Just Last Night(69)

I sense Finlay’s mood plummeting further, each time we reboard the bus.

“Is it worth prioritizing things your dad would find particularly interesting?” I ask. “Is he a devolution junkie, would he be interested in seeing the Scottish Parliament buildings? Or . . . the café where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter?”

“I honestly don’t know, it’s second-guessing someone I’m distant from, who is ill,” Fin says. “I think imposing old buildings are probably his taste.”

“Stay on for Holyrood Palace, then?”

“Yeah.”

Finlay can read me, but I can’t read him. Something’s bothering him and I can’t identify what it is. This was his idea. I’m here because he demanded I be here. Anyone watching would think it was the other way around.

We disembark at Holyrood and Finlay buys entrance tickets.

“Christ,” I say, surveying its colossal magnificence and general vast spread. “You take the west wing and I’ll take the east wing?” I make a grit-teeth face.

There’s an ominous grumble of thunder and as the heavens open, correspondingly, Finlay’s mood breaks fully.

“This is all we fucking need!” he splutters, both of us holding the hoods of our coats in place as we dash for cover across the manicured lawns.

“Let’s take shelter in the ruined abbey!” I say. “It’s a little further but this is just the moment to appreciate it.”

“How do you know about that?” Fin says, and I’m quite pleased with myself that I do.

“Like a Goth, I always research evocative ruined abbeys.”

I lead us there at a jogging pace, and on arrival, Fin says: “Not to be a nitpicker, but the place you’ve brought us to has no roof.”

I start laughing in that slightly helpless way you do when the weather and circumstances are attacking you.

“It has a beautiful fa?ade though. Here, this part still has a roof.”

We huddle in an archway, watching the rain beat down on ancient mossy stonework, interiors that are now exteriors. We’ve stumbled into a peculiarly unforgettable few minutes.

“Let’s just settle in for three hours of this then,” Fin says, eventually.

“I love it. Wish we’d brought a hot thermos.”

When Ed called this a Very Creepy Interlude, he might’ve underrated how much I like creepy interludes.

“How are you so perky? To the point of . . . revolting effervescence.”

Finlay says this unemotionally, in his usual crisp manner, face splattered with water. I get a squirm of pleasure in my stomach at this teasing, as I watch him yank his hood back down and try to pat the water out of his hair, which only spreads it around. He’d only dare be this familiar if he’s feeling comfortable around me.

“Am I perky?” I say.

“Yup. Dragged against your will to another country, by a man you don’t know, to look for another man who’s not in his right mind. Being drenched in what looks like a Game of Thrones set. And it’s like you’ve been handed a Coco Loco at a swim-up bar.”

“Sad is happy for deep people,” I say, and I’m rewarded with authentic Finlay laughter. I realize I’m talking to him like he’s Susie, and somehow I don’t know if I’m doing it on purpose or not.

“Is that original?”

“No, I nicked it from Doctor Who.”

“I don’t even know when you’re having me on.”

“While we’re being personal, why are you being a mardy arse?”

“A mardy arse?” Finlay says, speaking the words as if smelling a stinky local delicacy cheese.

“It means grumpy—”

“I remember,” he says. “. . . Agh, it feels so futile and foolish. We’re a day behind him, if not days, we’re not going to find him doing stupid sightseeing buses. Not that I had any better ideas,” he adds, remembering it was my suggestion.

“Yeah. I reckon in a new place, he’ll stick to his former points of reference,” I say. “Where was his family home? Where he grew up?”

“Portobello, the seaside. Lovely day for it.”

“Let’s go back to the hotel, dry off, get lunch, and try that this afternoon.”

Finlay nods. “I think the forecast is actually dry, later.”

“I might get a photo of this before we go,” I say, looking out at the rain pelting down.

I pull my phone out and unlock it, and with sickening inevitability, the last thing I had open appears, my camera roll. Finlay Hart glowering at me, unaware he was my subject.

Fin isn’t quite close enough to see the full screen, but he can still spot himself well enough.

“Is that . . . me?”

“Yeah,” I say, re-angling my phone, glad that my hood is partially obscuring my face, and that I can legitimately not meet his eyes, shrinking into the fur. “You wandered into my compositions of the castle.”

“When I was standing still?” Fin says, with his infuriatingly sharp thinking. I’m momentarily without a comeback, sizzling with embarrassment, pretending to concentrate on focusing in on an archway, pushing at the screen with finger and thumb.

“I wanted general mementos of the trip,” I say, the pleasurable squirming now writhing internally.