by Iain Banks
I shake my head. ‘I was going to say – and this isn’t a way of still suggesting it – but I was about to say, Jump on the train. Come to—’
She shakes her head, though she’s still smiling. ‘No.’
‘Yeah, I know. Wasn’t actually going to—’
‘I’ve stuff to do; driving to Peterhead to see Mum—’
‘I know, I know. I realised before I said it, it’s—’
‘It’s a romantic thought, but no.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘But, otherwise, yes. That’s what I was coming back to say. I’ve…I realise I’ve decided. I don’t need another night to sleep on it. Let’s get together. You and me. Let’s give it a go. Okay?’
‘Very okay.’ We kiss again as the train pulls screeching and squealing to a stop; a kiss that goes on until the train doors start slamming shut again. ‘Fucking brilliant okay,’ I tell her breathlessly. I can feel myself grinning from ear to ear. ‘You sure?’
‘Not entirely,’ she admits, with a quick shake of her head.
‘Still need to be convinced?’
‘I guess.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Please do.’
‘See you very soon,’ I tell her.
‘Good.’
I lift up my bag again, pull her to me by the small of her back – there’s a tiny yelp – plant a smacker of a kiss on the girl, then let her go, turn and swing onto the train.
A few minutes later, the train crosses the Stoun on the old grey granite bridge. From here – though you’re just ten metres or so above the river, right where it starts to widen for the basin and the estuary – there’s a wide, clear, open view between the remnants of the tree-bare water-meadows, the marshes and the salt flats towards the docks and the harbour. Past those is the town itself, with its grey-brown clutter of buildings, spires and towers, edged by the bright flat plain of water with its tarnish marks of cloud shadows and ruffled fields of wind shear, and beyond that the road bridge, rising grey and tall and shimmering in the east, astride a silver glimpse of sea.
Iain Banks sprang to public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. Since then he has gained enormous popular and critical acclaim with further works of both fiction and science fiction, all of which are available in paperback from either Abacus or Orbit. His novel The Crow Road was a number one bestseller and was adapted for television. The Times has acclaimed Iain Banks as ‘the most imaginative British novelist of his generation’.
