Chapter 25
Scottie
The Sean Lamont poster above the bed in my old room has started to peel. Forty days ago, this single bed was a piece of furniture I’d outgrown. A relic of the boy who worshipped Lamont like a deity.
Now, it’s the place where Ava MacKinney stripped away every boundary we drew. I offered her every scrap of myself on this duvet until the boy who used to live here died and a man who needs her took his place.
I’m propped against the wall. My knees are higher than my hips, and the position compresses my lungs. I’m staring at my mobile. The screen brightness is set to maximum. But I’m not doomscrolling. I’m refreshing a browser tab for the Scottish Ballet production news feed.
Refresh. Nothing.
Refresh. Nothing.
The audition was two days ago. I know, because of course I’m subscribing to their newsletter.
Text her.
Physically, my thumb barely moves. Yet the energy required to stop it from swiping to my contacts list and hitting the green icon is immense. The effort forges the fibres in my forearm into knotted cables. It’s a brutal exercise. Every second I don’t text her is a rep.
Just say: Did you get it? How was it?
I lock the phone and the screen goes black.
No.
Ava told me with wet eyes that I saw people as projects, as messes to mop up. If I write to her now – if I corner her to break the silence – I’d make it about me. I’d ignore her agency only because I can’t stand her absence.
That’s a fucking euphemism for when your heart lives outside your body with someone else.
Am I respecting her choice? Or am I shitting my breeks that if I reach out, she’ll tell me to fuck off again?
I flip the phone over on the duvet.
Respecting her choice. Sounds like something a good man would do.
‘Scottie!’ Mum’s voice drifts up the stairs, carrying the forced cheer she’s been wearing all day like an ill-fitting hat. ‘Come get your birthday cake.’
Twenty-five.
The milestone clobbers me with the dull slap of a wet sandbag. A quarter of a century on this planet, and what do I have to show for it? I’m hiding from my family because I can’t construct a facial expression that shows anything resembling joy.
I shove the phone into my jeans pocket and hoist myself upright.
Game face.
I lumber down the stairs. A Colin the Caterpillar cake sits on the dining room table. They might not have noticed, but I’m not seven anymore.
‘Blow them out, then.’ Erin’s leaning back in her chair, scrolling on her phone with one hand, annoyed in the way only a seventeen-year-old dreading her Highers can. ‘The wax is dripping on the icing, and that’s minging.’
‘Gie him a minute, love,’ Mum chides, hovering with the cake slice.
‘Don’t make a fuss. Make a wish.’ David raps his knuckles twice on the table.
A wish? I wish I hadn’t let her walk out of that fucking axe-throwing pub.
I focus on the flames and force a smile. It feels tight, but I hold it there. I will snuff these candles, eat the cake, and prove to my family that I still function and haven’t morphed into a parasite who feeds on their pity.
I inhale and blow. Acrid grey smoke curls up.
‘Cake time,’ Mum announces, ignoring the tension in the room, and starts slicing. ‘Big piece for the birthday boy.’
We eat and the sound of clinking forks fills the room.
They’re tiptoeing around me. I feel it in the way Mum places the plate down too gently, in the way Erin keeps checking her phone but never actually typing.
The conversation avoids the two craters in my life: the brief suspension and the breakup.
They talk about the March weather (‘dreich’), the neighbours (‘noisy’), and Erin’s driving lessons (‘scary’).
We all stick to a script, like a fucked-up reality show.
I nod at the right intervals and ask about Erin’s parallel parking. I participate in the farce because if I stop, even a tick, the base will crumble and the pillar will topple, taking the whole house down with it.
‘So,’ my mother smiles too brightly, ‘Evan called earlier. He sends his love. Said he’d pop round the next weekend.’
‘All the way from London? That’s nice,’ I say. ‘Tell him thanks.’ I stab a chunk off the caterpillar and wait for them to fill the gap.
‘You know what would’ve been nice? To go to the leisure centre or the cinema for your birthday,’ Erin says. ‘Instead of sitting here watching you mope.’
I stop chewing. The word cinema acts like a sniper shot to the heart that liquefies my guts. A memory flashes. Popcorn, darkness, a girl with her hair in a bun who settled into my system before I even knew her name.
‘Erin,’ Mum warns.
‘What?’ Erin lifts her head. ‘It’s depressing to watch Mopey MacMopeface. Where is your ballet dancer, by the way? She was fun and made you less annoying.’
Mum stalls with a cake slice in mid-air. David puts his fork down. A vacuum forms in the centre of my chest.
Where is she?
As much as I know, Ava’s been in Glasgow for the past month and a half. I don’t look at my mum, because I can’t handle the sympathy.
‘Oh no. Did she dump you?’ Erin asks, her head too far up her own arse to notice the mess. ‘Because you’re such a grump all the time?’
‘Erin!’ Mum snaps. ‘That’s enough.’
I push my chair back and stand up. The walls are leaning in, compressing the space. ‘I’m off out the back.’
I walk out into the garden and don’t let my feet speed up until I clear the kitchen door, fighting the urge to run.
It’s almost April. The sunlight streaks the lawn and turns the whole garden into a postcard. But the evening chill bites through my T-shirt as I stand on the wonky patio slabs.
In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.
I try to imitate the breathing technique Ava used. It doesn’t work for me. Only makes me lightheaded. I’m not a fine-tuned instrument; I’m a bludgeon.
The sound of the sliding door opening behind me breaks the quiet. Then the whir of tyres on stone.
I don’t turn around. ‘Go back inside, Dave. Tell Mum I’m fine. Just checking the perimeter.’
‘Aye, because the marauding sheep are a real threat.’ He stops and spears me with a face of cold North Sea basalt and locks the brakes. ‘Sit down, Scott.’
‘I’m fine standing.’
‘Sit the fuck down.’
My knees unlock, and I dump my weight onto the rusted iron bench. David fishes a packet of fags from his pocket. He doesn’t smoke often – Mum would leather him if she found out – but he keeps a stash for bad days. The lighter clicks, and a quick flame eats the end of the cigarette.
‘You look like proper shite.’ He exhales a plume of grey smoke.
‘Thanks, arsehole.’
‘Want one?’
I glance at the white cylinders he’s holding up. A hit of nicotine would calm my hands. But there are rules. ‘Naw. Only at Christmas. You know that.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He shrugs and puts the packet away. ‘I’m serious, though. How long are you going to keep at this?’
‘What? Breathing?’
‘Don’t give me that. You’re miserable, and I know why.’ He turns his head to face me. ‘You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing since Dad died?’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Fixing everything. Now paying the mortgage. Payments for my FES-therapy. Driving up here every time a tap drips. You’ve been trying to earn your seat at this table since my accident.’
His words smack the blood from my face. We never talk about it. We never name the debt.
I scratch a curl of rust off the bench with my thumbnail. ‘It’s what family does.’
‘Fuck’s sake.’ David rolls his eyes. ‘Newsflash: you can’t make it all better and magically go away by grinding yourself down.’
‘I did what I had to do.’
‘You know what pisses me off the most?’ David leans forward. ‘You don’t see your brother. All you see is the accident.’
‘I climbed up first.’ I fight a shallow, stinging breath before the rest comes. ‘I should’ve watched out for you. I should’ve stopped you. I was a fucking bad example. It was my fault.’
‘I followed you, and I slipped,’ he says. ‘Have I cursed that day? Aye, plenty. But it doesn’t change the score. Look, I’m at uni. I have a life. A girlfriend who likes me. You’re the only one who treats me like I’m half a man.’
‘Dave—’
‘You know I can call the repair service myself,’ he says. ‘I have a phone. I have a bank account. I even have opposable thumbs.’
‘I’m trying—’
‘I know,’ he interrupts. ‘But I don’t want you to. It’s pissing me off, to be honest. You could lose the money, the career, the strength, this fucking helper’s syndrome. You could be totally fucking useless, and I’d still want you at this table. Because you’re my big brother, for fuck’s sake.’
His words slug me in the middle. I stare at my palms. Blunt, battered slabs of skin and bone. If I’m not the muscle or the brace, if I don’t have a load to shift, I’m nothing but meat in the way.
‘I’m saying it because I’m bored with it, Scottie. I’m bored with watching you punish yourself. It’s fucking tedious, man.’
‘I didn’t know you felt that way.’
‘Well, you were too busy crucifying yourself to notice, let alone ask.’ He takes a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘You know what I actually want? I want to finish my degree. I want to move to Edinburgh with Freya. And I want you to back the fuck off.’
‘Our arsehole dad is dead, Evan pissed off to London, Katie’s doing her PhD, so this family is my responsibility.’
‘Don’t you dare hide behind that word,’ David says. ‘You think if you stop being useful, we’ll all realise we don’t actually like you.’
I recoil. He’s too close to the nerve. So close it burns.
‘And that,’ David points the cigarette at my chest, ‘is why she left.’
My chin springs up. ‘Leave her out of this.’
David laughs. ‘Sore point, is it? Means I’m right. Why haven’t you gone after her? Why sit here and wallow in a mess of your own making?’
‘Because she told me not to.’ I drag the words up a throat that feels like it’s filled with wet cement. ‘She basically said I treat people like tasks to be finished. If I keep trying to patch this… I’m only proving her right.’
There’s a decent ring to it, as if I’ve taken the high ground.
David shakes his head, exhaling a cloud of smoke. ‘You’re staying away because you’re a big feartie.’
I claw the edge of the metal bench. The rust bites into my palms.
‘If you’re the one holding everyone else up, you never have to risk falling yourself,’ he continues. ‘You never have to ask anyone to catch you and take the chance on not being caught.’
The truth of it rings in the air.
Fucking smartarse.
‘You lost her because you wouldn’t let her in. You handled her like a dependent,’ he says. ‘I know because that’s how you treat me. And Erin. Even Mum sometimes.’
I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. I replay the last months. The constant, low-humming surveillance of her needs. Are you okay? Do you need this? Let me handle that.
‘I thought I was looking after her.’
‘I know,’ David says. He stubs the cigarette out on the side of the bench. ‘You tried to be the hero again, ya rocket. When will you learn?’
The sun has dipped below the horizon, leaving a smear of red across the clouds. Everyone’s saving me. Ava left to save me. The team stuck together to save me.
I’m the project.
I blew the whole thing by holding the frame so tight there was no room for her. I played the part of the man with all the answers so she couldn’t find the person underneath. She was the only real win I ever put on the board, and I’ve put the boot through it.
‘And don’t look at me like I’ve handed you the meaning of life.’ David says. ‘I’m just telling you to sort yourself out. What you do with it is your business. Then again… As I’ve said many times, I’m the smart one.’
‘Mum!’ Erin’s voice bellows from the window, shattering the moment. ‘The tap in the utility room is leaking again! It’s soaked the floor.’
‘For Chrissake,’ Mum’s voice flutters back.
My muscles coil. Drip. Repair. Usefulness. Validation.
All I need is a wrench and some tape to plug the leak. To walk back into that warmth. To be thanked and patted on the back.
My fingers curl into claws on the rusted metal of the bench. It actually hurts to remain static, a phantom ache in my forearms screaming at me to seize a tool, to do something, to justify the space I’m taking up.
No.
I look at my brother. He’s watching me, waiting to see if I’ll run the same play I’ve run for years. To sit here – letting the water leak, letting someone else deal with the mess – feels like a violation of my core operating system.
I force my legs to extend and fold my arms behind my head. ‘Erin!’
She pops her head out of the window. ‘Get in here, Scottie. It’s a puddle.’
‘Stop moaning.’ I push the words out through a tight jaw. ‘Call a plumber.’
‘What?’ Her voice pitches up.
‘You have a phone you’re glued to all day. Google a plumber. I’m off the clock. It’s my birthday.’
Erin gawks at me like I’ve started speaking Spanish. Then she disappears. ‘Right. Fine. Jesus.’
The window slams shut, and silence returns to the garden. I swear, I feel sick. I’m vibrating with the inaction.
‘See? Better.’ David unlocks his brakes. ‘I’m going inside. It’s Baltic out here. You coming?’
‘In a bit.’
He turns and pauses at the door. ‘Stop trying to be the dyke, man. Let the tide come in and see what happens. Nobody’s gonna drown.’
The sliding door clicks shut behind him.
I sit in the gathering dark as the spring cold seeps into my bones, but I don’t move. I have no strategy, no next phase. I have no defensive line to set, no attack to launch. Twenty-five years old, and every pocket, every drawer, every room in me has been cleared out. I let myself feel the loss.
I miss her so goddamn much.
It’s not a poetic ache, it’s physical deprivation – like dehydration or hypothermia. I miss the sound of her laugh, the way she snorts when she finds something truly funny. I miss her kisses and her touch. How she challenges me.
I close my eyes.
I’m sorry.
A short buzz against my thigh, but I decide to ignore it. I can’t be arsed right now. It’ll be the team WhatsApp group or a random birthday GIF from Aunt Angela.
It buzzes again. A single follow-up vibration. I let out a weary sigh and pull my phone out of my pocket, intending to silence it.
The screen lights up the dusk with two notifications. The sight of it trips a breaker in my chest. Everything stops. Breath. Heart. Logic.
Marzipan:
Happy Birthday, Bear. Are you free on Tuesday night?