‘You can look for another job using the resources here; we’ll help as much as we can,’ says Hari. ‘Maybe not as a geography teacher?’
Essie tries to smile, but she doesn’t make a very good fist of it.
‘It’s just losing your job,’ says Hari. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
Essie comes from the end of the world. She doesn’t want to go back there.
2
At the end of the world, in Carso, Janey Munroe – her corkscrew curls just like her daughter’s, if rather less glossy but instead tightly pinned back for work, her blue eyes shrewd, and certainly shorter in the eyelash department – is having a rather wonderful morning.
Her scrubs are turquoise with a navy trim, which she rather likes; they don’t cling, but they do accentuate her softness and her large bosom. She knows her daughter Essie spends quite a lot of time in the gym trying to defeat this particular genetic quirk. Janey has decided to embrace it.
‘Come on, then, let’s be having you,’ Janey signs with a grin to the tiny child she has in her clinic that afternoon. This is her very favourite part of her job, by miles.
As chief audiologist at the county hospital, she has her own consulting room, even if it is in a prefab shed. Most of her clients are either children or the elderly, so she has flowers and a big squishy bear called Frisko who wears hearing aids (in case you’re feeling nervous and need something to cuddle). A surprising number of people, young and old, quite like clinging on to Frisko, it turns out. His nose is nearly worn away, and one of the women in Carso, where they are intense and competitive knitters, has knitted him a cheerful red hat with ear holes. He is quite a smart bear these days. In fact, she would quite like ared hat for herself. She might mention it to the knitting circle. It would suit her dark curls, which, with a bit of cunning root-dyeing, still look pretty good. She knows they are a bit long for a woman of her age – Essie points it out quite often – but she is vain about her hair, if little else these days.
Janey spends a lot of time improving the lives of elderly people in particular; the small renewal of independence a better hearing aid brings is incredibly rewarding, giving people a huge fillip in wellbeing, even if the grumpy old codgers sometimes then complain that everyone is, in fact, too noisy and they’re going to keep it switched off for the foreseeable. But that’s alright too. After her dad died, ten years ago, her mum upped and moved to Spain and is living it up like nobody’s business, which is great that she’s happy, but Janey misses her.
Her very favourite times are days like today, when she joins the ENT clinic for babies who require aftercare for their cochlear implants. Implants aren’t for everyone, and Janey entirely sympathises with people who do not think they are suitable for them or their deaf children and don’t see being deaf as a handicap. Janey respects this a hundred per cent.
But for those who want them, it can be transformative, and this morning is one of those days.
Baby Ruaridh, the magnetic receiver on his head, looks around nervously, his large hazel eyes blinking anxiously as his mother strokes him reassuringly. His dad is filming the whole thing on his phone. The ENT consultant, Dr Joshi, a well-respected colleague of Janey’s, nods at her as she hushes the room, and for the first time they turn the implant on.
The child’s face is comically confused as his head shoots up, and his mother, her voice cracking a tiny bit, says, ‘Hiya there, Ruaridh. Hello.’
The head twists as she moves him round to see her; his eyes go wider, if that were even possible. His mother kisses him.
‘Hello, my beautiful baby boy. It’s very nice to say hello.’
Janey has seen it a hundred times, and it gets her every time. Dad puts down his phone, eyes shining. ‘Hey, wee man,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘Hiya.’
The baby’s head turns again, and he points a small chubby finger directly at his father.
‘Oh, my God,’ his mum says. Then, quickly, ‘Sorry. That sounded like a swear. I don’t mean it.’ She turns bright red and buries her face in the neck of her goggling baby. ‘Oh, my beautiful boy.’
Dr Joshi takes various notes prior to starting to run tests but glances up to say briefly, ‘I believe everything seems to be working reasonably successfully at this stage,’ in the quiet murmur Janey knows indicates he is delighted with the results.
So Janey is in buoyant mood heading off for lunch – until she remembers what’s on the lunch agenda.
Her pace noticeably slows as she cuts through the hospital, which was put up shiny and new by one government, and left to lapse by another. The once-cheery wall paintings are looking a bit faded, particularly the mural of a group of children having a good time in a field, something everyone feels is a bit embarrassing anyway, as they can’t imagine anyone, particularly children, wanting to be reminded that they aren’t, currently, children having a good time in a field, rather than in hospital.
It is hard to talk about sex at the best of times, never mind when you’re looking at a pallid omelette and a very wilted excuse for a salad. But her friends have decided it’s time. After a rotten divorce, finally, it’s time.
The nutshell version Janey has learned to spiel off – as if she doesn’t care, it’s all years ago, even though it canstill wake her in the middle of the night as if it’s happening that very day – is that Colin had an affair, they decided to stay together for Alasdair and Essie, their then teenage children, and then neither of them had been able to be the thoughtful, endlessly kind, unselfish outstanding citizens the counsellor and endless magazine articles had ordered them to be. Janey had been sad and snappy, then menopausal, which had taken sad and snappy and hurled in a touch of simmering rage; Colin had been unable to give up the other woman entirely, and they had bumped along for years trying to do the right thing, making everything worse day by day. Being a little older, Al was already one foot out of the door; Essie was right in the middle of enough teenage drama of her own without adding her parents to the mix, and, when Colin had filed for divorce the week after she’d moved to Edinburgh for college, it had cracked her world apart. Her dad had moved away, to a new build on a new estate with a new wife and, eventually, a new child, Logan, with whom he was utterly besotted.
Janey had had to give up the house and rebuild everything she had ever known, as well as taking the blame from Essie, who needed someone to use as a punching bag. What Essie thinks is more or less what Janey feels about herself – she should have been kinder, should have worked harder. It drives Al up the wall. And her friends, in fact, who are spending this lunchtime giving her an ultimatum: it is finally time to get back out there and date again.
Janey wonders what Essie will think about this, then discards the thought immediately. Essie will think it is gross, almost certainly. Her funny, contrary daughter. She hopes she’s having a good day.
3
The real kicker is, Essie thinks, meandering very slowly back from the office, completely distraught, that the day had started so well.
She had woken up with a hangover, but a happy feeling when she realised where she was: her favourite place in the entire world, her boyfriend Connor’s vast, beautiful apartment set high in Moray Place, in the heart of one of the world’s most glorious cities: Edinburgh, Scotland.
Moray Place is the loveliest street – it isn’t even a street; it is a circus, or circle, of huge grey stone houses laid out around a private garden. Cars aren’t allowed all the way round, so it is a blissful haven of quiet in the noisy city, normally just busy with people recreating scenes from the many films and television shows shot here. Essie quite likes passing them, heading up to the shiny big black door as if she belongs there. It would be nice if she also had a key, but they aren’t – she’d glanced at her blond boyfriend Connor, happily snoring next to her – they aren’t at that stage yet.
