The Steep Approach to Garbadale (34 page)

He had never imagined that she might change as a result of all that happened. Even after hearing from Haydn that she’d been back to Lydcombe, that she had a boyfriend, he had somehow written that off, dismissed it. That had been somebody else, or that had been just her turning out to have been a bad person all along but only now being exposed as such. And somehow the image that he held of her had not changed; that strange, frozen icon of her that he possessed had stayed with him and somewhere deep inside he’d felt - even after all the travelling and changing he’d done - that he could still wake them both from their dream if he could only find her and somehow nothing essential would have changed. It was only now he realised he never could do that, that everything had changed; most of all the two of them.

‘James and Clara made me feel I’d hurt everybody,’ Sophie says quietly. ‘Themselves mostly, naturally, but Grandma Win, your parents, the whole family. Even you. We had to . . . I had to draw a line under it all and start again. That was the only way forward, the only way out. Put it down to youthful stupidity and move on. If I could do that, if I could not look back, then we’d all be okay. They’d be happy. I’d be saved. You’d get over me quicker.’

He feels tears prick behind his eyes but fights them back, clenching his jaw to try and bite them down. ‘So,’ he says, and has to clear his throat again. ‘Do you think it was just youthful stupidity?’

She looks at him for a long while. Joni Mitchell sings about Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire. Eventually Sophie says, ‘You going to light that joint or just fondle it all fucking night?’

They smoke the last joint, passing it back and forth over the table. On the TV, the School Bus Chase is now being labelled as the School Bus Siege. Dan rings to say he’ll be there all night and intends to crash at a pal’s nearby in Daly City - apologies. Usually he’d feel threatened leaving her in the apartment with such a handsome guy, but - hey - they’re cousins and it’s not like they’re from the Ozarks or something.

They finish the wine.

She gets up, has to hold on to the end of the couch for a moment, goes ‘Woo!’ then puts on
This is the Sea
by the Waterboys. ‘Do you know this?’

It’s a record he remembers from just after they were split up.

‘Yes,’ he tells her. ‘I remember this.’

She stands in front of the hi-fi, between the speakers, swaying, head down, eyes closed, hands clasped above her head.

He twists round, watches her for a while.

She turns and says, ‘Do you want to dance?’

 
‘You’ll have to go,’ she tells him.

‘What, now?’

‘No, but before Dan gets back.’

‘Why?’ Though of course he knows. He tries not to let the hurt into his voice.

‘Because it’s too complicated otherwise. And I’m not so great at lying.’

‘But why do I need to go if—?’

‘Look, it’s not like we’re going to be able to do this again, Alban. He’ll be here. I’ll be
here
.’

It’s been the first time they’ve made love in a bed.

‘Well, I know, but—’

‘I’ll say we had a fight. An argument. Some family thing. I can make that stick. That I can do. But not if you’re here.’

He waits a while, bringing her a little closer, stroking her hair, her newly skinny side and flank, cupping one sweet, smallened breast. ‘Okay,’ he says.

She reaches down, pulls at some of the sheet lying crumpled beneath them. ‘And I’d better get this washed, too.’ She breathes deeply, glancing at the blinds then pushing away from him. ‘Christ, it’s dawn. Come on; shift. If I get this down to the laundry now I can have it back on by the time he gets back.’

He helps her strip the sheet, wondering when she became so thoughtful, so adept, so managerial.

 
They say their goodbyes in the apartment block’s basement laundry while pale pink sunshine seeps through a high, grubby, pavement-level window. She doesn’t let him kiss her deeply, unpeels his hands from her behind and just shakes her head when he tries to say too much.

She puts her forehead against his and says, ‘We probably shouldn’t have done this.’

‘Yes we should.’

‘No. No we shouldn’t.’

 
He finds out much later that Dan guessed they’d fucked anyway, almost as soon as he got back, and threw her out.

Since Lima, he’s been keeping at least half a grand of Blake’s money inside his sock, curled in a sweaty wad round his ankle. He uses some of this to fund a taxi to the station and then buy a train ticket back to LA.

He starts university a month or so later.

Sophie avoids him subsequently.

The next time he’ll see her will be at a trade fair in Singapore. She’ll have perfect, shiningly white teeth, her nose will be smaller, she’ll be slimmer still and even more blonde.

7

T
hursday. Verushka drives him north, out of the city in a grey smir of rain along Great Western Road, staying within a couple of mph of the speed limit until the roads near the Erskine Bridge, slowing again subsequently then opening the Forester up once more after Dumbarton. The traffic thickens along the side of Loch Lomond but she manages some coolly judged overtaking nevertheless.

‘This thing feels quicker,’ Alban says, frowning.

She flashes him a grin. ‘Yeah, I’ve had it chipped.’

‘That makes it go faster?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Bet you didn’t tell the insurance company.’

‘Bet I did, smart alec.’

The back of the vehicle is mostly full of her kit. He has one newly bought bag but she has a substantial backpack plus all her other hiking gear and a spare tent in case she wants to establish a base camp partway between the road and any given mountain - otherwise she’ll sleep in the car or wherever’s appropriate on the hill in a bivvy bag.

They make good time after the road opens out past Ardlui, scything through drizzle and darting past other road traffic. She gets flashed at once by an oncoming car, and passed by a growling Evo carrying serious tail. The getting passed, she explains, cancels out the getting flashed at. Especially as the flashing was entirely unjustified.

They reach positively dizzy speeds during an unexpected dry period on the few miles before Bridge of Orchy. They stop for fuel and lunch in Fort William. She’s in what she describes as mountaineering mode, and packs away an all-day breakfast of considerable size and fat content. He smiles at her, shaking his head. Just out of town they pass the sign for Inverlochy Castle Hotel where Fielding and the duet of great-aunts will be staying the night, breaking the journey to Garbadale.

They listen to her iPod on random, playing through the car’s system via a technically illegal radio transmitter unit, and are treated to rather a lot of Bach, mixed in with Berlioz, Gwen Stefani, Hector Zazou, the Kaiser Chiefs, Jethro Tull, the White Stripes, Belle and Sebastian, Michelle Shocked, Massive Attack, Kate Bush, Primal Scream and the Beatles. They’re twenty-one tracks in before a Led Zep song, which apparently is some sort of record (though, as she points out, they all are - haw haw).

The obvious route is via Inverness but Verushka has other ideas so they swing west at Invergarry - he asks to stop and look at some interesting trees but she wants to press on - and take the road for Kyle. The roads to the junction at Auchertyre pass in a dazed sweep of sunlit summits, heavy showers and startled overtakees. More pedal to the metal stuff along the roads either side of Achnasheen as the road dries. Verushka is driving with a broad smile on her face.

‘Maxed out?’ he asks.

She glances at the speedometer, which appears to have run out of numbers to point at. ‘Yup.’

‘Tyres up to this sort of speed?’

‘Yup.’

North of Ullapool - a fuel top-up and scones with tea - the late afternoon brightens further. She lets the pace drop off a little, though they’re still zipping past slower traffic. They’re less than an hour from Garbadale.

‘Have you sorted out what your -’ she hoists one eyebrow ‘- I’m trying to think of another word instead of agenda, here,’ she confesses. ‘But anyway, have you? Do you really know what you’re going there to do?’ She glances over at him.

He watches the road ahead unspool towards them.

‘I feel like a UN Observer or something,’ he tells her. ‘I’m going to watch them tear themselves apart, for money. Or stay shackled together, in some dubious spirit of solidarity. Which we are not, frankly, very good at.’

‘But what do you want?’

‘I suppose being honest with myself I want Spraint to fuck off and leave us alone, though if we’re prepared to sell out to them then we deserve whatever we get. With the possible exception of the money.’

‘Okay. How much money?’

‘They’re valuing the seventy-five per cent of the company they don’t already own at a hundred and twenty million US dollars. About seventy million of your Earth quids.’

‘That a final offer?’

‘They say. But they only started at a hundred, so probably not. If we’re greedy we’ll hold out for something a lot closer to two hundred mill US.’

‘And are you greedy?’

‘Of course we are.’ He smiles humourlessly.

‘So if they raised their bid to that level, you’d still vote no and try to get other people to do the same?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re not that bothered if it goes the other way?’

‘Correct.’

‘And it doesn’t mean much to you financially?’

‘I’ve a hundred shares left, specifically so I still get a vote. If I’m forced to sell I’ll use the proceeds to buy you a slap-up meal and a bottle of something nice to go with it. But there won’t be any change.’

She frowns. ‘
Can
you be forced to sell?’

‘If they get ninety-two per cent of the shares, the law says they can buy the rest compulsorily.’

‘Hmm.’

She’s quiet for a few moments while a moderately fast-moving Audi saloon is dispatched with a series of deft flicks of the wrists and a blip of throttle.

Alban twists in his seat, looking back. ‘I think that was Aunt Kath and Lance,’ he says. He gives a small wave, in case it was. The Audi flashes its lights. They haven’t been flashed since Glen Coe. Or overtaken since the Evo near Crianlarich, for that matter.

‘That count?’

She shakes her head. ‘That doesn’t count.’

‘Anyway,’ he says, settling back, ‘I don’t think I’ll have much influence on them. They’ll sell. Just a question of how much for.’

She looks over at him. ‘And what about your cousin? What about Sophie?’

‘Yes, she’s supposed to be there. Probably.’

‘That’s not what I meant. Come on.’ She says it gently enough.

He watches the road for a while. ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s like I’m always expecting -’ he looks over at Verushka ‘- at this point I’m looking for an alternative to “closure”, but, well . . .’

‘What? Every time you see her you realise you still feel something for her?’

‘I suppose.’ He looks down, brushing imaginary specks off his jeans. ‘Something like that.’ He reaches up and massages his temples, as though he has a headache. ‘I don’t know. It’s . . .’ His voice trails off.

‘How
do
you feel about her?’ Verushka sounds intrigued, no more. ‘Come on, McGill. Be honest.’ Another glance. ‘With yourself; be honest.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, VG,’ he says, shaking his head as he looks out at the mountains sliding slowly past in the distance. ‘Sometimes I think the easiest person to fool is yourself. How do I feel about her? I honestly don’t know. I look and look and I can’t seem to find anything there. I feel that I’ll only know when I see her again, but then that never works out either. And she’s - she’s changed so much. Changed herself so much.’ He shakes his head. ‘She looks good - she looks ten years younger than she is - but she’s had a lot of work done.’

‘Think she’ll have had anything else done since?’

‘Ha! Fuck knows. Botox, probably. Facelift? Bigger bum? Smaller bum? Boob job, either direction? I don’t know; what’s the fashion these days?’

Verushka grins. ‘Gee, dude, you are like so asking the wrong poisin.’

‘And your American accent is still terrible,’ he tells her, smiling at her.

‘Maybe so, but, one day . . . Anyway.’

‘Anyway,’ he says, reaching out and putting his hand to the nape of her neck.

‘That’s nice,’ she purrs, pushing her head back a fraction. ‘If I start to drool, you will stop, won’t you?’ Another flashed grin. ‘Same if we crash.’

‘Deal,’ he tells her. ‘But shouldn’t the question you ought to be asking be how I feel about
you
?’

She shrugs. ‘I know how you feel about me.’

‘You do? Well, tell me.’

‘You think I’m great,’ she tells him. ‘Which, I mean, I am, obviously. ’ She has a cheerful smile on her face. ‘But, you know I’ve been free with my favours, I’m unrepentantly selfish, I have no intention of ever getting married and I don’t want children. So we’re fine unless and until you find somebody you can love who wants the things you want, especially children.’

‘Or you do.’

‘That’s the difference,’ she says. ‘I pretty much already have what I want.’

‘Well lucky old you.’

‘Yup, lucky me.’ She spares a look for the few high, puffy clouds. ‘Actually, no, that’s not entirely true.’

‘No?’

‘I miss you,’ she says. Brightly, almost. ‘I told you last night. I meant it. I wish you lived in Glasgow, or somewhere nearby. I wish we saw each other more often.’ She shrugs.

He wonders what to say to this. ‘Well,’ he says eventually, ‘I guess I have to live somewhere.’

‘Steady, now,’ she says archly, ‘these wild rushes of enthusiasm will be the unmaking of you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That sounded wrong. I just mean . . . But what about you? Would you move somewhere else?’