Hot Scots Christmas Read online

  ‘Ivy, why have you come back?’

  ‘I told you. I was tired of such a vacuous industry.’ Standing, she takes herself back to her chair, brushing invisible lint from her pyjama pants as she sits.

  ‘So you’ve opened a beauty salon?’ Because that makes sense.

  ‘Hair and beauty. And I was tired of living out there. What? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Seems a bit odd, is all.’

  ‘Odd says the girl hiding from the world while sleeping on my sofa. Odd from the girl whose dozen pairs of Gucci boots litter my hall.’

  ‘Two pairs,’ I mumble. The other pair are actually Choos. ‘And I’m sleeping in your spare room, in case you haven’t noticed. Why don’t you just say it? You want me out.’

  ‘No, you eejit,’ she says wearily. ‘I want you to start living again.’

  ‘I am living. In fact, I’m thinking about going travelling again.’ The embryonic thought is out of my mouth before it’s even half-formed.

  ‘Running away,’ she says, throwing her hands up in a gesture of frustration. ‘Because that worked out so well last time.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You were supposed to go get drunk for a few months and have fun, not come back with a husband ten years older than yourself.’

  ‘So, by that you mean what? That I’m not capable of making my own decisions? I can’t be trusted alone?’

  Her expression and tone hit a raw nerve. I’d always thought she liked Marcus; back then, he was so much more sophisticated than either of us. A little nicer, too. She’d seemed so impressed when she came to visit in Singapore. And Dubai. Skiing with us in Saint Moritz.

  ‘No, you need to learn to be alone. And you make rash decisions. You always have.’ Ivy’s tone is plaintive. ‘Just look at the waxing course.’

  ‘But we’re not talking about a course that’ll cost me a few dollars.’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds!’

  ‘We’re talking about my marriage. About me.’

  ‘I said for you not to go—or to at least wait for me.’

  ‘I wanted to go travelling. Not on holiday!’

  ‘But what with your mum . . .’ Her words trail off; she means when Mom decided to sell the house, concluding I was old enough to look after myself. ‘It was bound to be an emotional time. You were adrift.’ She speaks softly, her tone almost a plea . . . until her expression changes and she’s back to angry again. ‘But no, you wouldn’t listen. Typical. Next, you’re married!’

  This is all true. I did meet Marcus while I was travelling; on a private beach in Koh Samui, actually. Me and Ella, a Swedish backpacker I’d met, had slipped into a party he was hosting. We’d gotten a little buzzed and then a lot busted, but as we were being frog-marched to the gate, Marcus stopped the security guard and told him we were part of his group. Us with our dirty braids, Haviana’s and batik sarongs. We looked so out of place, hanging out in his beach house with his Eurotrash pals.

  He always did have terrible taste in friends.

  ‘It’s not like I planned it.’ And it’s not like we hooked up or anything. After Rory, there was no way I was going there again. I just happened to keep seeing him around. First time was a few days later in the nearby little town. Then in Pattaya the following week. I was flattered; because it was obvious he was following me, arranging these crazy sort of meet-cutes. I was dazzled, in truth. Who doesn’t want to be desired after being used, then spurned? At least, that’s how I considered it then.

  At the time, he was a perfect gentleman and it wasn’t long before Ella and I stopped staying in the awful back-packer hovels to hang out with him. Five star hotels, champagne, and parties on massive yachts with the older, more sophisticated man. But I didn’t sleep with him. Maybe that’s what appealed to him. He referred to me as his princess. At least, in the beginning. And by the time Ella had flown on to Australia, he’d asked me to marry him.

  I realise Ivy’s still speaking, though yelling might be more appropriate.

  ‘—you need to live. Twenty-one and married! You’ve never lived by yourself—never had to support yourself! You don’t know anything about paying bills or balancing a bank account or any of those things.’

  ‘You make it sound like such a cliché. Like he was my sugar daddy or something.’

  ‘That’s like saying Goebels was slightly racist!’ She slaps her head, a bit more dramatic than her usual tact. ‘He was the ultimate sugar daddy! Yeah, sure, he was hot, in that tanned, sophisticated older man deal. And loaded. He took care of you, though not always in a way like a husband should.’

  ‘He was barely thirty when I met him! And he loved me. He treated me like a princess.’ She murmurs something under her breath, something I don’t catch. When I ask her what, I wish I hadn’t.

  ‘I said like fucking Rapunzel, locked away in an ivory tower!’

  ‘That’s not fair—I had a social life. I worked!’

  ‘In his circle where he could keep an eye on you. Fin, you never came home. Never visited me, not while I was here, or in America, or on location. I only ever visited you.’

  ‘I thought you liked to visit?’

  ‘Of course I did. Staying in the lap of luxury was the icing on the cake, but did you never stop to think why you never kept in contact with your friends from uni? Why you never travelled anywhere without him?’

  I instantly feel disloyal, because of course I did. Especially after our honeymoon year, but speaking ill of the dead just doesn’t seem right. It sounds so pathetic, but at the time I couldn’t help be endeared—to be loved so much he couldn’t bear to be parted from me. Later, maybe not so much. Later it seemed, at best, like a lame excuse. At worse, a lie to control.

  ‘I thought you liked him,’ I say quietly.

  ‘No, you liked him. Loved him, whatever,’ she says with a dismissive twist of her hand. ‘That was enough for me to keep my mouth closed. I tolerated him, kept my words and thoughts to myself because I love you and he was your choice. But I hated how condescending he was to you. It was almost like you were walking on eggshells around him. I hated how quietly controlling he was. Hated it, Fin.’

  ‘We fought about it plenty,’ I mutter, unable to meet her gaze. ‘It was just so much easier to live his way. Look,’ I say, my voice stronger now. ‘I wasn’t some bullied wife.’

  This isn’t the first lie I’ve made in his defence, but Ivy’s expression is so unyielding, I make a confession of sorts.

  ‘He was manipulative, I know. But in all successful marriages, compromise is key.’

  The truth is, I think in all relationships one partner compromises a little more than the other and that happened to be my role.

  I instantly feel ill; playing the grieving wife when I’ve no right to be. It’s not that I don’t grieve, because I do, but my grief is nothing compared to the guilt that weighs me down daily. And now I feel guilty that I never confided in Ivy. To tell her that I’d begun to see these very things. Guilty that I continue to have such disloyal thoughts, even though he’s gone.

  ‘And even now, you want to hang onto that line? That love? Even after everything he’s done?’ Incredulity fills her face and her tone.

  ‘You don’t know for sure.’ My heart rate peaks again. I don’t want to talk about this—it’s not like it’s not there in the back of my mind every day.

  ‘I’m not talking about his suicide.’

  ‘Please don’t say that.’ I come up from the sofa as though pulled by invisible strings. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. ‘No one knows that, not for sure.’ No one can know—it could’ve been an accident, and if no one knows, maybe I can convince myself it wasn’t my fault.

  ‘Oh, babe,’ Ivy says softly. ‘You need to face the facts.’

  ‘I do face facts—everyday! I examine the probability of him taking out his yacht, weighed against the clothes left on the deck. Did he go for a swim, get a cramp and drown? Did he have a heart attack? Or did he—did he do i
t on purpose? Did he—did he . . .’

  ‘I’m not talking about how he died. I’m talking about the other stuff.’

  Stuff enough to make him kill himself.

  ‘Stop. Just stop.’ My hands are at my temples; my head feeling like it’s ready to explode. ‘I can’t do this right now, all right? I just can’t.’ And I’m back to pleading again as I lower them, wrapping them around my waist and curling into myself.

  ‘If not now, then when? You won’t speak to me about it. You refuse to acknowledge any of it. Even when the reality of the mess he left you in stares you in the face. Every time you tuck yourself into that tiny bedroom, every time you hesitate from buying yourself a coffee, contemplating the balance of your bank account. He did that to you—he left you in this limbo. It could’ve been worse, if it wasn’t for your friend Soraya, you could have ended up in prison. You know that’s true.’

  ‘I do know, but I can’t . . . Not yet.’

  ‘You need to pull yourself together, maybe get some counselling. And a job. You need to come back to the human race.’

  As she sighs, I can see the strain of it all on her face, but I can’t think of her right now. As usual, I choose not to think about any of it.

  ‘I—I’m going to refill my cup.’ Without giving her a chance to speak, I spring from the sofa. ‘Want one?’ I pretend not to hear her deflated sigh.

  Welcome to my Saturday.

  Seven

  Fin

  I come to, my chest rising from the bed with an almighty jerk. I’m coughing and spluttering, oxygen and breathing not able to commit to being friends. My heart pounds somewhere in the vicinity of my windpipe, leaving a horrific sense of abandonment in the empty cavity of my chest.

  A waking nightmare.

  Waking has never been one of my favourite states, but in the weeks following Marcus’ death, I found I was almost unable to stay awake and spent most of my time sleeping. Banishing reality, I suppose. I just couldn’t get out of our bed, like grief and guilt weighted me down against the mattress, its invisible hands holding me captive there. But it wasn’t a true sleep. A restful sleep. More like a loss of consciousness where I was forced to watch our last morning together playing on a loop inside my head.

  Did he say goodbye? Did I miss any clues?

  These days, sleep comes easy only with the aid of pills. Without them, I sleep fitfully, plagued by nightmares. Nightmares that follow me into the light of day. I might feel normal for a few moments after I open my eyes, stuck somewhere between the emptiness of sleeping and the as yet unrealised reality of the day. In the back of my head, I sense something is missing, but for a blissful minute, I’m not sure what. I’m just normal. Nothing bad has happened. Everything remains the same. In the natural order of things, the fog of slumber clears and with it, a cold reality sets in: I no longer have a husband. A home. A place in the world.

  Then, more occasionally, I wake like this.

  Terrified. I feel like I’m choking. My nose burns with the phantom sting of salt water and my skin prickles from the burn of the sun. I know it makes no sense, this drowning by empathy, but yet here I cower, coughing and spluttering, desperately fighting to stay alive.

  My breathing is erratic as I swallow mouthfuls of air, struggling to inflate my lungs, able to wipe the tears from my face only as I begin to calm, inhaling large gulps of oxygen. Physically shaking, I force myself back against the pillows and pressing my hand against what I think is my diaphragm. I push myself into the mattress, willing my breathing to catch up with my reality.

  I’m dry. I’m on land.

  I’m not dying. I never was.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Concentrate on the rise and fall of my hands, the birds singing outside, or the lines in the ceiling. Concentrate on anything else.

  Intellectually, I know guilt is the cause. I might not have had a hand in his death, but I feel I’m somehow to blame. I’d stopped feeling invested in my marriage long before he died.

  Once I’m able to push away the terror, I can rein in my thoughts, my heartbeat finding it’s equilibrium, though I feel like I’ve been lying here an age.

  Ivy’s alarm sounds through the thin wall, and a moment later, I can hear her stumbling about her bedroom. It’s mornings like these that makes me thankful she’s a heavy sleeper, but it’s sort of comforting, listening to her start her day. I’m grateful that, this morning, her only morning free from the salon, she’s disciplined enough to set her alarm. This small piece of domestic normality is something to hold onto; something to concentrate on. I’m here—so is Ivy—and I need to appreciate my friends more. Even if their kindness hurts.

  I stretch out my trembling arms, for once not depressed that my fingers almost touch the walls either side of my bed. My breathing is as it should be now, panic reduced though I’m still shaken.

  Fuck it all. I’m so tired of not feeling like me. Sick of being afraid of what the morning might bring. Tired of those around looking at me like I’m about to crumble from the outside in; like at any moment I might implode and collapse. Turn to dust .

  From terrified to angry, I swipe my phone from the small mirrored table masquerading as a nightstand. Flicking through my emails, I notice one from Soraya asking if I’ve time for a chat later today. I sigh, though it’s not exactly bitterness that prompts me to do so, more a small and sudden why. Why me and not her? Why not the stranger on the street? The uncharitable thought prompts a wave of guilt, because without my friends, who knows where I’d be.

  I read once that grief must be tackled in stages, but I can’t seem to get beyond my fearful state. No, that’s not quite true, because I’m plenty angry. Angry that this has happened; that I’ve lost everything. It’s an anger I keep bottled up inside. A rage I can’t express; I’m just so sick and tired of being terrified all the time.

  ‘You want a coffee?’

  Ivy’s voice from the other side of the door pulls me from my own head, away from what I don’t care to share. My throat is hoarse as I answer.

  ‘I’ll make them.’

  I note Ivy’s tone is sleep filled but not unfriendly which, after yesterday, is all I can ask. We managed to avoid each other after our chat, mainly because Saturday turned out to be her busiest day so far. I’m pleased business is going well, especially so soon after opening. I’m also pleased we didn’t sit down to dinner together later that evening. She’d said she had a heap of paperwork to deal with and spent most of the evening glued to her laptop and receipts, whether in truth or just to avoid me, I can’t be sure.

  Out in the kitchen now, I fill the kettle with icy cold water, grabbing the jar of instant from the cupboard above. I miss my Italian built-in coffee machine; I wished I could’ve brought it with me. It’s not the most sensible thought, but out of all the trappings of my previous life, good coffee is one of the things I miss the most. It’s not as though there’s space for an espresso maker in here; the kitchen is barely big enough for its tiny rectangular table setting. We don’t usually eat in here as it’s become Ivy’s office of sorts, her laptop taking up the tiny dining space, while I’m camped out in her office space, I suppose. On the table, piles of paperwork and invoices are piled strategically and weighted with items varying from a garlic crusher to a can of stewed prunes. I guess Ivy must have some method in that madness, though to me it just looks chaotic.

  She didn’t have a lot of money left over after the salon refit, which was seriously seventies in its décor. The flat above the salon wasn’t much better. We’d done what we could to bring it up to date, firstly by pulling up the almost psychedelic carpets running across the entire floor. It was the kind of floor covering with a pattern so mad that, if you stared at it for more than a minute or two, you were left feeling dizzy. I scuff my toe against the kitchen floor, thinking it was lucky for her bank balance we’d discovered fairly decent floorboards underneath the yuck. After an unpleasant day of sanding, Ivy, Nat and I had whitewashed the boards, coating the kitchen units with the same pai
nt. The resulting effect is a little more shabby than chic, but pretty enough, especially paired with the scrubbed pine table and DIY’d white-washed chairs.

  ‘Don’t you own pyjama pants?’ Ivy appears in the kitchen doorway dressed in blue flannel and a Ramones tee, her hair looking like a magpie’s des res . Her frown is directed in the vicinity of my legs causing me to look down at my nightwear, or lack thereof. What I’d thought was an oversized t-shirt has come up a little bit short.

  ‘Could’ve been worse.’ I have a thing for lingerie and flimsy nightwear; or rather, I had a thing for those kinds of frippery. These days, what you see is pretty much what you get. Panties. Tees. Marginally bristly legs.

  ‘Can you make mine a tea?’ she asks through a yawn. ‘And there are sultana muffins June baked in the bread thingy.’

  I turn to pull out the tea canister when my phone buzzes against the kitchen worktop.

  ‘Whozat?’ Ivy asks in her usual candour.

  ‘Junk email, I expect.’ I pop a teabag into her mug. ‘I got a message from Soraya late last night. She’s calling later on.’

  Ivy makes an indistinct noise; a sort of enquiring sound. Something’s definitely a little off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ she repeats, only in a higher tone, doing a fair impersonation of a deer caught in a pair of high beams.

  ‘What’s with the strangled noise?’

  ‘I was just thinking that’s probably a good idea.’ She nods her head vigorously. ‘A really good idea.’

  ‘It’s just a phone call, Ivy.’ Just a phone call I hate making more and more these days. I’ll forever appreciate everything Soraya’s done for me, but it’s like she and I might as well live on separate planets now. I’m indebted to them both—Ivy and her—but for them, I would be living with my mother and her new guy, or maybe worse. Languishing in a foreign jail, maybe . But keeping in contact with Raya makes me sad. It’s almost as if, in the days between our calls, I can ignore my past and just focus on what I have in front of me. And by in front, I mean just that; neither the past nor the future, just what’s right in front of me.