Duncan was pushing the pram round the rose garden. As he turned to her with a smile, Maggie shoved the book at him.
‘This was in Nick’s room. He’s obviously been using it to bamboozle that fuckwit of a shrink.’
Nick appeared without making a sound, as he often did.
‘You’ve been in my room?’ he asked mildly, a hand on the roof of the pram. ‘Rummaging around? That’s a bit of an invasion of privacy, Mags.’
‘I was cleaning it.’
Nick reached out for the book and opened it. ‘I was reading up on the effects of –’ He lowered his voice. ‘Childhood abuse. I was trying to understand you.’ He turned his bright blue eyes, all concerned, on Maggie. ‘What happened to you was so terrible. I wanted to try to understand why you fly into rages the whole time. And your issues around trust.’
‘My what?’ Maggie half-screamed. Jesus – he was turning this round on her?
‘Apparently, childhood abuse can stop the prefrontal cortex developing properly, which can lead to problems with rational thinking –’
‘You little fucker!’
‘– And impulse control,’ he finished in a small voice, stepping back. He looked at Duncan. ‘Can make people lash out for no reason.’
She just lashed out for no reason. That was what the prosecutor had said at Maggie’s trial for GBH when she was seventeen. Had Nick somehow got hold of the trial report in the local Paisley paper? He was crafty enough to have found it. To have sent off for it to a press cuttings agency.
Her lawyer had tried to argue that Maggie hadn’t been in her right mind at the time of the assault in the nightclub, which was true enough. Something that bitch had said or the way she’d said it had conjured up Ma, and before she knew it Maggie had picked up the ice bucket and walloped the lassie on the side of the head. It was like it was Ma standing there laughing at her, and Maggie wasn’t a helpless bairn any more, she was a grown woman with an ice bucket in her hand.
Gillian Menzies, her ‘victim’ had been called. Maggie still sometimes wondered about her, how she was doing. She’d been in a coma for two days, and when she came out of it she wasn’t right. Wobbled when she walked. Had cross eyes. Problems concentrating.
Maggie had been in a fugue state, her lawyer had argued. Having a flashback to her traumatised childhood. The sheriff hadn’t bought it, and Maggie had been sentenced to three years in a YOI. Which was fair enough.
She took a deep breath. She nodded at Duncan, to tell him I’m fine, I’m not losing the head here. And then she turned and walked away from them both.
But on the other side of the line of wee trees, she stopped.
Nick was going, ‘Mr Stirling-Stewart said I have to be more accepting of Maggie and her problems and stop panicking all the time that she’s about to kick off. But . . . Dad, I’m still worried. I’m still worried about what she might do.’
‘We’ve been through this,’ went Duncan.
‘I know, but . . .’
‘Maggie’s offending behaviour stemmed from what she suffered as a child and was effectively addressed long ago. Yes, she’s been a little short-tempered lately, but that’s because she’s in protective new mum mode. You have to cut her some slack and remember her bark is worse than her bite. In fact, she doesn’t even have a bite.’
‘But what if she got really angry with me or you? Or with Isla?’
‘For God’s sake, Nick. You’re being ridiculous now. Maggie would never hurt any of us.’
‘But how can you be so sure? I know you do all that amazing work with troubled people. I know you’ve already helped Maggie a lot, but maybe she needs, I don’t know, more specialist help?’
‘Maggie’s fine,’ said Duncan. ‘She doesn’t need “help”。’
Maggie didn’t wait to hear any more. She marched along the path and across the lawn and onto the gravel, her C-section scar nipping like a bastard. There was a wee stone urn by the door with bonnie flowers in it. She kicked the fucker.
It went over, and all the earth and flowers fell out.
‘Maggie, are you okay?’ said Duncan’s voice behind her.
Fuck.
She turned. Duncan was there with the pram, and Nick right next to him. They’d followed her.
‘Fine. Tripped.’
‘Let me do that.’ Nick got down on his knees and scooped everything back in the urn. As he patted the earth in place around the plants, he whispered, ‘Nice one. QED, Mags. QED.’ He got to his feet with a smile. ‘There we are. No harm done.’