‘I don’t know how we can do – this.’ Ailsa isn’t sure whether she means her death, or continuing to live this way. A new heart is feeling more and more hypothetical.
Hayley sighs, gets up from the table and opens the window, lights a cigarette. There are ‘no smoking’ signs, but the hotel seems to be turning a blind eye. ‘I suppose I just think – look at this. We’re OK now. We’ve got this view and air in our lungs, and we’ve just eaten better food than most of the people in the world will ever get to eat. Right this minute we’re fine, and that will have to do.’
Ailsa smiles. ‘Right now, we’re fine,’ she says.
Hayley blows smoke out of the window. ‘Tamsin says I’d make a grand Buddhist.’
‘You might have to give up the smoking, though. And the swearing.’
‘Fuck that.’
And Ailsa almost lets the moment go, but she can’t, because at some point she might need to know the answer to the question that fills her every time she looks at her mother. ‘What will you do, Mum? If – if I don’t get a heart in time?’
Hayley stubs out her cigarette on the stone windowsill, a slow-motion grinding. There’s the smallest of shakes through her shoulders. When she turns back towards Ailsa, there are tears in her eyes. ‘I’ll take it a minute at a time, Ailsa.’
23 July, 2018
‘You’re nervous about this, aren’t you?’ Seb’s looking at her the way he does, sometimes, half scrutiny half love, and she feels more naked than when she’s naked.
‘Maybe. Why do you say so?’ It comes out more sharply than she intends, and she touches his arm in apology.
‘That’s the third time you’ve got changed this morning. That’s saying something.’
Ailsa sighs, throws herself down on the sofa next to him. ‘It’s saying your eye’s getting better?’
He laughs. ‘That’s more like it. But honestly, your blog isn’t cleverer than you are. And you know best.’
‘You sound like my mother.’ Just the thought of Hayley still hurts. Ailsa used to think it was anger, at being lied to all of those years. Maybe it was. Maybe she’s missing her. But if she thinks about that now it’ll all come apart.
‘Wilkie rang, while you were changing,’ Seb says. ‘Guess what?’
‘You’re the next James Bond? You’re doing panto?’
He laughs. ‘Well, make those into a Venn diagram and you’ve more or less got it. I’m doing StarDance again.’
‘Wow. Congratulations!’ And she means it, she really does, because the only way to be here, now, is to deal with future complications later.
‘Thanks, BlueHeart,’ he says, and then, ‘it’s funny. When I was first offered it last year, I thought it was all my Christmases come at once. Now I’m more excited about Love’s Labour’s Lost.’
‘And Romeo,’ she says.
‘No, I’m petrified about that.’
She has to check his face in case he’s joking, ‘Seriously? You’ve not said. You don’t seem scared.’
‘It’s not scared, exactly. It’s – tension. Build-up. I always get it. I used to be sick before the live shows for Wherefore Art Thou?. And StarDance. It’s OK when there isn’t a live audience. If you mess up a recording, you just go again.’
‘I always get nervous before the hospital. And the tango.’
Seb pulls her closer. ‘The hospital, I can see. But the tango? Because of the show, you mean?’
‘Not the show,’ Ailsa says, ‘just the dancing. I’m all right once it starts. But the second before, I feel . . .’ She stops, shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. It seems silly. It’s only dancing. And I love it, once it’s – once it’s happening.’
Seb squeezes her hand. ‘It’s the unknown. You think you know what’s going to happen. You’ve got the lines, the moves, whatever. But it could still all go wrong.’
‘That’s it.’ Ailsa leans her head in to him. It’s frightening/lovely that he should understand her so well.
‘Do you want me to walk you there?’ he asks.
She laughs. ‘Would you be able to fit on the pavement? Next to my larger-than-life curviness?’
They’ve been joking about the latest article. Seb’s right, it does get easier – and the fact that he’s here, and they are just the two of them, together, makes the spite and stupidity of yesterday’s newspaper story seem obvious. Not that it doesn’t sting. But it’s so obvious that the Seb in the press is not the Seb in her flat that she can joke about it with. And when she does, he does something like what he does now – grabs her, kisses her, says, ‘You’ve captured my sexy playboy heart, Ailsa Rae.’ She can cope with the tabloids, because what they say is just not true. ‘Seriously, though,’ he asks, ‘will you be OK?’
‘Yes.’ And in this moment, she knows that she will be – can be – OK. And it’s nothing to do with Apple, or having to be some kind of walking miracle all the damn time. She just knows that she’s strong enough to meet whatever it is that David brings to her life. And to keep on building the bridge with Hayley that started in Full of Beans two days ago, when she talked to Seb, and hugged Ailsa when she left. Ailsa lets her shoulders relax, and her eyes close, leaning back against him.
Seb kisses the top of her head and says, ‘I’ve said I don’t want Fenella as a partner.’
23 July, 2018
David is unmistakable, because he’s her: the breadth of his forehead, the colour of his eyes. Ailsa recognises the shape of his hand as he shakes her hand, rather awkwardly. She’d wondered if she’d be overcome when she saw him, cry or rush to hug him, but actually, an awkward handshake hits the mark.
‘Hello,’ she says. Her voice is steadier than she thinks it will be. Her heart is too, come to think of it. This man, on the other hand – half a head taller than her, broad-shouldered, paunchy, well-dressed – looks like anxiety personified.
‘Ailsa.’ He says it with the emphasis on the second syllable, as though she’s a magic spell. ‘Good to meet you.’
She’d proposed they meet at the floral clock, because everyone knows where that is, and it makes a walk the obvious thing to do. A sightseeing bus passes, and Ailsa can almost see herself and Seb on the back of the top deck. How far she’s come since then, with her job and her career plan, and getting used to her solo home. She puts her hand on her chest, as though that will stop Apple from reaching out for Hayley.
‘I always liked this clock,’ David says. ‘It’s clever, isn’t it?’ His accent is a sort of characterless English, free of stresses.
‘Yes.’ The floral clock used to be a wonder to her. She and Hayley used to come and look at the time, after milkshakes at the Rose Street cafe.
David nods. ‘They’ve used succulents, so there’s not a lot of maintenance. Nice and practical.’
‘If you wanted a practical clock, surely they wouldn’t make it out of flowers to begin with?’ Ailsa smiles to show that she isn’t being argumentative. This is a bit like her first day at work, striving to make the right impression.
David nods. ‘True enough.’
‘I thought it would be good to take a walk, and I have to make sure I get enough exercise.’ She’s not going to brush Apple under the carpet, as it were.
They set off, the sharply rising bank to Princes Street on their right, where there’s a mass of flowers in purples and yellows, silver and green foliage, thistles and heather and fern, all tumbled together in a sort of well-planned chaos. To their left, down the slope, are trees, more formal flowerbeds, and lawns peppered with people.
‘This must take some maintaining,’ David says.
‘There are always gardeners around,’ Ailsa replies. She looks at the path they are walking, a sort of pebbledash pavement, sees how one foot just keeps putting itself in front of another. She can do anything this way.
She looks at his shoes. They are dark grey, suede, the sort of shoes that are advertised in the back of the Sunday magazines she recycles at the ends of shifts. He’s wearing jeans and a polo shir
t and carrying a jacket. He looks – respectable. She eventually fixed on jeans, her silver plimsolls, the cloud-heart T-shirt and a cardigan that Tamsin gave her, royal blue and wrap-around, so almost a coat if it gets cool.
They make small talk: David’s journey, Ailsa’s job, the weather in Scotland (again), how distinctive the Edinburgh skyline is. Ailsa waits – wants – to feel something, the bond that she’s owed, her genes remembering this connection. Something that will justify how much she’s hurt her mother.
They pause at the war memorial to the Scottish dead of the Second World War. David reads the inscription aloud: ‘If it be life that waits, I shall live forever unconquered. If death, I shall die at last, strong in my pride and free.’ He stands for a moment, then glances at Ailsa – they aren’t looking at each other, much, yet. ‘Beautiful.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Ailsa says. ‘Death doesn’t seem so glorious when you’re looking it in the teeth.’
‘True enough.’ David seems to agree with everything. Ailsa thinks of Dennis, shaking his head and saying ‘owt for peace’ when Ruthie is trying to persuade him to do something. But when Dennis says it, it’s a joke.
She’s tired, all of a sudden, and sits on a bench. The plaque on the back commemorates Maisie Sietsema, nee Stirling, born in Edinburgh in 1919, died in Massachusetts in 1966. How far some people manage to go in their lives.
‘I said pleased to meet you, but it should really be: pleased to meet you again,’ David says when he’s settled himself next to her, with something that might be a chuckle. Ailsa reminds herself that they are both nervous.
‘I don’t remember the last time,’ she says.
‘I do,’ David says, shaking his head. ‘Awful. Awful. Who’d have thought it, to look at you now?’
Ailsa bites back the obvious response – that clearly he didn’t. She’s here, so she’ll make the best of it. ‘I’m fine now,’ she says. ‘Better every day.’
‘It’s been a while since I’ve been to Edinburgh,’ he says. Ailsa pushes her teeth together for a second to make sure she doesn’t say something sarcastic. ‘And it’s a lovely day for Scotland,’ he continues.
‘Uh-huh,’ Ailsa says. She gets up and sets off again, slowly, along the path. David follows.
‘So you’re well?’ he asks.
Ailsa nods. ‘As well as can be expected. I have a check-up every week. Things seem to be going to plan.’
‘Good,’ David says. He touches his hand to his chest. ‘I had a bit of a scare this year with mine. Thank goodness for private health insurance. I had all the tests in a week.’
‘So what’s wrong?’ Ailsa asks. Heart trouble isn’t her favourite icebreaker but it will do in a pinch.
David gives a laugh. ‘Well – funny story – it turns out it was indigestion! Terrible pain, though, right up my side, down my arm. Sweating like a pig. I thought my number was up.’
‘Indigestion?’ Ah, here come the feelings. Ailsa suddenly, viscerally, would like to be anywhere else in the world than here. But most especially on the train to Glasgow, to her mother.
‘I know.’ David laughs again. No, actually it’s a chortle. It’s the sound of a man who always has someone to hand to laugh at his jokes. ‘Gemma gave me such a going over. No more chilli con carne for me!’
Ailsa doesn’t say anything. She really, truly cannot think of a single word to offer. She can hear Apple, though, loud and clear: Seriously?
David steers her to a halt in front of a flower bed. ‘I’ve tried to grow these,’ he says, indicating – well, something, Ailsa has no idea what, but they’re yellow. ‘I think the soil is wrong where we are. Too loamy. This will be peatier, I should think.’
‘I’m not interested in gardening,’ Ailsa says. Politeness seems pointless.
‘You don’t have a garden?’
‘For a while back there,’ Ailsa says, ‘I would have fainted if I’d bent down, or stood up. But no, I don’t have a garden. Don’t you remember? I’ve a couple of window boxes.’
David looks straight into her face for the first time since the moment they met. ‘You aren’t still in that flat?’
‘I am,’ Ailsa says. ‘It’s a great flat. A great spot. And such a lot of memories for me and my mother.’
David makes a gesture of shoulder and eyebrow, a sort of, ‘I don’t agree but I won’t argue’, and Ailsa is horrified by both his easy dismissal of such an important place in her life and the fact that she recognises that gesture as her own. Or rather, one she’s inherited, it seems. No wonder it’s always irritated the hell out of her mother.
‘We’ve nearly an acre,’ he adds, ‘but Gemma’s keen, as well, so it’s a hobby for us both.’
‘That’s nice,’ Ailsa says, because she can’t think of another response.
‘I’m sorry,’ David says, ‘I’m not doing very well. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Why don’t you tell me why you were never in touch?’ Ailsa says. She’s worked hard to expect nothing, yet she’s disappointed by him. And envious – a real, ugly, pus-like feeling – of the younger son, with his rescued animals and all the support he needs to cope with dyslexia. Why was he different from Ailsa? Why did he get a puppy when she got distance and disinterest?
‘Well . . .’ David says, ‘I suppose – I suppose I had assumed that you had – had not survived. Your chances weren’t good.’
It’s horrible to hear him so cold and clear about it, even though she has always insisted on an unsentimental approach herself. She’s earned it. He hasn’t.
‘I know that,’ Ailsa says. ‘But I had a chance. I’m surprised you didn’t want to know. And did you not think my mother would have told you?’
David sighs. ‘She was angry with me. And,’ he holds up a finger, as though Ailsa might have been about to interrupt, ‘rightly so. I accept that. After what she did to my flat – I don’t know how much she’s told you . . .’
‘She told me everything.’ Ailsa is full of pride for Hayley, her bravery and her truth. The fact that she took so long to tell Ailsa everything doesn’t seem to matter so much.
That half shrug again. ‘Did she tell you it was my parents’ le Creuset that she took?’
Ailsa almost laughs. Or cries. How she’s messed things up. Why didn’t she trust her mother, who’s fought for her, whose judgement is almost always right?
‘Well, I did want to know what had happened to you,’ David says, with a rising inflection of defensiveness in his tone, ‘but it never seemed to be the right time to ask. You know how it is.’
‘Not really.’ She’s keeping her voice even, but her feelings aren’t quite so serene. ‘In my life, I’ve always had to do things when I could, because there might not be tomorrow.’
It’s as though she hasn’t spoken. ‘I thought I would give your mother some time to – to calm herself down. I thought she might get in touch after I sold the flat and gave her the money from it. But she didn’t. And then, once we had George . . .’ David says. He fumbles in his pocket. Ailsa fears he’s going to try to show her some family photographs. She’s ignored a Facebook friend request from David until she met him. But he takes out a handkerchief, takes off his glasses, and polishes the lenses. He might be avoiding her scrutiny, but she has nothing to lose.
‘You were too busy?’
‘No, no,’ he seems genuinely distressed, ‘not at all! I often thought I should find out what had happened to you. I just never –’
‘Never got around to it?’
He looks straight into her face. It’s strange, how his eyes are her eyes. ‘Even though I thought you probably hadn’t survived, I didn’t want to know for sure. I wasn’t – I wasn’t ready for that. I know that seems ridiculous. I do know how badly I let you and your mother down, Ailsa. I’m not proud.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. I don’t think you have any idea how badly you let us down, though. Not really.’
They walk on. Ailsa imagines him with Gemma and her three sisters, a
nd their husbands and children, not the perfect family but a cauldron of disagreements and unresolved arguments.
He takes a breath. ‘Ailsa, I’ve no excuse. I did badly by you and your mother, and you both deserved better. Then when your message came, well, I thought it was a chance. I was so glad that you were alive.’
‘It hasn’t been easy.’
‘I do know that, Ailsa. Especially when I read your blog. You’ve been lucky.’
Oh, no, no. Ailsa already knows – and Apple is in perfect accord – that she never needs to see this man again, and needs to get away from him before he starts trying to include her in his sprawling family, the half sister/stepdaughter back from the dead. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to let him get away with that.
‘Lucky and determined. It’s been hard work. Plus, my mother has been amazing. She never gave up.’ The emphasis comes out on the ‘she’. Ailsa doesn’t care.
‘Maybe lucky was a poor choice of word. I suppose I’ve always been risk averse by nature. Your mother pulled me out of that for a while. But when the chips were down – well, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. I think you must understand that, though?’
‘Why?’ Ailsa asks. (Yes. Why? Apple echoes.) If she has sacrificed her relationship with her mother for this man, she will never forgive herself. Oh, she wants to cry, enough tears to flood her heart and wash her eyes away.
‘Well, your blog. When I saw your polls, I thought: now that’s my daughter. It’s always good to canvass opinions, isn’t it? Take a consensus. That’s what Gemma and I like to do. There’s no excuse for rashness in this day and age.’
Ailsa starts to walk more quickly, as though speed will lessen the impact of this body blow. She doesn’t much care if David keeps pace with her, but he does.
‘Ailsa?’
‘I’m not so sure it is a good thing, actually,’ she says. ‘Sometimes you trust your gut, don’t you? Or – or your heart. I mean – if you asked a hundred people whether you should abandon your child because she has a heart problem, I imagine a hundred per cent of the vote would say no, don’t do that. But you did it.’
The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae Page 26