Tiny Acts of Love

by Lucy Lawrie

  Somehow I made it to the main road and flagged down a taxi to take me back to McKeith’s. Ten minutes later I burst into the reception area in what could only be described as a hysterical state.

  The receptionist was with a group of clients, showing them where to sign their names in the visitors’ book and handing out visitor passes in plastic holders.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ I demanded, pushing to the front of the desk. ‘Have you seen Greg, the work experience student?’

  She raised an eyebrow and inclined her head to a seating area just off the main reception. Hardly daring to hope, I swung round.

  Greg was there, stretched out on one of the chairs reading The Economist, nudging Sophie’s pram back and forward with his foot.

  ‘You bloody bastard! You fucking idiot!’ I flew over and scooped Sophie out of the pram. I cradled her against me, and the world turned the right way up again.

  ‘Oh, there you are,’ said Greg. ‘I told you I had to be back here for three. I told you I had to walk Radcliffe’s dog.’

  ‘You disappeared with my baby because you had to walk a fucking dog!’

  ‘Yee-eees . . . speaking of which . . .’

  He nodded towards Murray Radcliffe, who had materialised beside me. Shaking my head, I turned my back on them and buried my face in Sophie’s neck, inhaling the powdery, milky scent of her. I didn’t care at all, at that point, about the vomit splattered on my sleeve, the mascara trails down my face, or the cluster of plastic-badged businessmen looking on with amused interest.

  *

  An hour later, I was standing on the street outside the office, staring into the middle distance and jiggling the pram back and forth. I was waiting to flag down a taxi and trying to process what had just happened.

  After my altercation with Greg, Murray Radcliffe had taken me aside, ushering me into a meeting room with an outstretched arm, casting a reassuring smile over his shoulder to the clients at reception.

  ‘Cassie.’ His voice was ominously calm. ‘Do you know who Greg Robertson is?’

  ‘Well . . . apart from being our work experience student . . . I’m not sure.’

  ‘His father is CEO of Robertson Cathcart Group.’

  Oh. It was one of the firm’s biggest clients.

  ‘The legal work is up for tender again next month. I’ve got five million pounds of business riding on this.’

  So this seventeen-year-old twat was not someone to be messed with. But with my newly-found Sophie in my arms, I still found it difficult to care.

  ‘You may also be interested to know that Bobby Spencer, employee of Braid Hills Funeral Home, has been on the phone for the last half hour. Making a complaint about you.’

  ‘About me? Why?’

  ‘He’s claiming you pushed Elliot McCabe down the route of dismissal because of your own personal prejudices. He’s threatening to raise tribunal proceedings against the funeral home, and to make a complaint about you to the Law Society.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous. I’m not even acting for—’

  ‘He says he overheard you telling Elliot that he was “taking the piss”, and that your dismissal of the spirit world amounts to discrimination against him on the grounds of religious belief.’

  ‘What? That’s just—’

  ‘He also said most of your attention during the meeting was taken up with a man standing outside the window with a pram.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t ideal, asking Greg to help out. It’s just that I didn’t want to cancel my first meeting with Elliot. The nursery said I had to pick up Sophie immediately because she had terrible diarrhoea.’

  As though on cue, there was a rumbling, squelching sound from Sophie’s bottom, and the next second I felt something wet seeping through the fabric of her leggings onto my hand.

  ‘Oh, poor love . . .’

  Radcliffe’s eyes narrowed just a fraction, but it was enough to convey his disgust, his utter contempt. ‘I’ll be making a note in your file. Now go.’

  Standing on the street now, with Sophie cleaned up and my own face scrubbed free of mascara stains using scratchy paper towels, I faced the fact that my days at McKeith’s were numbered. If they didn’t pick me out with a conduct or competency dismissal, they’d nudge me into the redundancy firing line. Being a working mother was bad enough; being the subject of a Law Society complaint was worse; but swearing in front of clients and calling the son of our biggest client a fucking idiot would surely finish me off.

  I imagined a scenario where I had to go home and tell Jonathan that I’d lost my job. What would his face look like, I wondered. Would his jaw drop in shock or would it tighten with suppressed rage? Would he be angry with Murray Radcliffe, or disappointed in me?

  Then I heard someone saying my name, and something made me pause for a second before I turned round.

  Because it was Malkie. I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  I’d been half expecting it for years, even more so since those mysterious missed calls after the birth, and the oh-so-close sighting in John Lewis. So really, I told myself as I slowly turned to face him, it was no big deal.

  But nothing could have prepared me for the current that leapt through my body, singing through every nerve. The intervening years seemed to vaporise in a single sharp twist of longing. And there I was, standing in front of him, twenty-two years old again.

  ‘Cassie.’ His voice was still improbably deep; it resonated in places that didn’t feel like they’d been touched since he’d gone.

  ‘Malkie. Hello.’ I was careful to keep an even tone.

  ‘How are you? Long time no see. And this is your baby? Nice one! How old is he . . . she . . . now?’

  ‘Five months,’ I said, staring at his too-close-together eyes. The laughter lines and the slight thickening around the jawline suited him, taking the edge off his looks, while making him inexplicably more attractive. I fervently hoped he wouldn’t notice I was covered in vomit.

  ‘And a wee stunner, I see.’ He peered into the pram.

  ‘Yes. Yes, she is.’

  ‘No smile for Uncle Malkie, though?’

  ‘Er . . . probably not, no. She’s had a stressful day.’

  ‘And how’s married life?’

  I didn’t miss the teasing tone, the hint of swagger.

  ‘Oh, good, you know . . .’

  I was reaching for the right responses, the responses of a contented wife and joyful new mother, but they seemed to have been stripped away.

  ‘So what about you?’ I asked. ‘What are you up to these days?’

  ‘I’ve just moved back to Edinburgh actually,’ he said, tilting his head slightly on ‘Edinburgh’, and raising his eyebrows, as if testing my reaction.

  ‘Oh right—’ I began.

  ‘Aaaaand . . .’ he interrupted, his voice sliding upwards ‘I’m working at McKeith’s.’ He pressed his lips together to suppress a smile.

  I have to admit that I was surprised. I’d always imagined that Malkie would have ended up working at a hard-bitten criminal law practice in the Grassmarket, with wire grilles over the windows.

  ‘McKeith’s. But that’s where I . . .’

  Again, he interrupted me. ‘I know,’ he said, and he grimaced. But he did it like a little boy caught doing something a bit naughty, showing his white, even teeth and screwing up his eyes. Something inside me seemed to quietly slip free from its moorings. I thought I’d remembered everything about Malkie, but I had forgotten this. Oh God, I had forgotten this.

  ‘I tried to phone you a couple of times actually, after I got your email, you know, about the baby.’

  ‘Oh? Sorry, I must have missed your calls. You should have left a message.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you know . . . I wasn’t sure what to say. After all this time, and all that.’

  The way his voice deepened on those last few words . . .

  ‘I was trying to get in touch because I’d noticed that one of the addresses on the email list was
this guy I used to work for in London who is now at McKeith’s. Mike O’Farrell. And I’d been thinking of moving back up for a while and was going to ask you about McKeith’s, how you found them to work for and so on. But in the end I just went ahead and got in touch with Mike, asked him if he was looking for any litigation lawyers, and here I am. It’s my third day!’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ I said, vaguely registering that it was odd for McKeith’s to be hiring in the middle of a redundancy exercise. It seemed to support my theory that it was all just an excuse to get rid of dead wood: troublemakers and foul-mouthed part-timers.

  ‘Right, well. Better get back to it,’ said Malkie. ‘I’ve got a preliminary hearing tomorrow and there’s a shitload of cases I need to read before then.’ He winced, and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I need to get Sophie home, too. She’s not too well today.’

  ‘Okay, see you around then.’

  ‘Bye.’

  I lifted my hand in an awkward salute to his retreating back as he crossed the road. I suddenly felt exhausted, weakened by the force of my reaction to him. I bent down to kiss Sophie, breathing her in again and letting her centre me. When I looked up again he’d gone; had disappeared so quickly that I was left wondering if I’d really seen him at all, or whether it was all, somehow, just one more weary trick of the light.

  8

  ‘No, Mum, we definitely can’t come!’ I could feel my voice getting tighter. My mobile phone was struggling for reception as the car wound its way deeper into the valley.

  ‘Look, sorry but you’re cutting out. I’ll have to go. Bye.’ I pressed the red button and flung the phone into the footwell.

  ‘What does she want now?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘Keep your eyes on the road, would you? She wants us to go to Sweden.’

  Mum lived with my paternal grandmother, Granny Britt, on a little island in the Swedish archipelago. Mum had raised me here in her native Edinburgh after my father’s death, but she’d been drawn back to that blue-green island existence in recent years, returning to take care of her mother-in-law, who was no longer capable of living on her own.

  They lived together in an old wooden house – dark and cool in summer, fire-lit and cosy in winter. The garden, with its four gnarled apple trees, was overgrown with wildflowers, and the scent of warm pine drifted across from the woods on sunny days. The beach was only a five-minute walk away – you could see the sea from the attic windows.

  Going to visit them was out of the question. I hoped Jonathan would see that.

  ‘Well, why don’t we go then?’ he suggested.

  ‘Well, Jonathan, first of all there is the sheer logistics of three-hourly feeds whilst airborne. And the disruption of her sleep routine. She’d probably never sleep properly again.’

  ‘I’m sure we could work something out,’ said Jonathan.

  It was this ‘can do’ attitude that annoyed me more than anything else. It was all very well to be blasé about somebody else’s routines when you weren’t the one who had to get up twelve times in the night when it all went to pot.

  ‘Well, what if she had a cold, and her little ears were blocked up? It could be agonising for her. What if she had diarrhoea and we had to continually change her nappy in the plane toilet? What if we were delayed for eight hours at Stockholm, like the last time we went? There’d be no fresh milk for her, no sterilising facilities . . .’

  And the last leg of the journey involved a tiny, shaky propeller plane.

  ‘It’s the propeller plane, isn’t it?’ crowed Jonathan. ‘You’re scared of the propeller plane!’

  ‘I am NOT scared of the propeller plane. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘I’m not,’ I repeated. ‘It’s just a logistical nightmare. If Mum wants to see Sophie she’ll have to come over here – end of story.’

  In fact, Mum had booked flights to come and stay with us, had been intending to come and help out during my first couple of weeks back at work. But two days before she was due to fly, Granny Britt tripped over in the kitchen, bruising herself badly. So Mum phoned to say she wouldn’t be able to come after all.

  I felt unreasonably hurt. I told myself that I shouldn’t mind – that Granny Britt needed her more than I did. But a dark part of me turned the situation around and wondered what I would do in the same scenario, if Sophie was grown up and struggling with a new baby. Would I abandon Mum, badly bruised, in her rickety wooden house and come to help Sophie? Yes, I thought angrily, I certainly would.

  We were on our way to a Babycraft weekend, to celebrate our babies’ six-month half-birthdays. Jody, her husband (oh, what was his name?) and baby Vichard had recently moved to a big house in the country near Stirling, and they had invited the whole group to stay for a couple of nights.

  ‘Just remind me,’ said Jonathan, as the car struggled up a steep hillside road, ‘why we are going away with the Babycraft people when you hate them?’

  ‘I don’t hate them, Jonathan. They are our support network, remember.’

  ‘God help us.’

  ‘If you had your way, we wouldn’t have any friends at all!’

  It was true – he didn’t seem to need them. He played the occasional game of golf with work buddies, but apart from that, it was only ever Stephen . . . Stephen, who now lived with his wife, Moira, and their twin boys in a leafy suburb of Washington DC, but who telephoned every Sunday at eleven p.m. without fail for a brotherly catch-up. Jonathan had woken Sophie up last time, his voice booming through the house as he’d discussed the finer points of weaning with Stephen, debating whether puréed pear was easier to digest than apple.

  ‘Anyway,’ I pointed out, ‘it’ll be good for us to have a change of scenery. We can have invigorating walks and things.’

  ‘And then we can get drunk in the evening and swap birthing stories. Molly can regale us with the tale of how they wanted to save the stump of Cameron’s umbilical cord to make soup.’

  ‘That is a complete fabrication, Jonathan.’

  He snorted.

  ‘It is,’ I insisted. ‘They wanted to save it to make a necklace.’

  The truth was that this weekend was less about Babycraft and more about Jonathan and me. A change of scenery, some quality time together in luxurious surroundings, maybe some time to talk – this was just what I needed to forget my worries, bond with Jonathan again and put that silly encounter with Malkie out of my mind.

  The house stood high on a hill overlooking fields and dark swathes of woodland; a landscape of soft greys and greens under a smirr of misty rain.

  ‘Anyway, have you remembered their names yet?’ demanded Jonathan as we hurried up the steps, him carrying Sophie in her car seat.

  ‘She’s called Jody, and the baby is Vichard.’

  ‘Jody with the chubby cheeks who can’t say “r”. I know. But what’s his name?’

  ‘They’ve never mentioned his name. She just calls him sweetie. And as you well know, there comes a point when it is just too late to ask.’

  He raised an eyebrow and rang the doorbell.

  ‘Let’s call him Tom,’ I whispered. ‘It might be Tom. I think it is Tom.’

  The door opened and there was the man himself. ‘Welcome to our humble abode!’ he said, gesturing us inside with a flourish. ‘Jody’s been held up unfortunately – she’s at her mum’s with Richard, but she’ll be back in time for dinner.’

  We entered a large, square hallway, our boots clattering on the bare floorboards.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re only halfway through the renovations,’ said Tom. ‘The best bedrooms are in the dormitory wing.’

  ‘Dormitory wing?’ I echoed.

  ‘Yes – this place used to be a boarding house for an old school at the other side of the woods. But that’s been turned into a swish hotel now.

  ‘Anyway, this way!’ he said, gesturing towards the staircase. ‘I had a call from Shona earlier – she’s been caught up with some court case in London for t
he last couple of days. She’s representing some doctor who’s about to be deported or something. She was meeting with the Home Secretary this afternoon so she won’t be able to get up here tonight. Paul and baby Elgin are with her – they went down with her because she’s still breastfeeding at night, so none of them can make it. Such a shame.’

  He bounded up the stairs ahead of us. ‘Mind the holes!’

  On the landing, some of the floorboards had been taken up, exposing dark spaces underneath. We stepped over and followed Tom along a dull soupy-green corridor.

  ‘Careful – the lights don’t work in this corridor yet, I’m afraid. We’ve had a few problems with the electrics.’ After a few twists and turns, and a couple of heavily-hinged fire doors, we came to our room. Stepping inside, I saw it was furnished with two sets of old iron-framed bunk beds, and a grey threadbare carpet.

  ‘There are sleeping bags there, and spare pillows if you need them,’ said Tom. ‘Sorry it’s a bit basic just now.’

  The windows rattled and a draught snaked up my legs. I thought longingly of the country house hotel up the road.

  ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. I’m making dinner in the kitchen, so I’d better get back to it!’

  It took Jonathan three trips to the car and back to fetch all of our stuff, including the travel cot and highchair. Meanwhile, Sophie and I had found the bathroom – a large freezing room with a green painted concrete floor, set up with six baths around the outside and a row of sinks down the middle. Both windows had cracked panes. Hearing a low buzz, I looked up at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights, with their plastic covers, displayed the shadowy corpses of dozens of dead flies.