Chapter 22
NOW
Celia leaves her mum pulling up sofa cushions in the hope of locating a squashed packet of Marlboros. ‘Bye, Mum,’ she calls back from the hallway.
‘Bye.’ Joyce is preoccupied with the matter in hand.
Celia’s chest feels tight as she closes the front door quietly behind her.
On the concrete path, between two small overgrown patches of grass, she stands for a moment, aware of light rain landing softly on her face.
It’s only that. Just rain – not tears. She waits to see if her mother will come out after her but of course she does not.
Normally Celia cycles here after work – her ancient bike is her main mode of transport – but today she chose to walk, to allow herself more time to build herself up to facing her mother.
Now she strides away from the house she grew up in.
The rain is pleasantly cool against her hot cheeks, and Celia glances up to see a chink in the grey; a break in the clouds, through which sunlight is peeking.
It’s only a glimmer but she feels her shoulders relaxing as her breathing returns to something more like normal.
She feels stronger now, and somehow lighter too.
Her heart is no longer a cold, heavy stone in her chest. Celia fills her lungs with cool spring air and then she stops and pulls out her phone and types a message.
After what happened I find it even more insulting that you haven’t even been in touch with me.
She pauses, wondering what else she wants to tell him. Whether to spill out every furious thought she’s had this past week.
But no – today is not the day for that. Maybe that day will never come because really, Celia is not built that way. Instead, she sends the message and lifts her face to the sunlight, and then she messages Amanda to tell her that she’s ready now – and that she’s told her mum.
Well done you!
comes the reply.
And Celia feels a tiny flicker of pride at that.
* * *
She delves into a giant carton of popcorn, marvelling at its just-popped freshness.
Salty or sweet? Hardly a bevy of choices but she’d found herself dithering as she inhaled the aromas at the snacks kiosk.
Now she remembers the last time she and Geoff took Logan to the cinema.
Just before Christmas, it was. Logan must have been about twelve – it shocks her to realise how long ago it was – and Geoff had allowed them to have popcorn only if it was bought at the nearby Tesco Metro and smuggled in.
How decadent it feels, to enjoy popcorn without shame or the fear that someone will march over and shine a torch in your face.
Then those thoughts dissipate as the movie starts and immediately Celia is swept away, the popcorn soon devoured.
Her head is no longer filled with the image of her mum angrily tearing down washing and barking that it was ‘only sex’.
For the duration of the film she is laughing and crying and still mopping away tears as they step out into the bright, blue-skied afternoon.
‘Oh, that was brilliant,’ she announces.
Amanda smiles. ‘I loved it too.’ She mentions the lead actors by name, but she could be talking about the creative directors of Gucci for all Celia has heard of them.
‘But you must go to the cinema all the time,’ she says. ‘I mean, premieres and things…’
‘Sometimes,’ Amanda concedes. ‘But honestly, they’re not as much fun as going with you.’
‘Oh, come on!’
‘No, really,’ she says, linking Celia’s arm as they make their way along a narrow side street. ‘You were engrossed, almost like you’d been hypnotised. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Celia doesn’t know quite what to make of this.
Is it weird to be so transfixed by a film that you don’t want to miss a moment?
That you barely want to blink? She wants to explain that it was the vastness of it that amazed her.
Those faces and feelings and emotions, beaming out at her and pulling her into the big screen.
But would that sound silly, as if her normal world were terribly small?
Something’s happening to her, Celia reflects, being around Amanda.
It may only be a week since she walked in on Geoff and that woman, and of course that’s not long enough to get over it – or even to come to terms with what’s happened.
Yet somehow, Amanda’s arrival, with the endless poke bowls and posh bread and being whisked to the pub and the cinema – well, it’s certainly shaken her up, and is delaying the terrifying business of facing her new reality.
And for the moment, Celia is prepared to go along with Amanda’s suggestions, because what else is she going to do? Sit there crying in her plant room?
They are heading for cocktails now, to a place Amanda read about on some list of Glasgow’s hippest bars.
The only lists Celia encounters are her own shopping lists, or the reminders she jots down in her many houseplant hospital notebooks.
She has no concept of what’s cool or uncool or anything in between.
Entering the bar feels like stepping from a bright spring day into a dimly lit boudoir. They perch on spindly high stools and Celia watches in awe as Amanda falls instantly into easy conversation with the charming silver-haired barman.
Celia picks up the menu, just a sheet of paper, the lettering resembling that of an old-fashioned manual typewriter. Of the ten cocktails listed she has never heard of any of them. If the popcorn choice was tricky, this is impossible because they may as well be written in Dutch.
‘I don’t know what to have,’ she murmurs.
‘What d’you recommend?’ Amanda asks the bartender.
Clearly happy to chat, he starts on about paprika and seaweed and ‘ umami notes’.
Celia doesn’t know what an umami is, let alone what it tastes like – but the talk continues, flirtatiously, as he mixes something he promises will be ‘salty and deeply savoury, a really intense flavour hit’.
He’s recognised Amanda, Celia thinks now.
He knows she’s a TV person and Amanda knows he knows but they’re both too cool to acknowledge it.
With a flourish he hands them their cocktails in small triangular glasses. With all this ‘savoury’ talk, Celia fears that it will be like drinking a liquidised crisp – but it is delicious and also extremely strong. Instinctively she grabs for the bar’s brass rail.
‘We’re in a bar, Celia,’ Amanda teases. ‘Not on a ship.’
Celia catches herself and laughs off her over-cautiousness, that lurking fear in her that, at any point, things could go very wrong.
She takes another sip and a surge of warmth floods her body.
‘Mum fell off a bar stool once,’ she tells Amanda as the bartender serves another customer.
‘We were in a hotel in London when I was a little girl. Remember that time we went on a city break?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Amanda says. ‘That was a big deal back then.’
‘I think Dad must’ve won money on the horses or something.’ Celia smiles. ‘And poor Mum clonked her head and had to be carried up to our room like a rolled-up carpet.’
‘Oh God, darling.’ Amanda grimaces, then adds, ‘But you’re not your mum.’
Celia smiles. ‘I’m definitely not.’
‘But can I say something?’ Amanda’s gaze holds hers for a moment. ‘You could maybe afford to loosen up a bit.’
Celia takes another sip. ‘You think so?’
‘I don’t mean to your-mum levels,’ she clarifies, and Celia smiles wryly before turning serious.
‘I don’t know what to do about her, Amanda.’
‘Look, you knew she was going to be upset about Geoff. But you dealt with it, and that’s brilliant?—’
‘I mean about the way she is,’ Celia cuts in. ‘I worry about her, you know.’
‘Hey,’ Amanda says. ‘Maybe you can help her at some point, or maybe you can’t. You can’t make everything right, Celia. She’s not like, like a houseplant?—’
‘Unfortunately not.’
‘Yeah.’ Amanda smiles kindly. ‘That’d be easier, wouldn’t it? Regular watering, a sunnier position, a bit of feeding now and then—’ She breaks off. ‘What am I saying? I can’t even keep cress alive!’
‘Oh, I’m sure you can.’ Celia conjures up an image of how she imagines Amanda’s home to be: huge and airy with sunlight streaming in and plants artfully placed around every room.
‘I bet your flat’s gorgeous,’ she announces, this umami concoction having rushed to her head.
‘I can picture it, like something from a magazine. Maybe I could come and visit sometime?’
‘Oh, uh, maybe! You’d be really welcome?—’
‘And isn’t it crazy that I haven’t even met Jasper properly?’ Celia takes another big sip. ‘I’d love to get to know him. He seems so lovely, Amanda. He’s obviously crazy about you. I could see that at your wedding, the way he kept looking at you…’
Amanda laughs tightly. ‘Well, er, yeah. He’s great.’
‘So what’s his life like? Is his art career flourishing?’
‘It’s, um… He’s getting there,’ she says quickly.
Celia smiles. ‘You’re like this golden couple.
But you always got it right, y’know? Moving to London so young, I wondered how you’d cope, being away from your mum and dad…
’ Her lovely mum, she muses, who made Amanda those wonderful packed lunches, all the necessary food groups including fresh fruit (grapes!
Kiwi!) and a treat. ‘But of course you did brilliantly right from the start,’ she adds all in a rush.
‘It hasn’t quite been like that.’ Amanda shifts position on the stool.
‘Oh, I’m sure you worked hard,’ Celia says quickly. ‘I didn’t mean it’s all fallen into your lap…’
‘No, it’s fine. I didn’t take it that way.’ Her expression is unreadable now.
‘What I mean is, I’m really proud of you, if that doesn’t sound patronising,’ Celia goes on, carried away by the novelty of drinking in a bar in the day. A beautiful bar, all polished wood and twinkling golden lights, tucked away down an alley that she hadn’t even known existed.
‘So, shall I come down and visit you sometime?’ she prompts her friend.
‘Of course, yeah!’ There’s a catch to Amanda’s voice now and suddenly, Celia wonders if she’s overstepped it.
If mixing her Glasgow life with her London life would be too much for Amanda.
I’m her hometown friend, she reminds herself.
I’m not like the people she hangs out with normally and I have to remember that.
‘I’d absolutely love you to visit,’ Amanda adds, smiling warmly now.
As she squeezes her hand, Celia relaxes again.
‘You could show me all the London things.’
Amanda laughs, nodding. ‘ All of them.’ She catches the bartender’s eye and he chuckles.
‘Hey, that sounds good,’ he enthuses. ‘If you’re doing that, I’m coming too.
’ Then Amanda falls back into conversation with the handsome twinkly eyed man, and somehow Celia finds herself being part of it too.
They learn that his name is Jack and that this is his bar, a new venture; a dream he’s had since he was a young man.
And by the time they leave, joining the throngs of Saturday afternoon shoppers, Celia feels happy and carefree and not unpleasantly light-headed.
She is no longer thinking about her own life, here in Glasgow, as they stroll together along the bustling shopping street.
She is thinking about all the London things , which she cannot even start to imagine. She’ll buy a picnic for the train! She’ll take a brand-new suitcase that doesn’t have a busted wheel! She might even go to a classical concert, confident now that she knows not to clap!
Celia’s thoughts break off suddenly. Now her attention is caught by a man and a child wandering towards them, hand in hand, up the gradual slope of Buchanan Street. They are chatting animatedly and keep looking around, as if eager to absorb every delightful detail of this sunny afternoon.
The girl says something and the man laughs. It’s not a polite I’m-humouring-you laugh but a genuine one, unselfconsciously hearty. Then the girl points across the street towards a busker with a guitar and they swerve towards him.
Look at that man with his daughter, Celia thinks. How relaxed and happy they are together. He looks like a good dad. Of course, he could be an uncle or a family friend but now she registers the likeness between them.
Briefly, she remembers going to drop some coins into a busker’s open clarinet case on this very street and Geoff telling her not to.
‘They’re just begging,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t encourage it.
’ Celia has always loved music – the controversial pink CD especially – and is of the opinion that if anything should be encouraged, it’s that.
She sees the girl hurrying over to the busker and something lands in the bowl on the pavement. He smiles his thanks.
There’s something else about them, Celia decides.
Not the girl, whose long dark hair is in plaits, somehow complementing her outfit of red top, black dungaree dress and tights, reminding her of Beryl the Peril.
No, she hasn’t seen this girl beyond the comics she’d loved as a child.
But the man – tall, dark-haired and attractive in a navy-blue shirt and jeans – is somehow familiar to her.
She remembers now. ‘Amanda, I know that man,’ she says quickly.
‘Who?’ She looks around.
‘Him. That man with the girl there… I mean, I don’t know him exactly, but we’ve definitely met…’
Celia thinks he spots her then. Something like a flicker of recognition crosses his face, and now it’s not so relaxed as his expression switches.
She can tell, even from some distance, that he is no longer giving the girl his full attention.
She is overcome by an urge to run up to him and say it’s okay, and that she’s sorry. She was just having a very bad day.
You can’t make everything right, Celia.
Well, maybe she can’t fix the big things but she can make this small thing right. It’s being with Amanda, she realises. How easily she chatted with the bartender and how comfortable she is in her own skin. And what else did she say in the bar? Maybe you could afford to loosen up…
‘Hello!’ she calls out, raising a hand. The man’s expression switches again. Perhaps she’s misread it and he didn’t spot her at all. He’s in a hurry, she realises. Because now he has bent slightly to say something to the child, and she beams delightedly, nodding as she says something back.
Then together, still hand in hand, they veer suddenly off the busy shopping street and turn the corner out of sight.