Garnethill by Denise Mina Read Free Page B

you worry," he said. "That's the worst bit over. We're only going to talk to you."
    But Maureen wasn't thinking about that. She just wanted to see Liam.

Chapter 3
    MARIE,UNA AND LIAM

    Maureen was the youngest of the four of them. They all bore a striking family resemblance: dark brown hair, square jaws and fat button noses. Their build was the same too: they were all short and thin. When they were children, people often mistook Liam and Maureen for twins: they had been born ten months apart, both had pale blue eyes and they spent so much time together they adopted all of the same mannerisms. When they hit puberty Liam refused to hang about with Maureen. She didn't understand: she followed him around like a little dog until he threatened to beat her up and stopped talking to her. Their resemblance gradually faded.
    Marie was the eldest. She moved to London in the early eighties to get away from her mum's drinking, settled there and became one of Mrs. Thatcher's starry-eyed children. She got a job in a bank and worked her way up. At first the change in her seemed superficial: she began to define all her friends by how big their mortgage was and what kind of car they drove. It took a while for them to realize that Marie was deep down different. They didn't talk about it. They could talk about Winnie's alcoholism, about Maureen's mental-health problems, and to a lesser extent about Liam dealing drugs, but they couldn't talk about Marie being a Thatcherite. There was nothing kind to be said about that. Maureen had always assumed that Marie was a socialist because she was kind. The final break between them came the last time Marie was home for a visit. They were talking about homelessness and Maureen ruined the dinner for everybody by losing the place and shouting "Get a fucking value system!" at her sister.
    It happened six months before Maureen was taken to hospital, but the way Marie told it there was only a matter of weeks between one incident and the other. And that explained it. Maureen was mental and Marie forgave her.
    Marie was married to Robert, another banker, who worked in the City. They had been married on the quiet in the Chelsea Register Office two years before but Robert had never found the time to come to Glasgow and pay his respects to her family. It was a shame because now he couldn't afford to: he had become a Lloyd's Name at just the wrong time, on just the wrong syndicate, and they were living in a bedsit in Bromley.
    Una's husband, Alistair, was an integral part of the family. He was a plumber and couldn't believe his luck when Una agreed to marry him. He was a quiet, honorable man and, to Una's everlasting joy, had proved himself eminently malleable. She began by changing the way he dressed, then moved on to his accent, and at the moment she was trying to change his career.
    Una was a civil engineer and made a right few quid. She scheduled beginning a family for 1995 and had virtually booked her maternity leave but she didn't get pregnant. She put a brave face on it but recently she had confided in them all, individually and in confidence, that she was getting desperate. Maureen went with her to the clinic when she had the preliminary tests. It turned out that Alistair's sperm count was a bit low and he was put on a course of medication. Una was happy and Alistair was if she was.
    When it came time for Liam to go to secondary school, Michael, their father, had lost his job as a journalist because of his drinking, quite a feat in those days. They couldn't afford to send Liam to the private school Marie and Una had been to so he was sent to Hill-head Comprehensive and Maureen followed him a year later. It was a good school but neither of them studied very hard.
    Winnie's alcoholism progressed rapidly after Michael left them. Within four years she was married again and their new stepfather, George, became the silent partner in loud, brutal arguments. Despite the atmosphere in the house Liam delighted his