The back up man, p.8
The Back Up Man, page 8
Plus it really doesn’t
You can’t rush art
See you bastards at 7
Still, perhaps Connor would be out on Ashton Lane later. It was only a ten-minute walk from his flat, plus it was a Friday, and payday (that morning she’d received her last lump sum from Berners Bilton. Another email from HR Pam, with a P45, had arrived that morning). Perhaps – a shiver – he’d end up in the same bar as her, in a corner with Duncan and Chris and a few of the insipid girlfriends. She quickened her pace, feet slapping the pavements so that she’d have time to put on make-up.
But life, Anya reflected a few hours later, installed in a booth with a rather weak gin and tonic, was just one long, cosmic disappointment. The flicked eyeliner and heeled boots – a Boxing Day purchase last year, which Connor had once told her made her look like ‘someone else, in a good way’ – so far appeared to have been for nothing. He was nowhere to be seen. Her head turned every time a group of men swaggered in, every time she heard a chorus of cheers or laughs or grunts, but he wasn’t there, of course he wasn’t there, and she felt bruised and let down and silly.
She tried to concentrate on Georgie, who was saying something, her eyes characteristically deep and concerned.
‘And anyway, it’s just a temporary solution.’ Georgie sounded encouraging, although her brow was furrowed. ‘You’re not going to have to look after them forever. And at least you’re getting paid again.’
‘I know that, Georgie.’ Her sister opened her mouth, but Anya beat her to the punch. ‘And obviously, I need the money. But knowing that doesn’t really help when the little witches are kicking a ball at my face or locking me in the laundry room, in the dark.’
Paddy snorted.
‘Sorry. It’s not funny.’
Anya glared at him and put her chin on the sticky table.
They’d ended up at Vodka Wodka, which was at that risky, transitional stage of a Friday night – the ‘just a few drinks’ crowd reaching the end of their stint, the ‘big one’ crowd increasingly revved up for theirs. There was a crackle in the air. Beside them was a hen do armed to the teeth with willy straws and sashes, although they’d so far been very well-behaved: sipping not slugging Prosecco; all of them still seated, rather than standing on their chairs scouting for willing accomplices. But Anya had been on a hen do, and knew it was only a matter of time.
Paddy nodded in their direction.
‘When do you think they’ll start having fun?’
‘Sssssh.’ Georgie stole a sideways look at the hen party. ‘They’ll hear you.’
Paddy rolled his eyes.
‘I wonder what Claire’s hen will be like.’ Georgie was examining her split ends now, which felt like a rather unfortunate reflection on the evening.
‘What hen do?’
‘Oh.’ Georgie contorted her mouth, like she was trying to swallow something she’d already said. ‘Did she … did she not invite you in the end?’
‘No,’ Anya snapped. ‘She didn’t.’
There was a squirmy silence, during which time Paddy stuck his head under the table to take a drag on his e-cigarette.
‘That’s not very subtle.’ Anya took another sip of her watery gin and tonic.
‘Sorry, Anya – I really did tell her she should invite you.’ Georgie was knotting her hands, and Anya suddenly felt very tired.
‘Georgie, don’t be silly. It’s Claire’s hen do. She can invite whoever she wants.’ But she jutted her chin, just a little bit. ‘I don’t want to go anyway.’
Georgie stopped knotting her hands and nodded. After a beat, she added: ‘I think it’ll be pretty quiet. We’re doing a scented candle workshop. Magdalena’s idea.’
Magdalena was Claire’s best friend. She was so haughty that Anya often found herself getting the giggles in her company – which she tended to avoid, apart from when it was thrust on her at family gatherings – out of sheer panic. Frankly, she was surprised that Magdalena had lent her endorsement to something as frivolous as a scented candle.
‘In that case, I am thrilled not to have been invited.’
Paddy, who had gone for another drag, re-emerged.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Scented candles,’ Anya said.
‘Right.’ He took a sip of his pint. ‘So, I applied for that job in the end. I wasn’t going to go for it at first, but then I realized that it’d look bad if I didn’t. And Mrs Dean said I should apply, so …’ He put his drink down on the table and Anya saw the delight in his face. Mrs Dean was the head, a stern but brilliant woman whom Paddy was slightly awed by.
‘This is the head of English job, yes?’ Georgie was definitely pleased that the conversation had moved off Claire, hen dos and cedarwood candles.
‘Yes.’
Paddy had mentioned it to Anya at the pub on the afternoon she was packing up at Connor’s; she felt a twist of guilt that she hadn’t asked him about it since. Self-indulgence was time consuming.
‘So, what happens now? Do you have an interview?’ She tried an intent, interested frown, which earned only a tight smile from Paddy. She hadn’t quite got away with it, then.
‘I have to present my ideas to a board including Mrs Dean.’ He picked up his pint again. ‘I won’t get it. But still. Good to look like you want these things.’
‘Definitely.’ Anya tried to clink her glass against Paddy’s but instead knocked his pint, which swilled over the rim. He gave her a hard stare but couldn’t keep it up, and she was relieved when it became a forgiving smile.
‘Anyway.’ He extracted a packet of cigarettes from his top pocket. ‘Anyone?’
Georgie rolled her eyes; Anya nodded. She was mainly a social smoker now – a vulture, Tasha called them, as she sucked on a Marlboro Light – but in her current mood, it didn’t seem like the time to be depriving herself of anything that offered a hit. She followed Paddy, who had almost collided with a member of the subdued hen do, returning with a single bottle of Prosecco for the table. She was glassy-eyed and didn’t seem to notice.
‘Only a matter of time,’ she muttered but Paddy was ahead of her, elbowing his way through the throng towards the smoking area outside.
Despite the temperature, it was heaving and Paddy and Anya positioned themselves on the fringes of the crowd. In sync, they lit up and took a hungry, grateful drag, Anya relishing the new, chemical lightness in her head and legs.
‘The job is exciting—’ she started, but Paddy was already talking.
‘OK, so’ – he took a deep breath – ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I saw Connor the other day.’
Anya’s blood ran cold. There she had been, willing Connor to materialize, but the prospect that Paddy had seen him made her feel terrified and unprepared, like those anxiety dreams about exams she hadn’t revised for. She managed to fix her face into something approximating calm.
‘Where were you?’
‘In that running shoes shop near the school.’ Anya looked blank, so Paddy added, ‘Sort of between school and his flat.’
She contemplated this.
‘But Connor doesn’t run.’
‘Maybe he’s started.’ Paddy was matter-of-fact. ‘He didn’t see me though. And I’d just realized spending £90 on new trainers was ridiculous, so I left pretty quickly.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘Yes. He had headphones in.’
Anya was weirdly grateful for this detail.
‘How did he look?’
‘The same. He was wearing work clothes.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t see you?’
Paddy exhaled again before he answered.
‘Well, I obviously can’t be sure, but it didn’t look like he had.’ Anya nodded, and he added: ‘Georgie told me not to tell you.’
Anya felt a little hot rush of shame – and a little satisfaction – that they’d been talking about her.
‘I’m not going to fall apart because Connor’s doing Couch to 5k.’
She wasn’t quite sure if that was true, but it sounded good; Paddy smiled a measured smile.
‘That’s what I said.’
Anya chewed her lip.
‘I hope he isn’t going to undergo some sort of transformation. You know, like I was the only thing keeping him from this athletic, healthy, better life.’
‘It’s just a pair of trainers, Anya.’
Paddy and Connor’s relationship had always been cordial. They embraced each other warmly at pubs and birthday parties, although it had not escaped her attention that over those evenings and afternoons, they’d rarely said much to each other except hello and goodbye. Admittedly, their characters were not a natural fit – Paddy was dry and wry, Connor rather more sweetly earnest – and their idea of what constituted a good time was very different. Anya definitely laughed more with Paddy: he was far sillier.
One rare afternoon, when the three of them had gone to the cinema, Anya and Paddy had amused themselves on the way home by doing an impression of the villain in the film they’d just seen. All it took was a look from Paddy to set Anya off again, and on the Subway they were hysterical.
After Paddy had gone his separate way, Connor had been quiet. They’d been walking back up to the flat from Byres Road.
‘Are you OK?’ Anya squeezed his arm.
‘I’m fine.’ He unlinked his arm. ‘Just don’t really enjoy feeling like a parent taking his two kids out, that’s all.’
‘What?’
‘You and Paddy. Your stupid act on the Subway. It was quite embarrassing.’
‘We were just messing about. Don’t be such a killjoy.’
They hadn’t hung out much as a three after that.
Paddy jabbed her on the shoulder now. ‘Stop staring at your shoes.’ Anya tried a weak smile. ‘And don’t give me that martyred smile.’ He prodded her again.
She felt another twist of guilt. She hated this version of herself – martyred, mopey, self-indulgent. It was so boring, and if she was boring herself, she could only imagine how Paddy and Georgie felt. She made her umpteenth resolution to pull herself together. For some reason, it helped if she imagined herself doing this in her mother’s voice.
‘Sorry, Paddy. I’m being such a drag, I—’
He waved the hand with the cigarette dismissively.
‘You got dumped; you live with Claire. I’d be the same.’
‘Yes—’
‘But saying that,’ he interrupted firmly, ‘even I have limits. And I’m not tolerating a meltdown because your ex-boyfriend is considering buying a pair of Asics.’
She grinned automatically and was pleased.
‘Point taken.’
‘Sorry for the tough love.’
Paddy stubbed his cigarette out on the metal bin, which was scarred with ash and overflowing with butts.
‘It’s what I need.’ Anya copied him.
‘Yes, it is.’ He did an exaggerated shiver, gripping his shoulders. ‘Right, come on. It’s fucking Baltic out here, and I want another drink.’
They’d stayed for two more. The hen do started, finally, to rev up: the maid-of-honour was leading her coven in a game of truth or dare that included challenges to ‘steal a bottle from behind the bar’ – the bridesmaid in question chickened out and had to drink – and to ‘proposition an eligible bachelor’. To his delight, Paddy was selected.
‘Will you buy me a drink?’ The girl was going for coquettish, although was slurring her words, and one fake eyelash was drooping from her eyelashes. Paddy grinned beatifically at her.
‘Since you asked so nicely, I will. But you have to make them do a dare.’ He pointed at Anya and Georgie.
‘Deal.’ This was the maid-of-honour who was, clearly, running proceedings.
When Paddy returned with a tray of shots, the bride had insisted that the three of them join the hen table. Determined to make amends for her sour mood, Anya concentrated hard on playing along, accepting her own dare – to lead a conga line through the bar – with enthusiasm, while praying harder than she ever had that Connor would not suddenly emerge from the men’s in time to catch her. When she returned, red-faced and a little breathless, she was rewarded with a hug from the mother-of-the-bride, which she returned clumsily. Paddy smiled at her.
After Georgie had been frogmarched by the bride to the bar to ask out the barman, the hens shrieking with delight, they’d decided to call it a night, much to the dismay of the bridal party, although not before the barman had returned to talk to Georgie. He was wearing the customary uniform of a very tight black T-shirt, which was stretched across a quite magnificent set of pecs and biceps.
‘Who’s your friend, Georgie?’ Paddy asked, as the man retreated, though not without a rather sultry smile in Georgie’s direction.
‘His name’s Alex,’ she said, casually, pulling her coat around her shoulders. ‘I gave him my number.’ Paddy and Anya’s jaws dropped, and Georgie looked pleased.
They walked back up Ashton Lane, Paddy in the middle. Warm light from bar after bar pooled on the higgledy-piggledy cobblestones, and the din of revellers was enough to make Paddy gaze wistfully into each establishment. When they reached the end of the road, he crossed his own.
‘So, what’s the plan then?’
Georgie shrugged. Anya knew she was the deciding vote. If she wanted them all to continue on at Georgie’s, they would. Surprising herself, she felt a powerful urge to be alone.
‘I’ll … I’m going to go back to Claire’s.’
‘Are you sure?’ Georgie narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re welcome at mine, honestly. I can take the sofa again, I don’t mind.’
This made Anya feel more sad.
‘No, it’s fine.’ She had to stop this. ‘I want to sleep in my own bed, honestly. Well. Mattress.’
Paddy and Georgie moved in to envelop her, and Anya was cocooned. She could smell Paddy’s cigarettes and Georgie’s detergent.
‘Will you be OK getting back?’ Georgie looked anxious. Anya nodded. ‘Text us when you get home.’ Georgie squeezed her shoulder.
‘Do you want a ciggie for the road?’ Paddy offered.
‘Go on then.’
It was a fifteen-minute walk home, and Anya gripped her keys the whole way back, though on this Friday night the city felt warm and friendly, rather than frightening. Still, it was very cold, and she was relieved when she reached the doorstep, even if Claire had locked the huge, double storm doors and it took Anya a while to grapple with the unfamiliar keys. She wasn’t sure if Claire had locked them because she thought Anya was at home and in bed, staying at Georgie’s or whether there were more sinister overtones.
In the hallway, she was grateful for the heat and observed she was drunker than she’d realized. So drunk that she took a few beats to notice Richard. He was standing at the end of the dim hallway, beside a heavy oak desk, reflected in the mirror that hung at the end of it. He wore striped pyjamas that made him look like a Victorian child, his face illuminated by the ghoulish light of his iPhone.
‘Richard!’
At the sound of Anya’s voice, he dropped the phone into the pocket of his nightshirt.
‘Anya.’
‘You gave me a fright.’ She stepped forward a few paces and shrugged out of her coat, which proved tricky. ‘What are you doing?’
It was hard to tell in the dark, but he seemed a little twitchy.
‘Nothing.’ He patted his top pocket. ‘Just looking for my phone. Which I have found.’
‘OK.’
‘So, now I’ll go to bed.’
‘Right.’
She started climbing unsteadily out of her boots, aware that Richard was still at the end of the hallway, fumbling around in the desk drawer. He straightened suddenly.
‘Good night, then.’
‘Night Richard.’
He moved up the stairs like a spectre. Once he’d disappeared, Anya tiptoed towards the desk and pulled open the drawer, which was empty except for an iPhone, an old model. Anya jabbed at the screen but it appeared to be off. She closed the drawer again.
Her legs were leaden and she was grateful to reach the top of the stairs. Closing her bedroom door as silently as she could, she tiptoed across her bedroom to switch on the tiny lamp that sat on the floor beside her mattress. The curtains were already drawn.
In the gloom from the lamp, her life felt even more makeshift: the spilled suitcases, the boxes of utensils and cookbooks and silly Anya miscellany that her parents had offloaded on to her when they’d moved to Balfron and which she’d been carting around for years.
She sat down on her mattress and, to her surprise, found that she was crying – silly, drunk, heartbroken tears that came from nowhere. She wished Paddy hadn’t seen Connor; she realized how much she had hoped she would see him that evening though, how many times she had peered over Paddy and Georgie’s shoulders across the bar, watchful and distracted.
Just as abruptly as she’d started crying, she stopped and wiped the rivulets of eyeliner from her cheeks. There was a box on the floor near her and she nudged it towards her with her toe. She parted its cardboard flaps. It was the stuff from her parents: a sports day ribbon; her S6 report card (she didn’t open that); a flyer from their S5 production of Animal Farm (Anya had played Cow #2); an employee handbook from the McDonald’s in Partick, where she’d worked for about four months when she was sixteen, before she got the silver-service waitressing gig. Her mother had been furious when she’d quit that job (‘We’ve spoiled you,’ she’d said bitterly. ‘That’s not it, Mum!’ Anya had protested. ‘I’m just sick of smelling like a Big Mac!’).
She sniffed thickly and then went deeper. There were bank statements from her first ‘Junior Saver’ account with Bank of Scotland (she remembered visiting the branch on Byres Road with her dad and going home and boasting to Georgie about the little blue book where the transactions would be recorded); and birthday cards from both sets of grandparents, long dead now – written in her Granny Mackie’s neat hand, and her Granny Williamson’s loopy one.
At the bottom of the box was her yearbook: royal blue, like the uniforms, imprinted with the school’s crest on the front and ‘Class of 2007’ in gold embossed letters. Nostalgia got the better of her, and she opened its hardcover warily. The fonts and graphic design were comically outdated, and the opening sections focused entirely on the performances of their hockey and rugby teams, with reports by the captains and the coaches. Anya flipped past to the middle of the book, where there were ten or so pages of pictures through the ages, snaps taken from school trips and sports matches and school dances and charity events. She pulled it closer in order to better scrutinize the photos in the low light from the small lamp and, as she did so, something slipped from the book’s pages and fluttered to the floor.
You can’t rush art
See you bastards at 7
Still, perhaps Connor would be out on Ashton Lane later. It was only a ten-minute walk from his flat, plus it was a Friday, and payday (that morning she’d received her last lump sum from Berners Bilton. Another email from HR Pam, with a P45, had arrived that morning). Perhaps – a shiver – he’d end up in the same bar as her, in a corner with Duncan and Chris and a few of the insipid girlfriends. She quickened her pace, feet slapping the pavements so that she’d have time to put on make-up.
But life, Anya reflected a few hours later, installed in a booth with a rather weak gin and tonic, was just one long, cosmic disappointment. The flicked eyeliner and heeled boots – a Boxing Day purchase last year, which Connor had once told her made her look like ‘someone else, in a good way’ – so far appeared to have been for nothing. He was nowhere to be seen. Her head turned every time a group of men swaggered in, every time she heard a chorus of cheers or laughs or grunts, but he wasn’t there, of course he wasn’t there, and she felt bruised and let down and silly.
She tried to concentrate on Georgie, who was saying something, her eyes characteristically deep and concerned.
‘And anyway, it’s just a temporary solution.’ Georgie sounded encouraging, although her brow was furrowed. ‘You’re not going to have to look after them forever. And at least you’re getting paid again.’
‘I know that, Georgie.’ Her sister opened her mouth, but Anya beat her to the punch. ‘And obviously, I need the money. But knowing that doesn’t really help when the little witches are kicking a ball at my face or locking me in the laundry room, in the dark.’
Paddy snorted.
‘Sorry. It’s not funny.’
Anya glared at him and put her chin on the sticky table.
They’d ended up at Vodka Wodka, which was at that risky, transitional stage of a Friday night – the ‘just a few drinks’ crowd reaching the end of their stint, the ‘big one’ crowd increasingly revved up for theirs. There was a crackle in the air. Beside them was a hen do armed to the teeth with willy straws and sashes, although they’d so far been very well-behaved: sipping not slugging Prosecco; all of them still seated, rather than standing on their chairs scouting for willing accomplices. But Anya had been on a hen do, and knew it was only a matter of time.
Paddy nodded in their direction.
‘When do you think they’ll start having fun?’
‘Sssssh.’ Georgie stole a sideways look at the hen party. ‘They’ll hear you.’
Paddy rolled his eyes.
‘I wonder what Claire’s hen will be like.’ Georgie was examining her split ends now, which felt like a rather unfortunate reflection on the evening.
‘What hen do?’
‘Oh.’ Georgie contorted her mouth, like she was trying to swallow something she’d already said. ‘Did she … did she not invite you in the end?’
‘No,’ Anya snapped. ‘She didn’t.’
There was a squirmy silence, during which time Paddy stuck his head under the table to take a drag on his e-cigarette.
‘That’s not very subtle.’ Anya took another sip of her watery gin and tonic.
‘Sorry, Anya – I really did tell her she should invite you.’ Georgie was knotting her hands, and Anya suddenly felt very tired.
‘Georgie, don’t be silly. It’s Claire’s hen do. She can invite whoever she wants.’ But she jutted her chin, just a little bit. ‘I don’t want to go anyway.’
Georgie stopped knotting her hands and nodded. After a beat, she added: ‘I think it’ll be pretty quiet. We’re doing a scented candle workshop. Magdalena’s idea.’
Magdalena was Claire’s best friend. She was so haughty that Anya often found herself getting the giggles in her company – which she tended to avoid, apart from when it was thrust on her at family gatherings – out of sheer panic. Frankly, she was surprised that Magdalena had lent her endorsement to something as frivolous as a scented candle.
‘In that case, I am thrilled not to have been invited.’
Paddy, who had gone for another drag, re-emerged.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Scented candles,’ Anya said.
‘Right.’ He took a sip of his pint. ‘So, I applied for that job in the end. I wasn’t going to go for it at first, but then I realized that it’d look bad if I didn’t. And Mrs Dean said I should apply, so …’ He put his drink down on the table and Anya saw the delight in his face. Mrs Dean was the head, a stern but brilliant woman whom Paddy was slightly awed by.
‘This is the head of English job, yes?’ Georgie was definitely pleased that the conversation had moved off Claire, hen dos and cedarwood candles.
‘Yes.’
Paddy had mentioned it to Anya at the pub on the afternoon she was packing up at Connor’s; she felt a twist of guilt that she hadn’t asked him about it since. Self-indulgence was time consuming.
‘So, what happens now? Do you have an interview?’ She tried an intent, interested frown, which earned only a tight smile from Paddy. She hadn’t quite got away with it, then.
‘I have to present my ideas to a board including Mrs Dean.’ He picked up his pint again. ‘I won’t get it. But still. Good to look like you want these things.’
‘Definitely.’ Anya tried to clink her glass against Paddy’s but instead knocked his pint, which swilled over the rim. He gave her a hard stare but couldn’t keep it up, and she was relieved when it became a forgiving smile.
‘Anyway.’ He extracted a packet of cigarettes from his top pocket. ‘Anyone?’
Georgie rolled her eyes; Anya nodded. She was mainly a social smoker now – a vulture, Tasha called them, as she sucked on a Marlboro Light – but in her current mood, it didn’t seem like the time to be depriving herself of anything that offered a hit. She followed Paddy, who had almost collided with a member of the subdued hen do, returning with a single bottle of Prosecco for the table. She was glassy-eyed and didn’t seem to notice.
‘Only a matter of time,’ she muttered but Paddy was ahead of her, elbowing his way through the throng towards the smoking area outside.
Despite the temperature, it was heaving and Paddy and Anya positioned themselves on the fringes of the crowd. In sync, they lit up and took a hungry, grateful drag, Anya relishing the new, chemical lightness in her head and legs.
‘The job is exciting—’ she started, but Paddy was already talking.
‘OK, so’ – he took a deep breath – ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I saw Connor the other day.’
Anya’s blood ran cold. There she had been, willing Connor to materialize, but the prospect that Paddy had seen him made her feel terrified and unprepared, like those anxiety dreams about exams she hadn’t revised for. She managed to fix her face into something approximating calm.
‘Where were you?’
‘In that running shoes shop near the school.’ Anya looked blank, so Paddy added, ‘Sort of between school and his flat.’
She contemplated this.
‘But Connor doesn’t run.’
‘Maybe he’s started.’ Paddy was matter-of-fact. ‘He didn’t see me though. And I’d just realized spending £90 on new trainers was ridiculous, so I left pretty quickly.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘Yes. He had headphones in.’
Anya was weirdly grateful for this detail.
‘How did he look?’
‘The same. He was wearing work clothes.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t see you?’
Paddy exhaled again before he answered.
‘Well, I obviously can’t be sure, but it didn’t look like he had.’ Anya nodded, and he added: ‘Georgie told me not to tell you.’
Anya felt a little hot rush of shame – and a little satisfaction – that they’d been talking about her.
‘I’m not going to fall apart because Connor’s doing Couch to 5k.’
She wasn’t quite sure if that was true, but it sounded good; Paddy smiled a measured smile.
‘That’s what I said.’
Anya chewed her lip.
‘I hope he isn’t going to undergo some sort of transformation. You know, like I was the only thing keeping him from this athletic, healthy, better life.’
‘It’s just a pair of trainers, Anya.’
Paddy and Connor’s relationship had always been cordial. They embraced each other warmly at pubs and birthday parties, although it had not escaped her attention that over those evenings and afternoons, they’d rarely said much to each other except hello and goodbye. Admittedly, their characters were not a natural fit – Paddy was dry and wry, Connor rather more sweetly earnest – and their idea of what constituted a good time was very different. Anya definitely laughed more with Paddy: he was far sillier.
One rare afternoon, when the three of them had gone to the cinema, Anya and Paddy had amused themselves on the way home by doing an impression of the villain in the film they’d just seen. All it took was a look from Paddy to set Anya off again, and on the Subway they were hysterical.
After Paddy had gone his separate way, Connor had been quiet. They’d been walking back up to the flat from Byres Road.
‘Are you OK?’ Anya squeezed his arm.
‘I’m fine.’ He unlinked his arm. ‘Just don’t really enjoy feeling like a parent taking his two kids out, that’s all.’
‘What?’
‘You and Paddy. Your stupid act on the Subway. It was quite embarrassing.’
‘We were just messing about. Don’t be such a killjoy.’
They hadn’t hung out much as a three after that.
Paddy jabbed her on the shoulder now. ‘Stop staring at your shoes.’ Anya tried a weak smile. ‘And don’t give me that martyred smile.’ He prodded her again.
She felt another twist of guilt. She hated this version of herself – martyred, mopey, self-indulgent. It was so boring, and if she was boring herself, she could only imagine how Paddy and Georgie felt. She made her umpteenth resolution to pull herself together. For some reason, it helped if she imagined herself doing this in her mother’s voice.
‘Sorry, Paddy. I’m being such a drag, I—’
He waved the hand with the cigarette dismissively.
‘You got dumped; you live with Claire. I’d be the same.’
‘Yes—’
‘But saying that,’ he interrupted firmly, ‘even I have limits. And I’m not tolerating a meltdown because your ex-boyfriend is considering buying a pair of Asics.’
She grinned automatically and was pleased.
‘Point taken.’
‘Sorry for the tough love.’
Paddy stubbed his cigarette out on the metal bin, which was scarred with ash and overflowing with butts.
‘It’s what I need.’ Anya copied him.
‘Yes, it is.’ He did an exaggerated shiver, gripping his shoulders. ‘Right, come on. It’s fucking Baltic out here, and I want another drink.’
They’d stayed for two more. The hen do started, finally, to rev up: the maid-of-honour was leading her coven in a game of truth or dare that included challenges to ‘steal a bottle from behind the bar’ – the bridesmaid in question chickened out and had to drink – and to ‘proposition an eligible bachelor’. To his delight, Paddy was selected.
‘Will you buy me a drink?’ The girl was going for coquettish, although was slurring her words, and one fake eyelash was drooping from her eyelashes. Paddy grinned beatifically at her.
‘Since you asked so nicely, I will. But you have to make them do a dare.’ He pointed at Anya and Georgie.
‘Deal.’ This was the maid-of-honour who was, clearly, running proceedings.
When Paddy returned with a tray of shots, the bride had insisted that the three of them join the hen table. Determined to make amends for her sour mood, Anya concentrated hard on playing along, accepting her own dare – to lead a conga line through the bar – with enthusiasm, while praying harder than she ever had that Connor would not suddenly emerge from the men’s in time to catch her. When she returned, red-faced and a little breathless, she was rewarded with a hug from the mother-of-the-bride, which she returned clumsily. Paddy smiled at her.
After Georgie had been frogmarched by the bride to the bar to ask out the barman, the hens shrieking with delight, they’d decided to call it a night, much to the dismay of the bridal party, although not before the barman had returned to talk to Georgie. He was wearing the customary uniform of a very tight black T-shirt, which was stretched across a quite magnificent set of pecs and biceps.
‘Who’s your friend, Georgie?’ Paddy asked, as the man retreated, though not without a rather sultry smile in Georgie’s direction.
‘His name’s Alex,’ she said, casually, pulling her coat around her shoulders. ‘I gave him my number.’ Paddy and Anya’s jaws dropped, and Georgie looked pleased.
They walked back up Ashton Lane, Paddy in the middle. Warm light from bar after bar pooled on the higgledy-piggledy cobblestones, and the din of revellers was enough to make Paddy gaze wistfully into each establishment. When they reached the end of the road, he crossed his own.
‘So, what’s the plan then?’
Georgie shrugged. Anya knew she was the deciding vote. If she wanted them all to continue on at Georgie’s, they would. Surprising herself, she felt a powerful urge to be alone.
‘I’ll … I’m going to go back to Claire’s.’
‘Are you sure?’ Georgie narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re welcome at mine, honestly. I can take the sofa again, I don’t mind.’
This made Anya feel more sad.
‘No, it’s fine.’ She had to stop this. ‘I want to sleep in my own bed, honestly. Well. Mattress.’
Paddy and Georgie moved in to envelop her, and Anya was cocooned. She could smell Paddy’s cigarettes and Georgie’s detergent.
‘Will you be OK getting back?’ Georgie looked anxious. Anya nodded. ‘Text us when you get home.’ Georgie squeezed her shoulder.
‘Do you want a ciggie for the road?’ Paddy offered.
‘Go on then.’
It was a fifteen-minute walk home, and Anya gripped her keys the whole way back, though on this Friday night the city felt warm and friendly, rather than frightening. Still, it was very cold, and she was relieved when she reached the doorstep, even if Claire had locked the huge, double storm doors and it took Anya a while to grapple with the unfamiliar keys. She wasn’t sure if Claire had locked them because she thought Anya was at home and in bed, staying at Georgie’s or whether there were more sinister overtones.
In the hallway, she was grateful for the heat and observed she was drunker than she’d realized. So drunk that she took a few beats to notice Richard. He was standing at the end of the dim hallway, beside a heavy oak desk, reflected in the mirror that hung at the end of it. He wore striped pyjamas that made him look like a Victorian child, his face illuminated by the ghoulish light of his iPhone.
‘Richard!’
At the sound of Anya’s voice, he dropped the phone into the pocket of his nightshirt.
‘Anya.’
‘You gave me a fright.’ She stepped forward a few paces and shrugged out of her coat, which proved tricky. ‘What are you doing?’
It was hard to tell in the dark, but he seemed a little twitchy.
‘Nothing.’ He patted his top pocket. ‘Just looking for my phone. Which I have found.’
‘OK.’
‘So, now I’ll go to bed.’
‘Right.’
She started climbing unsteadily out of her boots, aware that Richard was still at the end of the hallway, fumbling around in the desk drawer. He straightened suddenly.
‘Good night, then.’
‘Night Richard.’
He moved up the stairs like a spectre. Once he’d disappeared, Anya tiptoed towards the desk and pulled open the drawer, which was empty except for an iPhone, an old model. Anya jabbed at the screen but it appeared to be off. She closed the drawer again.
Her legs were leaden and she was grateful to reach the top of the stairs. Closing her bedroom door as silently as she could, she tiptoed across her bedroom to switch on the tiny lamp that sat on the floor beside her mattress. The curtains were already drawn.
In the gloom from the lamp, her life felt even more makeshift: the spilled suitcases, the boxes of utensils and cookbooks and silly Anya miscellany that her parents had offloaded on to her when they’d moved to Balfron and which she’d been carting around for years.
She sat down on her mattress and, to her surprise, found that she was crying – silly, drunk, heartbroken tears that came from nowhere. She wished Paddy hadn’t seen Connor; she realized how much she had hoped she would see him that evening though, how many times she had peered over Paddy and Georgie’s shoulders across the bar, watchful and distracted.
Just as abruptly as she’d started crying, she stopped and wiped the rivulets of eyeliner from her cheeks. There was a box on the floor near her and she nudged it towards her with her toe. She parted its cardboard flaps. It was the stuff from her parents: a sports day ribbon; her S6 report card (she didn’t open that); a flyer from their S5 production of Animal Farm (Anya had played Cow #2); an employee handbook from the McDonald’s in Partick, where she’d worked for about four months when she was sixteen, before she got the silver-service waitressing gig. Her mother had been furious when she’d quit that job (‘We’ve spoiled you,’ she’d said bitterly. ‘That’s not it, Mum!’ Anya had protested. ‘I’m just sick of smelling like a Big Mac!’).
She sniffed thickly and then went deeper. There were bank statements from her first ‘Junior Saver’ account with Bank of Scotland (she remembered visiting the branch on Byres Road with her dad and going home and boasting to Georgie about the little blue book where the transactions would be recorded); and birthday cards from both sets of grandparents, long dead now – written in her Granny Mackie’s neat hand, and her Granny Williamson’s loopy one.
At the bottom of the box was her yearbook: royal blue, like the uniforms, imprinted with the school’s crest on the front and ‘Class of 2007’ in gold embossed letters. Nostalgia got the better of her, and she opened its hardcover warily. The fonts and graphic design were comically outdated, and the opening sections focused entirely on the performances of their hockey and rugby teams, with reports by the captains and the coaches. Anya flipped past to the middle of the book, where there were ten or so pages of pictures through the ages, snaps taken from school trips and sports matches and school dances and charity events. She pulled it closer in order to better scrutinize the photos in the low light from the small lamp and, as she did so, something slipped from the book’s pages and fluttered to the floor.
