Exile Read Free Page B

by like a stranger’s funeral. Maureen found herself picking over everything Winnie had said, looking for clues about the family, guessing what she really meant. Liam had told her that Una was pregnant, but Maureen wasn’t concerned: she knew the baby would be safe from Michael because Alistair, Una’s husband, was so even-tempered and he had always believed Maureen about the abuse. What jarred more intensely was Winnie trying to listen to her. Douglas used to say that Maureen was hyper-vigilant with her family, always looking for signals and signs, clues about what was going to happen next, because nothing was predictable. He said it was a common behavioral trait in children from disturbed backgrounds.
    She couldn’t remember Douglas’s face properly anymore. All she could picture were his eyes as he smiled at her and blinked, a strip of memory floating in a void, like an animated photofit strip. Maureen looked across the desk at Jan.
    Jan was tall and blond and plump around the middle. She had an inexplicable penchant for wearing green and purple together and giggled about it, as if she were a great character. She stayed with her parents on the south side but resented living in their warm home and eating their groceries. Her parents had retired recently and seemed to spend their days kicking about the house, bickering with each other about minutiae. Jan kept trying to engage Maureen in the dull stories by asking about her own parents: did they fight, were they happy, who took out the rubbish? Maureen made up a story about a close family of two with an adoring mother who was very religious. Their father had left them when they were very young. She didn’t remember him but he was a sailor with a gambling habit and a beard. When Maureen saw her fictional father in her head she always imagined him steering a fishing boat and wearing a yellow sou’wester and joke glasses with pop-out eyeballs on springs.
    “Smoke?” said Jan.
    “Two minutes,” said Maureen, and went back to staring at a chapter in the housing-law textbook. It didn’t make any sense. A regulation had imported a double negative into the legislation. She was crap at this. When they had given her the job it was because of Leslie and the posters, not because she had shown any capacity to map housing legislation or write summaries. The few reports she had submitted were politely bounced back for revision by the committee and she knew their buoyant faith in her was flagging.
    In anticipation of the funding cut, the Place of Safety Shelters had moved to the cheapest city-center office in Glasgow. It was an ugly, gray, windowless room. The funding cut had been deferred because of the poster campaign but the PSS stayed there, saving their money as best they could, getting ready for the hard times ahead.
    The poster campaign was one of the few selfless things Maureen had done with Douglas’s money. Leslie didn’t tell the committee they were doing it. They plastered the city with the posters in one long night, working from west to east and finishing at dawn. Not many people phoned the funding committee number at the bottom of the poster to protest. The picture was quite obscure and most people didn’t know what it was about but, still, the funding cut had been deferred for six months. Everyone in the office had been speculating about the posters after the decision was announced; Leslie called a meeting and admitted responsibility. She told them that her pal had masterminded the scheme, paid for it all herself, and now she’d like to work for them on a voluntary basis if they could find a place for her. They saw that Maureen had a degree and gave her the housing job. She’d been a hero two months ago — everyone in the office wanted to talk to her. The desk she shared with Jan was right by the door and she could hardly get a full hour’s work done on any given day because women kept stopping by for a chat. She had a lot more time now.
    Work was a reluctant