Sean smiled. It was nice to focus on someone else’s love life instead of his own.
It wasn’t long until the Hollywood cavalry arrived in the form of Connor and Campbell – last and, of course, the biggest draw. The men had presence; Sean would give them that. Even dressed casually in jeans and button-down shackets, they were unmistakably movie stars. Although, the jury was out on whether sunglasses indoors on a stormy day before the poker had started didn’t just scream ‘wanker’.
And Campbell had gone one better with a broken leg accessorised with black carbon-fibre-effect crutches to add an accidental stylishness to his look.
Sean steeled himself for watching his wife interacting with her movie star ex. Not any old movie star either. Hollywood’s hottest eternal bachelor. Sean didn’t do jealousy, but given the dinner proposal, he would be watching closely.
‘Hey, hey, Seany!’ Connor Donoghue, the brother of Jamie’s fiancée, Alicia, bounded into Sean’s vision – although the man commanded attention from across the room by merely breathing. Some mistook it for arrogance, but Sean knew better. He’d met Connor enough times to see that his presence came from a natural, grounded confidence borne of growing up in Hollywood acting royalty. The glitzy Donoghue family made the Butlers look like the Waltons.
‘Alright, Connor. Thanks for coming. I appreciate your support. It’s raised the profile hugely.’
‘Wouldn’t miss it, bro. Any excuse to come to Kinshore and see my sister and my favourite second family. Also, I hear there’s a chance to win a cask of whisky; that’s mighty generous of Jamie.’
As Sean was about to confirm this, Cherry sidled up, with hobble-along Campbell Duff leaning into his designer crutches for allhe was worth.
‘Sean, this is Campbell,’ Cherry announced, meeting Sean’s eye long enough for him to see she was valiantly trying to mask nerves. ‘Campbell, this is Sean, my husband.’
Sean held out his hand and, after making an exaggerated fuss about what to do with his crutches, Campbell shook it, his handshake surprisingly firm.
‘What happened to your leg?’ Sean thought he ought to ask, although he didn’t especially want to know.
‘Och, I lost control of my golf cart. Filming a rom com, of all things.’
Sean’s urge to laugh kicked in hard, but he noticed Campbell was deadly serious.
‘Really?’
‘Aye, I drove it into a bunker during a wee chase scene,’ Campbell drawled, his accent adrift on the Atlantic somewhere between Glasgow and Chicago.
‘Oh, right. Sorry to hear that.’
‘Aye, I do all my own stunts, you see.’
‘I see. Maybe best you don’t. Was everyone else okay?’
‘Och, aye, the extra playing my caddy got knocked over, but he got away with a few wee cuts and grazes.’
Sean found it amusing that Campbell kept over-seasoning his speech with Scottish words like ‘och’, ‘aye’ and ‘wee’ as if he needed to prove his Scottish nationality after spending so long in the States. He probably had a trenchant opinion on Scottish independence, too, despite not living here.
‘I hope you heal well and are better soon. I’m sure the Scottish air will help.’
‘Aye, that and I’ll drop in for some of my maw’s food. Thanks, big man.’
This parting shot made Sean grind his molars. ‘Big man’might be a Scottish term of endearment, but he and Campbell were not on that footing, and Campbell was not the salt-of- the-earth Glaswegian he was playing here. Plus, his ex was Sean’s wife. The overfamiliarity curdled in Sean’s gut.
‘Sooo… You married Cherry?’ Campbell posed a pointless rhetorical question. Which would be fine if he hadn’t followed it with: ‘Congratulations. Never thought I’d see the day when “Gangsta” Paradise settles down.’
Cherry visibly tensed at being talked about as if she weren’t here.
‘Settling comes to us all eventually,’ Sean said, ‘like wrinkles and saggy balls.’
‘Ach, not to me, pal. Wrinkle-free, perky-balled bachelor ’til I die.’ Campbell winked firmly and pointed to the side of his eye as if to show that there were no crow’s feet on him. ‘Some of us aren’t made for the mundane life. Variety and action for me, like in my movies.’
‘I see. Well, some of us get that variety and action in our married lives.’
It was hard to miss Cherry’s disapproving glare, which Sean fully understood – veiled comments about their sex life weren’t called for here – but surely he’d earned the right to prod this man a little.
‘I can well believe it,’ Campbell said in another inappropriate turn. ‘I expect you won’t mind a night off that action. Enjoy the care home ceilidh, or whatever counts for entertainment around here,while I take your wife to dinner in the big bad city. All platonic and for charity, of course.’
