The Plus One Pact

by MacIntosh, Portia

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. I’m living with Joe… the one I told you about.’

  ‘You’re living with him? We haven’t even met him yet!’

  ‘Well, I’m living with him, but I’m not living with him. I’m renting a room from him. We’re just friends, Mum.’

  ‘I’m making dinner for the family on Sunday. Your gran is coming – why don’t you bring Joe over for dinner, so we can meet him, make sure he’s good enough for my baby?’

  I smile.

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, Mum, but I’m actually busy this weekend. I’m away.’

  ‘Away? Away where?’

  ‘Pitlochry. In Scotland.’

  ‘What are you doing in Scotland? Is it for work?’

  ‘Erm… I’m going with Joe.’

  My mum furrows her brow.

  ‘Oh, Cara. I don’t know, this all sounds so fast.’

  ‘We’re just friends, honestly. I promise you. He’s a really great guy, he’s always got my back. I’m having a lot of fun with him.’

  My mum’s eyebrows shoot up.

  ‘Not like that. Never like that.’

  ‘I just want you to be safe. I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum. Well, I feel the same way about you, so if we don’t get you a pair of heels you can keep your balance in, who knows what will happen to you?’

  ‘OK, love,’ she replies. ‘But I do want to meet him.’

  ‘Well, you’ll see him at Flora’s wedding,’ I remind her. ‘Unless I somehow get myself uninvited.’

  ‘You never know,’ my mum says with a sigh. ‘Anyway, let’s go shopping.’

  ‘I’ll go make myself decent,’ I tell her.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ she replies as she finds a pair of my knickers on the floor by the sofa.

  Shit, I must have missed them when I was sorting out my washing earlier.

  I take them from her and retreat to my bedroom.

  I know that she’s only looking out for me, but I really do feel as if I’ve got everything under control. I know how it looks though, as if it was my mum who had it good all those years, when I was a good child. Now that I’m closing in on thirty it must seem as though I’ve finally decided to go off the rails, moving in with a man at the drop of a hat, but I know that it’s not like that. I just need to show my mum that everything is OK, that I’m much happier now. And it’s true, I am much happier now – it turns out all I needed was a Millsy in my life. I know I might be getting older, I should be getting married, thinking about having kids, blah blah blah. Can’t I have a little time to just be? It’s hard not to feel as if I’ve been left behind a little, when everyone else is growing up around me, overtaking me – lapping me, in some cases. I already have old school friends who have been married twice while I haven’t even got close to once. But I’m fine with that for now; that’s to worry about at a later date. I’ll go shopping with my mum, buy some more ‘new me’ clothes to take to Scotland with me, and I’ll go and have fun.

  I think I’ll worry about growing old another day, thank you.

  13

  The drive from Leeds to Pitlochry takes just over five hours, in no traffic, with no stops. Of course, road trips rarely go so smoothly so we’re already over the six-hour mark. It’s pretty late, and very dark, but we’re almost there.

  Millsy, who it turns out is a lot of fun to go on road trips with, is driving, but he doesn't actually own a car. He says there’s no point, living in central Leeds, with everything on his doorstep and a train station nearby. However, neither of us fancied being cooped up on a train for at least five and a half hours so Millsy decided he would hire a car. Not just any car though, he said he was going to hire a cool car, and, boy, has he delivered.

  We cruised north in a brand-new convertible Mercedes C-Class. On paper that meant nothing to me but, now that I’ve been in it, I can definitely see the advantages. I knew I was onto a good thing when I got in the car, closed the door and a little motorised arm popped out to hand me my seat belt. It has heaters in the headrest (which were sadly no use on a hot summer’s day) and amazing air conditioning (which was very welcomed today), super-comfortable seats, and one hell of a sound system. Seriously, on a road trip is there anything more you could ask for than someone who is not only willing to stop multiple times, but will also sing along to cheesy pop songs with you?

  ‘OK, let’s get down to it,’ Millsy starts.

  ‘To what?’ I ask nervously.

  ‘To the real music,’ he suggests. ‘The music that shows who we really are. The guilty pleasures. What’s your ultimate guilty-pleasure song?’

  I bite my lip. I know the answer to this question but I'm not about to tell someone as cool as Millsy that my guilty-pleasure song is ‘Escape’ by Enrique Iglesias. I really should come up with a cool fake answer to this question.

  ‘After you,’ I insist with a cheeky smile. He’s not getting it out of me that easy.

  ‘Chicken,’ he says with a chuckle.

  Millsy calls upon the digital assistant in his phone and asks it to play none other than ‘Escape’ by Enrique Iglesias.

  ‘Wow, are you kidding me?’ I practically cackle.

  ‘OK, come on, I did say it was my guilty pleasure,’ he says quickly, seeming ever so slightly less sure of himself.

  ‘No, it's not that,’ I say. 'This is my favourite guilty-pleasure song too. I was just too embarrassed tell you.’

  ‘What? I’ll turn it up, then,’ he replies. He seems as surprised as I do that we have such a specific song in common.

  Millsy turns up the volume and starts to sing along. I actually feel comfortable enough to do the same.

  ‘It’s a shame we haven’t been able to drive with the top down,’ Millsy says once the song has finished. ‘We just weren’t on the right roads for it before it got dark. We can really make the most of it tomorrow though, driving around, enjoying the sunshine, admiring the scenery. It’s so beautiful up here.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ I reply. ‘I suppose that’s one of the cool things about driving somewhere in the dark. You get there, go to bed, wake up and you’re in the heart of it.’

  ‘And it’s about to get a whole lot darker,’ he says as we turn off the well-lit main road onto a much darker, narrower one. ‘Honestly, it might look like nothing but walls of darkness outside but you won’t believe what’s hiding behind them.’

  The road is narrow with absolutely no lights on it. The only light we have is from the car headlights but, other than seeing trees that line the winding road, I can’t see a thing. It’s kind of scary.

  ‘Don’t worry, I know this road well and I’m taking it slow,’ he reassures me, reading my mind. ‘What you can’t see on your left is just loads of trees. What you can’t see on your right is Loch Faskally and the River Tummel. The road runs alongside the river all the way to my gran’s house. My gran’s house is cool. It’s pretty big, right on the edge of Loch Tummel – the loch is at the bottom of her garden! And she lives there all alone. There are farms about ten minutes away in both directions, and some kind of massive, castle-looking house across the loch – not exactly easy to pop over to in an emergency. My gran does have a boat though.’

  ‘Sounds like a gorgeous place,’ I reply.

  It’s interesting, isn’t it? Millsy talks about his stepmum, and his supposedly evil stepbrother, but when it comes to his stepgran, I’m starting to notice he just calls her gran. I suppose, when he said he really liked her, he meant it, and you can tell by the way he talks about her that he thinks she’s great. She’s just his gran, as far as he is concerned. That’s so lovely.

  ‘What’s your gran’s name?’ I ask.

  ‘Iona,’ he replies. ‘She’s turning eighty-five this time.’

  ‘My gran is eighty-eight,’ I tell him. ‘She still lives in her own home too, on her own. She’s such a cool, sweet lady. I’d do well to grow up to be like her.’

  I pause for a second.

  ‘W
ell, I say that… I’m nearly thirty. Funny that I want to grow up to be like her – she’d had both my mum and my auntie long before she was my age.’

  ‘Do you want kids?’ Millsy asks me.

  ‘Yeah, but not tonight,’ I reply with a smile. ‘One day, biological clock permitting.’

  Millsy nods thoughtfully.

  ‘You already got a couple knocking around?’ I tease.

  ‘Sadly not,’ he says. ‘But I’m firmly of the opinion that – oh, shit, Cara, look!’

  I only have a split second to wonder where Millsy was going with that sentence before I realise what’s made him change the subject so quickly. In the centre of the long, winding road, in the light of our headlights, there’s a deer running in front of us, straight down the road, like a car. We follow it slowly, as if we’re in traffic behind it.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I reply.

  ‘Neither have I,’ he says.

  ‘How many cars do you think are actually using this road after 11 p.m.?’

  ‘Not many,’ Millsy says. ‘But, don’t worry, we’re sticking with it. It’s safe in front of us.’

  For a few minutes we just marvel at this deer leading us along the road to Iona’s house. Eventually, as the forest on my side of the road lowers to the same level as the road, the deer darts to the side before disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘That was cool,’ Millsy says. He glances at his satnav. ‘And now, we are… here.’

  Right on cue a house appears on the right-hand side of the road – you can only spot it once you’re alongside it, when the lights in the windows aren’t being hidden by the trees that surround it.

  As we pull onto the driveway a security light comes on. It’s still too dark to see much, but I can tell that there are two cars parked outside, and although I can’t see the house properly, I can tell it’s quite big from how many lit-up windows I can spy.

  ‘Who’s here?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s my gran’s car,’ he says, nodding towards a small red, old-looking car. ‘And my dad’s next to it, so he and Mhairi are here too.’

  ‘No siblings, then?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah, Fran wasn’t up to the drive,’ he replies.

  I mean, obviously I’m only really asking to find out if Jay is going to be here. I guess he isn’t.

  Millsy presses a button on the car remote, which pops open the boot.

  ‘So cool,’ he says to himself. ‘It’s making me want a car.’

  He grabs our bags and we head to the front door. Millsy’s hands are full so I press the doorbell. It only takes a few seconds for Mhairi to appear.

  ‘Oh, you’re here! Hello,’ she says. ‘We were starting to think you might have stopped somewhere for the night.’

  ‘Ah, you know what the drive is like,’ Millsy says. ‘A few hold-ups and you’re hours behind. And then, as we were driving along this road, we had this deer running in front of us. We had to crawl behind it.’

  He’s so cute, telling the story like an excitable little kid.

  ‘All right, Joe, you don’t need to make excuses,’ she says. She seems a little grumpy, but I imagine it's just because she’s tired. ‘Your dad was tired from the drive so he’s gone to bed. Mum said to let her know when you were here, but she’s in her bedroom, so I won’t disturb her. Is that OK?’

  I imagine Mhairi is just a little bit annoyed about being the person who had to sit up late to let us in, but it really knocks the wind out of Millsy’s sail.

  ‘Yeah, no worries,’ he replies. ‘You get to bed.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says almost sarcastically. ‘You’re in the bedroom off the lounge. Goodnight to you both.’

  ‘Night,’ we call after her, perfectly in sync.

  Millsy shrugs it off.

  ‘Well, fancy a quick tour of the house?’ he asks. ‘We’ll probably avoid upstairs, if people are up there sleeping, but that leaves two other floors – and that’s where all the best bits are.’

  He seems as if he’s perked up again, now that Mhairi has left us.

  ‘I’d love that,’ I reply.

  Immediately on our left is the kitchen. It’s a large, L-shaped room that wraps around the front driveway. From there we go through to the open-plan living/dining room. It’s an absolutely massive room, with a fireplace smack bang in the middle of it that you can walk around. Two of the long walls are made entirely of glass, looking out over what Millsy tells me is the back garden. He told me that, if it were light, I’d be able to see the loch, which is so strange because right now it’s like looking at black wallpaper.

  Millsy takes me downstairs, to a lower level. It’s below the ground floor at the front of the house, but it isn’t a basement – not that I can tell right now, given how dark it is outside. Apparently the back garden slopes down towards the loch. I can’t wait to see it in the daylight.

  ‘So, this is my favourite room,’ Millsy announces as he leads me through. ‘This is the party room.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I blurt. ‘This is just… wow.’

  It’s a large room – it seems as if it’s the only room on this floor – and it’s full of fun stuff. There is a large pool table in the middle of the room, and, while I don’t know much about pool tables, I’m going to say this is a full-size one, because I didn’t actually realise they were so big. There is a large flatscreen TV on the wall, and a bar. And then there are the books. One corner of the room has a big, comfortable-looking chair, and two walls with shelves that are absolutely stuffed with books.

  ‘Wow,’ I say again. ‘Wow, wow, wow.’

  ‘I know that it might seem a bit weird, for a granny to have a room like this in her basement, but it used to be the family’s summer house, where they would all go for holidays a few times a year. Last year my gran decided she wanted to live here full time. Enjoy the rest of her retirement somewhere beautiful.’

  ‘Your gran sounds seriously cool,’ I tell him. I’m sure he already knows.

  ‘She really is. OK, last but not least of the rooms I can show you without Mhairi murdering me…’

  We head back up the stairs, through the living room and along a short corridor. At the end there are two doors, one on each side.

  ‘On the left is the downstairs bathroom,’ he tells me. ‘There’s a toilet, a sink and a shower in there. The bath is in the upstairs bathroom. Then here, on the right, is our room.’

  In the centre of the large bedroom stands a four-poster bed. The frame is made from dark, twisted wood, which someone has wrapped fairy lights around. It’s not just a wide bed, it’s a tall bed, too. So far off the floor, in fact, that there is a little stool at each side that you use for climbing into bed.

  Opposite the bed is yet another large window. The curtains are open but there’s nothing to see.

  ‘I’m sure it goes without saying now,’ Millsy starts, ‘but there is one hell of a view out there. Whenever I come here, I always want to stay in this bedroom, but I rarely get to. I guess, because you’re with me…’

  ‘About that,’ I start. ‘People know we’re just friends, right?’

  ‘They do,’ he tells me. ‘I keep telling them but I’m starting to get the impression that they think I’m lying, so that they think I’ve changed. Like I’m pretending we’re platonic, just to look good, so…’

  I nod thoughtfully. That makes sense, I suppose; I’ll just have to be more obvious about the facts.

  ‘Don’t worry though. I usually wind up sleeping in my gran’s old recliner chair in the living room. I’m sure I would have been if you weren’t here with me. It’s no trouble at all – you should have this room.’

  I think for a second as I watch Millsy rifling around in his bag on the bedroom floor, before removing a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and his toothbrush.

  ‘Wait, you don’t have to do that,’ I tell him. ‘We’re adults, we’re friends… we can share a bed.’

  ‘You really don’t have to do that…’

  ‘I know I don�
��t but, come on, this isn’t a movie. We’ll be absolutely fine. We’re not going to fall out – or fall in love – just because we sleep in a huge bed together, without building a pillow barricade down the middle, or sleeping at opposite ends, or whatever the cliché says we’re supposed to do.’

  He laughs.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive,’ I reply.

  Millsy uses the bathroom first, returning in his shorts and T-shirt. I’m being mature about this but, for some reason, I don’t want to actually watch him get into bed, so I hurry off to get changed and brush my teeth. By the time I get back to the bedroom Millsy is already in bed and I don’t know why I thought it would be any less awkward this way.

  I pull back the covers and use my little footstool to climb in next to him. Thankfully the bed really is big enough for us to be nowhere near each other – in fact, you could probably fit a third person in between us, although that’s hardly going to make this less awkward, is it?

  ‘You OK with the light off?’ he asks.

  ‘Sure,’ I reply.

  It isn’t until Millsy flicks off the light on his bedside table that I realise why he was asking. It’s dark. Not just dark, pitch black. I can’t see my own hand in front of my face. I don’t remember the last time I was in such deep, empty darkness. Living in the city, there are always lights somewhere, but even at home, living in a village, there were still plenty of things outside giving off light.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ he says.

  I was so lost in the darkness it gives me a little jump scare.

  ‘Yeah, see you in the morning,’ I reply.

  It’s so strange, being here in the darkness. On the one hand, it should be very easy to pretend that I’m here all alone – well, unless I turn on a light or roll over three times, I can’t even tell that Millsy is next to me. But… I don’t know… there’s something about knowing that he is there, next to me, in bed with me, that gives me this feeling that I can’t quite put my finger on. I feel as if I'm blindfolded. I remember what Millsy said, about women wanting to sleep with him when he had his Leo the Lion costume, because they found something sexy about not being able to see the person inside the costume, the anonymity, the danger… I quickly push those thoughts out of my head. That is absolutely not what is happening here. It’s just creepy, being in a room with someone you can’t see. It’s not a sex scene, it’s more like something from a horror movie, right?