26
‘ B urnt Otter.’
‘That’s not what it says, stop being ridiculous,’ says Essie, grabbing the paint chart off the table in front of Dwight. ‘Oh. It is. They should add a health and safety line that says “no otters were burnt in the making of this paint”.’
Dwight throws his hands up. ‘This is all nuts. I don’t want Rabbit’s Arse colour.’
‘Well, maybe you do.’
They are technically having a planning meeting in the End of the World bar when it is shut, on a Friday morning, and Shelby is – Essie has checked carefully – off in Inverness doing some shopping and getting her roots done, as Jean in the village is not up to snuff, apparently.
Jean has a lot to say about this, little of which is repeatable, and, unusually for Carso, nobody has repeated it, because everyone is completely terrified Shelby will get the huff and leave the village and close the bar and then they’ll be stuffed because absolutely nobody is moving to open any hospitality venues – there’s no staff; all the seasonal young Europeans have disappeared.
They also technically asked Wee Jim to the meeting but he was not being much use, just sitting there looking so much like he didn’t understand why nobody wanted him to hit anything with a hammer that Dwight ended up sending him round the back of the Seagate cottages, where they’re putting the stuff they’ve pulled out that Essie has decided they can’t sell on, which is almost everything: cheap little falling-apart MDF cabinets and the type of old, heavy furniture riddled with woodworm that weighs an absolute ton and nobody wants in their house any more, even if houses need sideboards for wedding crockery.
Essie saves all the old wood for the wood-burner, and Dwight is astonished that they don’t have central heating and that anyone could conceivably prefer a stove with real wood they have to light and use kindling for rather than something you can just turn on with the touch of a button, much in the same way as he was astounded that Essie thinks wooden floors will be more popular than patterned carpet.
‘I’m just telling you what people like,’ Essie is saying.
‘Yeah, by people you mean snots ,’ he says. ‘Christ, I can’t tell you the difference it would make if there was carpet in the rig.’
‘Is it cold?’
He shook his head. ‘Outside is fucking nightmarish, but inside is just about alright. Twenty-five degrees.’
‘They heat it to twenty-five? Aren’t you all stifling?’
‘No, that’s a normal level of warm.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Essie, who has adopted the Edinburgh practice of pretending that cold houses are much classier, actually.
‘I really don’t care,’ he says, finally, gesturing at the paint charts. ‘Also I’m colourblind.’
‘Dwight!’ says Essie. ‘ What ? We have sat here this entire morning looking at paint colours and . . . they all look the same to you?’
He is clearly quite embarrassed about it.
Being colourblind possibly doesn’t go with his cowboy image, although it would explain all the black clothing.
Today he is wearing a two-tone shirt, with a cow’s head bootlace tie.
Normally Essie would be in hysterics. Now she feels like pulling the tie gradually towards her, grabbing his hat and sticking it on her own head. Which would be an absurd thing to do.
‘Not exactly the same!’ he says. ‘Just . . . ’
Essie picks up an odd aubergine colour he’d put aside as a definite maybe. ‘What colour is this?’
‘Titmouse,’ he says immediately.
‘No, I mean, what normal . . . Titmouse, really?’ She reads the writing on the card. ‘Huh. Anyway. What actual colour is it really?’
‘Brown,’ he says. ‘I thought that would be fine given the doorframe is – you know. Wood colour.’
‘It’s not brown!’ says Essie. ‘Oh, my God. It’s purple.’ She bursts out laughing.
‘Don’t laugh at me!’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
He shrugs. ‘You wanted me to choose one.’
She looks at him then. He is normally so confident and bullish about everything; it’s unusual to see him cowed in any way.
‘Yes, but not if you can’t . . . ’
‘I can.’
‘This is a horrible colour.’
‘Is it?’ He shrugs. ‘Purple’s not a colour I can see.’
She moves closer. His eyes are a distinct green, just like Shelby’s. But Essie isn’t thinking about Shelby right at that moment. She’s not, if she is being one hundred per cent honest with herself, really thinking about Connor either.
‘What can you see? Is the world black and white?’
He shakes his head. ‘Naw! I can see fine.’
‘It’s just . . . ’
‘You call it purple, I call it brown, that’s all.’
‘Well, I suppose you do,’ she says. ‘Is it brown you’d like?’
‘You choose,’ he says, finally. And holds her gaze.
‘I like green,’ Essie finds herself saying.
‘I’m not too good on that either,’ he says. ‘Red and green are a bit . . . ’
‘You can’t tell the difference between red and green? Is this why you never pay any attention to traffic lights?’
‘Traffic lights are for pussies,’ he says.
‘ Traffic lights are for pussies is exactly what I’m going to have put on your tombstone. When I have to order it, next week.’
‘Would you be sad?’ he asks, looking at her with a challenging glance.
She returns it. ‘I would wear mourning colours,’ she says. ‘Purple and brown, together.’
He hitches an eyebrow at her and Essie suddenly realises she is twirling a ringlet on her finger in front of him, which is not like her, not at all.
Suddenly there’s a commotion at the door.
‘Coo-ee! Dwight, love, can you grab my bags . . . ’
A bustling, highly scented Shelby, hair coloured a bright, gleaming blonde, piled high on her head, comes in through the pub’s side door.
She stops short on seeing Essie there, and Essie is conscious how close she and Dwight are sitting, and moves away, which, she realises belatedly, looks even more suspicious.
‘Hi,’ Shelby says in a pointed tone that is very much the opposite of friendly. Essie finds herself simultaneously a bit freaked out but also annoyed. Shelby used to bully her, for goodness’ sake. It should be Essie who gets to be snotty now.
‘Just leaving,’ she says quickly. ‘Dwight, I’m going to order some samples, have a look.’
‘You choose, eh?’ he says. ‘I don’t really care about all this stuff.’
Then why have we just wasted a morning? thinks Essie, then it comes to her that she might already know.
*
To her surprise, Shelby walks her out.
‘You’re hanging out a lot with my brother,’ she observes, icily.
‘I’m helping him on a work project,’ says Essie, cursing her need to try to connect rather than keeping an icy-pure Zendaya silence that would be much cooler.
Shelby snorts. ‘Yeah, whatever,’ she says. ‘You’re just playing about up here, laughing at the country bumpkins?’
‘I am not ,’ says Essie, exasperated. ‘I’m from here, I was born and raised here and I have every bit as much of a right to be here as you do!’
‘Except the second you can leave you’ll piss off back to Edinburgh. ’
She says Edinburgh the way one might say ‘Sodom’. Essie doesn’t have anything to say to that.
‘I’m not remotely interested in your brother. I’ve got a boyfriend.’
‘Really? You certainly seem interested in gaining access to his bank account.’
Essie rolls her eyes. ‘To help him , for God’s sake. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.’
‘No, how could he, coming from Carso? How could he, having saved up enough to buy three properties before his thirtieth birthday, which I’m sure you’re also doing.
How could we, when I run this place single-handedly.
How could we possibly know what the hell we’re doing?
Thank God Miss Essie Big Boots is here from the big city to show us all up for the idiots we are. ’
‘You’re impossible ,’ says Essie, too upset and angry to speak.
She wants – oh, how she wants – to think of something quick and witty to say off the top of her head, in the spur of the moment, but goodness, she just can’t.
She marches down the street instead, her whole body shaking, terrified and filled with adrenaline.
‘AND YOUR HAIR LOOKS STUPID,’ she shouts back behind her.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ says Shelby. ‘It looks brilliant. You’re wrong, as usual. Just as you are about everything.’
And she slams the door.