by Jenny Colgan
‘No, you can’t do that,’ said the caller. ‘No arse painting.’
‘You CANNOT say ARSE on the radio!’ shouted Fergus suddenly, his face going puce. ‘I mean, that word. I’d just like to apologise to all our listeners there for ah, having to put up with that when you were hoping for a nice golf chat, and…’
Nigel gestured furiously from behind the glass.
‘And no, we are NOT taking another call. We’re playing “Suck ’em and See” by Nelly!’
Nigel gestured on regardless. Meanwhile, Fergus started making signs to Katie to get up and leave, and started the music.
The music started quietly, and suddenly a new voice crackled into the studio.
‘I’m frae Buchan, and I just wanted to say tae the lassie, that me and all the lads in the rugby team will show our arses painted blue if she’ll show us her arse first…’
The rugby player from Buchan was cut off as quickly as he began, and the music pushed up louder.
‘I have NEVER in my born days!’ raged Fergus, standing up and taking a big swig from his cup.
Katie leaped up and fumbled for her bag.
‘I hope you’re happy, lassie. Now I’m going to have arses on the phone from here until Tuesday.’
‘Good,’ said Katie. ‘Maybe it will teach you to do your research.’
And she skipped out of the door.
Both of them were hysterical and prattling all the way to the car.
‘I thought his head was going to burst!’ yelped Katie.
‘You have no idea what Nigel was saying about him in the booth,’ said Iain. ‘And you never want to.’
‘Oh God. That was exactly as bad as I thought it was going to be.’ Katie realised her hands were shaking as she got to the car.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Iain, pointing across the road to a bus shelter, where a man was holding a portable radio. He was waving at them, and as they both turned their attention on him, he turned around and started unbuttoning his trousers.
‘We’ve created a monster!’
Katie opened the car window to get a little air. She felt exhilarated. OK, it hadn’t been ideal, but she’d managed to say her piece, and cause a little incident – which Iain of course would write up…and Harry had called in, and all in all it could just about have been called a success.
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Iain. ‘Are you thinking about how great you are and how well that went?’
‘No!’
‘A little bit?’
‘Little bit.’
‘How do you want me to describe you in the paper?’
She eyed him flirtatiously. ‘How about “gorgeous ravishing sex goddess”?’
‘I was thinking more “arse-obsessed publicity tart”.’
‘That’ll do.’
She went back to staring out of the window and a silence fell, but it was suddenly a silence that crackled with tension. She was very conscious of his presence beside her, his strong hand on the gear stick as they planed down the country lanes. Although it was after eight, it was still broad daylight.
‘What do you want to do now?’ Iain asked. ‘Not that…I mean, if you want to do anything.’
‘Sure,’ said Katie, fighting back a grin and the urge to put her hand on his knee. Hard to get, she told herself sternly. Think poise and grace. On no account think of not having had sex for months or that he’s gorgeous or that you’re wearing your best knickers, thus proving her a subconscious tart.
‘Well, there’s the Mermaid or…no, hang on, I’m sure they’ve just opened a really cool cocktail bar.’
‘Really?’
‘No. Mermaid or nothing.’
Katie was about to suggest a quiet drink at her place until she remembered she shared a room, and occasionally a bed, with the stuttering banshee of Kentish Town, and lived under the roof of someone who resembled those nuns who looked tough in The Sound of Music before suddenly bursting into song and hiding car parts from the Nazis.
She then considered suggesting they go to his place, just to see the look on his face.
‘What are you grinning at?’ demanded Iain.
‘I’m not grinning! I’m just looking forward to my vodka and tonic at the Mermaid.’
‘Well, if it isn’t the conquering heroes!’ said Lachlan, peering over the bar and turning down the radio as they slipped in out of the wind. The rest of the occupants turned to look at them, and waved or raised a glass.
‘Would you like to see our arses now, or later, then? Only, I’d have to stand up on the bar, and I just cleaned it.’
‘That’s bollocks,’ said Iain.
‘No, no, I’d do it.’
‘I mean, you never clean your bar. Two vodka and tonics please. I think I’ll leave the car here.’
‘On the house,’ said Lachlan. ‘We’re going to stop these outside bastards, and it was good to hear you sticking it to them up in the big town.’
It took a second for Katie to realise that by ‘the big town’ he meant Ullapool.
‘Wouldn’t you like lots of new folk in here?’ she asked. ‘It’d be good for business.’
‘I’d shoot them with my gun,’ said Lachlan, in the same jolly tone he used for everything else. ‘Unless they were lassies of course.’ And he gave her a winning smile.
Once they’d settled themselves in the corner furthest away from Dougie Magnusson’s accordion playing, it became suddenly awkward between them. After all, Katie was rationalising to herself, it was kind of their third date, and he’d seen her crying in a right state and didn’t seem too repulsed, and she still found him more than a bit dreamy. Quite a lot dreamy, in fact. She gulped her vodka and tonic.
Iain wasn’t doing much better. He was trying to stop himself sweating by thought power alone, a hard trick to pull off at the best of times, and worse when you’re sitting between a roaring fire, an accordionist and forty men, who’ve known you since you were a child, watching your every move. He wished he’d chosen another pub – there were plenty in Ullapool, although you wouldn’t necessarily walk out with all your teeth. He looked at Katie, who was grinning at him, and slurping her drink. Oh God. He hated to think of all those swish city types she’d been with, who’d have wined and dined her and, well, the rest. He was conscious that his hands were clammy. He took another slug of his drink.
Ohmigod, he was knocking it back. That meant he must be thinking what she was thinking, thought Katie. If it was just a casual pint, he wouldn’t wipe his hands on his shirt like that, would he? She hoped he wasn’t really really nervous. She understood that blokes get nervous, of course, but they were meant not to show it, otherwise it was a bit of a turn-off. Women needed to feel they were completely relaxed and being looked after, which couldn’t really happen when somebody was fumbling and knocking their head into your teeth and constantly asking you if everything was all right. What you really needed was to be swept off your feet and not to have to think at all…she took a large swallow.
‘Another drink?’ Iain asked.
‘Yes,’ said Katie.
He got them large ones.
Two vodka and tonics later, and they were ready. They were relaxed enough not to worry about the consequences, and were chatting away quite normally about childhood pets, if laughing a bit too loudly and deliberately not eating any breath-destroying crisps, even though they were both starving. Iain didn’t feel nervous any more, just excited, and very horny. He’d watched a lot of TV through the long winter nights. He wondered if she was one of those girls he’d learned about who’d gone back to pretending they were born-again virgins and you had to buy them jewellery and stuff in exchange for sex, which struck him as incredibly distasteful. On the other hand, girls like that didn’t tend to settle for a few drinks in the Mermaid, or at least he wouldn’t have thought so, if he’d ever met any like that, which he hadn’t.
Katie was thinking that this would be a very good time to get this show on the road, to hit her window of opport
unity. It was difficult to judge, so she wanted to get a move on, prompted by finding herself applauding Dougie’s rendition of the Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon.
As if reading her mind, the conversation suddenly stuttered to a halt.
‘Uh, um…’ started Iain. ‘Would you like to take a walk?’
‘Why not!’ said Katie, in what she hoped was a careless and breezy fashion. She hoped ‘a walk’ meant ‘back to my flat’ and not ‘let’s get down in the dunes’. It was nippy out there.
Actually, at first it was nice and cool outside after the warmth of the pub. They both felt somewhat relieved. As if it was a natural thing to do, Katie slipped her hand through Iain’s arm. It felt good there; right. The feel of his warm body this close reminded her of how long it had been since she’d just felt close to someone, unless you counted Louise, which she most certainly didn’t.
‘Do you think you’ll stay here for ever?’ she asked softly as they strolled down to the waterfront.
Iain looked around. ‘Um, I don’t know. I think so…I mean, look how beautiful it is. I don’t know how I’d cope in Glasgow or Edinburgh…I may seem like a pretty relaxed guy…’
In fact, he was doing an impression of being anything but relaxed at the moment, but Katie knew what he meant,
‘But I get…intimidated quite easily.’
He said this staring at the ground, and Katie understood suddenly how hard it must have been for him to stand up to his dad. He was a shy thing really.
‘Sorry, that wasn’t very rugged, was it? I should say, I’m a crazy sex god scared of nothing and nobody.’
‘Well, it’s patently obvious you’re that too,’ said Katie. He smiled. Despite its warmth, Katie was starting to feel the cold.
‘Where do you live?’ she asked suddenly. It was a reasonable question, wasn’t it? And even if it wasn’t, didn’t men appreciate a bit of directness?
‘Well, funny you should ask,’ said Iain. ‘We’re, um, kind of standing in front of it.’
‘Oh.’
‘Cof…?’
‘Yes please.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘I’m sorry,’ Iain was saying, again.
‘It’s fine,’ Katie was saying, again. The problem was, it was fine, until Iain started apologising over and over again, with which it was becoming less fine.
‘Honestly, it’s flattering, really.’
And it was quite endearing, in a ‘here we all are back at university’ type of a way. After all, she already knew there weren’t a lot of women up here. So. They would wait a little while and try again. She looked around at his tiny house. It was an incredibly sweet little fisherman’s cottage, painted blue, with wooden floors and only two small rooms downstairs and a little bedroom and a little bathroom upstairs. It looked out onto the bay and was perfectly charming in every way, although when she’d mentioned it, Iain had thanked her and then said that when families of eight used to live in it, it probably wasn’t quite so charming, and she’d agreed. Then they’d sipped (horrible) coffee and skirted around the issue, then he’d moved towards her and she’d looked into those huge green eyes and reciprocated as hard as she could.
But when they’d finally moved it to the bedroom things had got a little bit sticky, not helped by a long hunt for a condom (eventually found in a dusty pile in the cupboard under the sink, along with Imodium, Preparation H and probably about a million other things Iain wasn’t quite delighted with her seeing at this particular stage in their relationship). After this, things had gone downhill, with Iain having problems first one, slightly wobbly way, then, after some anguish, and in a terrible rush, the other.
Katie’s response to this in the past had always been to ignore it completely and start again as soon as possible, but Iain was clearly not about to let it lie.
‘I mean, it’s just been so long…’
‘Shh,’ said Katie. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s usually crap first time round…’
‘Was it that crap?’ asked Iain, his eyes widening.
‘Argh! Shh, OK? We can try again, can’t we?’ She caressed his lovely face, but it looked petulant.
‘Actually, I’ve got to get up really early.’
‘Oh, Iain, you don’t want me to go, do you? I’ll never sneak into Mrs McClockerty’s and it’s not like I could get a taxi.’
‘Uh, no, of course not.’
They tried to settle down onto the old-fashioned wooden bed, but if there’s something more difficult than getting to sleep with a near stranger with whom you’ve just completed an unsatisfactory sexual experience, it’s probably in the Olympics.
‘Goodnight then,’ said Katie, desperately wishing she’d had the foresight to bring a pair of pyjamas – she hated sleeping naked.
‘Goodnight,’ said Iain, snuffling down beside her with his head in the opposite direction.
Well, this hadn’t gone quite as well as she had hoped, thought Katie. She contemplated going home once more, but she didn’t want to make the lad feel even worse, and it was freezing out there. Maybe just put it down to experience that just because someone is nice and charming and takes you out to dinner and makes you laugh, and cheers you up when you’re sad…
Iain was also lying wide-awake, cursing himself as a fucking useless idiot who couldn’t do anything without screwing it up. His dad was right, he thought, ruefully, even if his dad was usually hollering about other things; family businesses and cities and pulling himself together.
Katie lying there was just reminding him what a twat he’d been – he could just imagine her telling her stupid gobby mate tomorrow and them having a good laugh about how crap men were, just like that stupid programme where all the men had been rich useless cocksuckers and the women had just talked about shoes and eaten ice cream for half an hour. He should stop watching it, it was making him more confused than ever. Lying in the dark next to someone who thinks you’re useless is perhaps the loneliest place on earth to be. Which is why, when Katie slowly snuck a hand under his arm and around his chest, he took it. And eventually, they both fell into an uneasy slumber.
Katie dashed into the shower the next morning – dashing, she’d decided, was absolutely the best way to forestall any conversation, by pretending they were both so super busy they’d have to have it later. Unfortunately, Iain had adopted the same tactic, which was slightly tricky in the tiny house, as they kept nearly bumping heads with each other.
‘Well, we must do this again some time,’ said Katie, feet on the stairs. She wished immediately she’d phrased it differently, as it sounded as though she’d said, ‘can we meet up again for crappy sex?’ whereas, what she’d actually meant was ‘can we have another chance, because I really like you and think this is a minor blip’.
‘Yeah, really,’ said Iain in a carefree tone, which sounded as though he was saying, ‘I’d rather eat my table’, but by which he actually meant, ‘if we could magically erase the night before, honestly I’d really like to see you’.
Neither meaning came across.
‘Call me,’ said Katie, finally, then she immediately wanted to bite her tongue off. She’d cast the evil spell on men; the two magic words that made it impossible for men ever to call you, even men out here in the wild!
Katie switched on her ansaphone at work; she was madly early. There were three messages. The first was from Harry, completely exultant at his brilliant disguise. She couldn’t help but smile; he was telling her it was him in case she hadn’t noticed. The second was from Louise, expressing the idea that they maybe should tell each other where they were going in future, because if she was dead in a ditch somewhere, everyone would blame her, Louise, and she’d have to besmirch the dead Katie’s name by insinuating that she was out having sex somewhere with some journalist. And the third was from Radio Scotland, asking her to come in for an interview.
Suddenly, she felt perky, rather than disappointed and slightly seedy (and ravenously hungry). This was going to be fine. She could handle anything.
And if Iain wasn’t interested, he was being an idiot.
‘Hey,’ said Harry. He didn’t seem to have the slightest interest in where she’d been, or why she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday; he just seemed pleased to see her. ‘Lots to do!’
‘Give me your sandwich,’ said Katie.
‘What?’
‘I can’t start work without your sandwich. I missed breakfast.’
‘Aunt S getting too much for you?’
‘Something like that. Sandwich.’
Harry felt in his briefcase. ‘You’re going to have to answer to Francis. Do you want some of that weird coffee you like?’
‘Yes please.’
Sure enough, as soon as she unwrapped the sandwiches, Francis slinked up from the radiator he was snoozing under and sat at her feet politely until she gave him half.
‘What are you doing?’ shouted Katie to Harry. ‘You’re not supposed to spoon the coffee straight into the cups! It’ll taste horrible!’
‘I thought that was the point,’ said Harry, handing over the foil packet. ‘And what am I going to have for lunch now?’
‘Well, that doesn’t matter to me,’ said Katie. ‘Because I’m going to Inverness to be on the radio.’
‘The what?’
‘You heard. They want me on BBC Scotland. Which is practically national when you think about it.’
‘What do you mean practically? That’s fantastic!’ said Harry delightedly. ‘It must have been the phone-in I did that did it.’
‘Probably,’ said Katie. ‘They made me promise not to say “arse”.’
‘Can I come?’
‘I thought you had tons and tons to do.’
‘Well, Derek can handle a lot of it, can’t you Derek?’
‘Yes boss,’ said Derek, popping up with a happy smile then disappearing into his cubbyhole again.
‘Your secretary has a crush on you,’ said Katie severely. She might as well have knocked him on the head.
‘What, don’t…what on earth…’