17 #2
He looks down at his basket, which contains some pouches of the most expensive dog food the Scot Nor had to offer, plus a blanket and a pillow from the expensive gift shop at the top of the town which has had an extremely slow start to the year and whose owner had been completely delighted by the arrival of Dwight and his jeans, which, Essie thinks, clearly show he will waste money on any old crap.
Most adorably of all, Dwight has a set of six tiny Velcro collars in different colours, so they can identify the pups. Even Essie melts at these.
‘So you’re the banker, are you?’ says Dwight, pinging his card without even looking at the total, which makes Essie frown even more.
‘Yes,’ she says. She may be bad with her own finances, but she’s watched a lot of good businesses go bad over the years. ‘Tell me you watch your building costs better than you watch your completely-strange-dog-that-is-nothing-to-do-with-you costs.’
He gives her a sidelong glance. ‘Huh,’ he says.
‘What?’ says Essie.
‘Nothing. This is my first project.’
‘Well, watch your costs!’ says Essie, slightly panicked for him.
‘Neh, it’s alright. I’ve got money, plus money from the bank.’
‘Yes, but people go through it like you can’t believe . . . ’
She doesn’t realise quite why she’s so concerned – who cares? But even so, she saw him helping Felicity and is less inclined to think he’s awful now. And it would be even worse for the village if the Seagate failed and got left to rot; her mum would basically be living next door to a slum.
‘Well, you don’t need to listen to me,’ she says.
‘Free advice from a banker? I think I will, actually,’ says Dwight.
‘Okay. Well. Watch your costs. Sit down with your accountant.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he says, making a shrug.
‘You have got an accountant?’ says Essie, suddenly worried.
‘Neh,’ he says. ‘It’s just doing up some wee houses, yeah? I’m going to get some mates round, we’ll be done in a couple of months.’
‘Haven’t you ever watched Grand Designs ?’
‘Has it got Jason Statham in it?’
‘No!’
‘Well. No, then. Sounds boring.’
They leave the shop and are soon back outside the Seagate cottages. Essie looks upwards. The houses are adorable, but they are crooked and leaning up against each other. The coving is coming away, likewise the guttering.
‘And you want to let these?’
‘Yeah,’ says Dwight. ‘Or flip them for absolutely loads. Down to B complaining they can’t find a cleaner, because cleaners have nowhere to live.
Essie realises she is sounding exactly like her mother.
She’s only been back a couple of weeks and she’s been infected already.
Why shouldn’t Dwight, who left school at sixteen and has done nothing but graft ever since, in some of the most difficult conditions known to man, make a killing?
There are very few ways left for guys like Dwight to do well in life; most of the routes have been closed off, as she knows only too well, scrabbling in the sea of publicly educated kids in Edinburgh whose parents had got them sinecures and internships at the banks they and their lawyer friends all worked at; who had secured the tutoring necessary to get their dumbo children into the right universities, then given them a place to live in the city while they got a foothold.
The system is totally rigged against the Essies and Dwights of this world, as she can see only too clearly, stuck back here by one turn of misfortune, while the Connors and Trisses of this world sail on regardless, happy that their rent is covered by Mummy and Daddy while they ‘make their own way’.
So yeah, screw them, and screw anyone who dares to tell Dwight what he can and can’t do with the meagre opportunities he has.
The system is rigged, so he might as well get on board with it, and if some of those posh wankers from the city end up with a boiler someone’s mate stuck in on a free weekend from bevvying off the rigs, well, they’ve got it coming.
On the other hand . . .
‘Are you thinking about the puppies?’ says Dwight, as they push open the garden gate.
Essie doesn’t want to admit that, no, she’s been thinking about him, and his business. But she can’t help herself.
‘If you like,’ she says shyly, ‘I could help. I’m on . . . gardening leave.’
She’s never quite understood what gardening leave is but has figured out that nor does anybody else, and it’s a good cover-all word to use whenever anyone asks what she’s up to.
‘I could . . . have a look at your accounts if you like. Just. Maybe. Help you out with your budget and stuff.’
He looked at her, shouldering the door. ‘Aye, Shelby says you were a right swot,’ he says, considering it.
Essie feels her fingers tightening into her palm.
He holds the door open for her behind him as they head back upstairs to where the puppies are. ‘Mind you, she also says you’re a stuck-up cow, and she was right about that.’
And he grins and lets Essie’s furious face follow him up the stairs.
‘That’s a yes, by the way,’ he yells back down.
‘You . . . you can STUFF IT!’ shouts Essie, loudly, as Janey and Lowell cover the puppies’ ears.
*
‘Hey, sweetie . . . ’
‘And there were pups! Born right away! Just there! Did you not look at my Insta?’
Connor laughs down the phone at Essie’s enthusiasm.
‘Sorry, I called to speak to Essie? Down-in-the-dumps, depressed-at-living-in-a-hole-in-the-sticks Essie?’
Essie glances out of the side window, to the end of the road, where in the distance she can just see the sun starting to set over the fields, the wind blowing through the long grass, the lambs hippety-hopping up and down.
On the street, closer by, she sees Struan McGhie, the local music teacher, pass with his girlfriend Gertie, who’s a famous knitter.
He is wearing a knitted bobble hat, a knitted scarf and a knitted waistcoat and is carrying a knitted music bag, all in lovely, matching but different spring tones of blue and yellow.
She smiles to herself. They seem pretty happy.
Johnson the postie whizzes by. He has been given a new electric bike to help with the hills and is a frankly terrifying sight on it.
‘It was cool!’ she says, and tells him all about it.
‘Three houses, wow,’ says Connor. As for all Gen Zs, even comfortable ones like Connor, home-ownership is still pretty amazing: on a par with ‘and then a unicorn appeared, tapdancing on the Northern Lights’.
‘I know,’ says Essie. ‘There was a codicil in the will stipulating they could only be sold locally.’
There’s a slight silence on the other end.
‘Interesting,’ says Connor. ‘So, he’s not a professional developer or anything?’
‘No,’ says Essie. ‘He’s made money on the rigs and he’s putting it into this.’
‘Very interesting.’
‘How is that interesting to you? They’re basically falling-down sheds in the middle of Carso. The nearest cappuccino is miles away. It’s not three Georgian townhouses.’
‘I know, I know, I’m just interested in property.’
‘You and everyone else. Well, come up and have a look,’ says Essie, teasingly. ‘I really want to see you.’
‘I want to see you too,’ says Connor. ‘I’ll make a plan.’
And Essie feels better all over again, and applies for four more jobs, trying not to even mind that none of them will get back to her. Her mother doesn’t even realise employers don’t have to get back to you these days; that everyone ghosts everyone all the time.
To put her in an even better mood, as she is about to close her laptop an email pings – a new vacancy has been posted!
With a capital management group! In town!
! She is so happy she even goes downstairs and doesn’t look at Janey’s pasta, with the earliest green beans from the garden, which Janey is so very proud of, and fresh herbs from the window ledge, and forgets to even mention that she thinks she is probably gluten-intolerant.
She doesn’t think she is gluten-intolerant; she is just annoyed that her mother doesn’t believe in it, so is striking a blow for truly gluten-intolerant people everywhere. Fighting the good fight.
*
Janey discusses it with everyone at work.
There are vague plans to start a rota to make sure Felicity is alright – Lish’s kids are keen – but in fact it doesn’t prove remotely necessary: local Facebook page readers start popping in at all hours, lots of them to make their opinions known but also, it being Carso, lots to help too.
Of course Fred Wilson from the butcher’s gets his usual snit on and starts wanging on and on about health and safety and rabies, which quickly degenerates into a shouting fight about dog vaccinations and foreign wars, but everyone is used to that and just ignores it.
Morag the pilot comes down and tries to persuade Gregor, her other half, to get one.
They puppy-sit for over an hour while Gregor patiently explains to her in English and in Gaelic that dogs and ornithologists are a terrible mix unless you get the breed exactly right, and whatever these deadly hellspawn are, they are not the correct breed.
Dwight has to be careful to lock the doors every day so the pups can’t roam, as they start to get more mobile – and so that Felicity can’t get out again, observes Jack Meakin gravely, seeing as that dog is basically a whore, and he is told to hold his wheesht by the ladies from the knitting circle and he says he can only say things as he sees them so they can blooming well hold theirs and Jean nearly punches him in the face, which would have proved his point so everyone is glad she didn’t.
But the person who is over every day is Essie. Making sure the children don’t get too handsy; that Felicity is fed and comfortable and, unavoidably, to hear Dwight stamping about, touching things. Essie cannot help but wonder if he has the faintest idea what he’s doing.