Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan

Author:Andrew O'Hagan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 2024-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

26 Gasholder Park

Vicky kept the box but sold the bracelet. She had never seen a green like it. ‘There’s a place in Belize,’ William had said to her, ‘where the water’s green like your eyes, like these emeralds, and I’m going to take you there one day.’

‘Aye, right,’ she said to herself.

He was going to move in with her.

They were going to hide from the world.

He hadn’t contacted her for five weeks and all the trees in the square had turned lovely. She’d expected to buy a suitcase for the first time and fill it with summer tops, to go to Spain with him.

She thought of the way he’d held her hand and began to crush it. That was the way with him, then he disappeared.

She sat on the sofa looking into Granville Square, wearing the jersey saying ‘1977’ he’d bought her in that shop in Marylebone. She liked to watch the kids playing on the swings and feeling feart for them if it went too high.

He was going to sell what was left of the businesses.

Nobody would find them.

Five weeks. Unanswered calls. Just ghosted her. She’d been going to Finsbury Library and using one of their computers to read every story about him, falling asleep at the desk sometimes.

She’d been dreaming about her mum ever since. She hadn’t seen her in eighteen months, but she thought of her up there in Ayrshire, at the top end of Stevenston, walking down from the Hayocks and along Keir Hardie Road on her way to work. There was a ruin she’d played in up there when she was wee: Kerelaw Castle, hidden in the trees, next to a burn. That’s where she’d had her first drink and her first snog and her first everything. Her mum told her one night, when they were having a heart-to-heart, that there used to be a borstal in the field on the other side of the burn. The boys in the school would sometimes escape at night, and she hung about with one. That was Vicky’s father. Later, there was a scandal at the school, and they tore it down, her mum said, when Vicky was about eight.

She never saw him again. The boy’s name was Sean.

Vicky shook as she sat smoking on the sofa. She was on gabapentin for the shaking and propranolol for anxiety. Then they gave her Seroquel for insomnia, though she still took a few wee hits of heroin, to keep her steady. Vicky looked at her phone again and read the son’s message for the umpteenth time.

‘It would be lovely to meet with you tonight. Sorry about everything. I guess we’ve all been let down by Sir William Byre.’

Walking down King’s Cross Road, she noticed every stranger. She crossed by the Scala and went up Caledonian Road. In the three years she’d been in London, Vicky had never been to anybody’s house. That’s a lie. She went to a party in a squat in Camden once and the place was trashed

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