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  Two hours later, Mo and I are looking at the remains of three pregnancy tests, all of them positive.

  ‘No. I wouldn’t know at three and a half weeks.’ Dropping the lid on the toilet, I sit heavily as I look once more at the ovulation chart I’d pulled up on my phone. ‘I was due my period last week. And the dates work. ‘But maybe it’s a false positive.’ I look at Mo as he sits perched on the edge of the bath, his expression absolutely unreadable. ‘Please say something,’ I sort of whine.

  ‘Well,’ he begins. ‘I’m no expert on the whole vagina thing but three false positives seems a little unlikely. Science and all that, no?’

  ‘Unlikely but still possible. They might even be a faulty batch?’

  ‘All three of them? Faulty batches from three different brands?’ His gaze flicks to mine, and I nod.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘As possible as a virgin birth around this time of year. When was the last one again? Oh, yes. Two thousand years or so ago.’

  ‘That’s not helpful, Mo.’

  ‘It’s not like you to be careless with contraception.’

  ‘It’s not like me to sleep with a man as quick as I did him.’

  ‘Scotsmen,’ he says on a sigh. ‘The whole virile manly man thing juxtaposed by a skirt.’

  ‘Kilt.’ He waves away my correction with his hand. ‘He said he couldn’t have children,’ I mumble, glancing at the tests again.

  ‘Oh-ho-ho. That old chestnut?’

  ‘What? It wasn’t like that.’ Was it?

  ‘I may not have personally heard that one. Again’—he makes a circle motion with his hand in the vicinity of his crotch—‘not my wheelhouse. But the rest of those terrible condom excuses? Believe me, I’ve heard a few. They don’t make condoms big enough for me; I’m allergic to latex; it’ll feel so much better without one; I’ll pull out, I promise.’

  ‘Okay, okay. But it really wasn’t like that. At least, I don’t think.’

  Then why hasn’t he called?’

  ‘Darling, come here.’ My tears drop onto the tiles as I get up from my throne, making my way over to sit next to him. ‘Whatever you’re going to do,’ he says, sliding his arm around my shoulder. ‘I’ll support you all the way. I have a dozen godchildren, but I always fancied myself as an eccentric uncle.’

  ‘You are an eccentric uncle already,’ I remind him wetly.

  ‘Yes, but this will be your offspring, not one of my dreadfully boring siblings.’

  ‘Oh, Mo. What am I going to do?’

  Chapter 27

  GREG

  ‘Geordie, you’re piling the weight on, man.’

  Thank Christ we’re only working a half day because these two are getting on my last nerve. I usually enjoy their ridiculous banter during our quiet time but maybe I just need a break. And I’ll be getting one as our two-week shutdown starts today.

  ‘You think I’m getting fat?’ Geordie answers, rubbing his rotund belly from across the corner of the workshop I use as an office. Josh is right; he is getting bigger. Mainly because after work, he usually hits the pub for a few pints. He once told me if I was married to his missus and had fathered four kids, I’d be hiding out at the pub till they were all a’bed, too. Needless to say, I’ve never spoken of the fact that Scotland has more chance of winning the World Cup than I do of having four kids.

  But I digress. His belly is probably ninety percent beer rather than fat.

  ‘Aye,’ answers Josh, looking up from the newspaper spread out on the workbench. I can’t believe I’m paying these fuckers to sit around and snipe. ‘You’re getting as fat as fuck.’

  ‘Well, that’s your girlfriend’s fault,’ he says, trying to curtail a grin. ‘See, every time I go ’round your house to shag her, she makes me a sandwich after. She really should stop doing that,’ he adds, giving in to a fucking great smile.

  ‘Ah, you’re a tosser,’ Josh answers, taking the bait.

  ‘And a Merry Christmas to you, too!’ crows Geordie.

  ‘I’m thinking of changing your names,’ I grumble, glancing up from my laptop. You’ll be Bungalow Bill, Geordie, on account of you havin’ nothin’ upstairs. And you,’ I say pointing to Josh, ‘I’m gonnae call you Dim Shady.’

  ‘C’mon, boss,’ Geordie cajoles. ‘Is it no’ time to pack up?’

  Christmas Eve is a half day, but not only that, it’s our Christmas party of sorts. As well as a turkey and a ham for their families as a Christmas gift, I’m also taking the pair of them to the local pub for a liquid lunch.

  ‘Aye, aye. Keep your hair on,’ I grumble, forgetting for a moment that Geordie is mostly bald. Also the fault of fathering four, he’d said.

  ‘Hey, boss, what do you call Santa’s helpers?’ Josh suddenly asks. I look up witheringly, waiting for him to enlighten me. ‘Subordinate Clauses,’ he answers with a laugh.

  I smile, unable to match his liveliness

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Geordie interjects. ‘You’ve a face like a well-skelped arse.’

  ‘I’ve just had a bad night’s sleep, that’s all. Why don’t you get yourselves away,’ I suggest. ‘I’ll meet you down the pub in a while.’

  They don’t have to be asked twice, grabbing their coats, the door banging closed in their haste.

  I finish updating an accounting spreadsheet, then decide to check my emails one more time. I doubt there’ll be anything pressing, but I’ve decided I’m putting myself on a phone and internet ban for the next two weeks. Cold turkey because I can’t count the number of times I’ve picked up my phone to call Isobel or opened my laptop to google her—to find her on social media.

  But I just can’t bring myself to.

  It’s not like there haven’t been other women since my divorce, but there’s never been anyone close to capturing my heart like she has. And it’s dangerous territory. Thinking of her floods my body with the good stuff—warmth, endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. But then I remember all the things she deserves that I’ve no way to give her.

  It’s like a bruise that’s constantly poked.

  I think I might be turning into a masochist because it doesn’t stop me from thinking about her.

  I can’t do anything about my brain—I can’t stop thinking about her, but I can choose how I deal, how I react to those thoughts. Or not. And by that, I mean I don’t call. It’s like I’m an addict, and she’s my drug of choice. I’m still coming down and fighting the craving, just promising myself if I can resist her, if I can just survive one more day without the taste or sound of her, I’ll hang on to my sanity.

  One day at a time, right?

  But that’s in my waking hours. In my sleep? That’s another whole other deal. I’m pretty sure I created a dream life with her in the one place I can fulfil both of our fantasies. I dream about us drinking coffee and reading the morning papers in bed. We’re on holiday, lying on a terrace in the sun or drinking cocktails around the pool, watching the light play across her pale skin. And I dream about bending her over the sofa. Of taking her out hiking and fucking her up against a rock face.

  I dream of going home to her, to the sounds and smells of domesticity.

  I dream of her holding our child in her arms.

  And that is the cruellest dream of all.

  Fingers on the keyboard, I sigh as I tip back my head to stare at the ceiling. It feels like the pain of the past—the things I’ve worked so hard to move on from—are no longer a dull ache. My heart feels freshly cleaved.

  ‘Fuck this,’ I growl, sitting up and slapping down the lid of my laptop. I’m fucking off to the pub. ‘I think I’ll get pissed.’

  As I reach our local watering hole, The Cock and Bull, renamed by the locals as The Cock and Balls, I go straight to the bar and order a round of beers with whisky chasers.

  ‘Ah, you’re a legend in your own workplace,’ Geordie crows, coming up behind me and slapping me on the shoulder.

  ‘Make yourself useful and take these over, would you?’ I’d already
spotted Josh by the dartboard. Only in pubs will you find half-drunk men being allowed to chuck pointy wee things indoors. I wonder how many people end up visiting accident and emergency each year after a few pints and a game of darts?

  I’m purposely filling my mind with the inane as I turn to make my way over to the lads, when my shoulder clashes with a woman walking in the opposite direction.

  ‘Sorry, hen.’ I apologise without looking up, concentrating on the spillage of beer against both of my hands.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says at the same time. ‘My fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.’ I know that voice, but I still don’t look up, wanting right now to be anywhere but here. The hairs on my neck stand like pins, my hands suddenly looking more like bare bones than anything else, bloodless through shock or maybe anger. Still. It’s been years, and yet I still rage when she’s near. ‘Greg, will you not say hello?’

  I inhale, exhale, and do the only thing I can as I look up and greet my ex-wife.

  ‘Diana.’

  ‘It’s been a long time.’ Not long enough, I don’t say. Our divorce was, like most divorces I’m sure, acrimonious. It’s a fine word but not an adequate one. Her request for a divorce hit me out of the blue, and from the day she told me until the day the final divorce papers came through, I felt like I bled continually. Bled money, bled pain and bled out love. She might’ve left me for someone else, which I didn’t know at the time, but we both know that wasn’t the real reason our marriage ended.

  ‘How are you?’ She wraps her hands around her waist, ostensibly to close her long cardigan across her body.

  ‘Good. And you?’ Like I give a fuck.

  ‘I’m well.’ Nope, no fucks were given that day.

  ‘And Chris?’ The twat you left me for?

  ‘He’s well. We’re just here visiting Mum for Christmas.’ Excuse me while I don’t get excited. ‘What about you? Are you seeing anyone?’

  ‘Nope.’ I place the beers back down on the bar. This looks like it might take a while.

  ‘I’ve always hoped you’d find someone else.’

  ‘Once bitten and all that,’ comes my gruff reply.

  ‘Well, that’s a shame. You really were a good husband.’

  ‘Just not good enough, apparently.’ I wish to God I hadn’t said that—wish I could rewind and suck those words back in. Because the last thing I want is her pity. If I never had to think about her again, I’d be happy.

  ‘No, Greg.’ Her cheeks turn as red as though I’d slapped her. ‘That’s not true. Our breakup wasn’t on you.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ The words come out as a sneer. ‘See, I seem to recall you telling me exactly that.’

  Diana’s gaze darts to the bar, maybe the barman, then over her shoulder. ‘Come and sit down, please,’ she says, her hands on my forearm.

  ‘What’s the point? I’ve no interest in anything you have to say.’

  ‘Please, Greg. Just five minutes. Please, just hear me out.’

  With a shrug and a deep sip of my pint, my eyes follow her to one of the booths as, from the dartboard, Josh and Geordie watch warily. I indicate the remaining drinks on the bar as I follow my ex-wife.

  ‘I’m truly sorry for hurting you,’ she begins before my arse even touches the upholstery, speaking so fast it’s like she’s worried I might not stay to hear whatever it is she feels she needs to say. ‘I said some awful things to you, Greg. Things that weren’t true. I didn’t leave you because we couldn’t have children—’

  ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil, hen. You could have kids.’ I lean across the table, my words dripping with a sudden menace, a sudden hurt. ‘I, on the other hand . . . Don’t hold back now, not when I’ve already heard this part. You left me because I couldn’t give you kids.’

  ‘I know that’s what I said, but it was an excuse. Something I told myself to absolve myself of blame, a way to unburden the guilt. I didn’t leave because of that. I left because I fell in love with someone else, pure and simple. I’m sorry, so, so sorry, but the fertility treatments and the doctors, the waiting rooms full of worried faces—I just couldn’t do it anymore.’ Tears begin to track down her face, but I don’t have it in me to feel pity either, it seems. ‘Chris walked into my life right at that time, and I told myself he was what I needed.’

  ‘Good old Chris.’ Grabbing my pint, I take a deep gulp. Just what she needed. A man not shooting blanks.

  ‘You and me, we were just going through the motions. I couldn’t help falling in love with him.’

  Just what a bloke wants to hear. More ways he was inadequate.

  ‘You’ll have kids now, I suppose.’ Seems that poking the old bruise wasn’t enough.

  ‘No.’ Diana looks down at her hands, her expression unreadable. ‘I knew we wouldn’t. Chris didn’t want a family.’ She raises her head and sets her shoulders as though expecting a blow. Then she delivers one instead. ‘I knew all that when I left you, but it didn’t matter. I only wanted to be with him.’

  I was hurt . . .

  You were too far away to reach . . .

  I felt dead inside.

  Your heart no longer in it . . .

  My head races, swimming with a million things she’d said, both then and now. The ways we’d hurt each other. The things she’d said at the pub. The lies and the subterfuge all meant so little. Is it odd that I feel like a weight has been lifted? Or maybe a veil? She left me for another man, not for another man who could give her children. She left because she fell in love with him, pure and simple. The rest didn’t matter so long as she had him.

  Is it strange that gives me a mad kind of hope?

  I thought I was protecting Isobel in the long term, and maybe I am. Maybe she’d leave me just like Diana did, but if she does, it might be for one of a million reasons. Not only because I can’t give her children. Maybe we’d adopt. Maybe we’d be happy on her own. Maybe we’d only date for a month before, leaving me just a shell of a man, all shagged out.

  Or maybe she won’t even pick up the phone.

  Yeah, that’s more likely. I mean, the possibility of Isobel telling me to get fucked is real.

  The windscreen wipers and heavy rain are mildly hypnotic, making me glad I didn’t get past the first quarter of my pint, or I might not be able to make this car trip right now. With a shake of my head, I move my mind back to the road.

  I’d left the pub within minutes of the speaking to Diana. Called my sister and told her I wouldn’t be there for dinner tomorrow after all. Next, I’d logged onto British Airways and booked myself on the next flight to London.

  Of course, I don’t know where she lives, and London is a fucking big place, but I know I’ll find her anyway. Maybe I’ll call the woman who runs the cleaning service, who also runs the letting agency, and see if she can get me Isobel’s address from when she booked to stay over on the other side of the loch. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll work it out somehow.

  My phone begins to ring, so I answer it, the sound of Jim’s voice ringing through the dark space.

  ‘Greg, how’s it goin’?’

  ‘Jim, just the person I need.’ Why didn’t I think of this before?

  ‘Oh, aye. Wit fir?’ What for? he asks suspiciously.

  ‘You remember Isobel?’

  ‘O’ course, I do. I’m not likely to forget her, you lucky bastard. But before you start your bletherin’, I have a quick question for you.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Have you rented the cottage out?’

  ‘No. Why d’you ask?’

  ‘ ’Cause I’ve just driven passed and there’s a car parked out front and all the lights are on.’ I pull over onto the grass verge at his words. What are the chances it’s her? ‘Want me to double back and check it out?’

  ‘No thanks, pal. I’m on my way over there just now.’

  I hang up as he begins to ask me what I’d wanted to talk to him about, swinging the car onto the other side of the road.

  Isobel, that had better b
e you.

  Chapter 28

  GREG

  I pull up at the cottage much later in the evening, the traffic being much worse than I anticipated. Why weren’t the fuckers all at home drinking eggnog and wrapping presents? But Jim was right. There is someone in the house. Please, God, let it be who I think it is. The car parked out front isn’t the same, but the last one was a rental anyway. In its place is a Jeep Grand Cherokee, something more suited to the Highland weather than the wee thing she’d arrived in last time. As well as the Jeep, the cottage is shining like a beacon with every light in the place switched on.

  I park at the side, as usual, and pull out my house keys. I hope to God Isobel is the person inside. As it turns out, I don’t need to use the key as the handle turns under my hand. I feel like there’s a fist wrapped around my heart as I push the door open and step inside.

  ‘Isob—’

  ‘You bastard—you rat lying bastard!’ I duck as a piece of fruit—a large orange—goes flying past my head, so close that I feel the hair above my ears rise.

  ‘You nearly knocked me out!’ I look behind me, out into the garden, though I can’t see when it landed. ‘I bet that thing weighed a half a kilo. You’ll have put a dent in your car.

  ‘I don’t care!’ she yells from the others side of the kitchen. ‘I hate you!’

  ‘No, you don’t. You don’t mean that. I’m sorry I haven’t called.’

  ‘You will be!’ Another orange thumps against the wall. Thank Christ she’s a terrible shot.

  ‘Of all the cruel things to say—all the lies to tell! You’ll rot in hell, Greg Hamley, you will!’ This time, a cup clatters against the door as I step back, pulling it closed like a shield.

  ‘Woah, woah, woah, there, Nelly.’ Popping my head around the door, I hold my hand. I’m not sure why I’m treating her like a frightened horse except for the fact I reckon she’s just as dangerous right now. Though not from flying bananas. I’m not sure where the fruit has come from.

  ‘Woah yourself, you . . . you liar!’