‘You look really …’ He stops looking as soon as he mentions how I look, and then can’t finish the sentence.
‘Is the lippy too much? I don’t want to frighten the fish,’ I joke, but I feel a bit embarrassed now at the effort I’ve made. It was clearly too much. See, that’s why I don’t try at things; the opportunity for humiliation increases with every attempt to better yourself.
‘No, it’s good.’
I pull on my only sweatshirt to hide my blushing face and follow James out into the hall, where I pluck the same old man’s jacket off the coat rack.
We get outside and it’s clear he’s been up for a while, as there is a four-wheel-drive jeep-type thing pulled up by the front door, and inthe back some fishing rods, a tartan blanket and other green and/or tartan outdoorsy stuff.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.
‘Where are we going? I thought we’d be going out on Loch Dorn?’
‘Nah,’ James says, starting up the jeep. ‘I’d like to get away from here, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I reply. I don’t really want to go fishing, of course, but I love the packing of the car and the adventure of it all.
The car slowly moves forward and we take the main road from the hotel in the morning darkness. I reach over to play with the radio, but I can’t get it to turn on.
‘It doesn’t work,’ he says. ‘Sorry. We have to take this one, as we’re heading a bit off the beaten track. Anyway, you can’t pick up a signal once we go down towards the river.’
‘Thank God you’re not a serial killer,’ I say.
It isn’t long before he turns up an almost invisible lane, which winds alongside a river. I grab the handle at the top of the car to steady myself as we are thrown left and right on the bumpy road.
‘You’re not comfortable in cars, are you? It won’t be long.’
‘I was in a minor accident when I was ten.’
‘Oh shit! Really?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, it was really minor. I backed into the carport.’ I wait for the laugh. Most people really laugh when I tell that story, and James does too, but then asks, ‘What were you doing, driving at ten?’
‘Just being a naughty kid,’ I say, finding myself wanting to tell the actual truth for the first time: that my dad had wanted me to drive him to work.
‘I can imagine,’ he says with a smile.
We pull up at what could loosely be called apark, in that it’s the end of the hardly apparent road at the point where the non-road becomes a wood. I realize in abject horror that we will have to do the drive back up the lane in reverse.
James is out before me, pulling stuff from the back and laying it down along the river’s edge and, as I make my way out, I check my phone to see it’s still before 7 a.m. James is carefully checking the rodsand laying them against the back of the car, and I wonder if it’s too late to go to the movies or for a coffee somewhere.
‘I don’t have a clue what to do here – you know that, right?’
He grins as he hands me a rod, then flings a heavy backpack onto his back and nods towards a tiny path that I can just make out, about five metres from the car.
I oblige.
‘You know, this is a weird thing to do on a day off,’ I say. ‘At this hour most normal people are in bed, binge-watchingFriendswith bacon, or still asleep on the night Tube.’
I look back at James, and he’s doing that chuckle to himself that he’s always doing.
‘It only happened four times,’ I say, squeezing another giggle from him.
‘Keep going, you’ll need to climb a little at the base – that’s it – and down onto the bank.’
We’re going to be fly-fishing I realize. And I’m annoyed, because in my fantasy we’re on a boat in the loch with a parasol, and James pretends to tip the boat and I squeal and fall into his arms.
‘Fly-fishing?’
