G03 - Resolution Read Free Page B

like caved-in heads.
    Maureen had been dreaming about her stomach splitting open again, about Michael being in the room, touching her with razor fingers, making her bleed between her legs. It was getting worse — it was getting worse because he was out there somewhere. Acknowledging the fear tripped her mind to the image of Michael lying on the floor.
    She kept thinking of a dark room. She shut her eyes. He was lying on his side ten yards from her, his breathing labored. Maureen’s face was sore down one side, smarting from a punch or fall. She walked over to him, raised an arm for balance and brought the heel of her boot down on his head, again and again, felt the cracking of bone shudder up her leg, again and again, until Michael was dead.
    She opened her eyes and looked at her trembling hands. She could try to imagine what it would feel like, to see if she could do it, but she would never know before the time came. She stopped herself, rubbing her eyes hard, reminding herself that there had been no phone call in the night: her sister Una’s baby wasn’t born yet. She had one more day of grace before the wars.
    She took her coffee into the living room and put the telly on to drown out the noise in her head. An earnest local news reporter was standing in a park, sweating in a heavy woolen suit. He warned the public to stay indoors or use a high-factor sun cream. The piece must have been filmed at lunchtime. The grassy hillside behind him was carpeted with pink and red bodies slathered in baby oil. Over his left shoulder a team of sunburned topless men, lying on the grass, raised their lager cans to the camera, waving fags and laughing, the living embodiment of a uniquely Scottish cavalier disregard for health.
    As she watched the morning news, Maureen’s bare feet felt the powdery dust on the floorboards and her toes recoiled, pressing the flaking grit against the soft skin. She had left the stains from his blood unpainted, hoping somehow that it would help her assimilate Douglas’s death. It hadn’t. Before she could begin to take in what had happened she was forgetting Douglas’s face and his manner, forgetting what she’d seen in him, forgetting everything but the shock and revulsion when she found his body. His eyes were the last image to slip her memory. When she saw him now, smiling and blinking slowly, she didn’t know if she was remembering him or the memory of him. The heat was lifting his blood out of the wood, forming a brown dust that gathered in the still corners. Everything that was ever Douglas was slithering away.
    In the bedroom, she pulled on a fresh T-shirt and a pair of baggy jungle shorts that hung low on her hips, pressing and wriggling her blood-dusty feet into a pair of trainers. Hearing her brother’s soft, familiar knock at the door, she walked out to the hall. Liam would be the first to know if the baby was born and although she was expecting him, she looked out through the spy hole for clues about Una. Liam was standing on the landing, his sports bag in one hand and his college bag in the other. His shades couldn’t hide a face still puffy with sleep. She opened the door and let him in.
    “All right, Mauri?” he said, his voice taut with sleep and flecks of morning phlegm. He pulled off his glasses and followed her through to the kitchen, sitting the sports bag on the table.
    “D’ye want a coffee?” she asked.
    “Naw,” he said, “I’m going to the library. I’ll just sort ye out and go.”
    Unzipping the bag, he lifted six boxes of duty-free Embassy Regal cigarettes onto the table. “I haven’t got any Superkings just now but I’ll bring some tomorrow.”
    Maureen nodded. “This sleeve’s a bit battered,” she said, lifting one box and looking at the smashed corner.
    He took it back and tutted at it. “Fuckers,” he said lethargically. “They shouldn’t give me shit like that. If ye can’t use them, give them back to me on Monday and I’ll refund the