Chapter 29 #3
The first pub is one of the oldest in the country.
Its entrance, down some ancient flagstones, leads into a darkly lit interior with antique wall panelling and a mahogany bar.
Heather scrutinises the faces of the regular pubgoers playing dominoes and nursing whisky or beer and draws a blank.
The students have most definitely moved on.
She consults her phone and rushes down Bell Street past the three storied Georgian buildings with ground floor shop frontages and finds the next pub, a basement bar located in an old warehouse.
She rushes down the wooden stairs. A few pub-crawlers have clearly decided to linger there and have scrunched themselves into a wooden alcove, but her daughter isn’t amongst them.
At the third pub, on cobbled Market Street, the landlord, possibly already annoyed by hordes of drunken students tied together at the ankle, refuses her entry with Maisie.
‘No dogs. Sorry.’ Heather can’t even manage a good look around first. He stands with his arms crossed, blocking her view and barring her entrance, his face immobile.
Knowing she’s beaten, Heather retreats and ties Maisie to a lamppost outside before returning to the pub.
‘Just stay here a minute,’ she says to the little dog, who immediately sits on the ground and lowers her head, perhaps relieved to be stopping for a quick breather after their mad dash across St Andrews.
Heather recognises Flo, Georgia’s friend from the Genealogy Society, the moment she enters the pub. Flo is already slurring her words and looks decidedly the worse for wear.
‘Gee. Yep. Yep. She left … I don’t know. About five minutes ago?’
Heather’s heart quickens. ‘Is she okay?’
Flo shrugs. ‘Seems to be. Bit wobbly. Alright, though, I think.’
Bit wobbly could mean anything.
Heather races to the next pub, a modern wine bar with tall stools, high tables and sticky floors. That pub draws a blank. As does the next and finally, at the pub after that one, Heather finds her sitting on a stool, beside a man she doesn’t recognise, her head on a table surrounded by glasses.
‘Georgia. Georgia.’ She runs up to her daughter, kneels by her feet and scoops her up in her arms.
A decidedly woozy Georgia allows her head to flop onto her mother’s shoulder until, slowly, reality filters through.
‘Mum,’ she says. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Heather ignores the stench of vodka, cider and beer coming from her daughter’s mouth and surveys her face carefully.
‘You said those things, Georgia. You scared me.’
Georgia’s bottom lip wobbles.
‘Yeah. Well. I was scared myself for a moment there. But I’m lucky. Bee and Trey have forgiven me. It’s their round. They’re at the bar.’
Heather glances at the boy sitting beside Georgia.
‘Oh, yeah. Mum. Meet Samir. He’s Trey’s boyfriend. And he’s lovely.’
Samir is, indeed, lovely. He stands on wobbly legs and extends his hand.
‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he says before returning to his stool, landing at an angle and falling onto the floor.
SCOTT
He doesn’t have the bandwidth to talk to Heather properly when she calls. He’s spent the last hour staring into space, Lorraine’s placations ignored and every decision since losing Lucy analysed.
‘She’s fine. Georgia’s fine,’ Heather says down the line, all breathy and relieved and oblivious to the enormous U-turn her behaviour caused in him.
‘That’s good,’ he says. And he means it. Georgia is a kind girl and a good friend to Brianna, despite the recent blip. He will only ever want good things for her.
‘It took me ages to track her down,’ Heather continues, breathily.
Scott can hear seagulls in the distance and the thrum of an engine as a car drives past. He can picture her speed walking towards her car having eyeballed Georgia.
Perhaps she’s now realising how disproportionate her reaction had been to leave him and drive to St Andrews.
‘They’re on that three-legged pub crawl.
Her, Brianna, Trey and his new boyfriend Samir.
Lovely lad. You’ll like him. I left them with a margarita each.
Now they’re catching up on the past few weeks.
Anyway, I needed to leave Maisie tied to a lamppost outside a pub, so I’m just backtracking to find her.
Then I’ll be back, and we can have that chat.
And that gorgeous food. I’m starved. Shall I come to yours? ’
He wishes it wasn’t quite so nice to hear her voice.
He wishes he couldn’t quite so easily envisage her mannerisms and little idiosyncrasies as she walks along the cobbled pavements of St Andrews Market Street.
Partly, he wishes he was still in her house and waiting for her return. But things have changed.
‘I’m happy you found her, Heather.’
‘You don’t sound happy.’ Her voice falters.
‘Heather. Honestly. I’m glad Georgia’s okay. But to be honest. I think it was always pretty clear she was going to be fine.’
Heather’s tone cools a little as she slows her pace and catches her breath.
‘Well, it wasn’t to me,’ she says.
‘No. But it was clear to anyone else.’
‘You sound really annoyed, Scott. If Trey were here, he’d say you sound pissy.’
Her attempt at mild humour falls flat on its face.
‘It’s okay, Heather. You just reminded me of a promise I made, that’s all.’ He pauses. Steels himself. ‘Look, how about we leave it for today and meet for a coffee tomorrow?’
‘I’m seeing my parents tomorrow morning.’
It breaks his heart a little to hear the confusion in her voice.
‘After that, then?’
Her hesitancy is now palpable.
‘Afterwards? Okay then. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
The emptiness and discontentment continue into the afternoon, so when Luca calls from the halfway checkpoint of the bike ride Scott missed to see Heather today and poses Scott with a conundrum, they agree to a call back.
Scott spends two and a half hours on the phone to Luca that evening, discussing, Googling, emailing and planning. And, eventually, comes to a decision.