containing those elements.

Motherhood was going to be a shock to her, Louise thought. She was going to hit the wall at sixty miles an hour and wonder what happened.

a suitcase that was stuffed with cheap, skimpy tops and thin cotton trousers and the embarrassingly revealing swimming costume in a horrible orange Lycra that would turn out to be the last outfit she ever wore, unless you counted the shroud she was buried in (because there was nothing in her wardrobe that seemed suitable for eternity).

Both Reggie and Dr. Hunter (who said she “used to swear like a trooper,” something Reggie found difficult to believe) used harmless substitutes, impromptu nonsense—sugar, fizz, winkle, cups and saucers—but the sight of Reggie’s brother merited more than a “Jings and help me, Bob.”

Jackson expected the screen to be full of tables and statistics, but instead there were screeds of words. Jackson looked away; numbers were impersonal things to cast an eye over, but another man’s words had an intimacy about them.

Jackson had the grace to be mortified by this memory.

Jackson saw a painting by some Italian Renaissance guy he’d never heard of, showing the martyred St. Agatha holding her severed yet perfect breasts up high, on a plate, as if she were a waitress serving up a pair of blancmanges.

clutching onto his can of lager as if it were going to stop him from falling.

Reggie didn’t know what kind of a cook Ms. MacDonald was before her brain started to be nibbled at by her crabby tumor, but she was certainly a terrible one now. “Tea” was usually a stodgy macaroni and cheese or a gluey fish pie, after which Ms. MacDonald would heave herself up from the table with an effort and say, “Dessert?” as if she were about to offer chocolate cheesecake or crème brûlée when in fact it was always the same low-fat strawberry yogurt, which Ms. MacDonald watched Reggie eat with a kind of vicarious thrill that was unsettling. Ms. MacDonald didn’t eat much anymore, now that she herself was being eaten.

Ms. MacDonald had a recipe that made real spaghetti from a packet taste exactly like tinned, which was quite an achievement.

Ms. MacDonald’s dog was on his last legs, literally—sometimes his back legs collapsed under him and he sat in the middle of the floor looking completely bewildered by his sudden immobility.

Banjo would sit by the back door and start to whine, and Reggie would say to him, “Come on then, poor wee scone, time for your constitutional,” and Banjo would waddle unsteadily along the street to his favorite gatepost, where he would awkwardly lift an arthritic leg. He could just about make it to the gatepost but usually had to be carried back.

Howard Mason had married several times after his wife was murdered. How had the subsequent wives felt about their dead predecessor? The first wife. Gabrielle, beautiful, talented, a mother of three, and murdered into the bargain—that was an impossible act to follow. The second wife, Martina, killed herself; the third—the Chinese one (as everyone referred to her)—was divorced by Howard Mason; the fourth had some kind of horrible accident, fell downstairs or set herself on fire, Louise couldn’t remember. There was a fifth one somewhere—Latin America, who outlived him. Louise wouldn’t be surprised if there was a beheading in there somewhere. You would certainly have thought twice before saying “I do” to Howard Mason.

If Louise were Alison Needler, she would get a big dog. A really, really big dog. If she were Alison Needler, she would change her name, dye her hair, move far away, to the Highlands, to England, France, the North Pole. She wouldn’t be in a safe house in Livingston, waiting for the big bad wolf to come and blow it all away.

Louise’s possessions looked like a refugee’s beside his, a refugee who spent a lot of time in IKEA.

Reggie Chase, as small as a mouse, as quiet as a house with no one home.

“Back soon,” she said to Banjo, pulling on her jacket. She picked up the big torch that Ms. MacDonald kept by the fuse box at the front door, put the house keys in her pocket, pulled the door shut behind her, and ran out into the rain. The world wasn’t going to end this night. Not if Reggie had anything to do with it. What larks, Reggie!

“Nah,” Reggie said, “Ms. MacDonald was just a rubbish driver.” She didn’t add that Ms. MacDonald was rapture ready, that she embraced the end of all things and was expecting to live eternally in a place that when she described it sounded a bit like Scarborough. Reggie imagined Ms. MacDonald nodding serenely at the 125 express train that was charging towards her, saying, “That’ll be God’s will, then.” Or was she astonished, did she consult her watch to check if the train was on time, did she say, “Not already, surely?” One second there, the next gone. It was a funny old world.

A great bubble of something like laughter but that she knew was grief rose up in Reggie’s chest. She’d had the same reaction when she was told about Mum’s death—in a phone call from Sue (minus Carl) from Warrington because Gary was “too choked” to talk. “Sorry, love,” Sue said, in a voice husky from fags. She sounded like she meant it, sounded like she cared more about Mum after a couple of days’ acquaintance than Mum’s sister, Linda, did after a whole childhood together.

“Aye, hatched, matched, and dispatched within a church, like most of us,” Trish said as if she were saying something wise.

She was wearing an aggressive three-piece outfit that was probably very expensive but had the kind of pattern you would get if you cut up the flags of several obscure countries and then gave them to a blind pigeon to stick back together again.

Bridget didn’t say what she did with her time now and Louise didn’t ask because she suspected that the answer would irritate her. Patrick was good Irish, Bridget was bad Irish.

“Oh, too early in the day, Louise,” Tim said, holding a hand to his forehead effetely. “Let’s leave the food miles off the breakfast table.” “Where else do they belong?” Louise said. Guess who was the bolshy kid in this family?

The table was a big old-fashioned thing that you half expected to see a Victorian cook kneading dough on. Bridget and Tim’s wedding present to them, hauled out of the boot of the car yesterday, had been a bread maker. “A good one,” Bridget said, “not one of the cheap ones.” Louise wondered how long she would have to wait before she could drop it into a charity shop. There were not many things in life that Louise was sure of, but she would bet the house on the fact that she was going to go to her grave without ever having made a loaf of bread.

an expensive espresso machine that did the whole process, from grinding the beans to steaming the milk, and looked as if it would grow the beans as well if you asked it nicely.

“Where in Yorkshire?” “Hawes,” Neil Hunter said. “Whores?” “H-a-w-e-s. In the Dales.”

“It’s half past nine in the morning,” Louise said when Neil Hunter produced two glasses and a bottle of Laphroaig from a cupboard. “There you go, then, it’s almost the night before,” he said, pouring himself a generous two fingers of whisky.

On her way up to the flat, Reggie stopped off at Mr. Hussain’s on the corner of her street. Everyone called it “the Paki shop,” racism so casual it sounded like affection.

Carnage from the Latin caro, carnis, meaning “flesh.” Same root as carnival. “The taking away of the flesh.” You couldn’t really get two more different words than carnival and carnage.

She heard Ms. MacDonald’s voice in her head saying, “Words are the most powerful weapons we have.” Hardly. Words couldn’t save you from a huge express train bearing down on you at full speed. (Help!) Couldn’t save you from neds bearing gifts. (No thanks.)

She barged back into Mr. Hussain’s shop. “All right?” Mr. Hussain asked, and she mumbled, “No, half left,” which was a poor joke of Billy’s when he was small. He wasn’t funny, even then.

People thought twice about messing with you if you had a big dog by your side. “It’s like the parting of the Red Sea when you’re out with Sadie,” Dr. Hunter said once, fondling the big dog’s ears. “I always feel safe with her.”

Jackson had never been a fan of the tattooist’s art, had even promised his daughter a thousand pounds in cash if she made it to twenty-one without feeling the need to decorate her skin with a butterfly or a dolphin or the Chinese character for happiness. Jackson himself had stuck with the one practical, lowercase message—“blood type A positive,” until now no more than a faded-blue souvenir of another life. “A positive”—a nice common kind of blood shared by roughly 35 percent of the population. Plenty of donors. And he’d needed them apparently, every precious ounce of red blood having been replaced courtesy of a band of blood brothers and sisters who had stopped him from being erased from his own life.

The junior registrar, “Dr. Samms, call me Charlie,” looked like Harry Potter. Jackson didn’t really want to be treated by a doctor who looked like Harry Potter, but he wasn’t in a position to argue.