I roll my eyes. “Didn’t think a country bumpkin like me would survive in the big city?”
Now it’s her turn to scoff. “I’d hardly refer to you as a country bumpkin. Rugged lumberjack seems more apt. Or yeti, as I said.” She folds her arms. “It sounds like you hated it. Why did you stay for so long?”
“Job paid well.”
I can’t tell her the real reason I moved. Or the guilt I felt. Only Mason and Ross know about that and that’s because they have it too. I was the last survivor. The final brother to abandon the sinking ship of our Da’s alcoholism, as he went from one beer a day, to five, to ten, as he drowned himself and everything he was and everything he ever loved in drink after drink after drink.
The job offer, when it came, was an escape. I took it reluctantly, telling myself it was temporary. The salary was good enough that I could send money back to help pay someone else to work on the farm, keep it afloat while Da was determined to drive it into the ground.
I hated London. Hated every lonely, grey day I spent there, tramping down flat, dirty pavements, in the shadow of flat, oppressive buildings. The shitty houseshare with the too-small shower and the too-low pressure and the shit, hard water. It didn’t even have a garden, just a sad excuse for a patio, paved over because a lawn was too much upkeep. The endless commute, always with some stranger’s face buried into my armpit because of how tall I was.
Violet was the only good thing about it. A polished gem in a sea of concrete. She was far too good for the likes of me: a city girl from her platinum roots to her white trainers that had never seen a fleck of mud. Proper. Wealthy. Smart. I’d neverunderstand why she picked me up that night in the bar. Never questioned my luck.
But even she couldn’t make London a place I wanted to be.
“So why did you come back?”
I remember the phone call with pinprick clarity. Relief and heartbreak and guilt and despair and a terrible burst of joy all at once. Da was sick. He collapsed in the field. Pancreatic cancer, they said. Six months at best, they said. Come back, they said. Ross was on his honeymoon and Mason had accepted his dream job in Edinburgh. There was no one else. I was the eldest. I was the one who had left.
My fault for not being a better person. A better son.
The next day, I grabbed the small bag of belongings I’d never really unpacked, and said goodbye to the housemates I’d never befriended, and got on a train back to Glasgow. And that was that. My life in London, over. My relationship, over.
Violet and I tried to make it work. But she wasn’t cut out for the farm. And even once Da had passed, I couldn’t leave it again.
I don’t want to tell Rowan, who is still a stranger, any of that. So I settle on a version of the truth. Palatable. Stripped clean of all the ugliness, the mess.
“I missed Scotland. Missed the fields, and the green and the shape of the sky. And Da needed me back to help on the farm.”
“That’s nice of you. I bet he’s grateful.”
“He’s dead. So.”
I hate this part. I tense, waiting for it: people can’t handle death. It makes them weird, uncomfortable. They clam up, or panic and babble. But Rowan looks at me with those wide, blue eyes and tentatively touches a hand to my arm.
“How long?”
“Four years.”
“God, I’m really sorry, Angus. That must fucking suck.”
She says it so sincerely that it takes me aback. I can feel her fingers burning on my skin. I want to shake them off. I want to grab hold of them and kiss them, every one, and I don’t know where the feeling has come from and I like it and hate it all at once.
“It is what it is.”
“Do you really feel that way?”
“What are you, a therapist?”
“No, but I’ve seen plenty of them. Guess it rubs off.” She tilts her head. “Nice evasion though. Top work.”
“Thank you. I’ve been practicing my whole life.” I hold out my hand. “Look. I’m sorry about last night. It was rude of me, to walk away like that. Can we try this again?”
Rowan, it turns out, isn’t the woman I expected her to be. I at least owe her an apology.
She eyes me warily. “You were a dick.”
“I was.”
