‘Shit… Sorr—’ Instinctively, an apology spilled out of him, but it was overridden by the fury of the recipient of the pizza.
‘What the hell? Jamie!’ The man’s rage fired up the chilled air.
Standing, doused in the Margherita, was Katie’s new boyfriend and the bane of Jamie’s existence, Frank.
‘Evening, Frank.’ Apologies were out the window now and Jamie was fighting to conceal his buoyancy. ‘There’sa pizza karma for you.’
‘Fuck’s sake.’ Frank dropped his gaze to his pea coat where thick glops of cheese and tomato sauce were now stuck. Instead of wiping the pizza off as might be one’s first instinct, he glowered. ‘Are you blind? This coat is new.’
‘Sorry about that.’ Jamie bit back laughter. ‘This is like the world’s worst meet cute, eh?’
But Frank didn’t share the amusement. ‘You need to get your eyes checked, Butler.’
‘Och, don’t do yourself down. You look okay in the dark.’
‘I was talking about you not seeing where you’re going.’
This was obvious, but if Jamie was allowed anything, surely it was winding up this man who took himself far too seriously. ‘I genuinely didn’t notice you there,’ he said. ‘Maybe because you’re dressed all in black like a cat burglar. You about to scale some fences to steal more hearts?’
‘Very funny. You’ve got all the jokes, but I hope you’re on good terms with the dry cleaner because the bill for this will be expensive. I’ll have to go to Glasgow to get it done properly.’
This was ridiculous. There was a perfectly good dry cleaner in Campbeltown. Frank thought he was the Cary Grant of the Kintyre Peninsula when he was a tour guide and whisky blogger. Jamie wasn’t about to enter negotiations with him.
‘Well, that’ll be a nice day out for you.’ He examined the remainder of the pizza in the box. There were several slices intact. This Frank-made wreckage was salvageable, even if the other one – his relationship – was not.
‘What are you doing here, anyway? Frank glanced towards the back of the house where there was a light on in the kitchen. ‘I hope you’re not here because of Katie. Hovering around at the back gate of someone’s house could be considered stalking.’
‘Sorry, what? I was running home. This is the route I take to get there.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. Don’t take your fright out on me because you were feart you’d bumped into the Highland Mafia kingpin.’ Frank had recently written a blog post about the ‘Highland Mafia’ and their control over Scottish distilleries. It was a complete fairy tale, influenced, Jamie’s brother Sean told him, by some TV show that Jamie had never watched, but there had been implications that Butler’s was involved. The company lawyers had made Frank take the post down, but that didn’t stop him spreading his fake news when he did his guided whisky tours around the peninsula and beyond. Jamie wondered if Frank had made the stories up because he was bored regaling the same historicalstuff, and eventually came to believe his own hype. As had Katie. She met Frank at a spiritual book club where he peddled more nonsense, this time about people’s energy, Jamie’s apparently being too corporate, money driven and generally negative. Jamie understood that Katie was always searching for a meaning to life but it was his “corporate” money that had paid for her soul searching trips to Bali and India and countless retreats in the UK. Now she had found enlightenment on her doorstep and was trading in their once fun relationship for life with a bampot who peddled homespun cod psychology.
‘Can I say tonight that your aura is totally off, Jamie.’ Frank eyeballed him as if he had some mystical insight into his soul. ‘You need to get home and recalibrate.’
‘My aura!’ Jamie scoffed. ‘You don’t half blether some drivel. And Iwason my way home.’
‘Mmhm, okay. Well, if you really must chat to Katie, best text me and I can arrange something, if she’s up to it.’ Frank stood tall, prodding for the argument he wasn’t getting.
‘Look.’ Jamie’s hackles were rising now. ‘If you want to live in the house that I own, then you’ll have to accept that there are certain logistical things to be sorted out, which are too complex to be done over text message.’ After the split, Jamie had moved out of the house because he couldn’t bear to be in it with Katie for a moment longer, but he wasn’t reneging a family property to her or this bawbag. ‘Anyway, I’d have thought you’d be keen to find a place of your own to start afresh. There is enough in the piggy bank for that, isn’t there, Frank?’ This barbed comment would wind Frank up because his move in with Katie had been the first one for the thirty-one-year-old that wasn’t his parents’ house.
‘So, is that why you came over here on aFridaynight?’Frank cut back. ‘To talk about the house?’ He was like one of the trouble-stirring village gossips, twisting the conversation to make Jamie appear small.
‘I didn’t come here to see Katie, but if I did, I would be within my rights.’
‘Well, okay.’ Frank stepped back. ‘I was only thinking of Katie. She doesn’t need this kind of stress on a Friday night. Not in her condition.’
Jamie stopped deathly still. Frank moved sideways to let him by, as if he knew he wouldn’t pass, now the grenade was detonated. Despite having pizza all over his coat, he had finally gained the upper hand.
‘Her condition?’Please don’t let this be what it sounds like.
‘Aye. Did she not tell you? We’re expecting a baby.’
Jamie’s gut wrenched. Katie was pregnant? With Frank’s baby?What the hell?How many times had he mooted that they start trying? She always said she wasn’t ready and he accepted they still had time, meanwhile maintaining his efforts to make sex whatever Katie wanted it to be, whether that be making love, fucking with abandon or something in between. Once in a while he’d throw into the ring the suggestion of some sexy fun, such as his dressing up in a kilt and letting her lick single malt off his chest, or vice versa. But Katie mostly suggested they ‘commune in other ways’. Trouble was, she never disclosed what those ways were and now Jamie was left wondering if he was just crap in bed. After all, she was clearly doing it with Frank. How was it that they had gone from spinning with laughter at a ceilidh to this? From his being her local hero to someone who was figuratively miles away. Their slow uncoupling was both heartbreaking and frustrating.
But Jamie would not show one scrap of his feelings toFrank. Not an inch of satisfaction would he give this weed of a man.
‘No, she didn’t tell me, but congratulations to you both.’ He reached out his hand to shake Frank’s. He was nothing if not a gentleman.
