by Shari Low
‘So you’re going to drive all the way to Prestwick to pick him up? On the motorway?’
‘It’s only an hour and a half away. It’s not like a different country,’ I added defensively.
‘Lou, you haven’t been further than the sports centre in Merrylee Road. How are you going to get all the way to Prestwick?’
Lizzy had a point, but I was determined that I wasn’t going to lose another moment that I could be with Charlie and, OK, yes, perhaps I wanted to show off a little by swooping in to collect him from his flight.
‘Look…’ I narrowed my brow and squinted in what I hoped was an expression of steely determination.
‘Have you got conjunctivitis?’ Ginger interrupted. ‘Your eyes look weird.’
Maybe steely determination wasn’t my thing.
‘My serial killer driving instructor certified me as being fit to drive this morning. I really want to see Charlie, I’ve been missing him like crazy, and there’s no point waiting until tomorrow morning, when I could drive down, collect him and his mum, take them home and be with him tonight. We can go out tomorrow night. Besides, don’t you think that’s a great way to meet my future mother-in-law for the first time?’
‘Nope, I think it’s a great way to waste twenty quid on petrol.’
‘That’s why you’re single,’ I told her, throwing a cushion in her direction.
I didn’t care what they said. This was going to be like one of those final scenes from movies featuring Meg Ryan. And like a great romantic-comedy heroine, I was on the way to get the bloke and the happy ending.
Seven
Did any of the great romcom heroines ever get a puncture?
Did the great Shakespearean love stories end up in Kwik Fit?
I wasn’t even out of the end of our street when I stopped, gave in to curiosity and checked why the car was driving like it was pulling a train.
Going back home and facing Ginger’s ‘I told you so’s’ wasn’t an option, so instead I nipped into a phone box and called Red. Fifteen minutes later he was there, with the good grace to look slightly sheepish.
‘I’m really sorry, Lou. I had no idea this would happen.’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, I think it was my fault. Someone smashed up the bus stop outside the flat last night and I parked next to it. I was so excited about getting the new car that I didn’t even notice I’d stopped on top of glass.’
Oh, common sense, common sense – wherefore art thou?
Red opened the boot of his new white Toyota Carina, took out some tool-shaped thingies and got to work on removing the tyre. Ginger swears he’s gay, but I’m not so sure. He’s the least camp man on the planet and I’ve never seen him wear the Boy George hat we got him for Christmas last year. He always wears beat-up jeans, white or grey T-shirts and black boots. And they’re not even suede. The only time I’ve ever seen him in anything else is when he’s on his way to work on a Saturday. He’s a photography assistant for the place down the shopping precinct and when he’s covering a wedding he has to wear a suit.
Nope, he’s definitely not gay. I mean, he always wears Aramis aftershave and, according to an interview I read somewhere, that’s George Michael’s favourite too.
‘So where are you off to then?’ he asked as he started winding up a tool thingy that was attached to my deflated tyre.
‘Collect my boyfriend from Prestwick Airport. He’s flying in tonight at nine pm.’ I checked my watch – still two hours and thirty-nine minutes until he landed. Thank God I’d left myself some extra time.
‘Are you sure you want to do that? It’s a pretty long drive and you’ve only just . . .’
‘I’m sure.’ I cut him off with a smile. There was nothing else he could say on the matter that his sister and Lizzy hadn’t already mentioned. I was going. Case closed.
‘Didn’t you used to go out with Gary Collins?’ he asked casually. ‘He was in my year at school. Dunno what happened to him.’
Dear God, as if this night couldn’t get any worse. My flatmates were in big fat huffs because I’d cancelled the hallowed Friday Night with the Girls. I had a flat tyre. I was freezing cold. My white five-inch stilettos were killing me and I was in danger of missing the most romantic episode of my life. And now . . .
‘He took off with Rosaline Harper. To London.’
‘That’s right! I remember hearing something about that now. About two years ago?’
November sixteenth, 1986. The night after I’d tossed my virginity in his direction in the back of his car. He didn’t even leave a note. Despite the fact that, unlike Ginger’s first love, Gary hadn’t taken off to a war zone, I still hoped that someone would shoot the bastard. Josie was all for tracking him down and removing his genitals but I hid all sharp instruments until she eventually calmed down.
‘Yeah, something like that,’ I said casually. It had taken me a long, long time to master nonchalance when it came to Gary’s betrayal. Not that I ever considered revenge, but for a while I actually felt some kind of kinship with that psycho woman from Fatal Attraction.
With a sharp heave, Red pulled off the damaged wheel and slid on the spare and put the screw thingies back on. I made a mental note to brush up on my vehicular technical terms.
‘So how are things at the photography, er, place? Must be quite cool with all those, er, wedding films that people are doing now.’
And perhaps a crash course on photographic terminology too.
‘Yeah, it’s great. It’s just part-time while I’m at uni, but it gives me some experience and some dosh. Right, there you go. Perfect. Take it into a garage on Monday just to check the wheel balance, but it should be OK to use in the meantime.’
‘Thanks, Red.’ I gave him a big hug, careful not to let any form of grease get near the baby-pink skirt and white T-shirt I’d borrowed from Lizzy. She’d agreed to lend them to me before I trampled all over her social plans for the night.
‘No problem. And hope it works out with Charles.’
‘Charlie.’
‘Sorry, Charlie. Anyway, hope it works out . . .’ he repeated, throwing his tools in the back of his car. It was difficult to believe that he and Ginger came from the same gene pool. He was so nice, so thoughtful and civil, whereas Ginger could set a new world record for brutal bluntness. ‘. . . because Ginger says your taste in men is chronic.’
Actually, I was beginning to see a slight similarity.
‘Red, can I ask a huge favour? I mean, apart from dragging you out here at night and taking advantage of your tyre-changing capabilities.’
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t tell Ginger about this. I don’t think I can handle hearing “I told you so” every day until the end of time.’
When I finally tore into the terminal building, I checked the huge arrivals screen. Half an hour! The flight landed half an hour ago! Shit! Shit! Shit! But surely he wouldn’t be through yet? I mean, he had to get off the plane, collect his baggage, then go through customs. Damn that bloody combine harvester. I’d been stuck behind it for twenty miles coming down the A77, too terrified to overtake in case I got squashed by a bloody great big lorry coming the other way.
Crowds of people were streaming towards me from the same direction, so, fighting against the heaving masses, I headed in the direction of what I hoped was the arrivals area, scanning the faces with periscope motions as I went. Where was he? Had I missed him? Was he gone? He’d be here. He had to be. I tried to tell myself that this always happens to Meg Ryan – ten minutes from the end of every film she suffers some kind of unavoidable setback, then at the very last moment destiny gets its act together and sorts out the problem. Well, if destiny would care to intervene it would be useful right about now. And doing something about my feet would be a good place to start. These shoes had been selected on the basis of standing stationary, looking deadly, waiting on the second (OK, fourth, maybe fifth) love of my life to storm through the doors into my waiting arms. At no point had I taken on board a contingency that involved me abandoning my car
outside the terminal building and then doing a 200 metre sprint through a crowded terminal building. I was praying that the nerve endings would die soon and that the resulting numbness would be a blessed relief from the pain.
I was slowing to a speed that allowed me to decipher some of the accents around me. Predominately West of Scotland with the occasional smattering of American. This was Charlie’s flight, I could feel it. He was here! Somewhere. I just had to . . .
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
I went down like I’d been shot by a sniper. Full frontal, face first, traitorous heel of shoe skidding off into the distance. Splat.
‘Are you all right there, love?’ A concerned elderly gentleman with a talent for being oblivious to the obvious was first on the scene.
‘Mufth. Ma. Mfose.’
Yes, indeed I had. Burst my nose. Red liquid oozed through the fingers that were desperately trying to stem the flow before it reached Lizzy’s white T-shirt.
It was like trying to contain an oil slick with a bucket. Oh holy crap, she was going to kill me.
‘There you go, love, just keep it steady, keep it steady.’ I had no idea who was speaking but I didn’t have a choice. The elderly gentleman had launched an attack, pinching his fingers around the bridge of my nose. ‘Don’t worry, love, they taught us how to do this in the war.’
A small crowd started to form around me and, suddenly, a very sombre policeman, who looked like he was way over the weight limit for any kind of public service action role, crouched at my side.
‘The first aid team are on the way,’ he announced with, I have to say, not much compassion in his voice. ‘Happens all the time,’ he told Sir William Haig, who was still reliving his war years courtesy of my facial contusions. ‘They drink too much on the plane and then we have to sort it out at this end. I’d bloody ban alcohol on flights if it was up to me.’
‘Ah wothnt dwinkin!’ I spat, outraged.
‘Is she Russian?’ asked someone in the crowd.
To Sir William’s obvious disappointment, the first-aiders – visibly irritated at having their tea break disturbed for anything less than a full cardiac arrest – arrived and took over. Despite my vehement objections, they manhandled me into a wheelchair and while one took my pulse, the other eyed up his defibrillation paddles with solemn regret.
Slowly, the crowd began to disperse when it became clear they weren’t witnessing a scene that would require their presence on a Crimewatch reconstruction. Then . . . it was just a glimmer at first. A passing flicker of recognition, one that was then blocked by a large lady with a Dundonian accent.
‘Owthi way! Owthi way!’
‘She’s getting aggressive,’ shouted one paramedic.
‘Aye, that’s definitely Russian she’s speaking,’ said the lady from Dundee.
I pushed all of the hands off me and stood up, sending another projectile globule of blood shooting from my nose.
Charlie! It was him. It definitely was. And look, he had his arm around his mother, helping her across the terminal building. Except . . . He was laughing. And that arm thrown around that female’s shoulders was more of a casual, loving gesture than a maternal guidance aid. They were close enough for me to get a good look now. Yep, I could see all too clearly. And unless his mother was approximately twenty-one and sporting a natty line in denim miniskirts and boob tubes, then this wasn’t the happy picture of family support I’d been expecting.
He leaned over and kissed her as they walked, too engrossed in each other to even notice the small crowd and the cast of General Hospital still attempting to attend to a distraught Russian female with a bleeding nose and one shoe.
Giggling now, they passed us right by, staring into each other’s eyes, not even looking at where they were going. Never in my life have I ever prayed more for a bloody great big pillar to suddenly materialise out of thin air.
He’d lied. The second love of my life (OK, so who’s actually counting?) had pulled the same stunt as the last one and buggered off with someone else.
I briefly considered giving chase, but given that I looked like an extra from a scene of mass destruction in Alien, I decided not to bother. Instead, I thanked my audience for their participation, hobbled out to my car, took the parking ticket off the front window, got in and drove off using my one good foot. As I headed home, I almost wished there was a combine harvester in front of me as it would delay the inevitable. Lizzy’s huff would escalate to devastation when she realised that I’d wrecked her favourite clothes. Ginger’s huff would escalate to unbearable smugness that my rejection of a night with the girls had landed me on my arse. Literally. I could only hope that both situations would be diluted by love and sympathy when they saw that my face looked like it had done ten rounds with Muhammad Ali.
What a disaster. When was I ever going to learn? Josie was always telling me that my common sense took a bus to Pathetic Central whenever there was a man involved (I knew her honesty came from a place of love so I didn’t take offence). Given that it was Friday night and I’d dumped my pals for a bloke who was probably right now licking his duty free vodka off some blonde’s buttocks, I had to concede that she probably had a point.
I flicked up the indicator lever to signal that I was pulling out to overtake a caravan doing twenty miles an hour in the inside lane.
Bollocks. Bloody bollocks. Friday night, almost midnight and look at me. I could have been drinking cocktails and having a great time with my pals right now and instead I was driving in the dark, in the middle of bloody bollocking nowhere and all because of a bloke who was definitely not worth it.
A terrifying thought suddenly came into my head: I’d done exactly what I’d spent my life watching my mum do. All those nights spent driving to get my dad, leveraging her happiness because of a man, putting him first above everything else, caught up in some stupid messed-up fantasy where all that mattered was making him happy.
Woe.
I’d turned into my mother – the one person whose life I’d always sworn I would never have.
Well, enough. No more. Never again was I going to allow a guy to mess me around, take me for a ride, and break my heart. Fuck Meg Ryan. Life wasn’t like the movies and I had to stop expecting Tom Hanks/Billy Crystal/Richard Gere/Tom Cruise to wander in and save me. I might be Della Cairney’s daughter but I was Josie Cairney’s niece and I was pretty sure that if there was a fight for supremacy in the genetic pool of life, Della’s genes would need David Hasselhoff to resuscitate them.
As I passed the Hillman Imp that was pulling the caravan, I caught the smiling expressions on the faces of the middle- aged couple in the front seats. Dear God. Caravan-pulling tourists were happier than me. Could this night get any worse?
The cosmos answered by sending a sudden torrent of hailstones against my windshield. I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, desperately trying to keep calm. It was a bit late to wish I had more practise at driving in the rain. And in the dark. And while sporting a broken nose and eyes like a puffer fish. And . . .
Bang. Blackness. Silence.
In answer to my question, my night just got about as bad as it could be.
Eight
Lou
The St Kentigern Hotel, Glasgow. Friday night, 11pm
‘Getting arrested, leaving school, leaving home, losing virginity . . .’
Ginger shrieked. ‘Eeeeew, I have no wish to think of you in that way! Clear the mind. Clear the mind. Uuuuuummmmmmmm.’ She clasped together her middle fingers and thumbs, closed her eyes and went for it.
‘Lizzy, make her stop. We’ve paid for three nights here and I don’t want to get ejected after one,’ I begged.
Lizzy nudged Ginger in the shoulder. No reaction. She poked her in the ribs. Still the mock meditative chanting continued.
‘Ginger, that jacket is stunning. Is it Prada?’
‘Gucci. Limited edition. Couldn’t resist it.’
‘There you go,’ I told Lizzy. ‘A prod to the ego always works.’
>
Ginger grinned and signalled to the waitress for another round of drinks.
‘So go on then, smart one – what would you consider the landmark events in our lives?’ I asked her.
‘In my life or yours?’
‘Either.’
She thought for a moment and then let out a shriek that was almost other-worldly, before pausing to compose herself, then starting to whistle.
Yep, whistle.
A tune.
Oh. Dear. God. No.
‘Lizzy, make her stop again,’ I pleaded. ‘Quick, ask her if the handbag is Chanel!’
But this time Lizzy was otherwise engaged. It was hard to help a friend in need when you were harmonising to the soundtrack of the most mortifying moment of her life.
Nine
Lou
1991 – Aged 21
Baby, I know what it meant to you
I wanted it so bad and the words I spoke were true
Then under the stars you gave yourself to me
But it didn’t feel right, so I had to set you free
Oh, oh, oh, oh Sue, I’m sorry it could never be you . . .
‘Switch it off! Quick!’ Angie hissed. ‘The last time she heard it she almost took out the speaker with a flying hairdryer!’
Over at the reception desk, Rosie, the sixteen-year-old junior lunged towards the sound system and flicked it from ‘radio’ to ‘cassette’. Chesney Hawkes ‘The One and Only’ cut Radio Clyde dead.
Rosie and Angie, the salon juniors, were now watching me, eyes wide, ready to duck should another hairdressing implement be used in an act of random violence.
‘Aw that’s a shame, hen, I was enjoying that! I love that song,’ moaned Mrs. Marshall, my regular Friday afternoon, 5 pm shampoo and set. ‘I mean, we should be dead proud of him, shouldn’t we? It’s like Local Hero but without the football and that lassie with the chunky legs.’
