500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(54)
Kim-Ange beamed. “A lover?”
“No!”
She frowned at him and he realized he’d gotten it wrong again. London was teaching him a lot.
“I mean, that would be obviously fine, aye . . .”
Kim-Ange nodded more appreciatively. “But it isn’t . . .”
“Not on this occasion, no,” said Cormac, feeling increasingly stupid.
“Okay then,” said Kim-Ange. “So he’s a friend of yours?”
Cormac explained. Kim-Ange raised her eyebrows.
“You’ve let a homeless guy into a nurses’ home?”
“I thought you were meant to be the tolerant one.”
“Well, have you left your wallet in your bedroom?”
Cormac had, of course. He turned around, then turned back. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Yes, all right, country bumpkin,” said Kim-Ange.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Cormac, as she followed him back upstairs.
THE ROOM WAS empty, the shower too. Cormac called out Robbie’s name, but there was no response at all; he’d done a runner, taking Cormac’s clean clothes but leaving his dirty ones behind. They were, truly, only fit for the bin.
Cormac looked around for his phone, but it was in his pocket—there was a new message from Lissa, something about Lennox looking for harvesters. Well, he was hardly going to manage that, was he? He scrabbled around the room, trying not to let Kim-Ange see that he was worried or reveal the huge relief he felt when he saw his wallet, untouched, on the desk, and his watch next to it, likewise, and he felt both instantly guilty and dreadfully sorry for Robbie running away. He sat down on the bed, defeated. Kim-Ange made a decision.
“Come for a walk with me,” said Kim-Ange. She was wearing a bright gold sleeveless jacket with fur trim over her wide back, tight black leggings, and high-heeled gold Timberlands, with gold eye shadow to match. It was a little alarming to the uninitiated.
“What time is it?” said Cormac.
“Going-for-a-walk time,” said Kim-Ange.
Cormac groaned and went over and washed his face in the small sink. “Are you sure you don’t just want me with you so you can lean on me when your feet get sore in your very stupid shoes?” he said.
They were quite stupid shoes, with a dangerous-looking stiletto heel.
“I do,” said Kim-Ange. “And bare your teeth if anyone starts shouting.”
“Who’s going to shout at you?” said Cormac, drying his stubble. “And even if they do, you won’t hear them up there, you’re about nine feet tall in those.”
“Catwalk,” said Kim-Ange sagely. “Come on, we’ll go up to Tate Modern. They’re all arty up there. I shall be appreciated.”
She smiled at him.
“Well done for this morning. Risky, but you pulled it off.”
Cormac didn’t feel much better, though.
Although once they got outside, into what Cormac considered to be a terrifying heat wave and everyone else thought was a perfectly normal day, he felt that something had changed. At first when he’d gone into clothes shops or walked through Soho, marveling at the looks, the fashion, the different types of people—male, female, and everything in between—he’d found it embarrassing. Why would anyone dress like that? Why would people want to stand out and have everyone stare at them, giggling and pointing?
Now, as he started to get more used to the ins and outs of the inner city, he’d realized something that would have completely surprised him: he liked it.
He liked the individuality of people’s dressing. He liked the effort that went into having silver hair, or wearing a wig or something incredibly uncomfortable, just so that everyone else didn’t have to look at the same boring jeans and fleeces all day.
He also had a theory: In Scotland, the colors and the world around you changed daily, hourly even. The pink of the blossom bursting, the gold of the daffodils, the deep greens of the grass after the rain, and the soft lavender of the heather on the hillsides. Bright yellow fields of rapeseed; fresh white lambs dotting the place like clouds; sunsets that stretched uninterrupted for miles.
Here it was gray pavement, gray buildings, gray pavement, brown buildings, everywhere you went. Always the same, never changing. Harsh electric lights burning yellow, over and over again. You could barely see the sky from the street, couldn’t see anything bursting into life and color, changing day by day. Nothing changed. Everything was at the same temperature, everything was built upon, and anything that wasn’t had a crane sitting on top of it.
So people dressing colorfully, wearing yellow spectacles or bright turquoise suits or pointy red shoes, they were all adding to the brick urban landscape, giving you something beautiful and interesting to look at, because, in Cormac’s mind, they were so unlucky as to be trapped somewhere they couldn’t look at the sea, and the trees, and the sky.
They walked along the embankment of the vast sludge-covered river. It being the weekend, the sidewalks were absolutely thronged with people: families; people on bicycles and scooters, mostly ridiculous grown men with funny beards; brightly colored groups of young Italians with large rucksacks; self-satisfied people stepping out of the curious Globe Theatre. There were just so many people. How, thought Cormac, did you ever get used to it? He understood completely now why you couldn’t say hello to passersby, couldn’t even make eye contact. It would be impossible, exhausting. Except, as he got carried along by the throng, he found himself thinking, You know, if anyone was looking at me, they wouldn’t necessarily think that I came from a tiny village, that I’d never spent time in the city before. They would see me walk and not think anything of it, think I’d lived like this all my life. And he found, to his surprise, that he rather liked that sensation.