‘Hang on, hang on!’ Calvin ordered, taking in the sight in front of him. ‘I just need to take a minute to remind myself that political correctness is a thing, and I’m no longer allowed to comment on the fact that you’ve got abs that resemble the peaks of the Andes. What was left of my self-esteem has just been crushed to dust.’
Ollie laughed. ‘Good to see you, pal. Two minutes, I’ll be right back. You know where the coffee is.’
He took the stairs two at a time to his bedroom, where he threw on a pair of jeans, a chunky black jumper and ran some styling powder through his hair. Shaving could wait until later. Maybe tomorrow.
He was back down in the kitchen in less than ten minutes. This time, he gave Calvin a proper hug and was rewarded with a black coffee in a travel mug.
Calvin gestured to the door. ‘Ready to go, my friend? We’re seeing it at 11a.m. but we’re stopping for breakfast in a little spot nearby.’
‘So it’s still available?’ A property. The kind of place he’d dreamt about his whole life. One that Calvin had been talking to him about for the last month. One that could change so many things in his world.
‘It is.’
Ollie stood back to let the older man go first. He’d have to tell Sienna about this viewing, but not yet – she was furious enough without sending her into orbit.
Lately he’d been feeling that their marriage had been a contractual obligation and neither he nor Sienna had been living up to their ends of the bargain. And he had a sinking feeling that today was the day he might be about to throw in a deal-breaker.
3
ALICE BROOKES
In a well-practised move, Alice scooped the teabag out of her mug, waved it at the automatic bin, waited until the steel lid lifted, then dropped the bag of camomile leaves inside. Most mornings she shared a pot of normal tea with her friend and housemate, Val Murray, but today she’d been in the mood for what Val called, ‘that fancy posh nonsense’. Judging by the roll of Val’s eyes, she wouldn’t be changing her mind about that any time soon.
‘You’re not allowed to roll your eyes at me on my last day here. You have to play nice and treat me like your very favourite person in the world so that I’ll come back to visit you,’ Alice teased, but even as she said it, she had to swallow the lump that kept rising in her throat.
As always, Val wasn’t slow with the smart counter points. ‘Aye, you’ll be back. They always come back,’ she said dramatically. ‘Except our Dee’s dodgy pen pal who slept on the couch for six months when he first moved to Scotland at the end of the nineties. He’s in jail now for running one of those Ponzi schemes. Don’t ask.’
Alice didn’t, but she couldn’t help laughing. It was common knowledge that thanks to Val and her huge heart, her home had accommodated many waifs and strays over the years and Alice was the latest one. She’d been here since last May, after meeting Val on the day Alice finally made the break and left her bad bastard of a husband. It was only a few weeks after Alzheimer’s disease had taken Val’s husband, Don, but still she had offered up her spare room without question or judgement, and Alice had been grateful for the roof and the safe harbour. As the weeks and months had passed, it had become so much more than that.
As someone who had been isolated from any friends for the entirety of her marriage to former politician-turned-corrupt-crook, Larry McLenn, Val had become the first pal she’d had in decades. Someone to chat to every day when she came in from her cleaning jobs. Someone to mull over life with. Someone to laugh with, every single day, because Val refused to let the world drag her down.
And that wasn’t even taking into account the other women of all ages in Val’s life who regularly stopped by her terraced house on an estate in the village of Weirbridge, about twenty minutes from Glasgow. There was her chum, Nancy, a widow who lived only a few streets away and who’d also had tough times but was having a second lease of life after meeting an old classmate at a school reunion and falling in love with him. There was Tress, who dropped her toddler, Buddy, here two days a week because Val and Nancy were his beloved childminders. Sometimes Buddy was collected by Keli, a nurse at Glasgow Central hospital and Tress’s soon-to-be sister-in-law. And Carly and Carole, Val’s nieces, two women not much younger than Alice, but miles apart in lifestyle, because they led very glam lives in London. They visited every month for at least a weekend and absolutely livened things up. Then there were the old friends of Val’s daughter, Dee, who’d been tragically killed by a drugged-up driver a decade ago. They still popped in every couple of weeks for a blether and a glass of vino or a cup of tea with a biscuit from the tin that had permanent residence in the middle of the kitchen table. Alice was sure it had some kind of miracle self-replenishing properties because it hadn’t been empty since the day she’d got here.
And at the centre of it all was Val. This woman had truly put her back together again. Alice had gone from having no one in her life other than her adult son, Rory, to having what felt like a sisterhood, all of them rooting for her to get back on her feet and build an incredible new future. Damn, there was that lump in her throat again.
This, right here, was probably the thing that she’d miss most. Both of them, sitting at Val’s well-worn oak kitchen table in their dressing gowns at the start of the day, Alice usually fresh from her shower because she’d already done the 5a.m. cleaning shift at the local school. Val, just out of bed, her voice still husky, with her white blonde bob tucked into a terry towelling turban. They’d drink their tea, eat their toast and contemplate what things they could come up with to add just a bit of sunshine into the day. A mid-afternoon coffee in one of the cafés in the village centre. Zumba class in the evening – even though they got the steps mixed up and always seemed to be going the wrong way. A visit to one of the elderly folk in the village, armed with a packet of caramel wafers and an hour of chat.
Not today, though. Today was her last day in Glasgow, before she moved south to start a new chapter of her life with Rory and his girlfriend, Sophie, in Reading. The couple had met when Sophie was on a weekend break in Glasgow seven months before, and they’d known almost instantly that they were for keeps. Now Rory had made his life down in Reading, and when the couple had asked Alice to join them, there had only been one possible answer. She’d lost so much time with Rory over the lastfew horrific years with Larry, and for a time had cut her son out of her life to protect him from the worst of his father’s cruelty. Larry had used a toxic combination of manipulation, blackmail and threats against their son to stop her leaving, so she’d stayed because it was the only way to protect Rory. It had cost her years of pain, humiliation and abuse, but now she was free and both she and Rory wanted to make up for those lost years. Moving closer to him would help, but she’d declined their offer to live permanently in their home, keen to let them have their own space. The plan was to stay with them for a couple of weeks until she found her own place, somewhere nearby, so that they could all be in each other’s daily lives.
Now the day had come to leave, Alice was feeling every emotion: happy, sad, scared, excited, just for starters. She hadn’t gone to work before dawn this morning because yesterday had been her last day on the mops. She’d completed her early shift at the school, a deep cleaning session they always did when the kids were on their Christmas and New Year break, then her late shift at the Town Hall, then she’d pulled off her Marigolds for the last time. Val had stood beside her as they’d tried to give them a ceremonial burning in a steel mop bucket in the back garden last night, but the rain kept putting the flames out. Probably just as well – it was a rash gesture because the Marigolds still had a bit of life left in them.
Val reached for the slab of butter that sat between them, sliced off a hearty knob and began buttering her toast. ‘So tell me then, what’s the plan for today? Just so I know when to fit in sulking and sobbing uncontrollably because you’re leaving me,’ she asked breezily.
Alice followed suit with the butter. ‘Enjoy this little interlude of sunshine with you…’ she said, with a grin. ‘And then head over to Burnbank for that funeral. It’s at 11 o’clock. After that, I’ll treat you to lunch somewhere lovely, then back here to finish gettingorganised. I’m already packed, but I’ve still got a few odds and ends to do. My flight is at seven, so I’ll leave for the airport around four o’clock.’
Val swallowed her first bite of the day. ‘Tell me again whose funeral it is.’
‘The sister of the girl who was my best friend when I was in my teens and early twenties.’
‘And we’re going because…?’
Alice wasn’t sure she had a good answer to that. She’d spotted the death notice in the local paper and immediately recognised the name. Audrey Benning (Née McTay). Back in the eighties and nineties, Audrey’s younger sister, Morag McTay, had been the pal who’d worn a matching puffball skirt when they’d gone to the old Apollo concert hall or the Barrowlands, to see Big Country or Simple Minds or a dozen other bands they’d loved. She’d been the one who’d carried their shoes, because Alice was holding the kebabs after a night of dancing at a long-gone nightclub in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. For over a decade, since they had met in their first year of high school, Morag was the one who’d shared all her secrets, and plotted to land her dreams. And then one day, when they were both in their twenties, she’d left, moved to Ireland, and Alice had never seen her again.
‘I’d like to pay my respects. Nostalgia, I suppose. Audrey was always good to me, even though she was probably sick of her wee sister and her pal always raiding her wardrobe and borrowing her make-up. Optimism, too, if I’m honest. I’m really hoping Morag will be there. It would be great to see her after all these years.’
‘She’s the pal who moved to London?’
‘Dublin,’ Alice corrected her, with a smile. Val had a formidable memory for information or gossip, but sometimes the details got slightly confused. ‘She’d met a lovely Irish guywho was working over here for a couple of months, and the next thing she announced she was going back there with him and off she went, never to return.’
