Just Last Night(67)
One day, I might be looking at photographs with my currently unlikely kids, and they’ll say, “Who’s that?” and I’ll say, “Oh, that’s my dear friend Susie, she got hit by a car and died really young.” They’ll peer with renewed interest due to this macabre backstory, and then, because she was never Auntie Susie and they never met her, turn the page in the album. I feel an indignation that’s almost anger at this prospect. It’s a lie, that obituary. Susie is not a sad short story. Susie is not a tragedy. She was a long lively story, cut unnaturally short.
With some secret chapters I hadn’t seen. Footage left on the cutting-room floor.
I unzip my suitcase and yank my toiletries bag from it and have a shower that’s long and scalding enough to make up for the lack of one earlier. I raid the complimentary toiletries and dry my hair section by section on a big round brush in front of a vast mirror, rolling my wrist as if I’m in a salon. I’ve not thought about my appearance for months. All of a sudden, I want to look nice. I think it’s the surroundings, and being here for my fake father’s fake seventieth with my fake brother. I wish I were living her life, the goofy, loaded, carefree liar.
A knock at the door and my dinner arrives, thrillingly under a silver tureen.
As I dip the last French fry in the dainty ramekin of ketchup, my phone lights up with a message from Ed . . . Oh God it’s half nine!
Hi! Remember me? Remember that thing we talked about?
I wipe my greasy hands hurriedly on the thick linen napkin.
Argh sorry sorry it’s been crazy—the car broke down and we’ve got to the hotel late, but the good news is, it’s The Waldorf
Wow sounds like my worries were misplaced! One big suite is it? Michael Bublé on the Bose and roofie fizzing like an Alka Seltzer in the Laurent Perrier
I should’ve known he’d equate the outlay with a Finlay Hart scheme to lay me. He’s met Finlay, how can he seriously think “desire” features?
Uhm no, separate rooms. Sorry I forgot to say hi, I’ll remember tomorrow
Mind that you do. N’night, Harris x
My phone blinks with light again.
PS: I’m sure you know this, but. If you need me to come and get you as a matter of urgency at any point—call me. I will be straight there, no questions asked. Do not let pride stand in the way of help. X
Of course, thank you. (you would ask questions though) x
OK yes I would X
By the light of a lamp, I lie on the bed and gaze up at the ivory ceiling’s cornicing, pristine and unblemished, like a roll of marzipan icing.
Ed is jealous. I repeat that evident truth to myself. I’d sensed it during his previous tirade, but not so clearly registered it until now. I try to work out what to do with it.
27
After unwinding a croissant and sipping the sort of black coffee that reminds me how coffee is supposed to taste in a metro-tiled breakfast room that was absent of Finlay Hart, I go back up to my room, brush my teeth, and head down at nine.
Finlay’s an imposing, ink-blue figure against all the wedding-cake white—unsmiling, hands thrust in pockets in his trench coat. He’s not unfriendly, exactly, but seems a little antsy, brisk, eager to get on. I shouldn’t mistake the splendor of our hotel for any pleasure he’s taking in this.
“Tourist traps, then the family addresses, is the plan,” Fin says, sounding stiff and somewhat disenchanted, as we emerge into the cold snap of Princes Street. “Following the plan set out in my father’s note.”
“Gotcha. How about a sightseeing bus?” I say, as one rolls past outside. “Cover more ground.”
Finlay looks up at the Coca-Cola-red, logo-emblazoned vehicle, skeptical. His profile is momentarily strongly redolent of Susie’s, against the morning winter sun, and I get a sharp pang, that stupefaction, remembering her loss. I’m perversely glad it’s a shock again.
“Hmm, really? Would we recognize my dad in a crowd, from a pigeon’s vantage point?” Finlay says.
“We’d get off at the stops,” I say. “How are we getting ’round them any faster, on foot?”
Fin shrugs his reluctant agreement and buys two tickets from the man in the lanyard, accepts tour leaflets, and we step on.
“Upstairs?” I say, to his shoulder.
“If you want,” Fin says, glancing back, wearing the look of a tolerant weekend dad with visiting offspring. He picks seats near the front. It’s almost empty, as you’d expect from the roof-free top deck of a sightseeing bus in a rainy country at a cold time of year.
Mercifully, it has optional headsets where you can plug yourself in for an audio narration, so we get to experience the city without the soundtrack of someone bellowing jovially into a microphone about Greyfriars Bobby, as we lurch corners.
Everyone else on the deck brandishes their phone aloft on portrait mode, with both hands, taking pictures or filming.
“Do you think any video taken on holiday ever gets watched?” I whisper to Fin. “People will film anything. How does it work, do you go home and then on a boring Tuesday say: get the beers, let’s watch three minutes of shaky footage of the Royal Mile? Or do they subject friends and family to it?”
“I don’t know,” Fin says. “I’m not a fan of the way the technology’s turned everyone into an amateur documentary maker. I saw an argument in The Bagel Hole the other month, and another customer stood there as if it was their kid’s nativity play.” Finlay mimes holding a phone and staring intently into it.