“Of course. I remember now.” She looked around, “I was supposed to be meeting some new friends here but it’s so busy I can’t see them anywhere.” She waved the guidebook. “We were meant to be talking about going hiking.”
This was obviously a downright lie but Lachlan’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been wanting to find a walking buddy, but you look like you’re way ahead of me.”
“Not really. I’m just aiming to bag all the Munros, maybe we could build up to grabbing a few together?”
He bought Amelia a cider and Babycham then another. They yelled into each other’s ears over the babble of loud music and other people’s raucous conversations. After a few more drinks, Lachlan walked her back to her halls of residence past the castle and up Lothian Road.
They talked easily. Amelia had done her homework and knew his interests. He was charmed that they liked the same musicand movies and he felt protective of this poor orphaned girl who clearly needed looking after.
He kissed her on the cheek and said shyly, “Amelia. I’m not really looking to have a steady girlfriend but …” She interrupted him. She had decided it would be best to pay it cool at the start, so said, “I understand. You’ve just arrived here and you want to have some fun. I get that. Don’t worry about it.”
“No. I mean I was going to say I hadn’t planned on meeting someone so soon, but I really like you, Amelia, and I want to get to know you better. Would you come out with me on Saturday? We could grab something to eat. Or just go for a walk.” He paused and looked worried, “Or maybe you think it really is too soon?”
She smiled at him, putting on her most innocent-looking, sweet and naive expression. “I’d love to go out with you, Lachlan. Here’s my number. Give me a call.”
She ran up the stairs to her tiny room and danced around in glee. It was all falling into place. Soon they would be a couple and then she would have him all to herself. Amelia told herself she would have a completely different life from her father and step-mother and from the ghastly Eric and Ruth.
After a few weeks, Lachlan and Amelia became inseparable, and she managed to keep up her act of being the perfect girlfriend. In her mind, the only way to be completely sure of Lachlan was to give him what she believed every man wanted.
So she’d sit freezing and bored stiff at rugby games but cheer, smile and pretend to be having a great time. They’d go for long walks up Arthur’s Seat and she’d prepare picnics that Lachlan would carry in his backpack complete with real glasses and a red-and-white check table cloth.
She helped him study and laughed at his friends’ lame jokes. Lachlan was generous, Amelia quickly noted, picking up thetab for drinks and dinners, and when she was worried about affording a textbook, he bought her a brand-new copy.
She sometimes helped herself to money from Lachlan’s wallet, especially after a drunken night out, when he’d groan and wonder how on earth he could have spent that much. But she knew that his family kept him generously provided for, so why shouldn’t she have some of that cash.
She quickly realised Lachlan couldn’t cope with unpleasantness of any kind, especially anyone being sad or upset. He was a people pleaser, so she only had to frown slightly or make tears come to her eyes, and he’d do whatever he could to avoid her crying.
Her chin would wobble if he said he was going out with the boys or couldn’t make it to one of their dates, and he would end up cancelling and spending time with her instead. This made him more and more uncomfortable, and he was beginning to have niggling doubts about Amelia. He had caught disconcerting glimpses of the real person when her mask slipped.
There was the time she had ranted at a beggar in Princes Street for touching her hand when he asked her for spare change. He saw venom and hatred in her eyes and flinched. She had tried to make light of it saying the man had scared her, but, a few days later, he had caught her looking at one of his friends with bored disdain when he was talking excitedly about being picked for the rugby team.
Lachlan came to realise he knew very little about Amelia. She had no friends and no interest in meeting other people, whereas he wanted to enjoy the social side of university.
“You are more than enough for me, Lachlan. Why would I want to spend time with anyone else?” she would say. If he encouraged her to meet up with some of his pals’ girlfriends she would look worried and ask if he was bored with her.
Then he would have to reassure her, and they would inevitably find themselves in bed together. By now they had slept together a few times and although Lachlan had enjoyed himself enormously as only a testosterone-fuelled 18-year-old boy can, he increasingly felt as though Amelia was acting out a part for him.
As she lay under or over him, writhing, panting and squealing, it felt as though she was waiting on the director of the movie in her head to shout ‘cut’. He had to admit that the sex was good, although he didn’t have much to compare it with. He just felt that having a girlfriend shouldn’t be this difficult. It was exhausting.
He realised he was never completely at ease with her and they didn’t laugh together at silly things. When he made a funny remark or attempted a joke she would look at him in complete bewilderment. It gradually dawned on him that they just weren’t right for each other, and she was making him miserable.
They continued to see each other for the next few months but Lachlan was feeling increasingly trapped by Amelia. Things came to a head when she visited his family. She’d kept dropping hints about spending a weekend with them, but it was a big mistake.
Perhaps she was nervous or maybe she thought she didn’t have to try too hard anymore, but for once Amelia forgot to keep up her perfect girlfriend act. Truth be told Amelia was becoming bored with the part she’d been playing and Lachlan wasn’t living up to her expectations.
She offended his strictly religious parents by laughing at them saying grace, didn’t eat her food, talked over his younger sister and was generally deeply unpleasant.
After they’d left, his mother called him. An expensive necklace that had belonged to his grandmother was missing. She didn’t want to point fingers but wondered if it had anything to do with Amelia.
When Lachlan tentatively mentioned if maybe Amelia had taken it by mistake, she flew into a blind rage, accusing Lachlan’s mother of trying to turn him against her, swearing blind that she had nothing to do with it.
He tried to calm her down, but she was hysterical, pummelling his chest with her fists and swearing and crying. Lachlan knew he had to put this relationship out of its misery and from that moment on he avoided her completely.
She left increasingly manic messages on his answerphone and even came round to his flat banging on the door demanding to be let in. The days turned into weeks and Lachlan stayed away from classes as she kept following him there. He told his lecturers he was ill and worked hard at home, trying to lose himself in his studies.
Lachlan was too embarrassed to complain about her, believing he would be laughed at for being scared of a wee bit of a lass. So he swerved his usual haunts and mostly stayed in by himself while his flatmates enjoyed Edinburgh’s nightlife. When Amelia battered and kicked his door, screaming like a banshee, he hid in his room and refused to answer or got one of the other boys to say he was out.
Another couple of months went by, and the threatening texts and messages dwindled to a few a day instead of more than a dozen every hour. Amelia had finally stopped coming round and creating a scene and Lachlan thought he was in the clear, especially when he saw her draped on the arm of another boy.
