“I wanted to come up to the house, but Logan said that Emily is just too ill for visits . . .”
“Yes. She can’t really see anyone.” I took a deep breath. “And how are you, Eilidh? I haven’t seen you in years!” I was quite amazed when I looked into her eyes. I’d forgotten how alike they were to mine – the same shape, the same shade – aqua blue. You could see we were related, though she’d been spared the red hair – I prefer to say auburn, but let’s face it: it’s red. Eilidh’s was the colour of chestnuts and rested in lovely waves on her shoulders.
“I’m good. I’m back in Glen Avich now. I have a son . . .”
“Yes, Aunt Mhairi told me. Congratulations . . .”
“And he’s such a bonny baby!” Peggy jumped in.
“I’m looking forward to meeting him. Say hi to Jamie for me . . .”
“Will do. Listen . . .” She put her warm hand on mine. I looked down. I didn’t trust myself to look into her kind, open face and not burst into tears. “I’m only up the road. If there’s anything you need just call me or drop by.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s a new coffee shop a few doors up, did you see it?”
“Oh, yes, La Piazza. I only saw it from the outside.”
“If you fancy a coffee, one day . . .”
Suddenly, the door opened and a gust of cold wind blasted us. “Hello, Inary,” said a voice I knew. A voice I knew well.
I turned around, and there she was. Anabel. Lewis’s mum. On some church-related errand, no doubt.
We hadn’t spoken in three years. I was bound to run into her, sooner or later. I forced myself to look at her, though I knew how that would make me feel. She was a tall, broad woman, with a booming voice and inquisitive eyes.
“Hi, Anabel.” My heart was hammering against my ribs.
“And how have you been?” she asked, with that slightly condescending tone she’d always had with me. Like I wasn’t too bright, I wasn’t too beautiful, I didn’t go to their church, but I was her son’s choice – for a while – and she had to put up with me. Once, she said that the McCrimmon women were a bit odd; Logan never spoke to her again. Emily called her Cruella, because she bred dogs and she was convinced she made coats out of them. She had liked to joke that Anabel would turn up at my wedding in a Dalmatian coat.
“Good. Yes,” I replied. How have I been? Had she not heard? Strange. Everyone knew everything about everyone, around here.
“Lewis told me about Emily . . .” Oh. She did know. I gazed at her face, and I was quite astonished to see that she looked genuinely upset. “But Emily was always sickly, wasn’t she . . .” She made it sound as if it was Emily’s fault, somehow. The tainted McCrimmon blood, I suppose. In other words, she was back to her usual charming self. I cut her short.
“Well, it was nice to see you, Anabel” – it wasn’t – “Thanks, Peggy,” I said quickly and practically ran out of the shop, my cheeks on fire. I stood outside and inhaled as deeply as I could. There was a question stuck in my throat: how’s Lewis? The question I just couldn’t ask, because I didn’t really want to hear the answer. In case he wasn’t well, and it would upset me; in case he was happy with someone else, and that would upset me too. And I wasn’t supposed to care, anyway.
All of a sudden I realised that I was holding a stack of magazines that hadn’t been paid for. I had to go back in . . . and try not to thump Cruella. But just as I was about to open the door, Eilidh walked out.
“Those are on me. Nice woman. Come,” she said, and slipped her arm in mine. “Let’s head off before she comes out.”
“Thanks. Yes, she was always a charmer.” I swallowed.
“You had a lucky escape with that lot,” said Eilidh.
A gust of wind mixed with rain hit my face, and I fastened the collar of my jacket. The sky was heavy, laden with pewter clouds. Eilidh and I walked towards St Colman’s Way in peaceful silence. I was grateful that Eilidh wasn’t asking questions – even the easiest of enquiries brought on painful thoughts. Like how long will you stay for?
Until . . . and then the thought I couldn’t think without my heart breaking in two: Until she goes.
“So where’s your baby today?” I asked, trying to steer my mind towards happier grounds.
“At the soft play in Kinnear with his dad and Maisie. I’m doing some spring cleaning. My life is so exciting!” she joked.
“Spring? You’re an optimist!” I said, raising my eyes to the stormy sky.
“Spring will be here soon,” she said.
Yes. And Emily will not be here to see it.
We said goodbye with one last hug and the promise to meet soon, and I stepped back into the house – and with that step, I knew I was walking into the limbo between life and death, a no man’s land where all I could do was wait and hope against hope.
6
Girl in a white dress
Alex
“Going down to the cafe, do you want something?” one of the other designers, Sharon, asked in her soft voice. A freezing rain was falling on London, three weeks to the day since Inary left. I was trying to forget about her for a few hours the only way I knew how – working. Lesley was due to come to the office soon, to discuss the redesign of the website of the company she worked for, which cheered me up a bit.
“Alex?” Sharon was looking at me, waiting for an answer. I realised I had forgotten to reply.
“Sorry, I was distracted there. No, no thanks. I’m not that hungry.”
“No lunch today again?” She folded her arms in mock reproach.
“Maybe later.” I smiled.
“No, no way. You are going to eat with me. I’m going to buy you a . . .” – she raised her eyes to the ceiling, trying to remember what I like – “. . . chicken mayo sandwich, wasn’t it?” I nodded, smiling. “And a cream cake too. I won’t take no for an answer!” I opened my mouth to protest, but she stopped me again. “Right, I’m off!” she said and looked straight into my eyes. I noticed how the muted light made her brown eyes darken to near-black, like two pieces of obsidian.
“Thank you. Tell me how much I owe you . . .”
“My treat,” she said, and disappeared through the door.
Sharon had been working with me for two years. It took me a long time, and some help, to figure out that she was interested in me. I just hadn’t noticed. I never fail to see the patterns and colours of people’s clothes, the shapes of buildings and flowers and every shade painted in the sky in every hour of the day . . . but people’s behaviours are a bit of a mystery to me. In the end, Gary, my colleague and friend, had to spell it out to me.
“You sure she likes me?”
“Oh yes. Did you not see how she looks at you?”
“Not really.”
He rolled his eyes. “Wake up, Alex. You’d be a fool to let her go.”
I avoided talking about Sharon from then on. I avoided Sharon herself, as much as I could in a small office. Don’t get me wrong, she was beautiful, and kind, and funny. She was everything a guy would want.
She just wasn’t Inary.
She seemed to keep her distance for a while, maybe hurt over the fact that I didn’t seem to respond to her interest. But after a while things seemed to settle down again, like she had understood and accepted my choice.
One day Inary came to see me at the office. She walked in like a ray of sunshine, smiling, chatting happily, the way she always did. I could see Sharon watching her long and hard. Even I realised that Sharon’s smile was forced and that she was sitting rigid in her chair, just waiting for the moment Inary would leave. Sharon had figured it out; she knew how I felt about Inary. Well, no biggie, everybody around me knew. And everyone at some point had tried to make me see sense. Except for Lesley, who was convinced that Inary and I were made for each other, that she just needed time to get over this guy who had left her.
One night, when the two of us were alone at my house, I was given a glimpse into Inary’s old life.
�
�Did you know I was about to get married?” she said, pouring herself yet another glass of vodka. She was curled up on my sofa, her bare feet folded underneath her, her head on the cushions. Inary is usually a happy drunk, you know, the kind that dances and laughs and tells everybody they love them. Not then.
“Were you?” I was astonished. I knew there had been someone in her life, but not that it’d been so serious. Inary, engaged?
“He didn’t want to just live together,” she said, waving her glass about. “No. His mum and dad would not approve. People would talk. People from that bloody church of his. No, he wanted. To. Get. Married.”
“Right,” I replied soothingly.
“So I went and bought a dress. Emily helped me choose. It was lovely, you know? Sort of strapless, like that . . .” Half the contents of the glass ended up on the cushions as she showed me the shape of her wedding dress. “And then he left me!”
“I think you’ve had enough to drink, Inary . . . Come here. Have this . . .”
“Oh, thanks. What is this? Why are you giving me water?” she grimaced.
“Drink up . . .” I insisted, and sat beside her.
“No.”
“Come on. If you drink up, tomorrow I’ll make you a cooked breakfast,” I tried to bribe her like you would a child.
“Okay then. Crispy bacon and scrambled eggs please.” Had she not been so upset about her ex-fiancé, I would have found it funny. She leaned her head on my shoulder. “Oh God, I’m so tired . . .”
“Right. Time for bed.” I lifted her up and carried her to the spare bedroom. As I was helping her to the bed, she mumbled something.
“What was that?”
“I said I never want to love anyone ever again!”
“Oh. Okay . . .” I said, slipping the duvet over her. Part of me was amused at her drunkenness, but there was a sad note in her voice that made me nervous, made me wonder if she meant what she was saying.
“You know what was the thing?”
“What was the thing?” I asked.
“Lewis hated my gift.”
“Did he?” I said, covering her with the duvet. She had panda eyes and her hair was damp around her forehead. She looked very young and very vulnerable. “What gift was it?” I asked, thinking she must mean some present she’d given him. Bit of an odd reason to leave someone just before the wedding. But I never got my answer; she was sleeping already.
The whole thing was very un-Inary – I’d never seen her like that before or after that night, and I never knew what she meant by Lewis hating her gift.
Inary’s refusal to date anyone, and not for lack of offers – I lived in fear of the writers she worked with – had lasted three years already, and didn’t seem to pass. I knew that the guy she was engaged to broke her heart, but was it really her disappointment, her fear that kept her away from me? Or was it something else, something a lot more final – she just wasn’t interested in me – and when she was finally ready, she’d find someone else. One of those literary types she worked with, for sure. I’d torture myself picturing her with some Swedish short-story writer who’d whisk her away on a cruise around the fjords. Okay, fjords are in Norway, but you get my point. Every time she mentioned someone at work, dread settled in my stomach in a cold, hard lump. I wanted to believe Lesley’s theory; I wanted to keep hoping that one day she’d change her mind about us. But what happened three weeks ago – the pain she’d caused with just a few words – it slayed me.
Sharon’s return interrupted the chaos of my thoughts; she was back with a delicious-smelling parcel in her hands. I made coffee and we ate together. Without warning, she leaned over and brushed my cheek with her finger, very close to my lips. Her hair smelled rich and deep, of some dark-noted perfume. “You had cream on your cheek . . .” she said, smiling, and lowered her eyes at once.
She knew what she was doing. Even I knew what she was doing.
At that moment Lesley came in, and sure enough, she knew too. She never mentioned anything, not even when Sharon left and we were alone in the office, but I was sure she would, sooner or later.
She sat beside me at my desk and subtly started to straighten things and align things, and generally give my stuff the Lesley treatment.
“You really are messy, aren’t you?”
“No, it’s you being freakishly tidy,” I replied.
“Shut up,” she laughed.
“So . . . have you heard from Inary?” I forced myself to sound casual as I brought the work in progress onto the screen.
“Yes. She called a couple of times. It’s just terrible, Alex. She sounds worse every time. Emily is in a bad way . . .”
Suddenly, I felt horribly selfish. Here I was, agonising over our night together and my feelings for her when her sister was dying and she must be going through hell.
“I can’t imagine how it must feel . . . Emily is only twenty-three . . .” I said.
“I can’t imagine either. If I lost Kamau . . . Anyway. I just hope a miracle happens. I wish I could be there for her, that she wasn’t so far away.”
“Me too.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“No.”
“You haven’t spoken to her at all?” Lesley looked astounded. So Inary hadn’t told her about us . . .
I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to discuss what happened between Inary and me. I just couldn’t.
“Maybe you should give her a call . . .”
I took a deep breath. “I think she needs space.”
“Maybe,” she replied, and looked at me curiously.
I just couldn’t take that conversation any more. “Let’s get to work, Lesley,” I said, and desperately tried to concentrate.
*
That night I took the broken daisy chain and slipped it into a drawer, which I closed with a little more force than I should have. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe forgetting Inary was like trying to stop smoking; it wouldn’t work the first time, but you’d try over and over again and fall off the wagon once, twice, three times, until, if you were lucky enough or determined enough, you made it. Inary was like any other addiction, sweet and eventually destructive – I couldn’t live without her, but ultimately she stopped me from living.
It was time to stop this coming close and then being lost to each other again. It was time to stop it. But how could I, when Inary was going through all that grief? And was I ready to live my life without her, not only as a girlfriend, but as a friend as well? Without Inary at all.
I wasn’t sure how I could face it.
7
A wall between us
Inary
I could sense it from the way he was closing and opening drawers, from the way he was sighing while making coffee, going through Emily’s pill bottles to check I don’t know what, wrestling with the tea towels as if they were a nest of snakes. I knew he was spoiling for a fight.
Part of me wanted to keep out of his way, avoid the confrontation I knew was coming, and part of me wanted to face it head on and tell him all I’d had in my heart since I’d moved away. How I resented him for having punished me constantly, incessantly. How I never chose to have my life broken into a million pieces, forcing me to leave. How I hated the way he always had a chip on his shoulder . . .
“Inary! Whatever it is you’re making, it’s burning,” Logan yelled. I shook myself and removed the soup from the stove. “That’s all we need. The house going up in flames! Can you just focus, for once? Can you keep your head on what’s happening here and now? Or do you have a million more important things to think about, as usual?”
There. It was bound to happen. My hands were shaking with anger as I swept my hair away from my face, trying not to shout back. But he wouldn’t let me be.
“Can you tell me where your head’s at, Inary? Can you tell me?”
He was standing very close to me – too close. I looked up at him. My brother was a tall man, and strong; he towered over me. But I wasn’t afraid of his anger; I wa
s furious.
“My head is here with Emily,” I whispered angrily. “Where it’s always been, Logan. My thoughts were always with her. And keep your voice down . . .”
“So all the time you were in London your thoughts were with Emily? She didn’t need your thoughts, you know? Your thoughts didn’t make sure she took her pills every day, didn’t take her to the hospital every four weeks, up and down to Aberdeen, and it was always bad news. Always. I never heard ‘things are looking good’, never. Every month it was a professional smile and a shrug of the shoulders when I asked when is the new heart coming? Is she getting better? Is she going to live?”
I hated myself as I felt tears streaming down my face. I tried to open my mouth, but he wasn’t finished.
“I haven’t slept a whole night in years. I always wake up to go and check on her. Like Mum used to do when we were children, remember? Or maybe you never noticed. I haven’t slept one whole night in years for fear of finding her dead in the morning. And there was no telling you the truth, Inary, it just would not sink in . . . Every time we tried to tell you she would not live unless she got a new heart, you just wouldn’t listen! You were always convinced a miracle would happen . . .”
I sobbed, a hand clasped over my mouth.
“Maybe it was to your advantage, to think that way. So you could allow yourself to leave. Because Emily would be fine. But she’s not fine, she’s dying. And you were away from us for three years. You left me dealing with it all . . .”
I couldn’t take it any more. I couldn’t stand there and listen any more.
Because he was right.
I wanted to run away, run out into the street and up to St Colman’s well, and cry in peace.
Instead I slapped him.
He froze and just looked at me, eyes blazing. For a second I thought he’d strike me back – I braced myself – but he didn’t. He turned around and punched the wall so hard I heard a crack. He held his injured hand in his good one, wincing.
“Can you keep it down, please?” The nurse Lynda’s face appeared through the door. “Emily can hear you. She’s upset. Whatever it is, go sort it somewhere else!” she hissed.
Take Me Home Page 5
