‘Where have you two been?’ she calls out.
‘We went to see the red squirrels,’ I reply.
‘Oh, aren’t they gorgeous? There are red kites too. You know, birds of prey—’
‘I’m sure Carly knows what they are,’ Oliver cuts in with a grin.
‘Er, yes. I do.’ I smile too, aware of a tiny spark of happiness flickering inside me. I’m not sure where that came from.
‘’Course you do.’ Suki laughs. ‘So if you like, we can go up to the hide later and watch them. The farmer putsout food for them. It’s amazing – isn’t it, Ols – to see them diving down for it?’
‘Yeah, it really is something special.’ He catches my eye with a bemused glance, and his sister pats his arm fondly as we step into the cabin. By the time I’ve come back from getting properly dressed, warm croissants and bowls of fresh berries have appeared. In between carrying them to the table, I quickly check my phone.
Nine-forty a.m. and still no reply from Frank to the message I sent accidentally. And now the thought of driving back, to the house that no longer feels like home, causes an ache deep in my gut.
‘Dinah, breakfast is ready!’ Suki sing-songs. Then to Oliver and me: ‘Sit down, tuck in. Oh, Carly! Lyla just sent me some gorgeous photos. She and Eddie were at a party last night. Look!’ She grabs her phone from the worktop, pulls up a photo of the two of them and hands it to me.
My heart seems to clench as I take it from her. Their young faces are pressed together, cheek to cheek. Lyla is wearing a cream sleeveless top, or maybe a dress, with delicate beading around the neckline. Her blonde hair is scooped up with loose tendrils floating at her flushed cheeks. She looked lovely that day at the private members’ club. But I was too shocked, from having that lunch forced upon us, to appreciate it fully.
Here, she looks like an angel. And Eddie looks … well, I don’t knowhowEddie looks. Kind of frozen there, and helpless. My son, playing a part.
Something snags in my throat as I hand back Suki’s phone. ‘Lovely picture,’ I say, as if everything’s normal.
‘Don’t they look great together?’ Suki enthuses asDinah wanders in, rubbing her eyes sleepily. ‘Look, Dinah! Aren’t they cute?’ Suki rushes over to show her.
‘Very nice,’ Dinah says curtly. It’s like someone who doesn’t like dogs being forced to admire a chihuahua.
I glance over at Oliver and we seem to exchange a silent message as we all take our places at the table.This is all so weird. But it’ll be okay.And, stranger still, even the party photo and Dinah’s terse presence don’t propel me into feigning illness at the breakfast table.
Oliver offers around the coffee pot as sunshine slices into the bright and airy room. And as Suki chatters happily about all the wonderful places she plans to show us today, I figure that perhaps I’m not ready to go home just yet.
Chapter Twenty-five
Eddie
At ten-thirty on a cool, bright Edinburgh morning, Eddie looks at the photo of him and Lyla on her Instagram and feels as if his heart could break.
That party. God. He plonks his phone face down on the duvet and glares at the towel pinned up at his window. Obviously he can’t draw it, like a curtain. But the concept of taking it down every morning and pinning it back up again at night is too much to wrap his head around. There’s the blind his mum ordered for him, still in its packaging, propped up in a corner of his room.Your Blind From EasyBlinds has arrived!reads the yellow sticker on the hefty cardboard tube.
Nothing easy about installing a blind, Eddie reckons. Nothing easy about life when you’re having to fend for yourself, without the comforts of home. In this miserable room Eddie exists either in the unforgiving glare of the room’s centre light, or the meagre amount of sunlight that struggles through the towelling layer.
Neither option creates the ambience he’d envisaged when Raj and Calum had told him about the vacant room. Edinburgh with his best mates! Finally, Eddie’s adult life would properly begin. No more getting stoned at the bandstand and watching the Arran ferry chugging back and forth as the years slid away. No locking himself in the bathroom at home just to glean a bit of privacy from his parents. Moving out, he’d decided, would bebliss.
Eddie had pictured his friends’ flat as being scruffy but relaxed and fun, with impromptu gatherings and late nights sitting up, having a smoke and a few drinks and long, hilarious conversations.
It hasn’t quite turned out that way. Okay, there was that first night when he’d just moved in. The party and meeting Lylaand look what happened then!But since that night, Raj and Calum have been too busy to go out beyond the occasional quick drink. Too busy with work, that is. Eddie had never realised howseriousthey are now; proper corporate types, working for the same company and forever going on about systems and targets and ‘awaydays’ with ‘the team’. It’s as if they went straight from being normal teenagers to being instantly forty-five. While Raj is single, Calum has a girlfriend, Zara, who also seems oddly mature for twenty-three with her sensible blazers and curled-under brown bob and talk of how she and her flatmate want a modular sofa. What’s that all about?
Not only that, but these days Raj and Calum are up at dawn and heading off to their workplace’s gym together. They even go there at weekends! They’ll be there now, working out on a Saturday morning when they should be lying around the flat, drinking coffee and nursinghangovers like normal people. Eddie’s suggested finding a skate park they could all go to, but they looked at him as if he was mad.
Now Eddie mooches through to the kitchen in the otherwise empty flat, cringing at the sight of the huge, pearly-white helium balloon that’s hovering at the ceiling. Zara brought it round for Calum – she ‘stole’ it from a work event, this is what counts as rebellion these days! – and Eddie couldn’t admit that he still fears balloons.
Trying not to look at it, he fills a greasy pint glass with tap water. It tastes as if it’s come out of a rusting tank with a dead pigeon floating in it. Maybe it has – who knows? He saw a rat running along their street with a bit of battered sausage in its mouth the other night. At least, he thinks it was sausage. He didn’t exactly get up close to inspect it. Anyway, nothing would surprise him around here.
He glugs down the stale water while glaring at another appalling object in the kitchen. Sitting there on the worktop is a ridiculously huge, clear plastic bottle with a spout and measurements marked down the side. Eddie knows it’s to encourage you to guzzle water all day long. He faintly remembers a time when life was all about messing around and laughing with your mates. Now it’s about stayinghydrated. All the same, he’s desperately hungover and needs liquid before he can function. He drank way too much at that party last night. It was the only way he could handle it.
Please come to Josh’s thing,Lyla had messaged him.We can do some photos. Mum’ll like that.Obligingly, he said he’d go. But it wasn’t like the party where they’d first met. It was a fancy thing in a hotel suite, full of brayingpeople with loud, confident laughs. And the loudest and brashest was Lyla’s uni friend Josh.
Of course he was aJosh: holding court with his big white teeth and expensive shirt and a job at the Scottish parliament. ‘What d’you do, Eddie?’ he asked.
