Chapter 13 #2
‘Hey, Alison. Long time, no speak.’ Niall talked to the plaque, aware of the irony that he had never met Carli’s mum but was at complete ease talking to her bench.
‘I wanted to say that if you played any part in bringing me and Carli back together, then thank you. I’m going to make amends for all the shit…
trouble, in the past. You’ve an amazing daughter and I’m not a stupid wee boy anymore, and while we’re in Kinshore together, I’ll look after her, okay? ’
Normally, Niall might check in case anyone was watching him talking to an inanimate object, but today he simply stared at the bench, aware of the sadness inflating in his chest. Carli should be having coffees and lunches with her mum, walks on the beach, buying her presents on Mother’s Day.
Instead, she’d flown halfway round the world to sit by a freezing loch and talk to a memory.
It broke Niall’s heart. Why did these things happen?
Why did the good people die young? And leave behind people too young themselves for that kind of grief?
He turned away from the bench. Time to get out of here and do something to make things a little better for Carli. But as he was passing the next bench, a name on the plaque threw him.
Robert McInally (Bob). Father, son, husband, teacher and inspiration to many. Taken too soon.
Mr McInally.
Inspiration to many? Taken too soon?
Definitely dead.
The number of times Niall had wished that he’d come into school to be told that Mr McInally had passed in the night, so he wouldn’t have to endure the man’s condemnation anymore.
So he could pick himself up and be the person he wanted to be.
The man could never be taken too soon, as far as Niall was concerned.
But he was gone.
The impact Mr McInally had on Niall’s psyche was indelible.
For years, he’d carried around the belief that he was unworthy, not as good as his siblings, and a large part of that belief came from his maths teacher.
And now here in the blink of an eye, Niall discovered the man was dust, merely an etching on a piece of metal on a bench in a place most people didn’t know existed.
The walking, breathing incarnation of nastiness was gone, his beliefs vanished with him.
So where did that leave Niall? Was there freedom in Mr McInally being dead?
Like he’d been overseeing a giant classroom that was Niall’s life, always supervising with his jaded beliefs, affecting how Niall saw himself.
And now there was no one in charge except him alone. And he could control his self-image.
Things were more complex than that, but in this moment, something lifted from Niall.
Seeing his teacher reduced to an engraving reminded him of how ephemeral it all was.
One day they would all be engravings on a bench or ashes in a loch or names occasionally mentioned by a fireside or whispered on a bus.
So many small things that seemed to mean a lot at the time were, in the grand scheme of things, nothing.
Nobody would remember him in two hundred years’ time.
Life shouldn’t be about the opinion of others who were impossible to please, it should be about being the best person possible for the sake of those who mattered.
And Niall was trying, he really was.
There were things he had to do. To honour Alison’s memory. And to try to let go of the belief that because he’d done one stupid thing it made him an irredeemable person.
To kick the mindset that he was an inherent fuck-up to the kerb.
And to give Carli some answers.
Niall got back to the Butler family home mid-afternoon. He was keen to see Carli, and not only give her the things he’d got for her, but to tell her about Mr McInally.
Chatter was coming from the kitchen, but when he looked in, there was no sign of Carli.
Just his mum and sisters sitting around the kitchen table, cupping mugs of tea, the plates in front of them with only a scattering of crumbs left but the conversation sounding like it had a long way to go before it ran out.
‘Hey.’ Niall poked his head into the room. ‘You guys seen Carli?’
‘Yeah, she’s upstairs,’ said Cara. ‘FaceTiming Glen.’
FaceTiming Glen? Who the hell was Glen? Niall hadn’t heard Carli mention a Glen.
She’d said there was an incredible chemistry between them they had to resist, but not because of a boyfriend.
Was Glen a stepbrother? A nephew? A friend?
A sharp stab of something that was unequivocal jealousy cut into Niall and twisted in his core.
‘Who’s Glen?’ he asked Cara.
His sister shrugged and sipped her coffee. ‘Dunno. Boyfriend maybe?’
Niall narrowed his gaze. ‘Cara!’
‘I dunno, Noo Noo. She said she was heading upstairs to FaceTime Glen and off she went with a spring in her step.’
Niall scanned the expressions of Eilidh and his mum, but they were both as poker faced as Cara.
‘Right, well, if I find out you knew all along, there’ll be trouble. Mark my words.’
‘Ooh! Scared!’ Cara leaned back in her chair looking anything but frightened.
Niall left the kitchen. Who the hell was Glen?
He stood in the stillness of the hall, an unnatural silence lingering in the kitchen behind him.
If they’d known it was a boyfriend, they’d have told him to stay down here.
Still, a bit of him was terrified of some six-foot-five Aussie hunk making a play for Carli.
The idea of her being with another guy tore at him.
How could she be anyone else’s? It didn’t make sense.
Niall took the stairs two at a time. He’d slip past quickly. Casually.
When he reached the bedroom door, it was open a crack and he could hear Carli’s laugh ringing like wedding bells.
‘Do you miss me?’ she asked, presumably of Glen, in a voice spilling with saccharine tenderness. ‘Oh, you do. I can see it in your eyes that you miss me. I miss you too and I’m thinking about you all the time.’
Fuck’s sake.
Niall couldn’t catch the other side of the conversation. Carli must have her ear buds in. Glen was no doubt telling her how much he missed her too and how he was thinking about her and imagining her naked and asking if they could do online sexy time later.
Fuck you, Glen. You could never love her like I loved her.
Niall scraped his hand through his hair.
He shouldn’t be here, listening in on this conversation, even if it was only one side.
But when it came to Carli, his masochistic tendencies pulled themselves into sixth gear.
If she was with another guy, he wanted to know exactly who and why, and what he had that Niall couldn’t give her. Damn this Glen!
‘Anyway, I have to go, honey.’ Carli’s voice dripped like caramel syrup.
Niall paced to the end of the hall and looked out the window towards the distillery. He didn’t want to hear the rest of the conversation, all the smoochy goodbyes and miss you forevers. When he was certain it would be over, he inhaled, walked back to the bedroom and knocked.
‘Hey.’ Carli’s voice called from inside.
‘Hey.’ Niall opened the door and entered the room.
Carli was lying on the bed, looking at her phone.
Maybe texting Glen and telling him she missed him already or swooning over photos of him.
‘I bought you some stuff for camping.’ He placed the bag from the outdoors store on the floor by the bed, then stepped back.
‘Oh, that’s incredibly sweet, and you didn’t have to do that. Your mum said there’s camping gear here I can borrow.’
Niall shrugged, not sure he wanted to be sweet. Was Glen sweet? ‘No need to camp like it’s 2009 anymore, Cass. You should be comfy. There’s a mat and a warm sleeping bag in there, and a pillow.’
‘Oh, Niall. Thanks so much.’
He nodded. ‘No bother.’ Then he let slip what was on his mind. ‘How’s Glen?’
A shooting star of confusion flit across Carli’s face and she pulled herself up in the bed, eyes sparking with interest at this question. He stared at her boldly, acutely aware he had no right to ask anything about Glen, but needing to know all the same.
For a moment, Carli simply met his gaze, as if trying to read him. Or maybe she’d read him already, closed the book and was about to tell him what she thought of his story of jealousy and possessiveness.
‘Oh, he’s great,’ she said, somewhat too dreamily for Niall’s liking. ‘Missing me, of course. And me him.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Niall swallowed hard.
‘We’re both missing cuddle time,’ Carli added.
‘Cuddle time? Right.’ This was way more information than Niall needed. Why the hell had he come upstairs and forced himself to be privy to this? Asked her about some guy he wanted absolutely zero detail about. He did not want to envision Carli having ‘cuddle time’ with another man.
‘We never had cuddle time, did we?’ she said, appearing to consider it.
‘Um… what?’
‘You and me.’ Carli met his gaze. ‘I mean, we had cuddles, but we never called it cuddle time, which is a shame because it’s nice to have cuddle time, don’t you reckon?’
Niall shuffled his feet. He liked to cuddle women as much as the next guy, but he’d never got down to calling it cuddle time with anyone. And Carli had been the woman he was closest to of them all.
‘If cuddle time is what you’re into then I guess you have that thing,’ he said.
‘Glen sounds like he’s very… in touch with his emotions, so you guys, erm…
Look, I’ve just remembered I have to be somewhere.
’ Niall turned to walk out. Fuck this. He was getting way too attached way too soon, so this was a timely wake-up call.
Go for a walk in the cold, stroll into the sea and let the cold water sort your head and your heart out.
‘Niall.’
He stopped. Turned back to Carli, still sitting on the bed, so naturally beautiful, bare-faced and lotus posed in her leggings and hoodie, glossy chocolate hair cascading over the front of her right shoulder in that way that made him want to stride right up to her, brush the stray tendrils from her cheek, take her face in his hands and kiss her. Like Glen probably got to.
‘Aye?’
‘You know Glen is a Labrador, right?’
Niall bit so hard down on the inside of his lip, he cut into the skin.
Glen is a Labrador. He’s a dog. He’s a flipping dog. Jesus H, Niall, you absolute muppet. Okay, stand up straight, meet her dead in the eye and pretend you knew all along. Maintain a scrap of dignity. Just one tiny wee morsel, you absolute toolbag.
‘Oh, aye, of course I knew he was a Labrador. Of course.’ Niall glanced at his feet, conscious that he was doing this a lot with Carli.
It was bloody obvious he’d thought Glen was a person, but they didn’t need to say it out loud.
This didn’t need to be audibly articulated.
That he’d been jealous of an Australian dog did not have to be said in words.
And as if she could read exactly what he was thinking, because even though they hadn’t seen each other in over a decade some things were hardwired into your understanding of a person, Carli said, ‘We don’t need to speak of this again, do we?’
And all Niall could do was mutter a grateful but sheepish, ‘Aye, thanks, Cass.’