Page 107
I tear a piece off the garlic bread. Penny tracks it all the way to my mouth.
“I don’t think I’ve ever asked. How old is she?” I nod at the shameless dog.
“About six, we think.”
“You don’t know?”
“Sometimes you don’t when it’s a rescue. The centre reckoned she was about three when I adopted her. She was such a shy little thing when I took her home. You’d never believe it now.”
“Naw. Shy and neck licking don’t go together. Not in my book, anyway.”
We eat for a while, chatting easily. I take more bread. She tells me to try one of the home-grown tomatoes in the salad, then looks ridiculously proud when I say it’s good.
On the wall beyond her, I notice a picture of Innes in rugby kit. He’s muddy, grinning, his hair sticking up. Same grin he had in the park when he took the piss out of me.
“How old is your brother in that one?”
She turns to look. “Must be about fourteen. That’d be a year before the accident.”
“He played rugby as well as doing jiu-jitsu, then?”
“Oh, he did everything. If it involved getting filthy or possibly breaking something, it was up Innes’s street. He was always sporty. Always sure that whatever daft thing he was about to try would be absolutely fine.”
“Sounds about right for that age.”
“Yes, well. In Innes’s case, it wasn’t all absolutely fine.” She cuts a piece of aubergine with the side of her fork.
“What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”
She doesn’t answer straight away. Then, “We were skiing. A family holiday in Switzerland. He decided to go off-piste.”
“Ah. Fuck.”
“He had a bad fall, and…” She shrugs. “Well, that was that. Spinal cord damage. They had to airlift him to hospital. He was in intensive care for thirty days. There were surgeries, and a ventilator, and a feeding tube. We didn’t know how it was going to go. He couldn’t even speak at first.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
She nods. Her eyes have gone shiny.
“Anyway, he’s doing well now. You’ve met him. He’s at university, and he’s got all sorts of plans for what he wants to do with his life.”
“Aye, sports journalism. He said. I may have only met him briefly, but I could tell he had drive. I respect that a lot.”
A small smile returns to her face. “He does have drive. Honestly, sometimes I think Mum, Dad, and I worry about the things he might miss out on more than he does. He has the best attitude.”
She looks down at her plate and pushes a piece of aubergine around with her fork. “Better than mine,” she murmurs.
“I wouldnae be so sure about that. It’s no many twenty-five-year-olds who can say they run their own successful business.”
“Hmm.” She looks up and meets my eyes. “Do you want to know something, Ryan? Something hardly anyone knows?”
“Er…sure.”
“All week, Innes and I had been skiing together. Mum and Dad stuck to the easier runs, so Innes and I would go off and meet them later. He was better than me. Much better. But I was the sensible one, the one who kept him from getting carried away.
“The day of the accident, though? I wasn’t with Innes. No, I’d sneaked back to the chalet with a boy. If I hadn’t done that—if I’d stayed with my brother—he’d never have gone off-piste, and the accident would never have happened.”
She lifts her glass and drains the wine. “Before you, I hadn’t done anything with a guy in over four years—not since that boy in the chalet.”
