I saw nothing. You saw nothing.
His expression shifts – a look that says he understands what wasn’t said – and he gives a single, slow nod.
My lungs unlock with one shaky exhale as I limp through the doors. I don’t know his name, but I know this: he let me keep a secret. He built a wall between me and the world without saying a word.
The wind carries the bite of frost settling on Stirling’s rooftops, and the car park is a sea of slick, black tarmac under the orange glare of the lamps. My dad’s discarded Volvo waits under a sputtering light. The key scrapes in the lock, and I slump into the driver’s seat. My fingers find the ignition, and the engine turns over with a protesting cough. I slip into first but keep my foot on the brake. The tendon screams at the pressure, a line of agony shooting up my shin.
I fumble the phone from my coat pocket and switch the ringer on.
The screen explodes in a cascade of green bubbles. Nineteen questions, demands, accusations. Each one more erratic than the last. My thumb scrolls, a mechanical, numb movement through the escalating anger.
Then the final one. Sent three minutes ago:
I know you’re not at the studio
Chapter 3
Scottie
I’m way too early, which makes no sense because I never am. Not least because timing’s everything in rugby. Screen three at The Wallace is three-quarters empty, the usual sparse Tuesday ‘crowd’. I’ve squeezed myself into my spot in the rear.
Another Christmas romance. Just like last week.
Bring it on. Cover me in icing sugar.
My head’s still stuck in the session from this morning. Brodie barked orders at the forwards. Finn chirped back with some shite about Brodie’s agent slash secret girlfriend Charlie, and the whole pack melted. I’d laughed too, said nothing, and held the tackle bags solid.
My focus keeps drifting to the entrance of the cinema, then snapping back.
I shift. My shoulder still clicks from the maul reps today. I hit the dirt nine times, knees ploughing grooves in the peat. When they score, nobody asks who softened the line.
Neither do I. It’s simply who I am. I live and breathe rugby.
I’d been on the pathway since I was fourteen, rucking in the sleet for the local club back in Oban. Seventeen, scouted by the District. Three years in the Academy living on beans and hope and graft. Then the first pro contract. The breakout season where the national selectors finally started paying attention. Now I’m overlooked and locked in for a bit less than three years. That one still bites. Even though it was the right call at the time.
I check the time on my phone and realise I’ve already done it twice.
A Visit Scotland ad flickers on. One of those drone shots that makes the sea look like hammered silver. The camera pans up the hillside until it clears the ridge and reveals the grey crown of McCaig’s Tower.
My insides seize.
The memory drops in uninvited. A summer evening ten years ago. David scrambling up the stone behind me, nine years old and ninety per cent mouth. I’d gone first. Tested the footholds. Called down that it was solid. That’s what big brothers do. They go first. ‘Get up here, Dave!’
He hauled himself up beside me, panting, grinning wide enough to crack his face open. A ferry horn groaned from the Mull crossing.
David jabbed my ribs with a bony elbow. ‘When I’m older, I’m buying a trawler. You can work on it.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Bait.’
‘Ya wee shite.’ I cuffed the back of his head. We sat there with our legs dangling.
Not even an hour later we were at the hospital, and David would never dangle his legs again. Because he followed me. I will the memory down. The advert’s long over. The guilt isn’t.
When the Rebels waved a sign-on bonus, I didn’t look at the weekly wage or the four-year clause. I took the money and gave up my potential international career for a lump sum. For Mum and David. Now I’m the best defensive centre in the URC, playing on a basement contract while my mother’s mortgage eats half my take-home.
The double doors creak open, letting in a sliver of the foyer’s bright glare. A petite silhouette moves in the light, and the rest of the room blurs. The red scarf, the tight bun, the posture. Light wrapped around steel, or maybe the other way round.
