Chapter 6
Cammy
‘Right, action stations,’ Val announced. ‘Places to go, people to see…’
‘… Unsuitable women to get engaged to,’ Josie added, with a pointed glare at Cammy.
He grinned in return. ‘Josie, I’m not rising to you.’
‘Quite right, son – she’s the root of all marital evil. Just ignore her,’ Val concurred.
‘That’s not true!’ Josie defended herself. ‘I love a good romance. But what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t warn the boy…’
‘I’m past forty…’ Cammy said, yet again, aware that when they were locked in debate, neither woman would hear him.
‘… that he’s about to marry the Glasgow equivalent of the Bride of Chucky.’
Even Val could no longer maintain the argument and hooted with laughter at that one.
‘Bet you wish you’d just kept driving that day, ma love,’ Josie told him, softening the blow with a grin of affection as she said it. Cammy couldn’t remember the exact date, but he knew exactly what day she was referring to.
3 p.m. Glasgow City Centre. Many years before…
Two more drops on his run, then he was done.
Stopped at the traffic lights, he looked at the list on the clipboard next to him.
La Femme, L’Homme. He’d delivered stuff there last week too.
A new underwear shop that was opening in the Merchant City.
Lovely girl, Mel, owned it… She sometimes made him a coffee while he waited for her to check the contents of the box he’d delivered.
Forty pairs of Boss boxers, thirty Armani briefs, and a selection of bras that he was fairly sure had something to do with Kylie Minogue.
Or perhaps he was making that last detail up in his head.
Anyway, it had been one bright spot in a day doing a job that only served the purpose of paying the bills while he figured out what he really wanted to do.
The traffic lights changed to green and he put his foot down and headed up Ingram Street. He needed to get finished early today if he was going to make it to the gym, before his usual crowd hit a new bar that was opening on Buchanan Street.
As he put the hazards on outside the shop, he noticed the sign, ‘Opening tonight’, in the window.
They were cutting it fine. When he was in last week he’d have said they were nowhere near ready.
Going by the crowd of workies he could see inside, they still weren’t even close.
He offloaded the box from the back of the van, ran up the steps, opened the door and…
‘Yer a no-good wanker!’
The shout made his head swivel to the side, and the combination of shock, disorientation and the large box he was carrying conspired to distract him so much that he didn’t notice the half-built bra rack on the floor, tripped, flew forward, and ended up in a seriously convoluted position involving a metal frame, a dozen G-strings, a pile of double Ds, and a naked mannequin.
And the owner, Mel, looking down at him, panic-stricken.
Their eyes locked, and he decided that, pain aside, the fall had been worth it.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry,’ Mel apologised, before turning to the source of the shout that had started it all.
‘For God’s sake, Josie, you’re going to kill someone.’
‘Was she shouting at me?’ Cammy asked, confused, injured, dazed.
‘No! She was shouting at that vacuum cleaner. It just cut out on her.’
‘No good piece of crap,’ Josie added, giving it a kick with a Doc Marten.
It was the first time Cammy had laughed all day. The sight of a woman who looked like she was in maybe her late fifties, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, in a profanity-laden, full-body combat dispute with a vacuum cleaner took his mind off the pain he was feeling from the knees down.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ Mel said again. ‘I don’t blame you if you sue. I’ll take it out of Josie’s wages until the end of time.’
He’d climbed on to a nearby chair and waited until the pain in his legs had dropped from ‘definite fracture’ to ‘perhaps just a strain’ and had more amusement in that half hour than he’d done in weeks.
Mel. Josie. Their band of friends and family.
The banter and bickering between them all had been hilarious.
Before he’d stopped to question his motives, he’d told them they were the last call of the day (they weren’t), pitched in to help (with a slight limp) and informed Mel that he had retail experience (he didn’t).
Whether it was out of sympathy, gratitude, or the fervent hope that he didn’t know a good lawyer, she’d offered him a job then and there.
And that was it. What started as a temporary post in the blokes’ section, led to a couple of promotions, until he claimed his self-penned accolade, Manager of Sack and Crack Support Services.
Mel and Josie had become his family from that day onwards. His hand-picked, wonderfully dysfunctional, endlessly dramatic family. Josie was the spiky-haired, chain-smoking, gloriously inappropriate aunt he’d never had. And Mel… Mel was his boss, his best-friend, his…
‘Are you okay?’ Val asked him, cutting into his thoughts. ‘Only you look like…’
‘…you’re having second thoughts?’ Josie asked, hopefully.
‘Nope, just revisiting the past for a moment. The early days, you, Mel, and me in the shop. They were great times, Josie.’
‘They were, right up until you hotfooted it off to LA and deserted us,’ she agreed, her tone mellowing, showing the soft side that she generally kept disguised under a veneer of sarcasm and brutal honesty.
‘How’s Mel doing?’ he asked, confident that he’d made the question sound nonchalant and casual.
Josie’s response said otherwise. ‘She’s doing great.’ That was all. No elaboration. No details. Just, perhaps, a tiny hint of sorrow. Or maybe it was sympathy.
He shook it off. No point in dragging all that back up now. And anyway, today wasn’t the day for looking backwards. From the moment several years before that he’d said goodbye to Mel, he’d been all about moving forwards, keeping going, cutting losses.
Since he’d returned from LA, he’d used the cash he’d earned to fund the new shop, taking the vacant lease on the premises that had once been La Femme, L’Homme, now closed down and long gone.
His new venture had been a success from day one.
To the outside world, Cammy was a man about town, an irrepressibly handsome, successful businessman and – until Lila – one of the most eligible bachelors in the city.
It had all gone to plan so far. Career established?
Tick. Financial security? Tick. Love? Tick.
Now it was time to focus on the next stage in his life and after getting used to the idea for the last few weeks, he knew he wanted to marry Lila.
He wanted to have kids. Enough of being the perennial bachelor.
He’d had a couple of decades of partying hard, with no responsibilities or commitments, but lately, it hadn’t been enough.
Making this step was the right move, he was sure of it.
This was the first time he’d felt this way since…
He stopped himself. Damn, it still hurt. He’d been in love before and he’d messed it up, not told her, let someone else have the life that he wanted. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. And so what if he’d only known Lila for a few months? It felt right. That was all that mattered.
‘Right let’s go, ladies.’
‘Under protest,’ Josie muttered.
Val and Cammy ignored her.
As they pulled out of the underground car park, Val stopped for a moment and checked a page on her notepad. ‘Right, first stop, the arcade. Today is going to go exactly to plan. I can feel it in my water.’
The traffic was heavy all the way into the city centre, to the busy streets surrounding the pedestrianised area, but eventually they slipped into one of the few parking spaces still available in the multistorey in Mitchell Street.
Cammy was surprised there were any left.
This was the last Friday before Christmas and the streets were heaving.
From there, they walked down Mitchell Lane, and onto Buchanan Street, crossed through the throng of festive shoppers, workers and buskers, then into the Argyle arcade, home to most of Glasgow’s fine jewellery stores.
He’d taken ages picking the ring. Who knew there were so many choices?
A solitaire. A trilogy. Diamond. Precious stones.
In the end, he’d gone for a square emerald, with a diamond baguette on either side.
He’d no idea what a baguette was, other than something that could be filled with tuna and eaten at lunch, but the manager of the shop had won him over to it, said it was similar to the one that he’d bought his wife and they’d been married for thirty years.
Cammy took that as a good omen. Not that he believed in omens, but still…
The trio hadn’t even reached the shop when he realised something was amiss. The shutters were still down and there were a few people loitering outside.
‘Someone must have slept in,’ Val commented. ‘I just hope they had a wild night and it was worth it.’
Cammy didn’t hear the end of the sentence, too focussed on the sign that had now come into his field of vision, the one that was stuck to the barred window, in front of an empty display area and right next to the iron grate that was blocking the door.
closed until further notice.
‘Cammy… tell me that’s not the…’ Val couldn’t get the words out.
‘It is,’ he answered.
‘The ring, you’ve already paid for it?’
Of course he had. Not all of it. But a hefty deposit, almost a grand, to secure the sale. He hadn’t wanted to take it home in case Lila found it, so he’d decided it would be far better to leave it here and pick it up on the morning of the proposal.
They were at the door now, next to a woman who was being comforted by a man as she sobbed, a couple of elderly bystanders and a security guard.
‘What’s going on here, mate?’ Cammy asked the guard, hoping that it was something minor that had delayed the opening. A puncture. A hangover. A lottery win.
‘Shut down. Manager did a midnight flit with the cash, the stock and the owner’s wife. Don’t fancy his chances if that guy finds him before the cops do.’
This couldn’t be happening. For a moment, he hoped it was all an elaborate ruse dreamt up by Josie to derail the nuptials, but she looked as shocked as him and, God love her, was offering to sacrifice herself to fix it.
‘Want me to break in and see if it’s still there?’ Josie hissed. ‘At my age, they’d never convict me.’
That was all he needed – the intervention of Glasgow’s finest CID. ‘Thanks for the offer, but we’re good.’
Except, this wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.
A grand. Gone. His ring. Gone. His plan for the day. Seriously gone awry.
Just as well he didn’t believe in omens.
Because if he did…