by Fiona Gibson
Dad’s local has barely changed since I was a teenager. Like me, my parents were born and brought up on the island, both on far-flung crofts; small farmsteads where a living would be scratched out through the growing of crops and sheep farming. Moving to the town was a big deal for them when they got married. Suddenly, they were in close proximity to thrilling amenities such as a post office, a shoe shop and a newsagent’s whose window display still consists of sun-faded jigsaws; I wonder, in fact, if they’re the same ones that were there when I was a kid. They certainly look it.
‘That’ll get the customers in,’ I joke as we pass it on our way back to Dad’s.
Meg chuckles. ‘You could get one for Arthur’s birthday, Ricky.’
‘You know, I’d be tempted if I hadn’t brought his present with me.’
‘You got him that laptop, right?’ she murmurs. Dad and Arthur are a little way ahead, pointing at things, locked in conversation.
‘Yeah, it’s what he wanted,’ I reply, adding, ‘Actually, you know what he’d really love?’
She blinks at me. ‘Not still asking for a dog, is he?’
‘God, yeah, I don’t think he’ll ever give up on that,’ I tell her, although – understandably – she’s been unaware of that. Keen to avoid being that tedious bloke who’s always blathering on about his kid, I tend not to share too much with her about Arthur’s life. She doesn’t need to know that he’s been on at me to let him get a buzz cut like Lucas’s, or that he scored a heroic (and indeed match-winning) goal in his last game. There’s my Arthur life and my Meg life, the latter of which, I have to admit, has been concerning me lately – and still is now, even on our holiday. Because, for every hint that she might actually be enjoying herself, there have been episodes of what I can only describe as weirdness.
Back at Dad’s place, I head straight to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Dad drinks gallons of the stuff daily; it’s something of a biological mystery why he doesn’t spend three-quarters of his day in the loo. So of course he fancies a cuppa, as does Arthur (he never drinks tea at home). However, when I ask Meg whether she wants a cup, her gaze alights briefly on the pink wafer biscuits I’ve pulled out of the cupboard – they’re Dad’s favourite – and she says, ‘Oh, I’m okay, thanks,’ in a faintly beleaguered way, as if she’s had enough to contend with today with the coleslaw mountain.
‘Just got some calls to make,’ she adds. Then, quick as a whippet, she’s off out to Dad’s garden again, closing the back door firmly behind her. When I glance through the window I see her pacing about, head bent down, perhaps reassuring a client that she’s only away for a week and will attend to their ear candling next Monday.
Dad is already installed on the sofa, with the TV blaring, and Arthur is plonked there, cross-legged, at his side. Having taken their teas and the pink wafers through to them, I glance out again to see that Meg seems to have finished her call. She’s just standing there, looking pensive, kind of gazing into space.
Christ, I hope it’s not depressing her, being here. Although she’s dressed casually in a black sweater and jeans, she still radiates ‘city person’ from her every pore. ‘Is there a cashpoint here?’ she’d asked Dad earlier, just before we went to the pub.
‘Aye, of course there is,’ he’d replied, looking as baffled as if she’d enquired, ‘Do children go to school here? Can they read?’
Taking out my own tea, I stroll towards her. ‘You okay?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ She smiles tightly.
I look around the garden, even though there’s not much to see: just Dad’s wonky old shed and the spindly wooden chair he uses when he wants to read his newspaper in the sunshine. ‘What did you think of the lighthouse?’ I ask.
‘Oh, it was beautiful,’ she says, ‘especially against that bright blue sky. I got some brilliant pictures.’
‘Can I see?’
‘Sure.’ She pulls her phone from her jeans pocket and taps the photos icon. Angling it towards me, she scrolls with her thumb. There are so many pictures of the lighthouse, some with her standing in front of it, her light brown hair blowing attractively, and others just with the structure itself.
‘These are great,’ I murmur. ‘Have you already posted one on your—’ I stop as she flinches, as if jabbed with a pin. She pulls back her phone, but too late; I’ve already seen it.
One of those pictures wasn’t of the lighthouse. It wasn’t of the beach, or the Anchor, or even the ice-cream-coloured cottages in this street.
It was of my girlfriend lying naked on the bed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
For a moment I wonder if I imagined it. Or maybe it was some kind of fluky thing and just ‘happened’, to do with her phone? I mean, they’re always doing weird stuff. Wasn’t there are a thing, a few years back, when Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ kept blasting out of people’s mobiles, driving everyone mad, and no one could stop it? I’m not a phone person like Meg is, wedded to the thing, using it for everything from accessing workouts to tracking her sleep.
However, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with how they work. And now I think about it, as she stuffs it into her pocket and turns back towards the house, I’m pretty certain that must have been a recent photo.
‘Meg?’
She looks round at me. ‘Yeah?’
‘What was that picture?’
‘What picture?’ She affects a look of bewilderment.
‘I saw a naked photo of you there. Unless I was hallucinating or something?’ I try for a laugh, to make light of it.
‘Oh, that’s ancient,’ she mutters with a dismissive shake of her head. ‘It’s nothing.’
I frown and try to read her expression. ‘But that duvet you were lying on, it’s the one here. It’s the purple one in our room.’
She splutters. ‘Ricky Vance, you must be the only straight man alive who’d see a picture of a naked woman lying on a bed and comment on the duvet cover.’
I shrug, deciding it’s probably best just to let it drop. I mean, I’m not the prying type and I do realise that people’s phones are immensely personal. Maybe hers just ‘went off’ when she was lying there, having a little catnap? Maybe it hovered about two feet above her naked body, kept aloft by some freakish warm air current and decided to take a photo of its own accord?
‘It was a mistake,’ she adds.
‘You took a picture of yourself naked by mistake?’
‘Yeah,’ she says curtly. ‘You know, it happens!’
For a moment, that does seems feasible. While hardly a rabid photographer, I do take the odd photo and occasionally I’ve done that thing where you flip to selfie mode accidentally – and instead of framing Sgadansay Bay I’ve been confronted by my looming face on the screen, and the undeniable evidence that I should probably have shaved and could do with more sleep. But what had she intended to photograph in the bedroom? The yellow wood chip ceiling? The tasselled lampshade?
‘Was the picture … for somebody?’ I ask.
‘For God’s sake,’ she exclaims. ‘What is this, an interrogation?’
‘Okay, okay—’
‘Look, I took the picture for myself, all right?’
‘For yourself?’ Just when I think I’m growing slightly closer to understanding the intricate workings of the female mind, something like this happens.
‘Yes, Ricky. I just wanted to see what I looked like after that massive dinner last night.’
I stare at her. That massive dinner? Like, a couple of bites of a mutton pie and about five chips? ‘Can I see it again?’ I ask.
She sighs loudly as she extracts the phone from her pocket again, finds the image and thrusts it at me. ‘Would I dream of denying you, Ricky?’
I take it from her and blink at the picture. Her long, slender legs are bent at the knees and her free arm is draped seductively behind her head. She’s pouting, and her eyes are languid, half-closed, and she looks incredibly sexy. ‘You’re posing,’ I remark.
‘
Of course I’m posing,’ she says with a dry laugh. ‘Any woman wants to look good in a photo, doesn’t she? Not like a shot putter who’s fallen flat on her back.’
I hand her phone to her. ‘Okay. Look, whatever you do is your business.’ Her mouth seems to tighten and she glances towards the house, as if there’s something happening in there that she really must attend to. ‘But if something’s going on,’ I add, ‘could you please tell me what it is?’
She just stands there and looks at me.
‘Meg?’ I prompt her. ‘Can you talk to me?’
She blinks and crinkles her lower lip. Maybe Dad’s turned off the TV – I don’t know – but everything feels very quiet and still. ‘Something’s … sort of happened,’ she murmurs.
Now her lower left eyelid is vibrating slightly. ‘What kind of thing?’ I ask.
She looks down at Dad’s scrubby lawn as if it’s suddenly fascinating to her and says nothing.
‘Are you pregnant?’
‘God, no, I’m not pregnant!’ She looks aghast.
‘What, then?’
She sweeps her hands across her face and back over her fine hair, as if trying to mentally collect herself. ‘There’s … something. I mean … someone. I should’ve told you, Ricky. I mean, I was going to, I planned to …’
At first, I’m not quite sure if I’ve heard her properly because it doesn’t make sense. If there’s someone else, then why on earth has she come to Sgadansay with Arthur and me?
‘You mean … you’ve been seeing somebody?’
She nods mutely.
‘Who is it?’
‘Um, just someone I know from way back and, well …’ a hopeless shrug, as if it was inevitable really ‘… it’s kind of sparked back up again.’
I’m still having trouble taking this in. Sparked back up again? What does that mean? I think of fireworks, and how you’re not meant to go back to one that hasn’t lit properly in case it blows up in your face. ‘You mean you’ve been sleeping with him?’
‘Sort of, yes.’ She nods again and her cheeks redden. ‘I’m sorry, Ricky. Really, I am.’
We stand there, just looking at each other in Dad’s back garden. A seagull’s dropping splats close to my feet and the bird squawks loudly, mockingly. ‘And that photo on the bed … did you take that for him?’
‘Let’s not get into that again,’ she mutters.
‘So you were taking naked pics of yourself in my dad’s house to send to your boyfriend?’ I glance round at the house and spot Arthur pottering about in the kitchen. I will him to stay there and not come out.
‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ she says firmly. ‘He’s just someone who means a lot to me—’
‘Who you’re having sex with—’
‘Ricky,’ she snaps, apparently outraged.
‘Is it that padded body warmer guy? The one with the statement moustache—’
‘Gerald?’ she splutters. ‘No, of course it’s not Gerald!’
‘Who is it, then?’
She’s still gripping her phone as if it’s essential to life. ‘It’s one of my hibiscus guys.’
‘What?’
‘He owns a deli. I met him through doing my tea thing …’
‘But you said it was someone from way back?’ As if it makes any difference.
‘He is,’ she insists. ‘He’s the first guy who took an order from me and we had a little fling, before I met you. We were just friends after that. Brihat’s been really brilliant and supportive—’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Brihat. It’s a Sanskrit name,’ she explains.
‘Oh, did he give it to himself?’ I bark, realising how bitter I’m sounding now. But I can’t help it.
Her expression turns defensive. ‘Yes, he did actually. What does it matter?’
‘Was it to sound more like a yoga kind of guy?’
‘Well, yes,’ she snaps, ‘because it’s more spiritual than Colin—’
‘Colin!’ I splutter. ‘Yeah, I can see why he changed it.’
She glares at me, then her face softens. ‘Look, I didn’t plan to tell you here. It’s the last thing I wanted to do, to ruin the trip—’
‘I s’pose it’s not ideal really,’ I cut in, ‘when we’re on holiday.’ Holiday? What am I saying? Meg likes her jaunts to involve yoga, meditation, exotic juices and salads scattered with edible flowers. That’s probably the kind of trip Brihat would take her on. And I’ve brought her to a Hebridean island to eat pies.
A huge crow lands on the fence and stares at us as if curious to see what’ll happen next. But I don’t know what’ll happen because I’m at a complete loss as to what to do. Clearly, we can’t go into all the ins and outs – unfortunate phrase – of her ‘sparking up’ with her spiritual friend, not with my father and son a few feet away in the house. But nor can we carry on with our jolly holiday as if it’s never happened.
Fucking hell, we’ve only been here for twenty-four hours. How the hell are we going to struggle through the next six days?
‘Is it that polyamory thing?’ I ask, and Meg shrugs and nods.
‘I just want to be free to see other people, Ricky. It’s more … me.’
I stare at her. ‘But I thought that was meant to be out in the open, not sneaking and lying—’
‘Well, I knew how you’d react—’
‘Oh, sorry for being a bit upset!’ I snap.
Meg steps away from me. ‘Okay, okay. Forget I said it. Forget everything. I think I should go home, all right?’
‘When?’ I exclaim. ‘You mean, like, today?’
‘Yes, like today.’
‘But how?’
‘On the ferry,’ she says with unnecessary emphasis, as if I am an imbecile.
‘But …’ I look around the garden, feeling like all the wind’s been knocked out of me. ‘It doesn’t leave until seven, and it’ll be nearly ten o’clock by the time you get to Oban and—’
‘I think I can manage,’ she says.
What about Arthur? I’m thinking. And Dad? I know it’s ridiculous and more about my pride, and how I’m going to explain it to them.
Me and Meg had a bit of a disagreement and she’s gone home.
Jesus fuck.
‘I’ll be able to get a train back to Glasgow tonight, won’t I?’
‘Erm, yes. I don’t know. You might miss the last one. What’ll you do then?’
‘Get a hotel in Oban.’ Great. Lovely. So that’s everything all sorted then. ‘I’m sorry, Ricky,’ she adds, walking back to the house now. ‘I’ll go upstairs and grab my stuff.’
‘What, now?’ I call after her. ‘But the ferry doesn’t leave for, what, three hours—’
‘I’ll sit there and wait then,’ she announces, glancing back at me as she adds, ‘I’ve brought a birthday present for Arthur and I’ll leave it on the bed. I hope he likes it.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Suzy
The distillery tour hadn’t been like this. Back then, in the mists of time, when I’d still loved Paul and thought we’d just gone on holiday for fun, Jean had greeted our tour group with a twinkling smile as she’d patiently explained how whisky is made. We were given samples to try, plus fingers of sugary shortbread to nibble on. We’d posed, grinning, as our obliging guide had taken photographs of us in front of the gleaming copper stills. We were told how that particular metal removes any sulphurous traces from the fermentation, and why the stills are shaped like gorgeous curvaceous, coppery onions.
‘Thank you,’ I told Jean at the end of our tour. ‘We’ve learnt such a lot.’
Of course now I realise I know virtually nothing at all. But how quaint and delightful everything seemed that day, with the cooper (‘Our barrel boffin,’ as Jean put it) explaining that the wooden casks originally came from Spain, where they’d have contained sherry, or from the grain whisky distilleries of Kentucky.
Today Kenny, who’s busily repairing barrels, barely grunts in response to my hesitant hello, an
d Jean looks up distractedly from the office with a mere, ‘I’m here all day if you need anything.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I’m just going to sort of … be here and … you know.’
She adjusts her gold-rimmed spectacles and peers at me from behind her orderly desk. There are framed photos on it because of course, no one ‘hot desks’ here; it’s her personal space and I assume they’re her three grandchildren, beaming broadly in their blue school uniforms. I catch a hint of her rose perfume – plus powerful ‘I am actually extremely busy’ vibes – as I take myself off to the malting room to make a nuisance of myself there.
In the vast, vaulted space, barley lies quietly germinating on the floor. It’s tended by Liam, the lumberjack shirt man who’d been so angry during my first meeting here.
‘Hullo,’ he says gruffly, as if I have come to pick fault with his practices. Of course I wasn’t expecting a big smile and a hug, like I’m some long-lost pal. I’m regarded with similar coolness and suspicion as I get in the way of the women in the box packing area, and the man who manages the kilns, where the barley goes to be – well, kilned is all I know about that part of the process.
It’s understandable that my questions are answered curtly, especially when I casually ask about Harry’s situation now (I have learned that he was widowed several years ago). No one wants to be seen to be fraternising with the enemy, I realise. But I’d hoped there might be a glimmer of warmth, and that at least some of the team would understand that I have come here to put things right.
I hover about in the bottling room, feeling like the kid at the party who’s only there because the birthday girl’s mother insisted on it. ‘For God’s sake, Emily, just invite her. It’ll look mean if you don’t and she’s not that bad.’ The bottling machine clanks away and I observe from a distance as a woman fills other bottles from an urn by hand.
It’s probably not even called an urn. It’s probably called a strommuch, a squidden or some equally mystifying term; Christ, my head is swimming with unfamiliar words like ‘rummager’ (something inside the still, I’ve gathered, and not an eager person at a jumble sale). I listened as hard as I could when Liam explained, reluctantly, what ‘grist’, ‘mash’ and ‘draff’ mean. I pretended I understood when another man said there was a problem where the worm tub connected to the grist arm (or was it the other way round?).