Chapter 9
HEATHER
Is it Heather’s imagination, or does Georgia, who’s still hiding behind the front door, seem a little under the weather?
‘You remembered I was coming today, right?’
The door inches open as another body snuggles up to Georgia’s and peers through the gap between the door and the architrave.
‘Heather!’ Brianna screams when their eyes meet. ‘Come in. Come in. Georgia. Move.’
Georgia is shunted to the side, allowing Heather into the flat. It feels as if someone has ramped the central heating to the maximum. Both girls wear vest tops and short flowing skirts, more in keeping with summer on the Mediterranean than Scotland at the beginning of winter.
‘Wow. It’s hot in here.’ Heather pulls the woollen hat from her head, the winter coat from her torso, and the scarf from around her neck.
‘Birthday cupcakes! Goodie!’ Brianna springs from foot to foot like an excitable gazelle.
‘Have you invited some other friends?’ Heather asks her daughter. They discussed on a WhatsApp chat that Georgia would ask a few others to join them for tea and cake to celebrate her nineteenth birthday.
‘Trey’s coming, right? And some other guys from the Genealogy Society?’ Brianna gives Georgia a playful punch on the arm.
‘Don’t know, Mrs Bossy.’ Georgia leans into Brianna, who holds her in a bear hug.
‘Trey was wasted last night,’ Brianna interjects.
Heather frowns. Does Trey’s mother know how much he’s drinking?
And then another thought takes over. How involved are the Genealogy Society members in helping Georgia locate her father?
She gives herself an internal shake and focuses on a third, less stressful question: how lovely is it for Georgia to have a friend who completes her sentences and calls her Mrs Bossy after only a few weeks?
Heather decides not to articulate any of these thoughts.
‘Right. Well. Let’s get the kettle on.’
She gives the cake box to Brianna and pulls Georgia in for a hug of her own. Nineteen years. Where has it gone?
Brianna leads the way upstairs, followed by Heather, then Georgia.
Heather follows the girls into the communal kitchen and surveys the room in despair.
There are mounds of dirty dishes beside the sink, in the bowl and strewn across the worksurfaces.
She pulls up her sleeves, directs the girls to do the dishes and tries to focus. She has a party to host.
‘Don’t you have any tea bags?’ she says twenty minutes later, as she frantically hunts for the essentials in Georgia’s cupboard: a plate to put the cupcakes on, tea bags, ideally one teaspoon.
She’s brought everything else: paper cups, fresh milk and three cartons of multi-vitamins, one for each of the girls, one for Trey.
‘Didn’t we leave some spare tea bags in your room? ’
Georgia shrugs.
‘Don’t you remember?’ Heather persists, ‘on the top shelf. We put a spare jar of coffee up there, as well. I’m sure of it.’
‘Have a look.’ Georgia swings her hand towards the door.
Heather glances at her watch. Two twenty.
The agreement was for her to stay an hour and a half, leaving the students time for a burger in town before a birthday pub crawl in Georgia’s honour.
Heather has chosen the 16:30 bus from St Andrews to get her back to Edinburgh in time for Strictly Come Dancing, which would be a positive result all round.
Two twenty leaves her only ten minutes to set up for the party.
She rushes into Georgia’s room and comes to a dead stop, startled by two enormous feet jutting out from the narrow shower room entrance and across Georgia’s bedroom floor.
They lie naked, toes splayed on the Ikea rug she and Georgia placed there five weeks ago.
Heather doesn’t believe it's been vacuumed since.
‘Oh.’ Her surprise comes out as a high-pitched squeal.
‘What the—,’ shouts a gruff voice, coming from Georgia’s en-suite.
The feet twitch. Heather casts her eyes further up the body. Bronzed, muscular calves are exposed below blue turned-up trousers which lead to shapely thighs. The legs bend and push against the carpet to gain purchase.
Heather walks around the legs and peers at the body lying prone under her daughter’s bathroom sink. His clean white vest is exposed under a blue boiler suit, which is unbuttoned to the waist. The person slides from under the sink, a spanner in his hand.
‘Oh. It’s you.’
She glares, trying to slow her breathing. Scott-Bloody-Reynolds.
***
Scott appears no happier to see her.
‘The maintenance here is shocking.’ He indicates the nut he was tightening beneath Georgia’s sink. ‘They haven’t done anything to a decent standard in this place.’
He stands up and shakes his body to realign it after lying prone on the floor.
Heather can identify with muscles seizing and joints stiffening after a period fixed in one position.
The curse of a body in mid-life. She doesn’t tell Scott this.
Instead, she watches as he leans over the basin to test his handiwork.
She notices his bicep tighten as he turns the tap and drops the black rubber plug into position.
The sink fills. He bends to reach under the new fitting and feels with his fingers for any sign of leaks, his blue eyes slitted in concentration.
‘All good now.’ He pulls the plug. ‘I keep telling them to call the site team when things break, but they seem to prefer it if I come round when I’m working in Glasgow.’
‘Right.’
Heather’s lost for words. Now that Scott’s upright, it’s impossible not to notice the rippling abdominal muscles flexing under his tight-fitting white vest. Or his off-blonde hair curling around his ear lobe.
The girls appear as if out of nowhere.
‘Oh, Scott,’ Georgia squeals, ‘you fixed it! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’
She jumps onto her tiptoes and gives him a tight embrace. Did she hug Heather quite so tightly? Thinking back, Heather can remember her daughter’s body rigid against her own, her arms hanging by her sides when Heather pulled her close.
Scott’s face colours. Which is kind of surprising. Kind of sweet.
‘You’re extremely welcome, birthday girl,’ he says, extracting her arms from around his shoulders.
The girls disappear into Brianna’s room and re-appear moments later in a flurry of giggles with some sheets of card, which they attempt to slide under the door of the room opposite.
Brianna lies on her belly and feeds the paper through the narrow gap between the base of the door and the carpet whilst Georgia, on her back beside her, selects the most appropriate pages for their mysterious prank.
Both girls are immersed in the activity and laughing like hyenas whilst Scott and Heather watch, bemused.
Heather’s face warms as she gives Scott a sideways glace. Turns out they’re standing very closely side by side. She takes a step backwards. Her movement seems to alert him.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were coming this weekend,’ Scott says, ‘otherwise I’d have—'
‘No. No. No. It’s fine,’ says Heather, glancing distractedly at the girls. ‘I wasn’t aware the sink was broken, otherwise—'
Her sentence stops short. Otherwise what? She’d wash and style her hair? Shave her legs? Wax her upper lip? Thankfully Scott fills the glaring gap in her speech.
‘I was over with my tools, anyway. So, it’s no great shakes. My company has just opened up a Scottish branch, so I’ll be up in Glasgow one week in four now.’
It’s as though he feels the need to fill the silence with more information than is necessary.
‘Ah. Okay.’
Heather shifts her feet.
Scott bends to pick up his tool bag. Despite her discomfort, Heather can’t help but notice how the exertion causes his bicep to bulge. Suddenly, he stands upright.
‘The mattress topper.’ He drops the tool bag back on the floor and begins rifling through the back pocket of his boiler suit, his forehead furrowed as he rummages. ‘How much do I—?’
Heather bites her lip to prevent herself from grinning. ‘It’s fine, honestly.’
But Scott finds his wallet and begins to pull paper bills from the notes section before leafing through them.
‘It’s all Dirhams. I hardly ever carry cash at home.
’ Until, suddenly, his eyes light up as he locates a purple note.
‘Brilliant,’ he says, flashing it at Heather, ‘here’s a twenty.
That’s not enough, though, is it?’ His face falls, and Heather watches, amused by how badly he wants to repay the debt in its entirety.
‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ she says. 'The girls—’
But Scott has a finger in the air.
‘Do you take PayPal?’
‘Trey’s here!’ Brianna shouts up the stairs and breaks their conversation off. ‘Time for our tea party.’
Georgia meets Heather and Scott at the top of the stairs as he’s preparing to leave.
‘Stay, Scott,’ she says.
Scott looks flustered. His eyes fix on Heather’s, piercing and blue, but she sees a brief flash of vulnerability there.
‘Do,’ she finds herself saying, ‘Georgia wants you here. And it’ll be fun.’
***
It isn’t fun at all. The six hungover teenagers (Georgia, Brianna, Trey, Flo from the Genealogy Society and two flatmates) gulp down their tea in a few swallows and finish their cupcakes in one bite without a word.
Heather had imagined a more civilised affair, something like a tea party at Bridgerton House, with chatting and replenished drinks.
Instead she needs to adopt the role of compere to fill the awkward silences.
She tries to keep the conversation alive by asking Trey what he misses about the States.
She and Trey’s mum, Bethany, are online friends now, and Bethany often asks Heather to interpret an extended period of silence or a broody response to a straightforward question about lectures.
Heather has promised to take a photo today, so Bethany can see her boy in the flesh with no filters applied.
Other than his dog, it seems, Trey misses nothing at all about home, but wonders what it will be like being overseas for Thanksgiving.