Scottie’s holding my hand tighter for a moment and then loosens.
‘I kept thinking it was temporary,’ I continue, tracing the curved spine of the hills rolling past. ‘That the man I met at the wedding would come back if I only waited patiently enough. Needed less.’ I let out a bitter sound. ‘My parents had a nasty divorce when I was ten. My dad works offshore. My mum moved to Northern Ireland two years ago. I bought myself a bunch of flowers after my first professional show, because nobody came backstage.’
He huffs, and it sounds vaguely disapproving.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Nothing. It’s… I can’t stand the thought of you being unhappy, even if it’s in the past.’
The quiet way he says it actually hurts. Nobody has ever minded about my past. Not even me. Unhappiness was wallpaper that I stopped noticing years ago. And here’s this man – my friend – driving us through the night, feeling for a version of me he never met.
I have no shelf for that sort of kindness. All I can do is latch onto his hand harder.
‘You learn to take up less space. Because you’re convinced that needing things is the reason people leave.’ I exhale slowly. ‘I couldn’t even tell my best friend what was going on. And I’ve known Laurel since we were eighteen and I moved in with her in Pollokshields. I couldn’t even admit it to myself. Because I didn’t know what “it” actually was.’
Scottie is silent for a long time. The only sound is the engine and the rain and the wipers.
When he finally speaks, he strips every bit of emotion out of it. ‘I was nine the first time I saw my dad hit my mum.’
Air stalls in my lungs.
‘Middle of the kitchen. She’d burnt his toast. She was crying and apologising, and he kept pushing her against the worktop. The fridge.’ A muscle in his jaw moves, a tiny spasm near his ear. ‘He slapped her twice. I hid behind the door, too scared to do anything. He pulled her hair as he shouted at her, his back to the door. She saw me and gestured for me to stay hidden. Afterwards, he went to the pub, and she cleaned herself up and never mentioned it. It was as if it didn’t happen.’
Any reply I could offer right now would sound cheap.
‘But it did happen. After he lost his job, he was drunk most of the time. And when he wasn’t drunk, he was angry about something. Mum learned to be invisible. As did the rest of us.’ He exhales through his nose. ‘My older brother Evan was the loud one. The brave one. He tried to get between them, but he got a thrashing, too. Evan warned me to stay away when Dad was like that because I was too wee.’
His thumb resumes its slow circles on my hand. ‘When I saw your name on my phone… When you texted, I didn’t even think. I just drove. Because I spent my childhood not stepping in, and I couldn’t do that again. Not with you.’
The confession sits between us like a third passenger. Two people who learned similar lessons in different houses.
Scottie presses a button on the steering wheel, and the car’s command system pings. ‘Call Mum.’
A ring fills the cabin. Then a woman’s voice, raspy and half-awake. ‘Scottie? God, look at the time. What’s wrong?’
‘I’m coming home tonight. And…I’m bringing someone.’
Muffled words on the other end, a question I can’t catch.
‘A very good friend. She needs somewhere safe. Only for a few days.’
A longer pause. I watch his face, the way his brow creases with something that isn’t guilt. ‘I’ll explain when I get there.’
He ends the call. ‘She’ll probably have questions.’
I trace the path of the rain through the windscreen. ‘What are you going to tell her?’
‘The truth.’ He changes gear. ‘Eventually.’
The word ‘eventually’ occupies the cabin between us. I let it as the last miles to Oban unravel. Scottie’s hand stays warm around mine, and I stop counting.
‘You know that cinema was the only place I could breathe?’ I say.
He lets the question sit there. I realise I’m tracing a line straight back to the reason I got in this passenger seat tonight. I need him to know that my trust in him didn’t appear out of nowhere.
‘I went there after my tendon diagnosis when I needed somewhere to process what happened and what it meant. And then you were there. You didn’t say a word. You could have mentioned it to Nevin, told him you’d seen his girlfriend crying alone. But you didn’t, and that meant the world.’
His profile is carved in shadow, the light catching the slope of his nose, the stubborn set of his mouth. Serious and solid, impossibly beautiful and gentle for a man his size.
