Chapter 6
HEATHER
The flood of sunshine through her bedroom window in St Andrews' Hotel du Vin does little to lift Heather’s spirits.
The sense of despair lingers like a persistent fug that none of her usual strategies: a bath, yoga, meditation, an early morning walk, can shift.
It’s as though this man has looked straight into her soul, imagined her greatest fears and then told her the only solution was to sleep with him.
She’s got that right, he did do that, didn’t he?
He’d looked dumbfounded when she’d slammed the door on him last night.
Surely, he knows it’s not reasonable to proposition someone in her state.
And those assumptions he made about her life and parenting!
Heather dismisses the uncomfortable fact that some of his points may be true, they’re still an affront coming from a stranger.
And what makes him the parenting expert of the year?
Heather hates herself for wondering if there are any foibles in Scott’s past which have caused Brianna distress throughout her life.
She’d just like to know what they are so she could remind him of them, just as he had to her.
That would put a different look on his handsome, arrogant face!
The only positive left is her plan for an intimate farewell brunch with Georgia.
This will be the last time the two of them are together for several weeks.
She wants to make the most of it. And she will not cry.
Instead, she will ask about last night, the new friends Georgia has made, what she expects to eat for the rest of the week and – most importantly of all – how she plans to stay safe when drinking in bars with virtual strangers.
Because she can’t yet know which people will stick with her in a crisis.
That’s the thing with new friendships that haven’t had a chance to bed in.
The flaky ones haven’t yet shown their true colours, and the steadfast friends of the future might not yet have materialised.
Heather has already thought of a few hints and tips which would undoubtedly help Georgia navigate these first few days.
She might also ask Georgia to check under her bed for cockroaches, just to be sure.
A text comes in: ‘Here!’
Heather looks away from the window, and her eyes widen as she checks her watch.
Ten thirty on the dot. It’s unusual for Georgia to be so punctual.
More typically, she’d sleep until midday and arrive just as the breakfast menu ends.
Heather’s forehead relaxes, and her stomach unknots.
The omelettes here are legendary. She pulls on her jeans and a jade green shirt.
‘Five mins,’ she replies by text, ‘get a table.’
Georgia replies with a thumbs-up emoji.
Heather pulls a comb through her hair, adds a streak of lip gloss and shoves an extra tissue into her pocket. Just in case.
***
‘Surprise!’
Georgia sits at a large table for four, in the middle of the opulent dining room, doing jazz hands in the air. ‘We discovered last night we both had plans to come here for breakfast, so Bee woke me this morning and I’ve persuaded them to join us. Isn’t that cool!’
Heather’s stomach hardens. He’s there, sitting at her table, his hair still messy from sleep, looking almost as mortified as she feels. Her face will betray her – it always does – and she can only hope the girls are too hungover to notice her annoyance.
‘How lovely,’ she says, smoothing her napkin over her lap. ‘Great to see you again.’ She smiles across the table at Brianna’s beaming face and turns to her right. ‘Scott.’
Scott’s eyes, like hers, are hooded today. ‘Heather. Morning.’
She reaches across the table and pours herself a coffee from the silver pot nearby, hoping it’s extra strong. Might a shot of caffeine help her navigate this?
Oblivious to the tension between their parents, the girls launch into a blow-by-blow account of the bars visited last night and the number of units of alcohol consumed.
‘One guy, Trey, from the States, hasn’t been to a bar before, because, well, like it’s twenty-one over there. And he got totally … I mean, the puke was just … everywhere!’ Georgia extends her hand over the table to show the magnitude of the poor boy’s sickness.
A stab of empathy for the lad – wakening in a strange university room, in an unfamiliar country, and trying to nurse a terrible hangover – sweeps over Heather. Does his mother realise how unwell he’s been?
‘Poor lad,’ she says. ‘Have you heard from him this morning?’
‘He’ll be, like, face down until lunchtime, I reckon.’ Brianna giggles.
‘So,’ says Scott, ‘food.’
The servers bring plates of eggs, bacon, sausage and haggis to accompany their drinks, and the conversation moves on from the night before.
Neither girl asks her parent about their evening, thank goodness, and although she’s missed out on her intimate brunch with Georgia, Heather enjoys the banter around the table.
True to the reviews, her omelette is exemplary.
She savours her first bite, then her second, before she notices Brianna isn’t eating.
‘You okay?’ she asks.
Brianna tilts her head towards her father, who’s folded the linen tablecloth under his plate and pulled an extra chair towards the table, which now houses his laptop.
He’s typing away whilst shoving forkfuls of egg into his mouth.
So the laptop still works, thankfully, but the rudeness! Heather can hardly believe it.
Brianna puts her own fork on the side of her plate.
‘Dad?’ The plea in her voice is audible.
Scott looks up; his blue eyes scan the luxurious dining room, then focus on Brianna, wide and blinking.
‘Sorry. Sorry. Got a quote to finish.’ He pulls the sleeve of his pale grey sweater above his wrist to expose his watch. ‘And I’ve got to catch my plane in, I don’t know, six hours?’
‘You’re going away?’ The question is out before Heather can stop herself.
Scott’s gaze shifts from her eyes to the tablecloth, now marked with bean sauce, and then back to her.
‘Well, yeah. I mean, it’s a fantastic time for surfing in Agadir,’ he says.
‘You’re going to Morocco?’
‘Flying from Edinburgh this afternoon. Yeah. That’s the plan. Leaving the car – not the keys,’ he points across the table at Brianna to stress this point, ‘and back in a month.’
Heather looks askance. What is it with men and their ability to detach like this?
‘But what if … what if …’
She moves her head in Brianna’s direction. The girl’s cheeks colour.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘I’ll be fine. I’m used to it.’
‘You are?’ Heather can’t hide the uplift from her voice. ‘But what if you need support, encouragement? Cooking advice?’
Scott’s eyes harden.
‘I’ve raised Brianna to be independent,’ he says. ‘She’s more than capable of managing her transition to university. Isn’t that right, darling?’
He directs this question to his daughter.
‘Yeah. Sure, Dad,’ Brianna says before turning to face Heather. ‘I’ll be good. Honestly.’
Georgia rolls her eyes. ‘Lucky you, getting some peace. I’ll have Mum all over me this first month.’
Heather jerks backwards, shocked.
‘Georgia!’ she says.
SCOTT
The absolute bloody nerve of the woman. Not only does she accuse him of sexual impropriety, deems it acceptable to parent her own kid into complete and utter dependency, but now she thinks she has the authority to cast judgment on his parenting style?
And that look when he’s working at the table!
What was that? Okay, he gets it, it’s a fancy restaurant, but he’s trying to replace the work lost when she threw a whole glass of water over his clothes and keyboard.
Essentially, it is her bloody fault he needs to work over breakfast in the first place.
Scott closes his laptop with a loud, pronounced thud, which seems to echo off the vaulted ceiling, then pulls his chair closer to the table to feign exaggerated interest in the conversation. She wants engagement? He’ll bloody give her engagement!
‘So, Georgia,’ he says, turning to the daughter. ‘Your mum tells me you have serious allergies that we all need to be mindful of.’
Heather snorts as though she’s said nothing of the kind, but she has.
Part of the conversation as he escorted her up the stairs last night (like a gentleman, incidentally!) involved a near-miss story involving a Snickers bar and a teenage snog behind the sports centre at school.
Heather had used it as evidence that she – not Georgia – but she, needed to be always on guard in case a gangster peanut edges its way into her daughter’s olfactory tract.
Because smell is enough, you know, smell is enough.
Georgia rolls her green eyes in a full circle as only teenage daughters can. ‘Muuuuum.’
Heather's cutlery lies on the table, and even though she doesn’t speak, her lips are parted in an exasperated: What?
‘Why would you say that, mum? That’s so embarrassing!’
Brianna, a natural acquirer of gossip, zones past the mother-daughter tension and shakes Georgia’s arm. ‘What happened?’
‘It was nothing!’ Georgia answers, despite keeping angry eyes and pursed lips directed towards her mother.
‘How can you say that?’ Heather retorts.
The argument is so intense, neither Georgia nor her mum seem aware of Scott and Brianna’s presence.
‘You nearly died! Your windpipe closed completely, and your heart stopped. They kept you in the hospital for forty-eight hours, Georgia. It. Was. Not. Nothing.’
A couple on a neighbouring table sneak a glance at them over their glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. Georgia sighs, pulls at her dark brown ponytail, and directs her eyes towards the ceiling.
‘All I needed was my EpiPen.’
‘Which you didn’t take to school that day.’
‘Well, I never normally needed it.’
‘You needed it then.’
The waiting staff sense something is amiss and hover nearby.
‘Oh for—’
He knows he shouldn’t do it, but something about Heather’s previously sanctimonious approach to his parenting means he can’t quite let it go.
‘So, you’re saying it’s all within your control, Georgia?’ he interjects. It’s a cheap trick, he knows.
Georgia slams her open palms either side of her plate. Crockery shakes on the table, and Scott’s overfilled water glass sloshes liquid onto the white tablecloth.
‘Exactly!’ Georgia says.
And, my goodness, what is with him today?
He stares Heather in the eyes with a look of victory, as if they’re locked in mortal combat.
My parenting style: one, yours: nil. But the glance will stay with Scott, because he sees the now-recognisable flush appearing over Heather’s smooth cheeks.
Her wide green eyes begin to glisten, and Scott feels like a total heel.
What has he done?
Having an emergency call-out to your only living relative in the middle of the workday is no laughing matter for any parent, and Scott can see Heather re-living that experience, right now, in front of them all.
Suddenly, the blue flashing lights from his own trauma are in front of his eyes. He remembers the feeling of impotence.
Not nice.
Why does this woman bring out his combativeness? Nobody else affects him like this.
A lull falls over the table as used glasses and crockery are removed by the waiting staff. Then the girls, who have long moved on from the previous conversation, chat about their plans for the week ahead.
‘We’re both joining the Genealogy Society,’ Brianna offers when Heather asks them which clubs they plan to explore during Freshers' Fair.
‘Genealogy?’ Heather looks as shocked and unsettled as he is. How can digging into their family’s past help a young person as they begin this next stage in their life?
‘Yeah. Neither of us knows that much about the families we were born into.’
Is it Scott’s imagination, or does Brianna make a pointed glance in his direction when she says this?
‘Oh. Okay. Genealogy, then,’ Heather repeats, her face ashen.
‘Yeah. And I’m going back to dance class,’ Brianna adds, her look a definite barb, this time in Scott’s direction.
‘Dance? Great,’ says Heather.
‘Yeah. I went when I was younger, but I haven’t been in seven years,’ Brianna replies.
Scott swallows, wondering if Heather also senses herself locked in some unavoidable torment, which looks set to last for the next four years, if not longer.