“Guid boy!” exclaims its owner, a shaved-headed young man bustling over with a plastic bag wrapped round his hand.
“Ugh, foul,” Plum says, turning away pointedly as we reach the end of the park and promptly double back on ourselves, taking a couple of steps down a steep drop again—
And then I see what at first I think is another little park, green and lush, sloping away to a stunning view beyond. I gasp in appreciation of the sight, which is framed by two high stone pillars. Gateposts. A sign on the right-hand one says NO ACCESS TO LOWER CALTON ROAD, but someone—doubtless a boy—has scrawled over it in marker pen, CREEPY CORNER. A huge iron gate gapes open beyond the pillars, outlining a wide stone path that leads into—
“It’s a cemetery!” Taylor breathes. “Oh wow!”
She’s darted past Plum and the other girls, who have stopped to light up cigarettes, and is through the gate already, walking down the path, looking around in wonder.
“Scarlett!” she calls. “Come look at this!”
“She really likes cemeteries, right?” Ewan says, grinning at me as we follow Taylor inside.
I grin in response. There’s something very charming about Ewan. He’s definitely good-looking, with those dark red springy curls and that attractively bony face, but even if he weren’t, the charm would still be there; it comes from his energy, which is bouncy and irrepressible and hugely positive.
“Taylor’s not, like, a huge goth or anything,” I say. “I think a lot of it’s the history. You know what Americans are like. They go mental for anything that’s a few hundred years old.”
“They’re like little houses!” Taylor exclaims, openmouthed, staring at the tombs. The cemetery has plenty of burial stones, huge and imposing in carved gray granite, but it’s also lined with tombs that really are like tiny one-room houses, with high walls and open doorways you can walk through. Just the sky above for a roof, and earth for a floor.
“The burying place of Alexander Henderson, Merchant, Edinburgh,” Taylor reads, looking up at the lintel of one. She walks inside to study a stone plaque affixed to one of the walls. “And here’s the names of the rest of his family. Where are they all?”
Ewan points to the ground we’re standing on.
“Under here,” he says cheerfully.
“Buried or cremated?” Taylor asks, looking at the packed earth with its loose topping of gravel.
“I dunno,” he says. “Want to dig down and try to find out?”
She laughs at this.
“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I ask a lot of questions.”
“No worries,” he says easily. “Hey, do you two like to climb stuff?”
Taylor and I exchange amused glances.
“You have no idea who you’re talking to,” I say.
The cemetery falls away in an almost sheer drop down the side of the hill; Edinburgh seems to be built on nothing but one hill after another. Stunning views of Holyrood, the Parliament, and the near-mountain beyond are spread out before us like a perfect postcard photo as Ewan leads us down the slope. We vault over tombstones, feet sinking into the lush green grass, jump up and down a series of stone steps that lead up to a whole array of tombs, one after the other, like a miniature terrace of houses.…
“It’s like people could live here!” Taylor marvels, but I’m focused on our destination: a turret, three stories high, almost in the far corner of the walled cemetery, wide and fat with a castellated top. Tilting my head back, squinting into the clouded sunshine, I see that there’s a metal staircase running round the top story, but it doesn’t seem to reach down to the ground.
“You can sort of climb up onto that tomb next to it and jump over,” Ewan’s saying. “There’s a trick we found. It’s not too hard. I’ll show you— Oh.”
He’s staring, mouth agape, at Taylor, who’s already scaling the side of the turret, finding a series of hand- and footholds in the open brickwork.
“Jesus,” he says devoutly.
“She does a bit of rock climbing with her family,” I say. “In the holidays.”
I dart a glance sideways to see if he’s put off by how good Taylor is; I know sometimes boys don’t like it when you can do physical stuff really easily. Jase threw a fit when he heard I’d ridden his motorbike, even though he did say I was amazing afterward.
“Will you look at her go,” Ewan marvels as Taylor swings one leg onto the top wall of the tomb beside the turret, hauls herself up, and climbs onto the metal staircase.
This is one of the reasons I love Taylor. It would never, in a million years, occur to her to pretend she couldn’t manage something, or let a boy show her how to do it, just to get him to like her. It simply isn’t in her DNA.
“Coming?” he says to me, already round the side of the tomb, where a big piece of projecting stone forms a sort of step we can climb onto. “Unless you’re going to go all Spider-Man like her.”
I grin.
“No, she’s better at that stuff than me,” I admit.
I can’t help looking back toward the cemetery entrance, though, where the rest of them are still clustered. I’m seeing what Callum’s doing … whether he knows we’re over by the turret.…
“I called for reinforcements,” Ewan says as I notice more boys milling around the group. “Callum gave me the nod. We thought we’d be swamped otherwise. Those glamour-girl friends of yours seem to need a lot of attention, eh?”
“They’re not our friends,” I say quickly. “Just in the same year as us.”
He grins. “I can’t exactly see them climbing up here. They wouldn’t want to break their fingernails, right?”
“Are you two going to move your asses and get up here?” Taylor calls from the top of the turret. “The view is awesome!”
“Coming, hen!” Ewan says, winking at me, and we climb easily enough up onto the tomb, levering ourselves over onto the metal staircase. The turret door is locked, but, as Ewan said, it’s easy enough to climb onto the staircase rail and pull yourself up onto the roof from there.
“Wow,” I say, raising a hand to shield my eyes. Taylor’s dark, shaggy hair is flapping in the breeze, blowing over her face in straight lines; it looks very striking, I think. Ewan seems to agree with me. He’s staring at her in appreciation.
“So,” he says, “you’re some kind of Action Woman, eh?”
“Us marines don’t like to boast,” Taylor says, deadpan.
They’re getting on so well, they don’t need me. I take in the view instead, realizing that behind Holyrood there’s a whole range of green hills rising and falling softly into the distance, peaking in that shale-topped mountain that towers over the city. The downs are green and lush, a much-needed contrast to the gray stone of the Edinburgh houses. It’s not a pretty city by any means; it’s a strong one. Hard stone, with nothing to soften it. I feel sorrier than ever for poor spoiled, indulged Mary, Queen of Scots, brought up in French luxury, sleeping on silks and velvets and goose down, thinking she would be cozy in France forever, and then wrested out of her pampered nest and sent across the steel-gray sea to this windy, hard country where her pretty face and her charm would do nothing but count against her with the grim, dour lords who ran her kingdom.
No wonder Taylor seems to be taking to Edinburgh like a duck to water, I think. If Taylor had been in Mary’s shoes, the Scottish lords would be whimpering by now in fear.
Ewan is leaning on the castellations next to Taylor now, pointing out various landmarks, I imagine, answering the questions she’s firing at him. I’m definitely a third wheel here. The sound of me swinging myself back down over the edge of the turret, finding the staircase rail with my feet, and maneuvering back down to the metal rungs again is covered by the whip of the wind; I don’t think they even notice my departure. I drop to the ground thirty seconds later, dust myself off, and step out from the narrow niche between the turret and the tomb, into the main cemetery again.
And then I yelp loudly in surprise. I even jump back a step.
<
br /> Because there’s a corner tomb to my right, just along from the turret. It has a short flight of steps inside its doorway, leading up to something I can’t see. And someone has just jumped down from there in one big leap, over the narrow stone lip below, arriving on the grass in a perfectly judged piece of drama that shocked the living daylights out of me.
It’s Callum McAndrew.
“Did you think I was a ghost?” he asks, smiling at me.
“I don’t know what I thought!” I say, cross with him. “I could have tripped and turned my ankle or something! You shouldn’t startle people like that!”
“Nah, not you,” he says. “I just watched you climb down that thing.” He nods at the turret. “You’re not going to fall over just because I jump out of a tomb and give you a wee surprise.”
I narrow my eyes, but he’s right.
“It was a shock,” I say a little sullenly.
But why am I being sullen? I think. I’m glad to see Callum, after all; I was looking for him earlier.
I can’t help it. I’m feeling really weird around him all of a sudden.
I take a deep breath and tell myself it’s natural that I should feel strange, alone for even a few minutes with Callum McAndrew. Conflicting feelings are whirling round my brain. I remember how hostile he was to me for so long, when we met before. That awful, life-altering afternoon, in a ruined tower near his parents’ estate, that ended in a death. Callum kissing me, and me kissing him back. A kiss that was supposed to be goodbye forever, because nothing could ever happen between us; not after his brother’s death, not after what we’d been through.
Callum is running his hand over his short, almost shaved hair, in a way that I recall very vividly from last year, but he isn’t saying a word. He’s waiting. Waiting for all my tangled thoughts to untwist themselves.
And the fact that he’s prepared to wait for me to work out what I think is strangely liberating. It means I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head.
“At Airlie,” I say, naming his parents’ castle, “you were always grumpy with me. And now I feel grumpy with you.”
I don’t know how he’ll take this, but, unexpectedly, his face cracks into a beautiful smile.
“I was a grumpy bastard with you,” he admits. “But not always. That’s not quite fair.”
His gaze is focused on my mouth now, and I know what he means; he’s remembering our kiss.
“D’you think you could get over the bad temper a bit quicker than I did?” he’s asking. “Like, maybe”—he pretends to look at an imaginary watch—“in the next couple of minutes?”
“I’ll do my best,” I say.
“Hey!” He throws his arms wide. He’s wearing one of his oversized knitted Arran sweaters—dark gray like his eyes and unraveling at the wrists—over faded, ripped blue jeans. Callum’s definitely not a dandy. “It’s sunny! In Scotland! D’you know how rare that is? And we’re in a cemetery! What could be more likely to bring a smile to a girl’s face?”
That does make me smile. And just then, a gust of wind brings Plum’s high, carrying voice to our ears. We can’t hear what she’s saying, but the sound has Callum flinching.
“That girl brings me out in hives,” he says, grimacing. “Come on.”
He’s dashing around the side of a row of tombs tall enough to hide us from anyone approaching. I follow him, the sun warming my face as we sprint downhill and come to a stop with our backs to a high obelisk. In front of us is a stone wall set with something genuinely unusual.
In keeping with the grim, unadorned style of the rest of the city, the other tombs and gravestones have no flourishes or decorations, just the chiseled names of their occupants. But this is a big stone panel set into the wall, beautifully carved with a tableau: a younger man kneeling to an older one, who’s holding his hand gently. They’re both wearing Greek robes. On either side of them is another panel, projecting farther from the wall to frame the central one, each depicting a naked figure leaning dejectedly on a staff. There are Greek urns carved underneath, and decorative curlicues running up the sides of the panel and over the top.
It’s still quite austere by normal churchyard standards; no weeping women or guardian angels. But because it’s not sentimental at all, that makes it even more moving. I stare at it for a while in silence, absorbing the images, feeling calmer as I do, though I don’t know why.
“Look,” Callum says eventually, leaning forward, indicating the words carved directly below the figures of the two men.
“Misfortune Soothed by Wisdom,” I read.
“I like that a lot,” he says quietly. “Don’t you?”
I think about everything Callum and his family have gone through in the past year. Their losses. The secret Callum, Taylor, and I carry about the truth behind Dan’s death. And I find myself reaching for his hand, wanting to give him some comfort. His fingers close around mine gratefully, warm and tight. We stand there, looking at the carving, its graceful lines and calm message soothing our raw spirits as the older man in the corner soothes the younger one. Just as it was intended to do.
To the Memory of
Andrew Skene
it reads underneath. And then:
Born 26 Feb 1784
Died 2 April 1835
“How are you doing?” I ask Callum eventually.
He shrugs, his hand dropping away from mine.
“Och, you know. It comes and goes,” he says. “Good days and bad days. Misfortune soothed by wisdom.” He gives a short, humorless laugh, shoving his hands into his pockets. “The music helps,” he adds unexpectedly. “I don’t think about anything but the music when I’m playing.”
I nod, knowing what he means. It’s like that for me when I’m working out.
“What about you?” he asks. “And Taylor?”
“Good days and bad days sort of sums it up,” I agree.
And we smile at each other. The carving’s done its work; for a little while, Callum McAndrew and I stand and grieve together for his brother, and for that other death, the one I don’t imagine we’ll ever talk about, because it was too horrible. All the jagged edges, the mutual suspicion and hostility, even the sexual tension, have gone; it’s like we’ve come through a storm and out the other side to that calm place afterward.
Which complicates things a lot. Because there’s more in our connection than just friendship. I know it, and Callum does too, without a word being said. In this new calm place, a lot of things might be possible.
Well, they might be. If I weren’t in love with Jase.
“Omigod!” comes a squeak of excitement. “Pink! Look, Sophia! It’s all shiny! And it’s got frills round it! I so want a pink gravestone!”
Lizzie Livermore has erupted onto the scene, and I can’t say, on balance, that I’m sorry to see her. Just like a golden retriever, she rushes up to her target, points at it, wriggling with excitement, and then rushes back to her human, her whole body vibrating with the urgent need to share her new discovery.
“Look!” she squeals, her hair bouncing, her bracelets jangling, as Sophia swims into view. If Lizzie’s a retriever, Sophia is a tall white swan, as calm and collected as Lizzie is eternally overexcited. “Pink!”
Sophia halts in front of the pink granite gravestone Lizzie’s indicating: three of them, actually, joined together, each one pointed at the top in a Gothic arch and decorated round the edges with more pink granite in a sort of carved ruffly trim that does, to give Lizzie credit, look exactly like a frill.
“Don’t you think it’s a little—shiny, Lizzie?” Sophia, descendant of generations of Austrian aristocracy, asks. The sunlight catching the pink granite is bouncing off it, bright as glass.
“No!” squeals Lizzie, whose father is a self-made billionaire. “I love it!”
I save this one up to tell Taylor. Old money likes everything a little shabby, a little fraying at the seams, to show that it’s been in the family for countless generations. Even the silver shouldn’t be too p
olished. But new money likes shiny, and plenty of it; since new money can’t boast quietly about its centuries of history, it brags loudly about what it can afford instead.
“Hey!” Taylor calls, strolling down the stretch of grass, Ewan next to her. “Where did you sneak off to?”
Her swift, knowing glance from me to Callum answers her own question, and she smirks at me. I didn’t actually slip away to find Callum, but I know that’s what she assumes. I can scarcely tell her I thought I’d leave Ewan and her alone.
“I love your city,” she says to Callum with surprising enthusiasm in her voice. “It was really cool seeing it from up there.” She gestures to the turret with a fervent sweep of her arm. “It’s so stark and beautiful.”
“Good to hear,” Callum says, flourishing a bow to her. “We’re quite fond of it ourselves.”
“It’s cold, though. And windy,” says Sophia, princess of the obvious, wrapping her fur-lined jacket closer around her. “I think we should go to Starbucks now.”
“Okay!” says Lizzie happily, darting off toward the entrance gate; Sophia’s wish is clearly her command.
“Aww,” Taylor drawls as the two girls walk away. “Lizzie’s found a friend.”
“I think she just wanted someone posh to tell her what to do,” I comment.
“I zink ve should go to Shtarbucks now,” Ewan hisses, exaggerating Sophia’s very light Austrian accent and completely flat inflection: it makes us all giggle naughtily, safe in the knowledge that she’s too far away to hear.
“Plum! There you are!” Lizzie’s dashed into a tomb whose lintel proclaims it belongs to Andrew Fyfe, Surgeon, Edinburgh; down each side run lists of Andrew Fyfe’s nearest and dearest, who are presumably crammed into the space with him. “We were looking for you everywhere!” Lizzie’s complaining. “Didn’t you hear me calling before?”
“I’d hide from her too,” Callum mutters as Plum and Susan emerge from Andrew Fyfe’s last resting place, flushed out by Lizzie’s eagerness.
“We’re going to Starbucks!” Lizzie announces.
“Oh, joy,” Plum says dryly as Lizzie herds her and Susan up the path to where Nadia is holding court, three young men standing around her in a circle admiringly as she plays with her thick blue-black hair and flashes her dark eyes at them. I have to admit, Nadia certainly knows how to flirt; her gold jewelry glints enticingly with every movement of her head as she turns capriciously from one boy to the next, not looking for too long at any of them, making them compete for her attention.
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