Tiny Acts of Love

by Lucy Lawrie

  ‘Did you just . . . drop him in?’

  ‘He’s cool with it.’ And Dave jumped in too, joining his family under the water, his long hair floating together with Molly’s like blonde and brown seaweed.

  I climbed carefully down the steel ladder into the pool, and Jonathan handed Sophie to me before climbing in himself, his face white and pinched.

  ‘Woooo!’ said Molly, bringing Cameron to the surface. ‘How was that, big boy?’

  Dave emerged in a great whoosh of water, back arched, face lifted towards the ceiling.

  ‘It’s so amazing that you can teach babies to do that,’ I said, trying to compensate for my earlier expression of horror.

  ‘Oh, it’s not about teaching him,’ said Molly. ‘If anything, he teaches us about moving naturally through the water. Humans are descended from fish, you know – we spend a lot of time reflecting on that, in the classes.’

  I pretended to reflect for a moment, and bobbed with Sophie over to Jonathan, who was crouched against the wall of the shallow end, knees bent so that he was immersed in the water up to his mid-chest. Tom and Vichard were getting into the pool now, followed by Jody, who was carrying an armful of plastic toys she’d lifted from the toddlers’ pool.

  ‘So Cassie,’ she said. ‘Are you coming to my fabulous girls’ day out?’

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Tom and I are staying overnight at Glenallan House Hotel on the twenty-fourth, to go to the Burns Supper. But boring old Tom’s going to be playing golf all day’ – she poked him on his white hairless chest – ‘so I thought we should have a Babycraft spa day! Shona’s coming!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Molly called over, her face twisted into a pained expression. ‘I’m doing a shift at our community café.’

  ‘Er . . . well, if Jonathan doesn’t mind looking after Sophie for the afternoon?’

  He assented with a slow blink.

  ‘Great!’ said Jody. ‘And it was so nice that we could all get together today! We’re trying to build up Vichard’s water confidence.’

  She picked up one of the plastic ducks she’d taken from the toddlers’ pool, and squirted it at Vichard’s face. He screamed and grabbed Tom tightly around the neck.

  ‘Time for another submersion, little fella?’ said Dave, taking Cam from Molly.

  Cam eyed his father balefully, but made no protest. Presumably he’d learnt that there was no point. Under they went.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Jody. ‘Soooo nice.’ She scooped some water into a red plastic watering can with a flower-shaped nozzle, lifted it over Jonathan’s head and poured.

  ‘Oh – !’ I cried.

  ‘We all love the water, see Vichard?’ said Jody.

  Jonathan didn’t move, or even attempt to brush the water from his eyes – he just stood there, his hair flattened in a wet slick against his forehead, his face a picture of abject misery.

  Sophie threw back her head, revealing her two new sharp milk teeth, and laughed as though it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.

  She pointed, quite clearly, at Jonathan, and said, for the first time: ‘Dada!’

  ‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Dada! Say it again, Soph.’

  ‘Dada,’ she said, dissolving into chuckles again.

  Jonathan, his face streaming, his expression unreadable, reached over and stroked her head. Then he hauled himself out of the pool and walked off to the changing room.

  *

  ‘Jody didn’t know,’ I said in the car. ‘She didn’t know you had a thing about swimming pools. You know what they’re like.’

  Nothing from him.

  Through the car window, Edinburgh looked grey and tired, far from the magical city it had seemed at Christmas time, with its sparkling lights and shop windows. But he could have redeemed the cold January day in a second, if only he’d say something that would let us move beyond last night’s note, and the green-glowing image of Malkie and me in the car park at Braid Hills. I wanted him to crow in delight over Sophie’s first proper word, and the fact she’d said Dada rather than Mama. I wanted him to make a disparaging comment about Dave and his Fishy Fun branded swimming trunks, or Molly and her loud rendition of ‘Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day’ (sung in English first, and then in French) in the café afterwards.

  Without Jonathan’s poking fun, without our sweet, sly, shared references to the antenatal classes and the various disastrous get-togethers, the Babycraft crew were just a bunch of wearisome people who didn’t really have anything to do with us.

  I thought, for a few bleak moments, about how life might be without him, and I remembered Dita’s words about the last few months of her marriage, and the aftermath of Frank’s death.

  She’d said that love was twisted into the fabric of everyday life. And that you didn’t always realise it until it was gone.

  25

  It would be too much to say that I enjoyed the drive up to Glenallan House Hotel, sitting alongside Shona, who was giving me a lift. But it was a change of scenery, and she was easy company – for once her legal stories were a welcome distraction.

  It wasn’t just the fact that Jonathan was still barely talking to me, two weeks after the Workplace Phantoms fiasco. Murray Radcliffe was furious with me, too. He’d appeared, incandescent, at my desk, going on about the firm being shown up in a bad light because of me and my actions. If it hadn’t been for Elliot McCabe’s low-key reaction to the programme (he’d admitted – apologetically – that he’d been relieved that the focus had moved away from the employees and their unhappiness, and on to me), Radcliffe would have probably dismissed me there and then. As it was, he’d set a date for the meeting to discuss the findings of my competency review, which would now encompass my handling of the Braid Hills affair, as well as Jean Forrester’s grievance hearing.

  I thought about whether I should confide any of this to Shona – whether there was any chance she might be able to help in some way – but decided I couldn’t face the look of shock that would inevitably appear on her face when she heard about the threatened demise of my legal career. It was easier just to let her talk.

  We turned into the impressive driveway of the hotel at about half past one. It was a dark, drizzly day, but the hotel was lit up like a Christmas tree, all the windows blazing. And all the trees in the grounds were strung with fairy lights. The gleaming Bentley in front of us pulled into the circular courtyard area at the front of the hotel, to be met by two uniformed doormen, but we cut left to go into the main car park.

  ‘Jody wanted us to text her when we arrived at the car park,’ said Shona.

  She appeared in five minutes, with her usual shrieks of delight.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing to have a girls’ day out! Absolute BLISS! You should see the room, it’s stunning.’

  I didn’t really register, at the time, that she took us round to a back entrance of the hotel, near the swimming pool. She kept talking all the way up to the room, a small but nicely appointed double.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked as Jody poured us each a drink from the minibar. ‘You said we were going to have lunch, and then go to the spa? I looked on the website to see if I could arrange day passes for the spa but there wasn’t any information about how to do that.’

  ‘A-ha! It’s all in hand, girlies, all in hand. Because it’s Burns Night, there’s a fantastic buffet lunch for residents. And our room comes with free use of the spa!’

  She imparted this with such delight that it seemed churlish to enquire further, so I just gave an anxious smile. Shona, however, had no such qualms.

  ‘But Jody, we’re not residents, are we? We’re not staying here.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Jody. ‘We’ll just wing it. I’m a golf widow today. My dearly beloved won’t be back until at least six, so I need my girlies with me! And anyway, I have a plan.’

  She disappeared into the bathroom for a second and came out with three fluffy white bathrobes.

  ‘Ta-da! I was a bit sneaky earlier and pretende
d there was a bathrobe missing, so they brought another one up and now we have THREE!’

  I smiled again, completely in the dark as to why this should be such a triumph.

  ‘If we’re all wearing bathrobes, the staff will just assume we are ALL staying! Come on girls, strip off.’

  Reluctantly, I began to peel off my clothes, and put my swimsuit on, followed by the bathrobe. And indeed, Jody’s bathrobe theory seemed to hold up; as we walked down to lunch, we passed several staff who all smiled benignly at us as if we had every right in the world to be there. Jody even asked one of them the way to the buffet, and he took us there in person, finding a table for us, and pulling back the seats for us as we sat down.

  The lunch was superb: asparagus soup with poached quail’s eggs, strips of filet mignon wrapped in bacon, lobster tempura . . . all washed down with champagne, glasses of which were being liberally distributed by white-gloved waiters.

  Our table was set by a large bay window that overlooked the golf course and the purple moorland rising up to the mountains in the distance. By the time we’d finished eating it was getting darker outside, and the clouds were gathering in low around the hills.

  Nobody questioned us when we walked into the spa. Jody signed the book at reception, the two of us trailing behind her.

  We walked through to find ourselves in a softly lit, limestone-tiled area, scented with peppermint. Whale song emanated mournfully from hidden speakers. We drifted on, past steam rooms and crystal rooms, saunas and light therapy cabins. We came to an area with heated, curved stone beds next to a trickling fountain, and we lay down. For the first time in days, a feeling of calm crept through me as I felt the heat radiating into my back and legs.

  A girl appeared at our side offering us drinks. Jody took a herbal ‘tisane’, in a little curved glass with silver handles. Shona and I took iced water, served in crystal glasses with slices of cucumber and lime.

  When we’d finished our drinks, we made our way up a stairway to an outdoor terrace, and the rooftop hydrotherapy pool. I lay back on an underwater bed, bubble jets battering against my neck and back muscles, easing tension I hadn’t realised was there. We spent a good long time there, and I was quite in a daze when we emerged.

  ‘Oh golly, is that half past three? I’ll need to check in with work,’ said Shona, heading towards the locker room. ‘Could you give me the room key, Jody? I’ll just make a quick call and then come back down again.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll come up too. I’ve got another swimsuit I might change into. Cassie – see you at the stone beds in ten minutes?’

  I found my way back there and settled down on the warm stone. Flicking through a couple of magazines, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I let my mind drift, soothed by the sound of the water.

  *

  An hour and a half later, the calm feeling had evaporated completely. Jody and Shona hadn’t returned. One of the members of staff had walked past four times, so I’d moved away from the heated beds into a small, dark steam room. It was empty, and at least I could wait there for a bit, without arousing suspicion by loitering for too long on the heated beds.

  But as I sat, enveloped by the jasmine-scented steam, my mind began to race. Where had Jody and Shona gone? I’d kept my phone with me, in my bathrobe pocket, but Shona’s was going straight on to voicemail and Jody’s was ringing out. What if they’d left without me? What if I was discovered by the hotel staff? Could they call the police; could I actually be charged with theft? The lobster tempura and champagne surely didn’t come cheap. Could they actually prove what we had eaten? God, I thought with a sinking feeling, just the use of the spa facilities alone could run into hundreds of pounds.

  I racked my brains, trying to remember my criminal law lectures – was there a legal basis for a theft charge? I tried to recall some ancient cases involving stolen cows and bottles of ginger beer; I could visualise the pictures I had drawn in my revision notes. A decomposing snail seemed to feature heavily too, for some reason. The images spun around in my mind in a macabre kaleidoscope. Then – oh Christ – I realised what I’d done.

  Not theft, but fraud. A false representation of a matter of fact, calculated so as to gain an advantage. I had falsely represented myself as a hotel guest, so as to gain an advantage, in the form of spa use, lobster tempura and champagne. And even if I wasn’t prosecuted, what if the hotel staff contacted the Law Society? I could be struck off.

  But first things first. I had to leave the steam room before I rendered myself unconscious. And then try to find Jody’s room and see if anyone was there. I couldn’t remember the number, but knew it was the third floor.

  It was a relief to come out into the cool air after the scented fug of the spa, and I’d left just in time – by the looks of it, I was the last guest to leave, and they were about to close up for the evening. I wandered around until I found the lift we’d come down in earlier. When its doors opened, they revealed a party of guests in full Highland dress, caught in mid-laugh at somebody’s hilarious joke, and clearly half-cut already. The drinks reception for the Burns Supper must be about to start. I concentrated on imagining, very hard, that I was in fact a hotel resident, and smiled as I stood aside in my bathrobe to let them pass.

  I found my way to the third floor and the corridor where Jody’s room was. I recognised the outside of the room when I saw it, two doors down from the lift. Unfortunately, judging from the noise that was coming from inside, it was very much occupied: gasps, shrieks, and a rhythmic thumping noise.

  Was that Jody and Tom? Oh God. I couldn’t go downstairs again; I would just have to wander around the corridors until they’d stopped. I turned and started walking, and almost collided with someone just coming out of the lift.

  ‘Oh! Sorry!’ I drew back, instinctively pulling my bathrobe closer around me.

  It took me a second or two to remember his name, to dredge it up from the old student days. But of course – he was Kevin Hartley, ex-boyfriend of Jo the psychology student, and near-victim of her sleep deprivation experiment. No such problem placing the man coming out of the lift behind him . . . Malkie.

  ‘Oh my God! Cassie! What the hell are you doing here?’ Kevin’s loose, easy grin spread across his fleshy face.

  ‘Hi . . . hi.’

  ‘Look, Malks. It’s Cassie!’ He threw a glance over his shoulder. ‘Your ex-bird,’ he added, sotto voce.

  I wasn’t best pleased about being called anybody’s ex-bird, or indeed about bumping into Malkie in these circumstances, with my face as red as a tomato from the hour spent in the steam room.

  ‘Bloody fantastic to see you!’ Kevin went on expansively, drawing me into a bear hug and releasing alcohol fumes around me. ‘We’re just up for Burns Night . . . I’ve brought some clients with me to entertain – give them a bit of the old Kev-ster treatment! I’m with Devalio’s – y’know, the PR firm? What are you up to these days?’

  ‘I’m a solicitor at McKeith’s. Malkie and I work together – didn’t he mention it?’ I shot what I hoped was a disdainful look in Malkie’s direction.

  ‘Hey – that’s brilliant! And how’s Helen these days? I heard she moved to New Zealand.’

  ‘She’s great,’ I said. In truth, we’d barely been in touch for weeks. We’d exchanged Christmas cards, and I’d commented on some of her Facebook updates, saying things like, ‘Wow!’ when yet another sunset photograph appeared. But we hadn’t spoken since I’d emailed her a very belated, and not entirely accurate account of the Braid Hills vigil, saying that it had passed without event, and that Malkie and I had behaved impeccably. I was now hoping that Workplace Phantoms wouldn’t be aired in New Zealand.

  ‘Well, say hi to her from me. Right! Time to get the old kilt on. Lots of drinking to get through! Might see you later?’

  ‘I’ll catch up with you in a sec,’ called Malkie to Kevin’s departing back. He turned to me with a smile playing round his lips.

  ‘Well-well-well, Ms Carlisle. So what are you doing here anyway?’
To my relief, there was no trace of the clammy, panicky Malkie who’d bared his soul in Bar Twenty-Nine.

  ‘What are you doing here? Since when do you qualify as a client of Devalio’s? I didn’t know they did PR for junior litigation lawyers.’

  ‘He just sort of snuck me in, you know. A business contact, rather than a client as such. In fact, Kevin’s firm is paying for me to spend the night in none other than the Fairview Suite! Are you staying for the Burns Supper?’

  ‘No, I’m not. My friend Jody is staying here and she invited Shona and me to spend the day with her, but the hotel is strictly residents-only today. And a couple of hours ago they said they were just going to the room for a few minutes but they disappeared and neither of them are answering their phones. All my clothes are in Jody’s room, but I can’t get them because somebody’s shagging in there. Which is a bugger, because if I’m caught I think I might get arrested or even reported to the Law Society.’

  He gave a little laugh.

  ‘You can come up to the suite if you want,’ he said in a sort of resigned way, as if it was a minor inconvenience – certainly not a proposition. ‘I’m going to have to go up there soon anyway, to change.’

  Reviewing my options, this did seem like the most promising one. Perhaps Malkie could even lend me some clothes. And if I stuck with him, I could always say that I was staying with him in the Fairview Suite. The danger of prosecution would be temporarily lifted, at any rate.

  26

  We made our way along to the suite, my slippered feet padding on the thick carpet, Malkie’s boots trudging purposively. As we walked I quickly keyed a text to Jody telling her where I would be, assuming she’d ever bother to try and find me. When we arrived, Malkie used his key card to unlock the door and flung it open to reveal the most beautiful suite I’d ever seen. There was an enormous canopied bed, a sitting area with armchairs and an elegant chaise longue positioned around a real log fire lit in the grate.