Wildflower Bay

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘Shove that in the back, darling.’ Her dad opened the door of the black cab, and Isla slid her case into the footwell before climbing into the passenger seat and strapping herself in.

  ‘Can you take me to Gilmerton, please?’

  Her dad sucked his teeth, shaking his head in dismay. ‘All the way to Gilmerton? That’ll cost you.’

  ‘It’s fine. My dad’ll pay at the other end.’

  She couldn’t help smiling despite everything.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got a good dad there.’

  Isla turned to look at him with a smile. ‘The best.’ He’d make everything better.

  Her dad switched off the For Hire sign and, with a growl of the diesel engine, they set off through the cobbled streets to home.

  The Georgian terraces of the New Town gave way eventually to the crazily stacked buildings that made up the ancient Old Town. The early evening streets were still packed, shoppers with armfuls of bags standing waiting at the bus stops, trams sliding silently past. Her dad always took her home by what he called the scenic route, past all the old sights, up the hill past the Meadows where students lay in lazy Saturday-afternoon piles. She averted her eyes as they drove past the late-night pizza shop where she’d stood the night before. There was no way on earth she was ever drinking again. How people chose to do that every weekend was completely beyond her.

  The genteel streets of Morningside passed by – delicatessens and cafes, old ladies with baskets of shopping returning to their pretty garden flats, mums pushing expensive prams along the pavement whilst toddlers wheeled along on tiny wooden balance bikes. Down the hill, and out of town – the houses getting newer now, 1930s villas squatting in square gardens dotted precisely with neat mounds of ubiquitous purple aubretia. And then they were turning left and over the flyover, down the hill and into the estate. A gang of kids were playing kerby on the pavement as they slowed up, bouncing the ball from one side of the road to the other. A toddler pottered around on the edge of the pavement, wisps of hair flying loose from a plastic hairband, her face sticky with the biscuit she held in one pudgy hand. She toppled forwards and in a flash a bigger girl, skinny legs in brightly coloured leggings, leaped to her rescue, scooping her up and twirling her away to safety.

  ‘These kids.’ Her dad, already driving at almost walking pace, slowed down even further. ‘I tell you, someone’s going to get hurt one of these days. No’ everyone drives at my speed. You get the hooligans coming through here in their souped-up motors . . .’ He shook his head.

  They drove up the hill, through stacked blocks of identical white-rendered houses, each with a tiny patch of garden outside. Isla felt the familiar combination of security and revulsion. It was so good to be here with Dad, but this place – she shuddered slightly.

  ‘Here we are,’ said her dad, as he pulled the taxi to a halt. ‘That’ll be eighteen pounds, please.’

  ‘Eighteen?’ Isla shook her head. ‘That’s daylight robbery.’

  ‘Lucky your dad’s paying, eh?’ He reached across, giving her knee a squeeze, pulled the keys out of the ignition and fetched her bag from the back.

  ‘Come on then, darling. You look like you need a cup of tea.’

  And then she was in the hall and she was ten years old again, hands running along the bumps of the woodchip paper as she stood with her too-big schoolbag waiting for a lift to school in the morning. Being dropped off early every day in a taxi made her stand out amongst the other kids, who walked to school in a noisy, squabbling, teasing bunch along the canal path and across the field where the two grey ponies stood, incongruously surrounded by barbed-wire fencing with a stable made from a disused lorry container, their hay nets tied up with frazzled orange baling string. Isla used to escape there on the weekends when her dad was working, on the days when she was sent to play with Aunty Theresa (who wasn’t even her aunt) across the road. Aunty Theresa didn’t have any children – and didn’t want any, either, as she told a disconsolate Isla regularly, shoving a plate of toast across the teak folding table before getting back to her knitting and watching a never-ending cycle of quiz shows on the television set that dominated her tiny sitting room. It was stuffed full of grey velvet furniture and a malevolent ginger cat that glared at ten-year-old Isla with distaste.

  It was tacitly agreed that nobody would mention to Isla’s dad that she sneaked off every Saturday and Sunday, spending the days in the library or down by the canal, kicking her legs as she sat on a disused barrel watching the barges pass by, or lurking in the corner of the horses’ field, daydreaming about the kind of life she could have had. Over time, she grew to love the horses – and they seemed to quite like her, whickering their affection as she climbed over the stile, mooching across to graze close by when she sat down with a packet of Polos and a stack of library books in a quiet corner under the hedgerow, where nobody noticed her. At least, most of the time. She’d hear the kids from the estate before she saw them, the loud shouts of Jamie and Allison, ring-leaders, King and Queen of Muirton, and she’d gather up her books in an armful and scuttle off, heart thumping, stomach a knot of panic. If she didn’t make it in time, she’d know all about it.

  ‘Eh, look who’s here!’

  ‘Got your nose in a book again, Isla? Swotting up to make sure you’re top of the class again?’ Jamie would beam at her, blond hair ruffling in the wind, blue eyes sparking with mischief. He’d stand, hands on hips, legs akimbo, completely aware of his place. He took up the space – and made the noise – of two people.

  ‘Can you smell that?’

  Allison Graves was ginger-haired and freckly, tall and athletic, the fastest girl in school, the most popular, clever, cheeky, and loved by the teachers. Nobody would dare tease her for being a ginger. She flaunted her wiry halo of red fuzz like a crown. The one thing Isla could do that she couldn’t was come top of the class for English – and Allison had it in for her as a result.

  The other kids swarmed behind them, an amorphous moving blur of scruffy hair and too-short trousers, hand-me-down jackets and beaten-up trainers. Isla would sidle away, blushing so hard her cheeks stung, books under her arm, climbing over the barbed wire, avoiding the stile because they were there, trying not to rip her jeans because her dad had only just bought them from the market and she knew he didn’t have much money.

  It never made sense to Isla. She had the same trainers as Allison Graves. She’d studied them carefully when they were getting changed after PE, making sure she directed her dad to the exact same ones when they went down the High Street. She’d carried them home in a box, heart full of hope, desperate that these grey and pink Dunlops might be the answer. She’d rubbed a palmful of mud in them out the back when her Dad was making dinner, trying to make them look worn in, desperate not to look like a try-hard. But no: she sat at the dining table at school, and nobody commented admiringly on them. She was all ready with her response. ‘These? Oh, yeah, had them for ages. I’ve got two pairs, actually. My new ones are at home.’ But nobody asked. She sat at the lunch table with Amira and Costas and Helen as usual, and nobody noticed. Amira and Costas and Helen didn’t care. They were too busy eating their lunches with the same haunted expression, looking up between mouthfuls, waiting to see which of them would be butt of the lunchtime jokes today, which one would get the piss taken out of them for their crappy packed lunches or their free school meals. It didn’t seem to matter that half the school was on free lunches back then. Somehow, their table was the lowest of the low.

  ‘You all right, hen?’

  Her dad, who’d gone ahead into the kitchen, peered back out into the hall where Isla was standing. She shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, I was just daydreaming.’

  He gave her a fond smile. ‘Aye, you used to do a lot of that as a lassie. Anything nice?’

  ‘Just thinking about school.’

  ‘Best days of your life, and all that?’ He gave her a rueful look. He’d comforted a crying Isla in the night until she fell asleep often en
ough to know that there wasn’t much about her school days she’d want to remember.

  Isla watched as he sat back, releasing his stomach from the constraints of the top button with a sigh. He ran a hand through his hair so it stood on end in thin wisps, a halo around his ever-expanding bald patch. He desperately needed a trim, and his eyebrows were taking on a life of their own. His good looks – because he’d been a handsome man, and the photos Isla had seen were proof of that – were still lurking beneath the surface, the indentations of good cheekbones still almost evident despite the weight he’d gained over the years.

  ‘Best days – yeah, something like that.’ Isla shook her head, with an ironic twist to her mouth.

  ‘Right then.’ Alan settled down at the little table in the kitchen. Radio Scotland was playing quietly on the same tiny transistor radio that had stood in the corner, covered in a layer of frying-pan grease and dust, for as long as Isla could remember.

  Isla was silent. She poured the tea from the aluminium pot, which dribbled, as ever, onto the table. She handed a mug to her dad, who added three sugars before stirring vigorously.

  ‘You said you were going to cut down.’ She looked across at her dad, whose bulk spread out across the chair, legs wide apart, allowing the heft of his stomach to sit comfortably on his knees. He wasn’t getting any thinner, despite the GP telling him his blood pressure was through the roof.

  He tutted, reaching into an old metal biscuit tin. She couldn’t remember when they’d ever had a huge square tin of Crawford’s biscuits, but the tin had always sat on the kitchen table, there whenever she needed one – not that she ever did. She shook her head as he waggled the tin in her direction, custard creams shoogling around in a sea of leftover crumbs.

  ‘I’ll just have the one, then. How’s that?’

  ‘Better.’ She smiled across at him fondly, watching as he sipped his tea, big hands wrapped around his favourite mug.

  She’d bought it for him when she was eleven – she remembered picking it up at the school fete and carrying it home with excitement. ‘World’s Best Dad’, it said. And he was. He’d brought her up from the age of seven when her mum had died of a cancer that had come on so suddenly, and brought her to her knees so quickly, that nobody had had time to realize what was happening. It always seemed to Isla that one day her mum had been standing at the kitchen window peeling potatoes, the radio playing, frilly apron tied round her waist, the house full of the smell of Mr Sheen and drop scones, Scotch broth bubbling on the stove, her dad coming in between shifts to sneak a kiss and slip his arm around her mum’s waist, ruffle Isla’s hair and sing a silly song to make her laugh . . . and the next moment, her mum was a tiny little birdlike shape in a hospital bed, smiling weakly and telling her to be a good girl for her daddy.

  Isla had tried her hardest. She’d been a good girl for her daddy and worked hard at school, and she’d bitten back her disappointment when he’d found her a job working as a trainee in his sister’s friend’s hairdresser’s round the corner, when she dreamed of going to Edinburgh University and studying to become an English teacher. She saw all the gorgeous, glamorous, exotic-looking students as they passed every day with their long floaty cardigans and their folders under their arms, laughing over pints of cider in the beer garden of the Pear Tree pub and chatting about books in confident little cliques as they lay on their backs on the Meadows. Isla used to sit there with a book on her days off, hoping someone might mistake her for a student.

  She’d made the best of it. She’d worked up from sweeping up hair to learning the ropes, studied her hardest on her day release course at college, and passed with honours and a special distinction as top of her class. Isla had a plan. If she was going to be a hairdresser, she was going to be the best hairdresser in Edinburgh. And she was going to save every penny she had until she could afford to buy her own place, and then she was going to employ the best staff and sit back and let them do their jobs. Then she’d head to university as a mature student, and study for the English degree she’d dreamed of all this time.

  And then – oh, and then – Isla had one other plan. She was going to turn up to the Melville High School reunion, whenever it happened, and she was going to walk in there and prove to Jamie Duncan and Allison Graves and every single one of their cronies that she was worth something. That they’d underestimated her. That she was worth ten of them, with their nasty little jibes and their vicious little teases. Isla had carried this grievance for years, nurturing it, visualizing as she worked her way up how she’d march in, dressed from head to toe in designer clothes, and everyone’s head would turn. How they’d marvel at how perfectly turned out she was. How they’d turn to each other and say ‘Is that –? No, it can’t be,’ and, like a character in the old John Hughes films she loved to watch, she’d walk over, pick up a glass of champagne, take one mouthful, turn around, and smile.

  And then – oh, and then – Jamie Duncan would look at her and realize. Because the thing that Isla never admitted to a soul, the thing that Isla didn’t even admit to herself for so, so long, was that Isla’s heart belonged to Jamie Duncan. Sometimes, when she met him on his own, he could be sweet and kind and funny. There had been a couple of weeks during the summer they turned fifteen when Allison Graves had gone camping in Newquay, and the rest of the gang had somehow melted away, and suddenly he’d shone every bit of that charm and charisma in her direction, and she’d basked in it. They’d messed around at the park, cadged money for ice lollies from her dad, wandered up to the woods to walk and chat about nothing for hours and hours. And then – Isla closed her eyes, remembering – he’d grabbed her hand quite suddenly one afternoon as they sat, legs swinging, in the bus shelter, the drizzle gathering on his hair like dew, and his long dark eyelashes starfished with rain, and he’d leaned forward and kissed her.

  ‘You’re all right, Isla Brown.’

  There was another side to him that nobody else saw. And Isla knew – just knew – that if Jamie Duncan could only see her for what she really was, he’d fall utterly, irrevocably, totally in love with her. And she’d love him right back. And he’d fall at her feet, devastated with horror at the nasty childhood things he’d said, and he’d apologize and he’d take her hand and he’d tell her he was going to make it up to her and they’d live happily ever after, just like a film.

  But Isla never said this aloud to anyone, because Isla didn’t share her thoughts with anyone. Isla worked hard. Isla got to the salon first, and left last. Isla turned down the chance of a night out with the girls so many times that in the end, they stopped asking. And if Isla ever felt lonely, she remembered that she had a mission, and that one day all this hard work would be worth it, and she’d be with Jamie Duncan, and then her life would begin.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, darling?’

  Her dad’s voice broke through her reverie. She looked up at him, startled. Coming back here always brought a whole raft of memories, ones she’d rather keep locked away. That was why she’d moved out, in the end – it was easier to keep her mind away from the past at Hattie’s flat, easier to spend her days working and her nights reading, keeping herself busy clearing up the place. And if she ever felt like Hattie took her domesticity for granted – well, she reminded herself that she was living in a dream house in the perfect part of town, and snapped on her Marigolds. Cleaning kept her mind off everything.

  ‘I was wondering what the doctor said the other day,’ she lied.

  ‘Ach, the usual. Cut down on saturated fat, get some exercise, no more pints in the Arrow after work, no pork pies. As far as I can see his suggestion is, take everything nice in the world and stop doing it. That’s no life.’ He pulled the biscuit tin closer, tapping a tune on the lid with his fingers before opening it up, studiously ignoring Isla’s look of disapproval.

  ‘What’s the alternative?’ Isla shook her head, frustrated. She’d had this conversation with her dad a thousand times over the years, watching as he grew from stout to slightly rotund, from
tubby to obese. He was a big man, and he carried it well. But he was a good six stone overweight, and Isla worried. ‘I don’t want you to –’ she stopped. She couldn’t say it. Her gaze lifted above her dad’s head to the photo frame on the kitchen wall where her mum smiled down on them, her mouse-brown hair neatly blow-dried, the silver pendant that Isla now wore hanging around her neck.

  Her dad looked up for a second at his late wife. ‘No, fair enough. No. I promise you I will try, sweetheart.’ He put the lid on the biscuit tin and pushed it away, towards Isla. ‘No more biscuits. Well, maybe one a day with my tea.’

  ‘And maybe a bit of a walk?’

  He nodded, begrudgingly, emitting an unwilling sigh. ‘Right enough.’

  ‘How about now?’

  ‘You want to go today?’ Her dad looked startled. ‘Maybe we could go for a Sunday stroll instead? Take a wander down the canal path?’

  ‘Now.’ Isla finished the last of her tea and put the mug down, decisively. Her head was still banging, and a bit of fresh air might help to clear it. She stood up, rinsing out her mug in the battered stainless-steel sink before leaving it upside down on the draining board. She fixed her dad with a steely glare. ‘Half an hour. No more. And then I’ll come back and give this place a tidy up.’

  ‘But I wanted to have a word about last night. You gave me a bit of a fright, you know, darling.’

  Isla stepped back, shaking her head. ‘We can talk as we walk.’ Frankly she didn’t want to discuss it with her dad, and was planning to sweep it under the carpet. With her bridges burnt with Kat Black, she knew that finding a job was going to be tricky. There was nothing in her contract about gardening leave, but she was going to find it impossible to walk into another salon without addressing their falling-out – the hairdressing world had the fastest and most efficient jungle drums around. By now, everyone would know they’d had an argument, and Chantelle would be delightedly telling the story to anyone who’d listen. Isla realized, watching her dad push himself up from the table and shuffle his keys and wallet around, that her clients would get wind of it pretty soon, too. At that point, nobody in town would touch her with a bargepole. The best thing she could do was take a bit of time off, and let it all blow over.