by Karina Halle
A few moments pass. “You know,” he says, “we’re not going to have any.”
I glance at him. “Have any what?”
“Kids,” he says. He shakes his head. “We discussed it, but…she’s not sold on the idea and to be honest, neither am I. A kid with my genes…isn’t very fair.”
I have to say, I’m surprised to hear Lachlan say this, only because of the intensity of his love for Kayla. On the other hand, I’m not surprised to hear her stance on it. Kayla has all the maternal instincts of a rattlesnake. I mean that in the nicest way.
“Well, that’s too bad,” I tell him, “because genes or no genes, I think you’d make a wonderful father. A far better one than I ever was, that’s for sure.” I sigh, pinching my eyes shut for a moment. When I open them, we’re pulling up to the airport. “But you do what is right for you. If you don’t want them, don’t have them. The last thing the world needs is another child that isn’t wanted. You and Kayla have your dogs and each other and very busy lives. It’s enough. Believe me.”
“I’m pretty sure Jessica is going to lose her mind when she finds out,” Lachlan says, calling our mother by her name as he usually does. He pulls the car up to the Departures curb. “I’m her last chance at grandchildren.”
“She had a grandchild,” I snap, the words pouring out like poison. My blood thumps loudly in my ears. “His name was Hamish.”
Images of Hamish fly past me. Ice blue eyes, reddish hair. A big smile. Always asking, “Why? Why dada?” He was only two when he was taken from me. He would be nearly six years old now. I always looked forward to him getting into school. I knew his curiosity would lead him to bigger and better things. Though I wasn’t in love with Miranda at the end, I was in love with my boy. And even when I had the selfish nerve of dreaming of a different life for myself, he was always my first concern.
It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.
Lachlan is staring at me, wide-eyed, remorse wrinkling his brow. “Brigs,” he says, voice croaking. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
I quickly shake my head, trying to get the anger out of me. “It’s fine. I’m sorry. I just…I know what you meant. It’s been a long day and I just need to go home and get some sleep.”
He nods, frowning in shame. “I get it.”
I exhale loudly and then try to perk up. “Well, time to go through security hell. Thanks for the ride, Lachlan.” I reach over into the backseat and grab my bag before getting out of the car.
“Brigs,” he says again before I close the door, leaning across the seat to look at me. “Seriously. Take care of yourself in London. If you need anything for any reason, just call me.”
The fist in my chest loosens. I’m a grown man. I wish he didn’t worry so much about me. I wish I didn’t feel like I needed it.
I give him a wave and go on my way.
***
All the radio announcers keep yammering on about is how beautiful the weekend was, a real extended summer with record-breaking temperatures and searing sunshine. Of course it happens on the weekend I’m in Scotland, and of course as I get ready for this Monday, it’s pissing buckets outside.
I eye myself in the hallway mirror and give myself a discerning once-over. I’m wearing a suit today, steel grey, light grey shirt underneath, no tie. Last week was all about making the students feel comfortable—I was in dress shirts and jeans, T-shirts and trousers, but this week is about cracking down. Some of the students in my classes are my age, so I’ve got to at least look like I mean business, even though I’ve got dog hair on my shoulders.
My gaze travels to Winter sitting on the floor by the couch, thumping his tail when we make eye contact, and back to the mirror. He’s calm for now, but when I leave I know he’s going to treat my flat like a gymnasium. Thank god for Shelly, my dog walker. She was watching him over the weekend too and fusses over him like an unruly child.
I smooth my hair back and peer at the grey strands at my temples. I’m wearing it fairly short these days. Thankfully I’ve put all my weight back on, so I don’t look like the weakling I did before. I’ve been at the gym most mornings, working hard all summer to get back into shape, and it’s finally paying off. After the accident and my consequent meltdown (or, as my old job called it before they let me go, my “mental diversion,” as if what happened to me could be so neatly explained, like a detour on the road), I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t living. It wasn’t until I found the courage to see a doctor, to get help and finally stay with it, that I crawled out of the ashes.
I’d like to say it all feels like a blur to me, the years at the bottom of the spiral, the world around me bleak, guilt and hatred sticking to me like tar. But I remember it all vividly. In horrible, exquisite detail. Maybe that’s my punishment, my shackles for my crimes.
I knew that falling in love was a crime.
I deserve all the punishment I can get.
And what’s worst of all is how on some nights, the darkest ones when I feel how alone I really am, how badly my choices have tipped the world on its axis, I think about her.
Not Miranda.
I think about her.
Natasha.
I think about the reason my judgement became skewed, the reason why I chose my own personal happiness over my family’s. I think about the first time I really fell in love. It wasn’t a stumble into comfort and complacency, like it had been with Miranda. It was cliff-jumping without a parachute, bungee jumping with no cord. I knew, I knew, the moment I laid my eyes on Natasha, that I was gone and there wasn’t a single thing to hold me in place.
You’d think that memories of love would feel just like the real thing, but these memories never feel anything like love. Love is good. Love is kind. Patient. Pure.
So they say.
Our love was a mistake from the start. A beautiful, life-rendering mistake.
Even if I did let myself remember—feel—what it was like to look into her eyes, to hear those words she once so softly whispered, it would do me no good. That love destroyed so much. It destroyed me and I let it willingly tear me apart. And then I destroyed every last good thing in my life.
Memories of love are a poison.
My therapist told me that I have to embrace it. Acknowledge that people fall in love all the time with people they aren’t supposed to, that I was swept away and lost control for once in my life, and no matter what, I can’t blame myself for Miranda and Hamish’s death. It was bad timing. It was an accident. People get divorced every day and it doesn’t end that way.
It’s just hard to believe that when none of it would have happened if I hadn’t let myself fall in love with another woman. It wouldn’t have happened had I not told Miranda that night that I wanted a divorce. They’d still be alive. And I wouldn’t be the archaic ruins of a man.
And Natasha is gone, even if the memories remain. In my deep, near suicidal grief, I told her that we had been a mistake and this was our punishment. I told her I never wanted to see her again.
It’s been four years now. She listened.
I sigh and observe my expression. I do seem haunted, as Lachlan says. My eyes seem colder, iceberg blue, the dark shadows underneath. Lachlan doesn’t know the truth though, only my therapist does. Natasha is a secret, a lie, to everyone else.
I paste on a smile that looks more like a wolf’s grin, straighten my shoulders, and walk out the door, umbrella and briefcase in hand.
My flat is on Baker Street, right across from the Sherlock Holmes Museum. In fact, when I’m particularly despondent, I spend a few hours just watching the tourists lining up to go inside. One of the reasons I picked the flat was the novelty of this. Growing up, I was a huge fan of Holmes, as well as anything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cooked up. I’m also quite fond of the pub next door. It’s a great place to pick up women, and if they’ve just come from the museum, then you know they at least have some kind of a brain.
Not that I’ve shared more than a few drinks with these girls—I’m ma
inly there for the company. Then they go on their merry drunk way and I’m ever the gentleman, the man she’ll text her friends about and say “Scottish men are so well-mannered. He bought me a drink and didn’t expect anything.” Though sometimes it does end in the bedroom. The truth is, I’m not ready for dating. I’m not ready for relationships. I’m barely ready for this job.
But you are ready, I tell myself as I dodge the rain and head down into the tube, taking the passageway across to my line. This week I will set the goals for the semester; this week I’ll let the students know what to expect. This week I’ll finally start working on my book: The Tragic Clowns: Comedic Performance in Early American Cinema.
As my thoughts jumble together, I realize the train is about to close its doors. I run half-heartedly toward it, then stop dead in my tracks.
There is a woman on the train, her back to the closing doors.
I can only see her from the shoulders up.
Her hair is thick, half-wet, honey blonde, and trailing down her back.
There’s nothing about this girl that says I should recognize her. Know her.
Yet somehow I do.
Maybe not as a blonde, but I swear I do.
I walk right up to the doors as the train pulls away, staring like a madman as it roars down into the dark tunnel, willing the woman to turn her head even a little bit. But I never see her face, and then she’s gone, and I’m standing on the edge of the platform, left behind.
“Next train shouldn’t be long,” a man says from behind me, strolling past with a newspaper in his hand.
“Aye,” I say absently. I run my hand over my head, shaking sense into myself.
It wasn’t her.
How can you know someone by the back of their head?
Because you spent months memorizing every inch of her that you couldn’t touch, I think. Your eyes did what your hands and mouth and dick couldn’t.
I exhale and stroll away from the edge. The last thing I need is to start the week like this, looking for ghosts where there aren’t any.
I wait for the next train, get off at Charing Cross as usual, and walk to school.
CHAPTER TWO
Natasha
Edinburgh
Four Years Ago
“Natasha, do you have a moment? There’s a Brigs McGregor here to see you.”
“Brigs who?” I ask into the phone. “Is that a first name?” The line crackles and I can barely hear my supervisor Margaret. That’s what they get for sticking me in a closet upstairs and calling it an office. Obviously they were so eager to have an intern here, busting her ass and working for free, that they’d make an office out of anything. I’m grateful I don’t have to type on a toilet.
“Just come downstairs,” Margaret says before hanging up the phone.
I sigh and blow a wayward strand of hair out of my eyes. I’m piled knee-deep in script submissions which should have been the highlight of this job, but since ninety percent of these submissions for the short film festival suck, my days have become exceedingly tedious.
When I first applied for the internship for the Edinburgh Short Film Festival, I thought it would be a good way to get extra experience before heading into my final year of my Master’s degree, especially as I’m targeting my thesis toward the influence of festivals on feature films. At least, I think that’s my thesis. I also thought getting out of London for the summer and checking out Edinburgh would be a nice change of pace, especially from all the dickheads I keep hanging around with at school.
And while I guess those things are true—I am getting good material for my thesis, and I am loving Edinburgh—I didn’t expect to be the company’s little slave girl. Not that I’m little, not with these hips and ass that can barely fit in this damn closet-cum-office, but I’m literally scrambling around from eight in the morning to seven at night, and sometimes I think I’m running the whole show by myself. For example, now they’ve put me on script submissions for the contest they have going (the winning script gets all the equipment to shoot it), and they expect me to pick the winner. While I’m flattered with the responsibility, I’m not sure it should fall into my hands.
I’m also not surprised there’s some man here to see me, because any time a filmmaker comes in with a proposal or a question or wanting to work with us somehow, they always shuffle them off to see me. I’ve only been here for three weeks and I’m supposed to act like I know everything.
Luckily, I’m pretty good at acting. I mean, at least back in Los Angeles I was.
I get up and leave the office, walking down the narrow hallway with its rock walls and wood floors, before going down the stairs to the main level and reception where Margaret is busy typing on her computer. She stops her flying fingers and nods at the seats by the door, below the range of shitty movie posters.
“This is Professor McGregor from the University of Edinburgh,” she says before going back to work.
A man stands up from the seats and smiles at me.
He’s tall and broad-shouldered, in a black dress shirt and jeans.
Handsome as hell, all cut jaw with the right amount of stubble, high cheekbones and piercing, pale blue eyes.
The kind of handsome that depletes your brain cells.
“Hello,” he says, walking toward me with his hand out.
His smile is blindingly white and absolutely devilish.
“Brigs,” he says to me as I place my hand in his.
His grip is warm and strong.
“You must be Natasha,” he continues.
Right. This is the part where I speak.
“Y-yes,” I stammer, and immediately curse myself for sounding less than poised. “Sorry, I was distracted by…Brigs, you say? That’s an interesting name.”
That’s an interesting name? Man, I’m winning today.
But he laughs and that smile grows wider.
“Yes, well my parents obviously had high hopes for me. Listen, can I have a minute of your time?”
I glance over at Margaret. “Sure. Margaret, is there a room free?”
She shakes her head, not looking up. Usually I have meetings in any of the other offices.
“Okay, well then.” I give Brigs an apologetic look. “Follow me. We’ll have to use my office, and I apologize ahead of time because it’s literally a closet. They keep me like Rapunzel up there.”
I walk down the hall and up the stairs, shooting him a glance over my shoulder to make sure he’s following. I expect him to be looking at my ass because it’s pretty much in his face, and it’s the largest thing in the building, but instead he’s looking right at me, as if he was expecting to meet my eyes.
“Here we are,” I tell him when we reach the top, stepping inside my office and squeezing between the edge of the desk and the wall. I sit down on my chair with a sigh.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” he says, hunched over so his head doesn’t smash into the ceiling. “Is there maybe a bucket I could sit on?”
I jerk my head at the stool that’s currently covered by scripts. “If you want to pass me those screenplays.”
He starts piling them on my desk, and takes a seat, long legs splayed.
I peer at him over the pile and give him my most charming smile. I really wish I had bothered to look at myself in the mirror before meeting him. I probably have kale in my teeth.
“So, how can I help you Professor McGregor?”
“Brigs.” That smile again.
“Brigs,” I say, nodding. “Oh, and let me preface our conversation by letting you know I am an intern, and I’ve only been here three weeks and I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“An intern?” he asks, rubbing his hand along his jaw. “Not from my program.”
“I go to school in London.”
“Kings College?”
“No, I wish. I couldn’t afford it.”
“Ah, international student fees. Are you Canadian? American?”
“You mean I don’t sound British?” I joke. “I’
m American. And yeah, the fees were too much, even though I have a French passport from my father’s side, though that only went through this year. Anyway, I’m rambling. Sorry. I go to Met for film. It was slightly cheaper.”
He nods. “Fine school.”
“That’s a very diplomatic teacher answer.”
“And I’m a diplomatic teacher.”
God, to have a student-teacher affair with him. But I’m twenty-five and he looks like he’s in his early to mid-thirties, so it wouldn’t be all that scandalous and…
My thoughts trail off when I catch sight of his wedding ring for the first time.
Oh.
Well, that figures.
Still, I can stare at him, married or not.
“So, what brings you here?” I manage to say.
“Well, it’s funny,” he says, running his hand through his mahogany hair. “I came here for one reason, and now I have two.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Okay.”
“One reason is that our program at school has trouble competing with the bigwigs down in London, so we decided that perhaps sponsorship of the film festival would give us the right exposure at the right place. In the end, there can only be so many winners, and when the festival is over and the failed filmmakers want to quit, that’s when we want to steal them, take advantage of their low self-esteem, and bring them into our program.”
I purse my lips. “That’s a very pessimistic way of looking at things.”
“I’m a realist,” he says brightly.
“An opportunist.”
“Same thing.”
Well, we could actually use some more sponsors. “All right, well I’ll have to run this past Margaret and Ted, but I think this is something we’d like to work with you on. What’s the other thing?”
“You come work for me.”
“Excuse me?”
He looks around the closet office, squinting his eyes at a wet spot on the ceiling where it leaks when it rains (and it rains all the time. I actually have a bucket just for that). “You seem like a bright girl. I’m starting to write my book and I need a research assistant.”