For the first time since I’d met her, Morag smiled. A tiny one. ‘I’d be freaking out if it was my mum. Not that I can ever imagine her meeting anyone. She lost all interest in men when my dad ran off, says they’re only good for one thing.’ A comedic pause. ‘Spending money at the pub. I definitely can’t imagine her finding a toy boy.’
‘Huh. No. That is hard to picture.’ To me, Holly said, ‘You’ll meet Brenda. She’s a force of nature.’
‘Despite everything,’ Morag said, and a look passed between her and Holly, just for a fleeting moment, before Morag said, ‘I’d better go and get that fire lit. We don’t want the house to be freezing when the others turn up.’
She left the room, head down, almost shuffling. She might be thirty-six, the same age as Holly, but she seemed much older, and not just because she didn’t have the benefit of expensive haircuts and skincare products. Maybe it was living out here, exposed to the elements. Perhaps I’d just caught her on a day when she was tired. But there was something about her that reminded me of my own mum, who always acted as if she was waiting for life to give her another slap.
It was undoubtedly that resemblance to my mother that made me like her– but as I opened my mouth to say something like ‘She seems nice’, I saw how Holly was watching her go, eyes narrowed in a way I hadn’t seen before. There was history between these two women.
‘Do you not like her?’ I whispered.
‘What? Don’t be silly.’ She looked towards the door Morag had vanished through. ‘Of course I like her. She’s one of my oldest friends. Actually, I’d better go and give her a hand.’
I watched her leave her room, a little shaken. If I wasn’t mistaken, this might be the first time she had ever lied to me.
3
I went outside to fetch the suitcases, the security lights automatically coming on. It was close to zero out there, and the streak of blue I’d seen in the sky was long gone. I checked the time. It had only just gone half three and it was almost dark already.The days are short up there, Holly had told me when we’d been preparing for this trip. She hadn’t been lying about that.
I had already decided I was probably wrong about Holly disliking Morag. We’d had a conversation in the first week of our relationship about the importance of honesty. She had told me that her previous boyfriend, a musician whose name I recognized, had lied and cheated on her repeatedly, and also been secretly taking drugs, a particularly awful betrayal because of Holly’s own history with substances. When I’d assured her I would never lie to her, I meant it. I have always found it almost impossible to tell even the whitest lie. It makes me go pink in the face and sweat.
Holly had promised to always be honest with me, too, and there was no need for her to lie about liking Morag. She had probably been thinking about meeting Jasmine, a subject Morag had just broached. It was a topic that filled her with dread– and I emphathized because, as I opened the boot, I was aware that the Grant family would start arriving soon.
I had, of course, met girlfriends’ parents and siblings before, and it had always been fine. But this wasn’t like meeting anormal family. Charles Grant was famous, as was his company, Gravitas, which was always mentioned alongside Dyson and Virgin whenever the media wanted examples of successful British firms with humble beginnings.
I had been on several dates with Holly before she told me who her dad was. It was the first time she had asked me back to her flat, right when I began to wonder how someone who worked in a clothes shop could afford such a gorgeous apartment, with two bedrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows giving spectacular views of Brighton seafront.
‘It was a thirtieth-birthday present from my dad,’ she had told me. ‘His way of luring me back to the UK.’
We were in bed. We’d just had sex for the first time and I was slightly dazed, astonished by the chemistry between us, wondering if I was already falling in love with her. I had been in lust before and it had been nothing like this. My blood felt warmer, my stomach in knots whenever she looked at me a certain way, the thought of losing her already filling me with dread.
‘So your dad’s rich?’ I had asked.
‘Yeah. It’s kind of embarrassing. Have you heard of Charles Grant?’
‘The computer hardware guy?’
Of course I’d heard of him.
‘That’s him.’
‘Bloody hell. What’s he going to think about his daughter going out with a delivery driver?’
Gravitas. I had looked it up on Wikipedia the next day, refreshing my memory. Charles founded it in the eighties, around the time of the first home computer boom. The company focused on consumer products first, before shifting to more specialist medical and industrial hardware. If you’veever been in hospital in Britain, chances are one of Gravitas’s machines helped diagnose, monitor or cure you. Recently, a the business had also started manufacturing drones and other equipment used by the British military. Remarkably, the company was still family owned, with Charles holding the majority share and his three children 10 per cent each. This meant that, on paper, Holly was rich, too, although she had told me that selling her company shares would be more than her life was worth.
I was startled out of my reverie by a noise behind me, the scrape of a boot against gravel. There was someone standing over by the cliff-edge: a teenage girl of about eighteen, with strawberry-blonde hair. A cloud of vapour rose about her, giving the impression she had just appeared in a puff of smoke. Noticing me notice her, she took another drag on her vape then stalked past me towards the house.
I followed her, carrying the cases, and found the teenage girl asking Morag when they were going to go home, calling her Mum. I was surprised. Morag must have had her very young.
‘We’re leaving in a minute, Avril,’ Morag said. ‘I have a couple of things to check. Be patient.’
Avril groaned.
Seeing me looking, Morag said, ‘This is my daughter, Avril. The bane of my existence and the apple of my eye.’
Avril did a classic teen eye-roll.
‘I’m just going to put all this stuff away.’ Morag picked up a bag of shopping that was just inside the front door. ‘You wait here. Be nice.’
