Chapter 7
HEATHER
Heather drops her bags on the floor of her Georgian terrace in Edinburgh’s Morningside, and the front door thuds closed behind her.
Morningside, three miles to the south of Princes Street, is home to several artisan shops, cutesy bakeries and cosy restaurants.
The Pentland Hills are visible in the distance giving the area both an upmarket and an edge-of-town vibe.
Typically, Heather arrives home with an enormous sense of gratitude, but now, for the first time, she’s opened the door to a hollow sensation in her chest. This is the point Scott-Bloody-Reynolds said she was most afraid of: her homecoming.
And now she understands.
Has the hallway always echoed like this?
She grasps now his suggestion about buying a dog.
The idea of furry feet scampering to greet her at this moment is quite compelling.
Heather hasn’t had a dog since her childhood pet, Nooky, died.
But for a split second she considers it, at least for the distraction.
A dog would certainly provide more sustained relief than sex with a socially awkward statistician who just happens to have a fit body and captivating blue eyes.
She climbs upstairs and walks into the kitchen of her three-storey town house.
The home would have been completely out of her price range twenty years ago as a newly qualified teacher of art, but Dougie, her partner at the time, insisted they bought it.
She was carrying his baby, after all. Together they re-purposed the space before they moved in.
An open plan kitchen-cum-lounge-cum-diner occupying the entire floor had been her dream and Dougie, both rich and compliant in those early days, was keen to give her her heart’s desire.
Ridiculous to think he left her and Georgia around a year later, bequeathing the house to Heather, so she and Georgia could have somewhere safe and comfortable to live. Guilt does that, she supposes.
Heather stares into the fridge. Two eggs, half an onion and the sludge at the bottom of a carton of oat milk greet her.
The larder is no more promising. The jar of Manuka honey appears to taunt her: “You might fancy me, but you have no bread, yogurt or porridge to put me on,” it seems to say.
The realisation that Heather has made the last few weeks – no, let’s be honest – the last few years, entirely about Georgia hits her acutely.
How can she have left the fridge empty with so little consideration for herself?
Have there been any points in the past eighteen years when she’s prioritised her own self-care? Heather thinks back.
None.
She reflects on her response to Scott-Bloody-Reynolds’ comment last night.
'Try the dating game' he’d said, as if a man was the answer to everything. And so what if her response appeared disproportionate? Heather is done with men, and now, it seems, she’s done with motherhood as well.
Leaving her where, exactly? The fabled Empty Nest. She imagines Scott walking along the seafront in Morocco, admiring the waves.
Maybe he has the right idea, after all? He won’t be sitting by the phone waiting for a check-in from his daughter or feeling this sudden loss of identity and purpose.
A sense of something she can’t quite place: melancholy? humiliation? wafts over her. Heather turns her back on the pitiful fridge. She can cope without food tonight. It saves one decision, at least.
***
Heather’s in loungewear watching the TV when the doorbell rings later that evening.
‘Fraser,’ she says with a gasp when she answers.
Her brother is dressed for work in a kilt of lightly coloured greys and greens with a band of bright blue running through the weave.
His muscular calves lead to walking boots which are coated in thick mud.
The white t-shirt which clings to his torso is well overdue a wash.
His new puppy, Maisie, a skittery and highly excitable West Highland Terrier, scampers around at his feet, mud clinging to her lower legs and paws.
‘I dropped the group off at the train station and came straight here to check how you were doing.’ Fraser works as a tour guide in the Scottish Highlands.
Heather has never gone on one of Fraser’s tours, but she’s certain his deep abiding love for his homeland would rub off on even the most cynical tourist.
A wave of love sweeps through Heather as her brother, who needs no introduction to the complex range of emotions she’s processing right now, takes her in his arms and hugs her tight while Maisie jumps up at their legs, desperate to be included.
Over the years, Fraser has been the one constant male presence in Georgia’s life and Heather is eternally grateful to him for his care and compassion at difficult times.
She knows why she is single, but why on earth is her brother?
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she says when they disentangle.
‘Been tough?’ Fraser’s eyes, green also, search hers.
‘You could say,’ she replies.
Fraser’s not impressed with Heather’s plan to forgo food, so after a quick steam in her shower and a change of clothes from the stash he always keeps at her house, he settles Maisie for a nap and takes Heather out for a meal.
Fraser knows all the best places to eat in town.
He takes her to a small bistro tucked away down a side street in Edinburgh's student area, far from the craziness of the tourists.
They sit on rickety stools around a cut down barrel and order local delicacies at half the price of the restaurants in town.
‘So. Tell me. How did she get on yesterday?’ he says when their meals arrive. ‘How’s the flat? What are the folks like?’ A few days in the Highlands always bring out the broadness in Fraser’s accent.
She gives her brother a quick summary on the location and layout of Georgia’s accommodation but stalls when it comes to the people. She tries to fill the awkwardness by asking the server to replenish their water, but Fraser catches her change of tone.
‘And?’
‘And she’s already made a good friend, Brianna. All the way from Hertfordshire. But … I don’t know …’
‘You’re not keen on her?’
Like Heather, Fraser is highly attuned to the possibility of Georgia getting hurt.
‘No. No, the girl’s lovely. It’s just that …. Well, her dad’s weird. One of those “let them learn for themselves” types. And it’s good, I guess. I can see that his daughter’s confident. I just found he was a bit … at odds … with me.’
‘A nemesis parent?’ Fraser laughs as he shoves a spoonful of Cullen Skink, the traditional Scottish soup made with smoked haddock, potatoes, and cream into his mouth. The smell of it has always turned Heather’s stomach.
‘Yeah. Kind of,’ she replies. She takes a forkful of her own food before continuing. ‘I guess I’m just concerned that Brianna might not be all that great an influence on Georgia.’
Fraser tilts his head and makes a gesture with his spoon to encourage her to elaborate.
‘Okay. Well. For example, they’re both joining the Genealogy Society.’
‘Genealogy?’
‘Family trees. Heritage. That kind of stuff.’
Fraser leans his spoon on the side of his bowl. ‘Like tracking down parentage, then?’ he says, his voice an octave lower than previously.
‘Exactly that.’
‘Ah. I wonder what mum and dad would think about that?’
Heather freezes. It’s unlike Fraser to mention their parents in such a blatant way.
As the youngest child and a boy, he was protected from much of the hideousness Heather experienced in her late teens and early twenties whilst at university.
Or perhaps he was just sheltered from it because he left home so quickly to begin his Mountain Leaders’ course.
But Heather was left to experience the full impact of her father’s morbid hobby, his disinterest in her and her mother’s complicity and refusal to challenge him.
‘I can’t imagine how they would react to it,’ she says, her voice hollow. ‘They probably don’t even know that Dougie’s overseas.’
She hasn’t seen her parents in nearly fourteen years. She isn’t about to begin anticipating their responses to things like their granddaughter’s welfare when they have been practically absent for Georgia’s entire life.
‘If we’re not good enough for you, then don’t think about crossing our threshold again,’ her father had said when Georgia was a vulnerable four-year-old, just out from hospital after an anaphylactic shock that was entirely her grandfather’s fault.
Heather’s eyes must tell Fraser the topic is now closed.
‘Right O. Got it,’ he replies. They finish their meal in silence.
***
When Heather returns home, the thud of the front door in the architrave no longer sounds as threatening as before.
Perhaps the thing she needs to do is re-programme a little?
What did she say on the Parents' Forum yesterday?
This is not the end of an era; it is the beginning of a new phase, one that can be designed with her in mind.
How can focusing entirely on herself be bad? When was the last time she did that?
She walks upstairs, unpacks the overnight bag she had with her in St Andrews and finds, scrunched up at the bottom, the manifestation sheet she worked on so diligently the night before.
It looks rather sad and juvenile now she is sober and can hear Scott Reynold’s disparaging voice in her head.
But perhaps the ideas still hold true? She flattens the paper out on the surface of her bed and assimilates the key points: Travel more, re-engage with old friends (she remembers leaving a space here, deliberately nonspecific), go for promotion, try something new every month.
She takes her phone from her back pocket, snaps an image and sends it to Claire.
Claire's son, Aidan, leaves next year, so it will soon be her turn to have an Empty Nest; but given her eighteen-year marriage to Mark, she’ll probably be less in need of a manifestation map when the time comes.
The response is instantaneous: “Nice one. What name is going in that gap?”
Heather grins. She knows Claire is desperate for her to find her “Mr. Right”.
“Just watch this space,” she replies. One thing’s for sure, whoever she does choose to fill that space, will only ever get so close. She’s had it with committed relationships. She knows the drill now. Men leave. They let you down. It’s a game Heather is no longer interested in playing.
SCOTT
He should have known his plane would be delayed. He’d got here just as the bag drop was closing and is now sitting in the departure lounge in Edinburgh airport, nursing a black Americano and wondering how the hell he’s going to pass the next two hours.
If anything scares Scott, it’s this. An expanse of time with no allocated purpose, which perpetuates the most dreaded of all things: time to think.
This, Scott realises, needs to be avoided at all costs.
He pulls his day sac closer, extracts his laptop and opens the still-incomplete quotation for his most important client.
He may as well finish it now he can work uninterrupted by crazy ladies throwing water on him – or casting aspersions about his parenting. He can now work in peace.
Only he can’t.
Her voice circles around his head like an echo: ‘You’re going to Morocco?’ and, to Brianna, ‘Are you all right, love?’ Had his daughter’s chin dipped at that point?
His mind flits back to their recent goodbye. They’d meandered around the rock pools by Castle Beach, searching for crabs, and he made himself ask her: ‘Have I done all right by you, love? The last few years. I know they’ve not been the easiest.’
Brianna grabbed a piece of driftwood from the ground and traced circles in the sand.
‘Bee?’ he said, gently prompting her.
Brianna dropped the stick, picked up a razor shell, and polished the pearly interior with her forefinger before responding. ‘It’s been fine, Dad. You did the best you possibly could. Given the circumstances.’
Given the circumstances.
Scott takes a gulp of cold coffee before closing the lid of his laptop and unzipping his phone from his breast pocket.
He swipes past his boarding card and opens the Gallery App.
He flicks past screenshots of adventure holidays until he finds what he’s looking for: Brianna on the top of the Chrysler building on her eighteenth birthday, her long blonde curly hair waving in the breeze and intertwining with his own.
Was that what she’d meant by fine? Is that what doing his best given the circumstances looked like?
She hadn’t asked for a trip to New York.
It had been his surprise. They’d flown business class.
She was smiling, doing one of those weird Tik Tok poses with the pouting lips when they were served champagne before take-off. She’d liked it. Hadn’t she?
A sudden wave of frustration and an unnameable sensation – dislike?
annoyance? – directed at Georgia’s mother, Heather, hits him.
What is it about her that makes him question everything?
And it wasn't just his imagination, there had been something between them, hadn’t there?
He wasn’t kidding himself. He can still envisage the fervent way she grabbed a dirty napkin and dabbed the water spill on his trousers, and the way her chest rose and fell outside her hotel room that evening, or that glistening in her eyes when he’d taken a cheap dig at her over breakfast. He can also recall, like muscle memory, her unbelievably firm buttocks when he stabilised her in the student flat.
How can someone so unlike him rile him so?
And if the girls are destined to be best friends, as they both predict, will it be possible to avoid her at all?
Scott has spent the past seven years protecting himself and Brianna from letting other people get too close. He is a past master at self-protection. He has this covered. He’s not about to screw it up now.
The departures board has updated. Flight 249 to Agadir now boarding. Gate 12. He grabs his bag, shoves the laptop inside and throws it onto his back before heading for the gate. Thankfully, he can now fill his brain with something altogether more familiar and comforting than Heather McVey.
Adrenaline sports.