‘I only keep you around because you look like that in the morning.’ The voice from the door.
He shrugged, grinning as he went for his usual retort. ‘I only keep you around because I’m partial to people who share my shallowness,’ he replied, rewarded with a flash of her smile, the one that he’d fallen in love with the first time he saw her six months ago. It was a June afternoon, just a few months after he’d opened the shop, and she’d come in with her dad to pick out a new suit. Her dad had left with a pretty cool Ted Baker number and Lila had left with his phone number. She’d called later that night, they’d met up, and he’d moved out of his rented flat and in with her a week later. He had no regrets. Although, her morning routine could definitely do with a volume control. He put it down to the fact that she was ten years younger than him so she woke up with far more energy.
‘Right, I’m away,’ she said, distracted, and he knew she’d be thinking about the location of her phone, her keys, her make-up bag – all the things that she lost on an hourly basis. When it came to her job, a pharmaceutical rep for a big blue-chip company, she raked in a substantial salary because she was religiously organised and highly efficient. When it came to everything else, she was borderline chaotic. It was one of the dichotomies in her personality that he adored.
She was already out of the door, teetering on heels that made indentations in the thick pile carpet, before he realised there’d been no kiss, no hug, no promise to call. That had happened a few times lately, but he wasn’t worried. Didn’t everyone fall into familiar patterns after they’d been together for a while? Anyway, if it was an injection of romance that was required, today was going to be the day for it. Or rather, tonight was going to be the night.
He slid out of bed and headed to the shower, still wet, with the aroma of her Dior shower gel hanging in the air.
Digby, his assistant manager was opening up the shop for him today. First time for everything, but he had total faith in him. And besides, he’d asked Jen, who owned the holiday shop next door, to keep an eye out and make sure it was all okay. If there were any issues she’d call him.
He sang along with the song on Clyde radio – ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’. A retro classic from Simple Minds. He had no idea when he’d first heard it, couldn’t remember learning the lyrics, yet he knew every word of it. It was one of those songs that was just there, in the West of Scotland DNA.
His shower routine and the song finished at the same time, and he climbed out, pulled a towel around his waist and shaved, something that he only did on weekends and special occasions.
Today was definitely the latter.
The most special occasion of all, if it all went to plan. And he had no doubt it would, because the people in charge would make sure of…
The doorbell. There they were. Half an hour early. He should have expected it. They’d probably been parked outside since sunrise waiting for Lila to leave.
Dropping the razor in the sink, he wiped the last of the shaving foam off his face and headed to the door, delivering an exaggerated bow as it swung open.
Two women. Perhaps, other than Lila and his lovely mum up in Perth, his favourite two women in the world. Josie and Val.
Actually, there had been two others. Stacy, his best friend in L. A., and Mel, his former boss, were the only other women he’d ever truly loved, but those chapters were closed now.
Evennow, years later, thinking of Mel caused a tightening in his throat so he was thankful for the bedlam brought about by the loud and forceful entry of the new arrivals.
Josie was blissfully unaware that she was heading for seventy, the spiky-haired love-granny of Annie Lennox and Billy Idol. Cammy had worked with Josie and Mel in another lifetime, when they’d been employed in the His and Hers departments of Mel’s lingerie boutique, a store that had been in the same premises as the one he owned now. They’d spent every day together for many years, become family, before he left and headed over to LA for a few years. He’d had a great time there, but it was all surface stuff. More and more, he’d realised that he missed his old life and wanted more than casual dating and wheatgrass smoothies. So he’d come home. Not to Perth, the city he’d grown up in, much as he adored his parents who still lived there in his childhood home.
No, he’d come back to Glasgow. Mel was long gone. The killer was that she’d married Josie’s son and went off to live abroad. But at least he still had a circle of friends that included Josie and her best friend, Val, a fifty-something Glaswegian with a perfect blonde bob and pink pencilled lips. Her heart and personality were far larger than her five-foot frame and she collected waifs and strays, Cammy included, like other people collected shoes.
Val ruffled his hair as she teetered past in the wake of Josie’s steel stiletto heels, the Ant to Josie’s sexagenarian Dec.
‘For the love of God, Cammy, put a top on. My libido hasn’t been stirred since about 1996, and you don’t want to waken the beast,’ Josie barked, in a voice that came courtesy of a love of laughter and twenty cigs a day.
They barged ahead of him, into the kitchen and, without waiting to be asked, set about making a pot of tea, to go with the packet of caramel wafers that Josie produced from her handbag.
By the time Cammy joined them, only a few moments later, he was fully dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, the table was set, the tea was steaming and the wrappers had been discarded. Cammy thought, not for the first time, that if the country ever considered invading a nation, they should send these two in first to clear a path using the mighty power of tea and chocolate-covered biscuits.
‘Right then, love,’ Val started, opening a notebook and getting out a pen. ‘Let’s go over today’s schedule.’
‘Hang on, I wish to interject,’ Josie, well,interjected.
‘Cammy, are you sure about this, my darling? Because you know, and I say this from a place of love, you could do better.’
He came close to spitting out his tea.
‘Josie! That’s enough. For God’s sake, this is an anxious day for the poor boy and you’re only going to make it worse. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’s sure.’ Val turned to him. ‘You are sure, aren’t you son?’
‘I’m sure, Val,’ he said, ‘and Josie, I’m past forty. I’m not some crazy kid rushing into this. I know for sure it’s right. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.’
‘You thought that last time and look how that worked out,’ Josie said, not unkindly, but making the point.
Cammy wasn’t going there, refused to pick at that scab.
‘I’m sure,’ he repeated.
