The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson

this.” He put the bag in my lap. It was one of those squashy ones with too many buckles.
    â€œI thought at first it was Carol’s—she’s my ex—from how it was tucked under the hall table like someone who lived there would put it down. I nearly didn’t see it except I was guddling around in the hall cupboard for wellies.
    â€œSo I shouted, ‘Is anyone there?’ You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to open the damn thing and look through it, Glo. And I was still waiting for a slap on the back of the neck. My mum used to go ballistic if you went in her bag and even my dad, even today, if she asks for her specs or her ciggies, he’ll hand the whole thing over and wait to take it back again.”
    â€œStig,” I said. For the first time it seemed as if he was just talking to fill the air. Or maybe talking so he didn’t have to say what needed to be said, if he would only shut up long enough to say it.
    He leaned over and opened the clasp, springing the fake buckle at the first go.
    â€œIt’s April’s,” he said, poking at the wallet, make-up, keys, phone. “All her stuff’s in here. And look.” He jabbed a piece of folded paper, but he didn’t pick it up or open it. I did that.
    Stephen , it said on the outside. And on the inside, in a round hand, plain blue biro, it said just what he told me: I heard the car .
    â€œBut why would she do that?” I said. “Why would she do any of this? Even though she wanted to kill herself, why would she involve you?”
    â€œJust trying to mess with my head?” He looked upwards and spoke loudly as if shouting to someone upstairs. “Nailed it, April.”
    â€œBut why?”
    He closed his eyes and stayed like that with his head back.
    â€œWas it definitely her?” I said. Stig sat up and blinked at me. Who knows where his thoughts had taken him, but it looked like a long way back to meet mine.
    â€œLook at the picture.” He took the wallet out of my hands and slid a travel card out of its plastic folder. “It’s her.”
    He was right. The face staring out of the card was the same one we had seen in the hole under the crypt, as round and plain as the signature under it and the writing on the folded note.
    â€œThat’s not what I meant, though,” I said. “Was it definitely April who was contacting you? Isn’t there a chance that someone else was messing with you both?”
    â€œI wondered that,” he said. “Not at first, because she knew too much for it not to be her. But when she phoned, I couldn’t get the voice to fit the picture in my head.”
    â€œWhat did she look like when you knew her?” I asked, still staring at the photo.
    â€œA skinny wee girl with her hair dyed burgundy, and all that zigzag way.”
    â€œCrimped,” I said.
    â€œYeah. Bad skin, too much make-up, like it helped.”
    â€œYou liked her,” I said.
    â€œEh?”
    â€œThat’s a lot of noticing for a teenage boy,” I said.
    He shrugged, half-smiling. “She was my ‘girlfriend’ for about ten minutes,” he said. “We all paired off and reshuffled till we’d been right round. You know what we were like back then.”
    Only I didn’t, not at all.
    â€œSo, she used to be your girlfriend,” I said. “And you’d been phoning and texting recently? And you were only at your flat tonight because of the weather?” He nodded. “Any other Monday you’d have got the text at your mum’s, driven to the huttie, found April, and phoned the police. Like you were going to.”
    â€œAfter I’d checked to see if she was really dead and probably got covered in her blood. You see?”
    â€œI see. And if they got a warrant for your flat, they’d find her bag.”
    â€œAfter me telling them I hadn’t actually seen her for twenty-odd years and