‘I know,’ said his sister. ‘But you know what he’s like. I’d better catch up with him. Come here.’ She held her brother close. When she released him she surveyed his face. ‘You look… lighter. Being here’s doing you good.’ She patted the cow once more and their mum’s voice activated.
This time they smiled without any tears.
‘I still miss her every day,’ said Karolyn. ‘The grief never got any smaller, but I’ve grown around it, if you see what I mean? It’s still in there,’ she thumbed her chest, ‘but it’s deep in there.’
‘Whereas Dad is still a big man-shaped ball of grief?’ Jamie said, a little wry, a little sorry.
Karolyn nodded. ‘But I think he made a bit of progress today, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never heard him cry before.’ Jamie blinked in wonder, remembering how it had happened.
‘I have.’ His older sister’s eyes were soft. ‘You just don’t remember.’
Jamie looked down at Holiday, considering something. ‘Here,’ he held the toy out to her. ‘Give it to Dad. I think he needs her now more than I do.’
With all the understanding of siblings united by the unspeakable, she took the cow without words. Jamie pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen, opening the voice note app. When the recording symbol showed, his sister pressed Holiday’s tummy once more and Jamie captured the sound.
‘Got it,’ he said, saving their mother’s voice.
‘I’ll be seeing you, then,’ said Karolyn.
This set off a twinge in his chest, the little-boy-left-alone feeling that had once consumed him. She knew this, of course. Her eyes flickered to the mill house behind him.
‘You know, you could make evening plans? You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’
‘Plans?’ he echoed. ‘What kind of plans?’
She smiled over his shoulder, lifting a hand to wave at someone behind him.
When Jamie whipped his head around, he caught Ally at the kitchen window, quickly hiding herself from view. And when he turned back to his sister, she was walking away.
‘Ask her out, you dingus,’ Karolyn called over her shoulder with a laugh. ‘Call it your way of thanking her, if you need to!’
Damn his sister and the way she always knew what was going on in his head. He couldn’t read her anything like as well.
Left alone, Jamie looked down at his feet, his hands feeling very empty and redundant without the soft fur of Holiday between them.
His brain ticked over. He pictured his flat. Dinner alone on the sofa. Indecipherable Gaelic programmes on the telly. His weights on the floor. One hundred reps. Shower. Hydrate. The same old podcasts, then sleep.
Or, he could turn around and knock on that door.
It took all of one second to make up his mind.
12
The doorman, Big Kenneth, held open the door for Ally and Jamie, giving her a firm nod of approval and a paper wristband.
‘Take it easy, folks,’ he told them, like he said to everyone he let inside the Ptarmigan après-ski nightclub.
Kenneth would begin his shift here at nine p.m. and end it at two when he’d walk down the lane to the dairy and stock up his milk van ready for his rounds which he, famously, did in his doorman tux. Nobody questioned it round the town. It was just the way things were.
‘Will do, Kenneth,’ Ally replied, and they made their way up the clanking metal stairs, the walls painted with snowy mountain scenes and dotted with images of the arctic-alpine birds that gave the club its name.
‘You ready for this?’ she said, stopping before the double doors at the top of the stairs, the sounds of muffled voices and thumping beats behind it. ‘Because I can promise you, behind this door will be scenes of absolute carnage and debauchery.’
‘Can’t be worse than chucking out time in Edinburgh old town.’
Ally’s eyes sparkled with the challenge accepted and she pushed the doors open.
