Deviant Read online

  The man stopped. “Here she is,” he said. His tone suddenly softened.

  After Abigail dared to look up, she found herself in another office, very similar to the one she’d just left. Or perhaps it was the same one. Could be. Same size, same table, same three chairs. The only difference was that there were no immigration officials, only a middle-aged man in a golfing get-up.

  “Hello, Abigail.” The golfer held out his hand. “I’m your father.”

  While her father wasn’t dead, the reunion didn’t feel very different from when she’d met her dead mother. Grahame Johnstone seemed eager to make physical contact with the handshake. But Abigail couldn’t move.

  “I’m sorry, Abigail.” His arm fell aside. “This is a bit awkward.”

  Tiny relief: he hadn’t presumed to call her Abi. But if he had, she wouldn’t have challenged him. This man was her father. Her father. The word was as terrifying and nonsensical as visa. Nieve had told her more than once: “Just think of your father as a sperm donor.” There had been times when she’d fantasized about a dad, mostly that first year when Jason McVeigh still thought adoption might be a possibility. The few times she’d indulged herself since, she’d imagined a rugged Irish movie star like Liam Neeson: the kind of man who saves the world against all odds, but saves his daughter first—as his daughter is much, much more important to him than the world.

  The man in front of her was not Liam Neeson. He was stern, sensible, reliable: the kind of guy who plays the second husband in a romantic comedy, the boring one for whom the feisty wife leaves the flawed-but-lovable first husband. Abigail scrutinized his features. He did look familiar, something about his eyes. So strange, like seeing a famous person in the street and assuming you know them. She didn’t know him, but he was … he was … my God. His eyes were the same color and shape as hers. And his lips went lopsided when he smiled, down to the left, just like hers did.

  “Look at you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not so sure how to handle this. The last thing I want to do is freak you out.”

  Freak me out? She started to melt. “About the passport …” Abigail realized she needed to explain herself. “I didn’t have one of my own, see. Had to buy one. I should have waited to do it officially, but I was in a rush—”

  “It’s okay. They’re not sending you back. You’re not in trouble.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “I’m not?”

  “I pulled some strings,” he said.

  “Pulled some strings?” she repeated.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  At last, Abigail felt relief. Blessed relief. She wouldn’t be going back to Glasgow. But then she found herself wondering how the hell a person, no matter how powerful, could get a virtual stranger past International Customs. He is a clever man, her mother had written. Thinking about it now, it didn’t read like a compliment. Clever might equal cunning. Clever might equal sinister: a gangster or corrupt politician. It might equal anything. And it was very clear that her mother didn’t want her father knowing about either the letter or the money. But she did mention he was kind, and to accept his kindness …

  “Do you have any other luggage?” he asked.

  “No, this is it.” She nervously patted the backpack on her shoulders.

  He flashed another lopsided smile. “Well then, let’s get out of here, okay?”

  THE WALK TO THE car only took ten minutes. Neither she nor her father spoke. She was a fast walker, Abigail. Not a stroller. Her legs took her places—usually not very nice places before now—but she’d always thought of them as pure transport. She was slow compared to her father, who walked at breakneck speed. She practically had to run to keep up with him.

  His car was a grey Audi convertible, roof down. Backpack in the backseat, they drove out of the airport and made their way onto the freeway.

  Okay. She could breathe. This wasn’t a dream. She’d done it. She’d escaped.

  The sun was shining on her face! The loud wind was rushing through her hair!

  She closed her eyes and breathed in LA. Hmm, it smelled … like car fumes.

  Her lashes fluttered open. Yes, she was still nervous about the man at the wheel, this Grahame Johnstone father of hers who pulled strings and drove soft-tops. His beige golf trousers and short-sleeved white shirt certainly fit the corrupt politician idea. How old was he? Around forty? Had all his hair, a kind of flat brown that looked artificial. Was it a wig? Did he dye it? Maybe it was acceptable for a man to dye his hair in LA. In Glasgow, you’d be shot. His glasses had a label on the side. She couldn’t make out what it said, but she could tell they were expensive. And they made him look clever. That word again: clever. Most of all, he seemed too straight for Sophie Thom. Even in death, she had some kind of edge.

  Also: what should she call him?

  She repeated the possibilities in her head: Dad, Grahame, Father, Daddy, Oh-Daddy-my-Daddy, Mr. Johnstone. Looking sideways as subtly as she could, she noticed that his brown eyes were always flitting from left to right.

  Finally he spoke. “We’re going to meet Becky for breakfast. That okay?”

  It was. She was starving, but more importantly, she was dying to meet her sister. She hoped it would feel less complicated than meeting him. She hadn’t expected anything—perhaps because she hadn’t had enough time to think about it—but she didn’t like how she felt. Uncomfortable questions multiplied like a virus in her head. A powerful stranger was now her custodian. He was driving her to his home, where she would stay. He was so very different from the crazy rebel he’d married all those years ago. His shirt had no creases. He smelled clean: not perfumed, but of soap and fresh air. He was alien, like no man she had ever encountered. Abigail wondered for a moment if he was real. Next time she turned to look at him, perhaps he would pull his face off to reveal a lizard head underneath. For a brief, panicky second, Abigail pictured herself jumping out of the car at the next red light—

  “Bit of a drive first.” His voice stopped the racing thoughts.

  She felt she should say something like: “Is it?” But she didn’t want to waste time. No use engaging in idle conversation. She wanted to get to know him. She wanted to stop feeling worried and suspicious. Also, she wanted him to like her, and people who are interested are likable. It might not work out, this father-daughter/family thing, but she needed to make it as smooth as possible. For at least a year … by which time she would be seventeen and familiar with this new world. She could go it alone after that. So there was no point in delaying the important questions: Why had he suddenly appeared in her life? How had he rescued her at the airport?

  “So, tell me about your company,” she began. “Prebiotics, yeah?”

  He smiled faintly, his eyes on the road. “Oh, you know about that?”

  “I Googled you.”

  “Ah.” Grahame’s Ah had a slightly worried tone to it. Snapping out of it, he said, “GJ Prebiotics is the name. Five years in business. It’s big, what we’re doing.”

  “I don’t know what prebiotics are … is.”

  “Oh, well, that’s not unusual. It’s very new.”

  Can’t be that new, she almost said. Five years in business, right?

  Now they were heading off the freeway onto actual streets, where she could make out actual buildings. So far, LA was not particularly appealing. Abigail could just see the distant outline of glassy high-rises through the smog, above a sea of low-lying buildings, each different from the next in its own unspectacular way. Signs swooped by overhead: BOWL! MCDONALD’S! FREEWAY ENTRANCE! OPENING SOON! SORRY WE’RE CLOSED! She knew there were hills here somewhere, but couldn’t see any. DO NOT ENTER! TACO BELL! GRINDER! MCDONALD’S (again)!

  She made a wish that her new home would be on top of an invisible hill. The city seemed soulless. That wasn’t something you could criticize Glasgow for. One thing it did have was soul.

  “Prebiotics are not the same as probiotics, which you will know about,” her father said.

  “Oh
.” Abigail shrugged and smiled awkwardly.

  “Okay, well you know those yogurt drinks you see advertised on the TV? ‘Yakult, for a healthy gut!’ ”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They’re probiotics. They help maintain the natural balance of organisms in the intestines. The normal human digestive tract contains about four hundred types of probiotic bacteria that reduce the growth of harmful bacteria and promote a healthy digestive system.”

  “Right.” Just a typical father-daughter reunion conversation, she thought.

  “But that’s not prebiotics.”

  “Oh.” Sweet Lord, there was more.

  “Prebiotics help probiotics to work, if you take them first.”

  “So … you make yogurt drinks?” She didn’t want to let on, but her flat voice had already given the anticlimax away. A fucking yogurt drink. Not even a yogurt drink. The drink you take in order to take a yogurt drink. The conversation wasn’t helping her work him out at all. He could be anyone, or anything. There was no other option; she would have to be more direct.

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how do you pull strings?”

  He chewed his lip, his grip tightening on the steering wheel.

  Okay, so he was her father, but that didn’t really mean anything, not yet anyway. “How’d you get me through customs even though I had a phony passport?”

  “I paid,” he said with a sigh. He turned to flash a disarming smile, benign and genuine. “There are very few things money can’t buy.”

  Abigail felt another wave of guilty relief. Don’t I know it, she thought. “How much?” she asked.

  He laughed and turned back to the road ahead. “You know what? I think you are going to get on very well with your sister.”

  ALMOST AS SOON AS they sat at an outside table, Grahame’s mobile phone went off. He answered in a very serious voice and said nothing but “uh-huh” and “yes.” When he hung up, it rang again. He didn’t apologize before answering, and once more embarked on a similarly boring monosyllabic conversation.

  Abigail took in the world around her as he busied himself on the phone. The bright yellow restaurant was opposite a palm-tree-lined beach. Just as she’d imagined: people dressed in colors other than black, with faces other than white, walking, cycling, running, and rollerblading on the boardwalk.

  Grahame finally hung up again. “Sorry about that.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re a bit early. It’s nine fifty. I told Becky ten o’clock. You want a drink? Juice or water?”

  She shrugged. “Pineapple juice’d be good.”

  “Shall we order?”

  Abigail bit her lip as she scanned the menu. She had only eaten in a restaurant twice before: both times with disgruntled care workers watching her every move; both times at cheap, cheerless chain-restaurant Nando’s; both times she had been asked to choose the cheapest thing on the menu (3x chicken wings, £3). Abigail didn’t want breakfast. She’d lost track of what time it was in the UK. But her body told her she needed food. Besides, she’d imagined eating salad in her new dream world, so why not? The house salad seemed pretty cheap, if dollars were still less than pounds.

  “Just the salad, ta.”

  Her father ordered a bacon roll.

  “Got hooked on these in Dunoon,” he said as the waiter left with their order.

  Dunoon. Our shared past! She was about to ask him about it when he looked over his shoulder and announced: “And here she is.”

  Abigail did not believe in ghosts. Many dark, boring hours had been filled playing with Ouija boards in shelters and foster homes. While she’d screamed a couple of times at the moving letters that spelled things like “death to Colin” (one of the social workers), she never really bought any of it. But when she turned and saw her sister for the first time, Abigail found herself staring at the undead. It was Sophie Thom with twenty years sucked out and fresh life blown in. This girl—this young Winona Ryder with short cropped dark hair, with a petite silver nose and belly button ring (visible under the crop top)—was the spitting image of Mum.

  “Oh my God,” Abigail whispered out loud, accidentally.

  “You must be my little sister,” her dead mother said.

  “I …” She couldn’t string a sentence together

  “Are you okay?” Grahame asked. “This must be a lot to take in.”

  Abigail took a deep breath, tried to shake off the shock, and stood up to face her sister. There was an aura, an energy, about this girl. Her eyes buzzed. “I’m sorry, it’s just you look—”

  “Identical to Sophie,” Becky interrupted lightly. “So I hear.”

  “Freakishly so.” Abigail swallowed. Her eyes began to sting. The exhaustion was finally catching up with her. Here she was with a father who looked like her and a sister who looked like her mother. This must be what a “family” is, she thought to herself. A group of people who have indisputable, physical proof that they belong together.

  Becky held out her hand to shake Abigail’s. “I’m so pleased to meet you.”

  Abigail took her sister’s hand for a trembling shake. Before she knew what was happening, Becky had hauled her in for a hug.

  “I’m so, so glad you’re here,” Becky whispered in her ear. “I mean it, Abigail.” Her voice quavered. “You have no idea.”

  ABIGAIL YEARNED FOR A moment alone, to take it all in. She sat crumpled in her chair, unable to speak. All she could think was that if she’d lived a privileged life, she’d probably be even more like her father. She’d have done physics and chemistry, for a start. She’d have had a room of her own, a desk to study on, and would have topped all her classes. Right now, she’d be getting ready for the next step, university. Hell, she’d probably be wearing slacks and a cardigan.

  These thoughts suddenly made her aware of her STUFF THE MONARCHY T-shirt. Her father seemed to notice her attempt to zip up her jacket.

  “So, you don’t like Kate Middleton?”

  “Oh, well, I’ve never met her … of course. I’m sorry. I suppose it’s a little—”

  “The Scots hate the English, Dad,” Becky said. “You should know that.”

  He blinked and tried to smile. “Sorry. I’m nervous, making small talk. Do you think Scotland will be independent one day, Abigail?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know.” She finally managed to close the zipper even though she had never been so hot in her life (and it was still morning!). She thought the Royals were a bunch of tosspots, but not because of Scottish nationalism. Just as nicknames were for people who were loved, nationalism was for people who belonged.

  “I love your accent! Say ‘Ach aye the noo’!” Becky demanded.

  “Sorry?”

  “ ‘Ach aye the noo!’ You know, Scottish for ‘Oh yes, right now’!”

  “Ach aye the noo?” Abigail was confused. She’d never heard or said anything of the sort.

  Becky clapped her hands and laughed. “I hate my accent. You are so lucky. So, Dad phoned and told me what was happening at the airport. I was very impressed! I take it the makeup was part of the disguise?”

  Abigail had forgotten about the green eye shadow and inch-thick foundation. She touched her cheek, embarrassed.

  “Here, use one of these to get it off.” Becky grabbed a small packet of makeup wipes from her bag and handed it to her. It took six wipes and an agonizing three minutes to remove the gunk Camelia had plastered there. Grahame kept pulling his phone out of his pocket and glancing at it the whole time. “Hello, there you are!” Becky said when the makeup was all gone. “Wow. You don’t need to wear any ever. Gorgeous.”

  The food arrived, thankfully. Abigail wasn’t used to being complimented.

  Her eyes widened. Her plate was huge, bright and beautiful, a salad unlike any she’d ever seen. Since leaving the commune, eating was not one of Abigail’s pleasures. She hated doing it in front of people. She picked out tiny pieces of lettuce nervously, making sure they were small enough to get into her mouth in one bite.

  H
er father, on the other hand, was a comfortable eater. Not nervous about spillages, like she was. Crumbs of bacon fell from his chin as he devoured the roll.

  Becky wasn’t hungry. Maybe she’d already eaten, because she didn’t order anything. As Abigail negotiated the greens, her sister started talking.

  “What do you think of LA?”

  She had to chew for several seconds before being able to swallow and answer. “It’s big.”

  “Does it always rain in Glasgow?”

  “Yes.”

  Nice easy questions, all of them, but chewing and anxiety made it difficult to answer. In the end, Abigail asked if she should get a doggy bag. “I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.”

  “Just leave it.” Her father’s kind smile made her cringe.

  I’m a fool, aren’t I? she thought. She already knew the answer. There was too much to learn.

  BECKY LINKED HER ARM through Abigail’s as they walked to their cars, almost as if sensing Abigail needed a crutch. “Did he tell you all about his prebiotics?”

  “He did.”

  “Fascinating stuff, eh.” Then she whispered: “Just his day job.”

  Abigail didn’t have time to ask her what she meant. They’d reached Becky’s van. It was beat-up, a jalopy—a stark contrast to their father’s car.

  “We’ll follow you,” Grahame stated. He nodded toward his passenger seat.

  Abigail wanted to ride with Becky, but she sensed it wasn’t up for discussion. She slid in beside Grahame and buckled up. They followed behind Becky out of the airport, onto a freeway, and then up into the hills. The streets got leafier, the houses bigger, the wind cooler. Abigail found herself grinning. Movie stars probably lived here. She wondered if she’d spot any, then chastised herself for being so shallow. A few minutes later, Grahame clicked a button on the dashboard. A large iron gate on the side of a winding road began to open. They turned right into a circular driveway. Another button made the garage doors open. Grahame drove inside and pressed yet another button that made the roof close over.

  Amazing: a world controlled by buttons. In robot mode, I’ll fit right in.