The Mum Who Got her Life Back
FIONA GIBSON

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperColl‌insPublishers 2019

Copyright © Fiona Gibson 2019

Cover design © Lisa Horton 2019

Cover [photograph/illustration] © Shutterstock

Fiona Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008310967

Ebook Edition © [month] [year] ISBN: 9780008310974

Version: 2018-12-20

For my fabulous friend Miss Jackie Brown

Queen of Fife

With thanks …

To the amazing Jackie B, who manages a Mary’s Meals charity shop and let me spend a day nosing around, talking to volunteers and rummaging in the back room. I couldn’t have written this book without your help, Miss Brown! To Kath Brown and Miranda McMinn at Woman & Home magazine for getting me thinking about Happy Empty Nesters (HENs) and inadvertently inspiring this book. To Jen, Susan, Laura, Wendy and Lisa (Kath, you were missed!) for celebrating with me in Ibiza when this book was done. To Wendy (again) for a detailed description of a certain type of pokey facial, which I used almost verbatim. To my brilliant editor Rachel Faulkner-Willcocks, publicist Sabah Khan and the whole fantastic Avon team. To my super-agent Caroline Sheldon for being the best in the business. Finally, all my love to Jimmy, Sam, Dexter and Erin, my lovely family who put up with me working crazy hours and very often talking to myself.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One: Things that happen when your kids first leave home

Chapter One: Nadia

Chapter Two

Chapter Three: Jack

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six: Nadia

Chapter Seven: Jack

Part Two: Sex and the Empty Nester: Things to Know

Chapter Eight: Nadia

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve: Jack

Chapter Thirteen: Nadia

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen: Jack

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen: Nadia

Chapter Eighteen: Jack

Chapter Nineteen: Nadia

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three: Jack

Chapter Twenty-Four: Nadia

Chapter Twenty-Five: Jack

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Nadia

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Jack

Chapter Thirty: Nadia

Chapter Thirty-One: Jack

Chapter Thirty-Two: Nadia

Chapter Thirty-Three: Jack

Part Three: The key to a successful holiday with one’s grown-up child

Chapter Thirty-Four: Nadia

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six: Jack

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Nadia

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jack

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Nadia

Chapter Forty: Jack

Chapter Forty-One: Nadia

Chapter Forty-Two: Jack

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four: Nadia

Chapter Forty-Five: Jack

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty: Nadia

Chapter Fifty-One: Jack

Chapter Fifty-Two: Nadia

Chapter Fifty-Three: Jack

Chapter Fifty-Four: Iain

Chapter Fifty-Five : Nadia

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About the Author

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About the Publisher

Part One
Things that happen when your kids first leave home

 • You keep checking to see if they’ve texted to say they’re managing without you. They haven’t … because you’ve only just moved them into their student halls and are still sitting in your car, in the car park.

 • You realise it’s no longer necessary to buy those two-kilo bags of potatoes. They just go green and start sprouting.

 • You also stop buying The Big Milk and switch to the smallest carton. How tiny you are! you think, the first dozen times you spy it in the fridge.

 • Friends say things like, ‘You might miss them at first. But when they come home on visits they’ll trash the place, and you’ll be relieved when they go back to uni.’ How harsh, you think. I love my kids. I’ll never think of them in that way.

 • You realise you could now have sex in your own home without worrying about the kids overhearing. Or perhaps you’re thinking more along the lines of, Shall I redecorate to mark this new chapter? Perhaps your mindset is less ‘shag pad’, more ‘upgrading of cushions’. Either way, it’s pretty thrilling.

 • Towels remain on the towel rail and the loo roll sits, unmolested, on its holder.

 • The washing machine goes on about twice a week. You start to feel proud of your tiny carbon footprint.

 • No one criticises your home-cooked lasagne. You don’t even have to make lasagne, with all the chopping and stirring it entails. Dinner can be a pot of hummus and a boiled egg if you feel like it.

 • No one crashes in, switching on all the lights and frying things at 3.30 a.m.

 • After a while you stop thinking, My God, this is weird! Where is everyone? You’re not missing the days when it looked as if wildebeest had stampeded through the kitchen, whenever someone made toast. Gradually, you become used to them not being there, and – it almost seems criminal to admit this – you don’t completely hate it.

This signifies that you have transitioned, relatively painlessly, into being a HEN: a Happy Empty Nester. Yes, you’re still a doting parent, but no longer in the day-to-day sense, which suggests that your new life has begun.

So, what now?

Chapter One
Nadia

Since my children left home, nothing terrible seems to have happened. There has been no evidence of malnutrition or the taking of shedloads of drugs. No one has phoned me, crying, because they couldn’t get a crumpet out of the toaster. At eighteen years old, my twins Alfie and Molly seem to have coped perfectly well during their first semester at university … which means I’ve done a decent job as a parent, right?

Naturally, their father, Danny, should take some of the credit. But the moving-out part was down to me. Danny is an independent film-maker and he was away shooting down south when I took Molly to her student halls. In the seven years since we split, his career has blossomed; he is pretty famous in film circles, and incredibly busy. At least, too busy/famous to drive Molly from our home in Glasgow to her university halls in Edinburgh.

‘Well, this is it,’ I remarked with fake jollity as we lugged her possessions into her stark little room.

‘Yeah,’ she said casually, tossing back her long dark hair.

‘You will be all right, won’t you?’

‘’Course I will!’

I cleared my throat. ‘Any time you need me, I mean if you need anything, I’ll come straight over.’

‘Mum, I won’t need—’

‘No, I know, but …’ I stopped. My daughter has always given the impression that she rarely needs anything, from anyone.

‘I’m not dying,’ she said, smiling. We hugged tightly, and I was immensely proud of myself as I hurtled out of the block, shoving my way past more new arrivals with their stoical parents and desk lamps and mini fridges and, in one instance, a gerbil in a cage, which I was pretty sure wasn’t allowed in halls. Only when I was safely back in my car did I allow the tears to spill out, and had to mop my face on a waterproof umbrella sleeve.

Two days later, I drove Alfie to his own halls further north, in Aberdeen. The city felt chillier and greyer than it had when we’d come up for the open day (his father had been too busy/famous to go to that too), and I reminded my son several times that he might start wearing a vest.

‘You can just leave my stuff here, Mum,’ he said, indicating the floor on the landing.

‘Really? Can’t I come in?’ But he’d already scooted into the flat to find his room, and so I stood there, waiting, like a FedEx delivery person.

Moments later Alfie reappeared, and we fell into a pattern of me fetching stuff in from the car, lugging it up three flights of stairs and handing it over at the designated spot on the landing. He grabbed the final box in which I’d assembled an emergency rations pack of tinned soups, pastas and – rather optimistically – fruit. ‘See you then,’ he mumbled, gazing down at his feet.

‘Er … okay, love. Look after yourself, won’t you?’ In truth, I was more worried about him than Molly. He’d always been rather shy and disorganised, and a klutz when it came to practical matters. I wasn’t convinced he’d be up to boiling spaghetti without somehow setting it on fire.

‘Of course I will,’ he insisted. I forced a hug on him and left the building, passing a woman carrying an enormous tropical plant (does anyone really need a tree in their uni halls?), and wishing that Danny was here too, but that night he was in London at his wrap party.

Good for him, I thought. Good for my ex and his girlfriend and those miles of canapés and champagne sloshing everywhere. No, this was all great, I told myself as I drove back to Glasgow, then stepped back into my second-floor flat. Danny is a caring dad – I’ve never disputed that. However, he’s never been too hot on the practical matters of parenting.

We were thrilled when we found out we were having twins, but from the word go we fell into pretty traditional roles. While Danny toiled all hours to get his career off the ground, I threw myself into the hurly-burly of toddler groups. We’ve been lucky to have always lived in a decent area of Glasgow: a little shabby, but friendly and safe. We stretched ourselves to upgrade to a four-bedroomed flat so the kids could each have their own rooms, and Danny could have a much-needed study.

For a few years I worked from a desk in our bedroom. I am a freelance illustrator, and had accumulated a small roster of clients before the twins came along. During my early years of motherhood, I’d tackle any commissions after the kids had gone to bed. I also did some occasional life modelling – i.e. with my clothes off – for local art classes, to bring in extra cash. In a weird sort of way, they offered a bit of respite from family life. Reclining nakedly on a sofa was pretty soothing compared to chipping hardened Weetabix off the floorboards – and I assumed the kids would never find out what it really involved. Anyway, I was around so much after nursery and school that Alfie and Molly didn’t actually believe I worked at all. Their primary school teacher laughingly told me that, when she’d asked Molly what her mum did for a living, she’d replied, ‘She colours in.’

In contrast, Danny did go to work – not in a nine-to-five sense, but for weeks at a time if he was away filming, or to his study at home where he’d hide away to work on edits or scripts.

‘Nadia, the kids keep coming in!’ he’d yell.

‘They just need to see you for a minute, Danny. Alfie wants to show you something he made at school …’

‘Honey, please. Can’t you just keep them at bay?’ he’d say, as if they weren’t his six-year-old children, but wild bears. But then, Danny’s work was all-consuming, and it was my job to thwart the kids’ access to He Who Must Not Be Disturbed.

‘Daddy’s busy being Steven Spielberg,’ I’d explain, ushering them away.

‘Who’s Steven Spee—’ Alfie would start.

‘A very important film man like Dad,’ I’d say. Alfie always needed more reassurance than Molly, and I was conscious of over-compensating for Danny’s unavailability: painting with the kids whenever they demanded it, and indulging Alfie’s lengthy baking craze. The more cakes he made, the more I felt obliged to scoff (‘Sounds like a feeble excuse to me,’ Danny had sniggered), my once-slender body expanding and softening, my skimpy knickers making way for sturdy mummy-pants.

Meanwhile, Danny remained his gangly, raffishly handsome self, all messy dark hair and stubble. He seemed to experience no guilt whatsoever on turning down one of Alfie’s Krispie cakes: ‘They look great, Alf, but I’m not really into that breakfast-cereal-confectionery hybrid.’ He didn’t intend to be mean, and the kids still adored him. However, Danny had always done whatever he wanted and he didn’t really worry what anyone else thought.

I’d known, when I got together with a film-maker, that I might be signing up for an unconventional sort of life. However, I also knew that other film-makers – friends of Danny’s – managed to be reasonably functioning adults, able to maintain healthy, happy relationships. To my knowledge they never left their partners stranded in restaurants because they’d gone to a lecture on Hitchcock and the Art of Cinematic Tension instead (on aforementioned partner’s fortieth birthday). Nor had they blown a small inheritance from an uncle by drunkenly bidding on one of the actual suits worn in Reservoir Dogs. Of course it wasn’t just about the suit or the missed meals; it was loads of stuff, piled up year after year.

Although it was me who finally decided we should split – Danny and I had never married – he didn’t exactly beg me to reconsider. I think we both knew we’d reached the end of the line. And so he moved out, to a rented flat half a mile away, and we both did our best to present our break-up in a non-dramatic manner. ‘We’re still friends who care about each other,’ I told Molly and Alfie – which was actually true.

A year or so later, Danny started seeing a make-up artist ten years his junior. I was fine with that, truly; Danny and I were managing to get along pretty cordially, and I was enjoying teasing him about his new liaison. ‘So how are things with Kiki Badger?’ I asked during one of our regular chats on the phone.

I heard him exhale. ‘Nads, why d’you always do this?’

‘Do what?’

‘You know. Use both of her names.’

I smirked. ‘It’s one of those names you have to say in full …’

‘Why?’

‘Because it sounds like a sex toy. “The batteries in my Kiki Badger have gone flat!”’

‘You’re ridiculous,’ he exclaimed, laughing. Then, after a pause: ‘It’s nothing serious, y’know? We’re just … hanging out.’ Yeah, sure. ‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone …’

‘You know there isn’t,’ I said quickly.

‘No I don’t. You might have someone squirrelled away—’

‘Hidden in a cupboard?’

‘Maybe,’ he sniggered.

‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ I retorted, but in truth I wasn’t too interested. It’s not that Alfie and Molly would have kicked off if I’d started seeing someone; at least, I don’t think they would have.

As it turned out, their dad and Kiki have stuck together over the years, and the kids have always seemed fine with that. However, they lived with me, and perhaps that made me more cautious. I wasn’t prepared to endure some teeth-gritting, ‘Alfie, Molly – this is Colin!’ kind of scenario at breakfast with some bloke I wasn’t particularly serious about. There were a couple of brief flings, conducted when Molly and Alfie were at their dad’s, and a significant one, eighteen months ago; well, it was significant to me. But since then? Precisely nothing.

It’s fine, honestly. It really is. It’s just slightly galling that the kids have left home and I’m free as a bird – yet I’ve found precisely no one to tempt into my nest.

Chapter Two

And yet … celibacy has its advantages. It really does!

I’m not even saying that in a bitter tone, with my teeth gritted. I can happily wander about with hairy bison legs beneath my jeans, if I want to. I can orgasm perfectly well by myself, and have plenty of friends to knock around with. Corinne and Gus are two of my closest; we’ve all known each other since our art college days in Dundee, and these days we share a studio pretty close to the city centre. As my children grew up, and I managed to establish myself properly, I reached the point where I could finally afford to work outside of the flat. It feels like a luxury sometimes, as now Alfie and Molly have left I can hardly complain about the lack of space at home. But I love working here. Our studio is the top floor of a tatty old warehouse, currently decked out with decorations and a sparkling white tree, as Christmas is approaching.

‘So your present to yourself is to get online,’ remarks Gus, as he makes coffee for the three of us.

‘I’m not joining a dating site,’ I say firmly.

‘Why not just give it a go?’ He glances over from the huge canvas he’s working on.

‘I’ve told you, Gus. It’s just not my thing.’

I turn back to the preliminary sketches that are littered all over my desk. I’m illustrating a series of study guides covering English, maths and history, and possibly more subjects, if the client is happy with the results. As I start to sketch, I’m aware of Gus and Corinne exchanging a look; both of them reckon I have been single for far too long.

It’s a year and a half since I last slept with someone, and that person happened to be Ryan Tibbles, who was also at art college with us, although I hadn’t known him very well when we were students. I’d just experienced a little frisson whenever I glimpsed him mooching around, with his mop of black, shaggy hair and languid expression, a smouldering roll-up permanently clamped between his sexy lips.

After we’d graduated, everyone had scattered all over the country in pursuit of work or to further their studies. I returned to Glasgow, to do admin for a small design company, hoping it would lead to greater things. Ryan, who’d been the star of his year, whizzed off to do a post-grad at St Martins in London. I heard nothing from him for all those years until he turned up out of the blue at a party at Corinne’s.

She hadn’t even invited him; he’d been in Glasgow on some work-related mission, and someone had brought him along. We sat together all night, reminiscing about college and, eventually, indulging in a little furtive hand-holding and kissing. ‘Be good, you two!’ Corinne had chuckled as we left together.

I took him back to my place where we crept in gingerly at 6.30 a.m. There was no real need to creep – Molly and Alfie were away on a school trip to France – but still, I’d half expected them to jump out from behind the sofa yelling, ‘Ah-a! So here’s our filthy mother, drunk and with a man!’ Even when Ryan and I went to bed, I was still on edge in case they charged in, flung down their rucksacks and clicked on the dazzling overhead light.

In the four days that followed, it felt as if we were teenagers, getting it on as much as humanly possible before my parents returned. When the kids phoned home, it was an almighty effort to put on a normal voice as I asked about their trips to Parc Astérix and the Camembert factory, which Alfie especially loved (ironic, given that he is now a vegan and regards cheese as the devil’s work: ‘No, I don’t miss it, Mum. Why’s everyone so obsessed with cheese?’ Because it’s heavenly! I always want to retort).

During that whole time, Ryan and I barely left my flat. We had pizzas delivered – cheese-laden pizzas – and drank wine during the day. We had long, languid baths together, with Ryan graciously occupying the tap end. It was terribly decadent but then, it had marked the end of yet another lengthy sex drought for me. It was as if I’d been on a juice fast – not just a weekend ‘cleanse’, but for two bloody years – and had then been presented with a mountain of profiteroles. I started to think we might have a ‘thing’, albeit of the sporadic, long-distance variety, as Ryan was still based in London. Like an idiot, I pictured him nipping up for weekends, and me standing there – blow-dried, make-up immaculate – at Glasgow Central station, waiting for him.

Then my kids came back, by which point Ryan had already loped off back to London, where he runs a successful leather accessories company, promising to stay in touch. But his replies to my texts were curt – he was ‘manic with work’, or ‘out of the country’ – then they stopped altogether. Some frantic googling revealed that, for many years, Ryan had been having an on-off thing with a model-stroke-personal-trainer with an ash-blonde pixie cut.

I felt pretty foolish, I suppose, as he’d claimed he hadn’t been seeing anyone for ages. I’d trusted him; perhaps that’s another reason why I refuse to join a dating site, despite Gus and Corinne badgering me to do so.

‘There must be someone you’d consider having a drink with,’ Corinne remarks now, when the three of us break off for coffee on our squashy corner sofa.

‘Yeah, there are about 800,000 people in this city, Nads,’ Gus adds with a smirk.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but once you take away everyone who’s too young, too old, married or crazy, that probably leaves about three, and what would be the chances of us fancying each other?’

‘There’s every chance,’ Gus insists. ‘You’re a very gorgeous woman, Nads.’

I laugh and look at Corinne. ‘And he’s not even drunk!’

He snorts in mock exasperation. All three of us are single but, unlike Corinne and me, he has no shortage of dates. A good-looking artist with bags of charm, apparently he has no desire to meet ‘the one’. While his lifestyle would be a little hectic for me, I envy him sometimes.

‘Don’t you ever look at a man and think, oooh?’ he asks.

‘It’s very, very rare,’ I say truthfully. In fact, I reflect as I get back to work, I’ve wondered if that part of my biological make-up has died, like a flat car battery. But that very lunchtime, when I pop out to buy a few last-minute presents, it becomes clear that that hasn’t happened after all.

The city centre feels jolly and festive, and I look around, feeling grateful to be part of this big, vibrant city where I grew up, and which I still love very much. In a few days’ time I’ll be installed at my sister Sarah’s on the Ayrshire coast, with Molly and Alfie and Sarah’s family for Christmas, and it’ll be lovely. We’ll all eat too much (Sarah is a wonderful cook, the self-appointed Queen of Christmas), play board games and kick back and relax. But for now I’m enjoying the festive build-up, the seasonal music blasting out from the shops, and the sense that quite a few shoppers have enjoyed a few drinks already.

Feeling the chill now, and regretting not putting on a jacket, I step gratefully into the warmth of a bustling shop. I’m perusing the shelves, looking for stocking fillers for Molly, when a dark-haired man – wearing jeans, a black jacket and a grey sweater – walks in. I know it’s weird to stare so blatantly, but I can’t help myself. Despite the marauding hordes, and ‘Winter Wonderland’ blaring out of the speakers, I cannot tear my gaze away.

Apparently, my ability to find another person wildly desirable hasn’t died after all. It has just jump-started.

He is tall and lean with a strong, proud nose and the kind of generous mouth that suggests he smiles a lot. From my vantage point some way across the shop, I can’t tell what colour his eyes are. But actually, it’s not just his appearance that’s stopped me in my tracks.

Normally, the word ‘aura’ makes me shudder, but this man has one. It’s one of quiet courage and calmness – the way he strolled into the melee without flinching. Clearly on a mission, a bold pioneer fearlessly navigating the store, apparently untroubled by people clamouring for highly scented goods. He wanders from one display to the next, then stops and looks around, as if assessing the terrain before deciding how best to proceed …

A man, in a branch of Lush, five days before Christmas: he deserves some kind of national bravery award for that.

I try to focus on what I came in for, but all thoughts of body lotions and bath oils have evaporated now. I edge past a boy with mauve dreadlocks who’s demonstrating some kind of product in a bowl of bubbly water. Girls cluster around him, squealing excitedly as if he might be about to pluck a live unicorn from the foam.

I’m closer to the man now, pulled towards him by a powerful magnetic force. Although he seems to be alone, I still scan his immediate vicinity for evidence of an accompanying female – daughter, wife, friend. There appears to be no one. This man looks like someone I absolutely have to speak to; all I need to do is figure out how.

Don’t be a lunatic, I tell myself. He’s probably married or gay or … my God, he made eye contact and smiled at me! It was a proper smile – warm and wide and perhaps held for a couple of moments more than you might expect from a stranger. Heat surges up my neck as I smile back, briefly, before turning away. Now I’m gazing around the shop as if I have never been to Lush before, and am considering writing a thesis on it. (I’d start it: How trustworthy are those labels on the products, depicting the person who made them? Can we be sure that Daria really created that massage bar, or could the labels be randomly generated?)

Pushing away such disturbing thoughts, I edge my way towards the man, pretending to examine the hand-cut soaps along the way. There’s just a display table between us now, bearing an outlandish rockery of pink and yellow spheres. He’s peering at bowls of gloop that are displayed on crushed ice, like fish. Feeling terribly stalkerish, I sidle around the table and position myself next to him. Now I’m close enough to register the colour of his eyes; they are a clear, piercing blue.

I am literally bursting to say something to him – but what? I no longer feel like a fifty-one-year-old menopausal mother of two. In fact, I seem to have reverted to my adolescent self, who gleaned her talking-to-boys tips from Just Seventeen. I try a conversation opener in my mind: D’you think the smell in here is just from the products, or do they pump something out of secret vents?

As he picks up a macaroon-shaped bubble bar, inspiration hits me. ‘You’re not planning to eat that, are you?’ I blurt out.

He looks momentarily shocked, then smiles. ‘Ha, no, don’t worry. They do look pretty edible though, don’t they?’

‘They really do,’ I reply, sensing my face simmering. Thanks, plummeting oestrogen levels. Fine time for a hot flush. I press a hand onto the crushed ice in an attempt to cool myself.

‘So hard to choose, isn’t it?’ I add, trying to establish common ground: i.e. we both find Lush confusing. Therefore, we must leave and go for a coffee together immediately.

‘To be honest, I don’t know where to start,’ he says.

‘Can I help at all?’ I ask eagerly.

‘Er, yes, maybe you can.’ Another disarming smile. ‘That would be brilliant, actually …’

‘So, um, is it Christmas presents you’re after?’

Of course it is, idiot. Why else would he be in here on December 20th? ‘Yeah.’ He rakes back his shortish hair. Noting the absence of wedding ring, I plough on: ‘Who for?’

‘My daughter.’ Yes! Not my incredibly sexy wife. ‘She’s kind of addicted to this place,’ he adds.

‘Ha, yes, mine too. So, has she given you any hints of what she’d like?’

‘Not really. Just bath stuff, I think. And maybe, uh, some creams and things for her face?’

‘You mean skincare?’ I offer, expertly.

‘Yes, skincare – stuff like that.’ He pauses. ‘She’s fourteen. Could you tell me what girls of that age tend to go for?’

I’m about to feign insider knowledge and say yes, of course – when I realise: he thinks I work here. Lush staff don’t have uniforms, a quick glance confirms, and in my black sweatshirt and jeans I could probably pass as a sales assistant (apart from being roughly thirty years older than these exuberant boys and girls, and having no interesting piercings or tattoos).

I press my hand further into the ice, reluctant to correct his mistake, as he’d probably hurry off to find someone to help him. ‘You could start with some bath bombs or bubble bars,’ I suggest.

‘Right.’ He looks at them thoughtfully. ‘So … what do they do, exactly?’

‘Er, well, they’re pretty spectacular,’ I start, trying to exude the enthusiasm of a genuine salesperson. ‘You drop them in, and there’s this explosion … ’

‘Explosion?’ He flashes a wide grin, and something seems to effervesce right here, thrillingly, in my stomach.

‘Like a sort of sherbet grenade,’ I charge on, ‘and it fizzles and turns the water pink or blue or whatever …’ He nods, apparently taking this in. ‘It doesn’t stain the skin, though,’ I add reassuringly.

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘But some are glittery. Perhaps avoid those, unless you want to look like a disco ball after your bath.’ His eyes glint with amusement. ‘I know they’re for your daughter, but the glitter clings to the tub, believe me. My daughter loves them. I always tried to choose her the non-glitter kind, but then there’d be secret glitter, lurking inside …’ I catch myself and laugh self-consciously. ‘That’s one thing you don’t miss when your kids leave home. The sparkly bath! Hours I’ve spent, picking it off myself …’ Stop ranting, idiot …

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he says, picking up a small brown nugget shaped like a Christmas pudding.

‘That’s a bubble bar,’ I explain, authoritatively, as Molly has had dozens of these too. ‘They’re more, er …’

‘Bubbly?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And glitter-free?’

‘Yep,’ I reply, hoping that’s correct. Whilst I’m managing to wing it so far, I’m dreading questions of a more complex nature. But of course, he’s a man – a terribly attractive man with his lovely, warm, slightly wonky smile – and he’s hardly going to quiz me about the nourishing properties of cocoa butter.

Realising my hand has gone numb, I extract it from the ice and surreptitiously wipe it on my jeans. Under my protective gaze, he starts to select various items from the display. ‘I’ll get you a basket,’ I announce, flitting off to fetch one and zooming back before he can get away.

‘Thanks.’ He piles everything in. ‘Oh, what do these do?’ He indicates some candy-pink boulders piled up on a slate.

I speed-read the explanatory label. ‘They’re jelly bombs. They’re, um, supposed to surprise and bewilder in the bathtub …’

He laughs. ‘Is that what people want?’

I smile. ‘Personally, I’d rather just relax in the bath.’ Preferably with you in it with me … As this scenario flits into my mind, I sense my cheeks blazing again, as if he might have read my lewd thoughts. ‘So, you mentioned skincare?’ I prompt him.

‘Yes, if you possibly could help me with that …’

‘Of course,’ I say, escorting him now to the cleansers and moisturisers where I manage to suggest several potions his daughter might like, simply by dredging my memory for Molly’s preferred products. As I blabber on about aloe vera and mallow extract, dropping in words like ‘brightening’ and ‘invigorating’, I realise I’m starting to enjoy myself. ‘Fresh dove orchid helps to plump up the cells,’ I explain, thinking, hang on: his daughter is only fourteen, so, presumably she doesn’t want her cells plumping …

‘Sounds ideal,’ he says, dropping a tub into his basket.

‘Could we talk about blackheads?’ I venture.

‘Sure!’

And so it goes on, this stranger amazing me with his willingness to purchase a toner, a purifying face mask and something called a ‘spritz’. I’d never realised it was so easy to flog beauty products. Perhaps I should apply for part-time work here, instead of supplementing my earnings by posing naked for the art class. At any rate, he seems impressed by my knowledge and passion for the brand, and obediently selects everything I recommend. Glancing down at his laden basket, I try to ignore a twinge of guilt as I wonder how much it’s going to cost him. Still, if I am outed as fake employee, at least I’ve boosted the day’s sales.

‘You’ve been so helpful,’ he says, eyes meeting mine. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem. Anything else I can help with?’

‘No, I think I’m all done.’

‘I’m sure your daughter will be pleased …’

‘Yeah, I hope so. Well, thanks again.’ He turns and navigates his way through the crowds towards the till. If I wasn’t afraid of my cover being blown, I’d accompany him, just to make sure he doesn’t get lost en route. Instead, I just dither about, feeling oddly light-headed, and make my way towards the door.

Outside, I inhale the crisp December air and stride along the busy shopping street. The sky is unblemished blue, the sun shining brightly. Veering off into a side road, I stop at a nondescript sandwich shop that I never go into normally. I emerge with my lunch, wondering now what possessed me to grab a cheese and onion sandwich, made with industrial white bread, like the ‘Toastie’ loaf Danny used to buy occasionally in an act of rebellion against my preferred granary. I’m clearly not thinking straight.

I walk briskly back to the studio and canter up the concrete stairs to the bright and airy top floor. ‘How’d you get on?’ Corinne asks, picking at a Danish pastry at her desk.

‘The shops are rammed,’ I reply.

‘That’s a surprise!’ Gus chuckles, tweaking his neatly trimmed beard.

‘I’ll have to go out again tomorrow,’ I add, perching on the chair at my own desk.

‘Why didn’t you do it all online?’ Gus asks. ‘It’s the modern way, you know—’

‘Yes,’ I cut in, a swirl of excitement starting up again in my stomach, ‘but there are benefits to going to the real shops.’

‘Such as?’

I’m smiling ridiculously, and now there’s no way I can resist filling them in on my impersonation of a Lush employee.

‘You should try that,’ Gus tells Corinne as they convulse with laughter. ‘Running to the aid of a confused and helpless male in a soap emporium—’

‘But did you get his number?’ she asks, looking at me.

‘No, of course not!’

Gus turns back to Corinne and smirks. ‘Yet she was absolutely fine, flogging him bubble bath under false pretences.’

‘Why didn’t you just give him yours?’ Corinne wants to know.

‘Because I was serving him. It would have been unprofessional …’ This sets them off again.

Okay, I decide, as I start to tuck into my unlovely Eighties-style sandwich: so I’ll probably never see that man again. However, something important happened today, in that I discovered I am still capable of fancying someone, after all. I am Nadia Watkins, a fully functioning woman with a working libido and everything. Which makes me think: maybe I will try to meet someone, and perhaps even find myself naked in the presence of another person, and not just the students at the life drawing class.

Chapter Three
Jack

Well, I messed up there all right. I completely forgot that Lori had asked for ‘that squidgy bath stuff’ and not bubble bars or face wash or any of the other stuff I ended up buying. It was just, the woman who’d helped me … I’d been so mesmerised. I’d completely forgotten what I’d gone in for. How could I focus on shopping efficiently when I was transfixed by the golden flecks in her greenish eyes? She’d been so patient and friendly, I’d just grabbed everything she suggested.

I know she’d only been doing her job, but … had she been flirting a tiny bit?

No, that’s just called ‘being friendly to customers’, you fool. They probably have training days about it, with role-play and everything. Still, it had worked a treat. On my way out, I’d noticed a soap the size of a dustbin lid propped up on a shelf. I’d have bought that, too, if she’d recommended it.

Back at work now – I’m the manager of a charity shop a few streets away – I realise I forgot to pick up any lunch. But no matter. Iain, one of our volunteers, offers to grab something for me while he’s out. I ask for a chicken sandwich; he returns with a duck wrap and an enormous cheese scone.

‘That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?’ he asks, ever eager to please.

‘Yeah, it’s fine, thanks,’ I say quickly, sensing a ‘situation’ brewing now as Mags, another volunteer, has emerged from the back room where donations are sorted, and is now slotting paperbacks onto the bookshelf.

‘Leave the books alone,’ shouts Iain, a keen reader of dated how-to manuals, who regards the book section as ‘his’.

‘I’m just putting new stuff out,’ Mags retorts, pink hair clip askew, lipsticked mouth pulled tight. Although it’s hard to put an age on her – our volunteer application forms don’t require a date of birth – I would guess mid-forties. She favours stonewashed jeans and floaty tops, usually made from cheesecloth, encrusted with beading around the neck. ‘You’re not the boss round here,’ she adds, glaring at Iain.

‘I’m deputy manager,’ he announces.

‘Says who?’

‘Says everyone, actually. Says Jack!’ He turns to me for confirmation, and I shrug. Although no such position exists, I – along with most of the volunteers – am happy to go along with his self-appointed elevated status, just as we willingly accept Iain’s instant coffees made with water from the hot tap. He works hard, coming in virtually every day, with utter disregard for the rota; he was visibly unsettled when I reminded him that we’d be closed for the days between Christmas and New Year.

During the couple of years he’s been volunteering for us, I’ve been to his flat several times. The last time involved escorting him home when he’d had ‘a turn’ whilst steam-cleaning some trousers in the shop’s tiny back room. As far as I’ve been able to gather, his only regular visitor is Una, the elderly lady upstairs who helps with his dog and tricky matters he struggles to deal with, like filling in forms and making calls on his behalf (Iain doesn’t like using the phone). Like with Mags, it’s hard to guess at his age, although I’ve surmised early thirties. He lives with his ageing mongrel, Pancake (‘’cause he likes to lie flat’), and has a liking for what he calls ‘found furniture’: i.e. the stuff people have left out on the pavement to be taken away by the council. Bookshelves, occasional tables and a wooden coat stand: Iain has dragged them all home, given them what he calls ‘a good sanding down’ (he means a perfunctory wipe) and then puzzled over where to put them.

The last time I was at his place, several shabby, mismatched dining chairs were lined up against a living room wall; it looked as if some kind of support group meeting was about to happen. ‘I’m going to sell them,’ he explained, with enviable confidence.

‘Piss off, Iain!’ Mags snaps now, swiping at him with a Galloping Gourmet cookbook. I stride over and suggest that she reorganises the plundered shoe section. ‘C’mon, Mags,’ I say. ‘You’ve got a real eye for it. No one makes it look as good as you do.’ As she beams with pride, Iain ‘straightens’ the books unnecessarily in order to re-establish his territory.

All afternoon, I keep thinking of the beautiful woman in Lush and wishing I’d asked her name or something. Christ, though – I don’t know what made me behave like some idiot male who’d never heard of a bath bomb. Lori’s been demanding the things every Christmas and birthday since she was about eight. I could probably sketch an accurate floor plan of that shop, the amount of times she’s dragged me in there. I’d never seen the woman who helped me, though. Maybe she’s new.

As closing time rolls around, I lock up and step out into the street, making my way through the revellers, many who’ve tumbled straight from all-afternoon Christmas lunches, by the look of it. We had our own last week, at an old-fashioned Italian in Merchant City. Mags demanded that the balloons be removed from the vicinity (she fears balloons). Iain shunned all offerings from the dessert menu and was finally appeased with a slice of Madeira cake adorned with squirty cream.

As Lush comes into view – happily, it’s still open – I decide, what the hell, I could just nip in buy the squidgy stuff Lori asked for, which I forgot all about. I clear my throat, smooth back my hair as if about to go in for a job interview, and stride in.

The heady scent engulfs me as I scan the store for the gorgeous dark-haired woman. But there’s no sign of her now. With the help of a shiny-faced teenage girl, I locate the product. It’s called ‘Fun’ and, as the girl explains its many uses, I put on a fine show of listening whilst conducting one final scan of the shop.

Nope, she’s definitely not here. And anyway, I reflect as I travel home on the packed subway, what would I have done if I’d seen her again? Lurched over to thank her one more time, when she’d probably attended to fifty more customers after me and would have assumed I was just some random nutter? Hello again! You probably don’t remember me, but a few hours ago you patiently explained the purposes of Tea Tree Gel … I imagine her at home now, with her attractive, fully functioning family: handsome husband, delightful kids, wrapping presents and putting the final touches to the Christmas tree …

Get a grip, Jack McConnell, I chastise myself silently, and possibly try to get out more.

Chapter Four

Over the next few days, I venture nowhere near the overly scented store. It’s not that I want to avoid looking like a weirdo stalker. Okay, it is partly that – but, perhaps handily, there’s no time to take lunch breaks anyway. A deluge of donations has arrived at the shop, suggesting that the whole of Glasgow is clearing out its old tat ahead of Christmas.

If the shop is going to be able to function, then all of this stuff has to be sorted. Despite the sign in our window reading ‘We welcome your sellable donations’, we’re gifted an alarming amount of skanky underwear and used toothbrushes with bristles splayed (sometimes harbouring ‘bits’). Because naturally, such items will bring in the money we need to build and support our network of animal sanctuaries. In fact, I think people sometimes forget that we are a charity at all, and regard us as a gigantic bin. Thank you kindly for your ancient knitting pattern that might possibly have been used to line a budgerigar’s cage! But then, happily, there is the odd pearl among the dross, and we actually do a tidy trade.

As the volunteers and I separate the good stuff from the ripped lampshades and filthy sandwich toasters, I find myself wondering why my lovely helper in Lush chose to work in what seems like a particularly youthful environment.

It’s not that she’s old, not at all; I’d put her at around the same age as me, and I don’t feel old. At least, sometimes I don’t (when I plucked a cracked glass dildo from a box of donated goods I did, admittedly, feel about ninety-six – and on more than one occasion my ex Elaine has ‘jokingly’ asked if I ever worry that being surrounded by so many old things might somehow seep into my consciousness and accelerate the ageing process). It’s just that she didn’t seem to quite fit with the other, multiply pierced and tattooed assistants in there. It’s bizarre, the way this stranger keeps sneaking into my thoughts. Perhaps it’s the time of year; it always unsettles me a bit.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay over the holidays?’ I ask Iain, who’s stayed on to help on our last day before we close until the new year.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he says breezily, carefully checking that all the components are present in Home and Away: The Board Game.

I glance at him. ‘You’re going to your mum’s, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Together, we begin to stack up the boxes of donations we haven’t yet sorted, in order to leave the back room in a reasonably orderly state. ‘What about the rest of the time?’ I ask. Who will you see, is what I mean, and what will you do to fill the days?

‘I’ll be fine,’ he says again.

‘Yes, but …’ I pause, wary of sounding patronising. ‘You won’t be on your own the whole time, will you?’

‘Of course not,’ he says with a trace of defensiveness. ‘I’ll be with Pancake … and I’ll finally have time to read,’ he adds, with a note of triumph, as if his life is too hectic normally.

‘Well, that’s good,’ I say as I lift a basket of hairdryers, their cables entangled, onto a shelf.

‘Yeah.’ He beams at me. ‘I’m going to learn some new stuff. Expand my mind …’ He indicates the scruffy hardbacks he’s stacked on the fridge, set aside for him to take home.

‘What kind of stuff?’ I ask, now wiping down the worktop of our tiny kitchen area.

‘All kinds of stuff!’

I turn and look at him. Whenever Iain’s in the shop, he’s never far from my side. Today he’s wearing one of his customary V-necked sweaters – tufts of chest hair are poking out – and his curious old-mannish trousers that always look a little too tight for his belly. Dropping the sponge wipe into the sink, I check the books he’s chosen. ‘Vehicle Maintenance for Beginners,’ I murmur.

‘Yeah!’

Whilst I am not au fait with Iain’s various conditions, I’d be surprised – and frankly alarmed – if he was ever capable of driving a car.

Small Plot Gardening in Full Colour is another of his choices. But Iain doesn’t have a small plot, or even a balcony. I check more of his books – which he’ll insist on paying for – hoping to find something that might be of use to a single man living alone with a dog. Picture Framing Made Easy, Creative Crafting With Yarn …

‘That’s what I’m going to do,’ Iain says eagerly.

I frown. ‘What, make macramé pictures of owls?’

‘No,’ he sniggers. ‘I mean this one. I’m going to learn to cook.’ He plucks the relevant book from his pile, and I recognise it immediately: a once-popular guide to a savagely punishing dietary regime.

‘We get this all the time,’ I remark. ‘If there was a prize for the most handed-in book, this would win it. It’s because no one can actually stick to it, Iain.’

He pushes back his wonky, possibly self-cut fringe: ‘But it’s full of healthy recipes. Weren’t you saying I should start eating better?’

I shrug in bafflement, having no memory of saying anything of the sort. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Yeah, you did. At the Christmas lunch …’

‘Oh, that. All I meant was, we’d seen the menu beforehand, and you said you were fine with the full turkey dinner. And then, on the day, you decided you didn’t want veg …’

‘I don’t eat veg,’ he says indignantly.

‘You wanted chips,’ I remind him, ‘instead of roast potatoes, and baked beans in place of the sprouts …’

Iain beams at me. ‘Yeah, well, like I said, I’m going to read this and be healthier, like you’re always on at me about …’ This is so not true. I’m never ‘on at’ him about anything, although sometimes I suspect he’d like me to act like a sort of dad-type figure, dispensing advice. Although he mentions his mum occasionally – I gather she struggles with a raft of mental health issues – he’s given the impression that his father was never around. It’s Una, his upstairs neighbour, who seems to keep an eye on him.

‘Well, um, I think that’s great,’ I say, ‘but, y’know, that book was written quite a long time ago, and people don’t really go for her methods anymore …’

‘But she’s a doctor,’ he insists, jabbing the author’s name on the cover.

I pause, wondering whether to break it to him. ‘The thing is, she’s not actually a real one.’

‘But it says it on the book!’ His eyes flash with indignation.

‘Yes, but there’s been some debate about whether her qualifications are real, or if she’s just a bit of a charlatan …’

‘A charlatan?’

‘You know – a cheat, a fake …’ I’m reminded now of a difficult conversation I had with Lori a few years back, when she asked me to tell her straight – no messing – whether Father Christmas really exists.

‘People can’t do that,’ Iain retorts. ‘Not when they write books.’

‘They can, if they have the nerve. I mean, I could call myself a doctor …’

‘But you’d be lying, wouldn’t you?’ He glares at me as if I might be considering it as a possibility.

‘Well, yes. I’m just saying—’

‘How did she write a book then?’ Iain snaps.

‘By sitting at her computer and hammering it out, I’d imagine.’ I catch Iain’s crestfallen expression and regret being so blunt. ‘Look,’ I add, ‘I don’t know for certain, but I do know there was a TV show years ago where she used to examine people’s poos …’

‘Ugh!’

‘And you don’t want to spend your Christmas doing that,’ I remark, but my attempt at a joke seems to appal Iain even further.

‘No, I do not.’

‘It wouldn’t be very festive,’ I add, at which, thankfully, his eyes glimmer with amusement as he finally realises I’m having him on.

‘I don’t want to ever look at people’s poos,’ he adds, ‘unless they’re Pancake’s. And I don’t like it, y’know – I just do it, with the little plastic bags, because you can’t just leave it lying there, can you? Not if you’re trying to be a good citizen.’

‘No, you can’t,’ I say, glancing at the clock now. It’s almost seven p.m., and Iain and I have spent an extra two hours past closing time, sorting donations. I’m paid an okay-ish salary to manage this place, and for the most part I enjoy it. But now I’m seized by an urge to head home, maybe go for a run or meet up with friends, anything rather than be trapped in our dingy back room.

I can tell Iain’s still feeling rattled as he stuffs his books into a carrier bag. In regular shops, where everyone’s paid, you can pretty much expect your team to come in and do their job, and go home; it’s a straightforward exchange of money for labour. A charity shop works differently. While some of our helpers – mainly the elderly ladies – simply enjoy the company and want to make a difference, others are more emotionally entwined with our little emporium.

I started out here as a volunteer myself. I needed something to keep me busy after the Glasgow-based book publisher’s I worked for went bust. It was gutting, really, when it happened. Gander Books had been a tight-knit operation with just the MD, two editors, a couple of admins and myself. After a media course at college, followed by a smattering of casual jobs, I’d been taken on at twenty-three as an admin assistant. Keen and hard-working, I seemed to fit in well, and pretty soon I was promoted until I was taking care of Gander’s publicity, marketing and events. It was a brilliant job, and as book publishing jobs are few and far between in Glasgow, I was happy to stay put.

Gander won literary prizes and Independent Publisher of the Year, and all seemed to be going swimmingly for many years until authors started to complain of advances and royalties being delayed, then not paid at all. The permanent staff were put on ‘emergency measures’ (i.e. drastically cut pay) and finally, after months of uncertainty, the whole place sunk.

We were all bereft. I’d worked there for fifteen years, and the place had felt like a second family. There was no payout for staff, and by then Elaine and I had a four-year-old daughter so I couldn’t hang around, perusing job ads until the ‘ideal’ position came up. For a few years I worked for an events company, building up a second strand in freelance proofreading on the side. When redundancy happened again I decided, to hell with it; the next job I took would really matter to me and what the hell if I took a big pay cut. I’d kept in touch with the manager of the charity shop, and when she decided to move on it felt kind of right to apply.

Iain turns up his jacket collar against the sharp wind as we step outside. ‘It’s great that you want to learn to cook,’ I tell him. ‘But how about you forget that cranky cookbook, and try something simple that doesn’t need a recipe?’

He folds his arms over his substantial stomach as I lock up the shop. ‘Like … salad?’

‘No, not salad,’ I say quickly. ‘How about soup? Something simple like that?’

‘But I just buy my soup …’

‘Okay, but if you’re going do some cooking over the holidays, it’s a good place to start. It’s the easiest thing. Even Lori can make it.’

‘What d’you do, then?’ he asks as we fall into step.

‘Fry up some leeks or onions, then chuck in any other veg, and water. Throw in a stock cube …’

‘Is that all soup is?’

‘Yep, that’s it.’ We fall into companionable silence as we make our way towards the car park. On the days I drive in, Iain tends to accompany me to my car, as if I might be incapable of finding it without his help. ‘Well, enjoy your Christmas,’ I add as we reach it. ‘And good luck with the cooking—’

‘Aw, shit!’ he says as his carrier bag splits, and his books tumble to the ground. As we don’t have another bag for him to carry them home in, he agrees to leave them in my car. Apart from the dog-eared diet cookbook, which he insists on taking home – ‘in case I need it.’ And I watch him, clutching it to his chest as he marches off, leaving waves of indignation in his wake.

Chapter Five

The next day I take Lori for our Christmas Eve lunch. As it’s her mum’s turn to spend the big day with her, this is our festive treat together. My daughter chose the sushi restaurant – because naturally, what you really want in Glasgow in December is chilled rice and raw fish, shunting towards you on a conveyor belt. ‘Shivery food,’ her mother calls it, but in fact, I’m quite happy to be here. Although Lori usually spends a couple of weeknights at mine – plus every second weekend – it still feels kind of special as we perch on our stools and tuck in.

‘So, did you go to the school dance?’ I ask as she swipes her third plate from the belt.

She shakes her head. ‘Decided not to.’

‘Oh, why was that?’

Lori twirls a noodle around her chopstick. ‘You know what they’re like.’

I can’t help smiling. ‘Not really, Lor. I mean, our school dances had Scottish music, and this awful situation of the boys all lined up on one side of the hall, and the girls on the other, and you were expected to walk over and pick someone …’

‘You mean the boys always picked? How is that fair?’

‘It’s not fair. It’s just the way it was …’

‘The girls never picked?’

I laugh and shake my head. ‘I wasn’t responsible for the system, Lor. That was a long time ago …’ I break off, realising she’s dodging my question. ‘Anyway, why didn’t you go?’

She shrugs. ‘I wasn’t allowed.’

‘By who? By Mum?’ I frown at her. It’s unlike Elaine to lay down the law about anything. She let Lori have her ears pierced at ten years old, which I wasn’t delighted about. But what could I have done when I only found out after the event?

‘Mr Fletcher said I couldn’t go,’ Lori says airily, referring to her form teacher. She flicks back her fine light brown hair and studies the conveyor belt. ‘I wish there were those little pancake things. You know the ones with the duck?’

‘Lor, why weren’t you allowed to go?’ I prompt her.

‘Just stupid stuff …’

‘Okay, but what exactly? It seems a bit severe—’

‘I didn’t want to go anyway,’ she says firmly, wrinkling her lightly freckled upturned nose.

She snatches a dish of tuna sushi and spears it with her chopsticks. At fourteen, she wears her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, virtually lives in jeans, T-shirts and baggy sweaters, and shows zero interest in make-up. All of this makes her look, if not younger than she really is, like a girl of her actual age. It’s a relief, frankly. Her best friend Shannon has spray tans and wears terrifyingly thick false eyelashes, like fluttering canopies. She is well into boyfriend territory – livid love bites have been spotted on her neck – whereas, thankfully, Lori still seems to regard boys as mates.

‘It’s not really anything,’ she adds firmly.

‘C’mon, just tell me. I promise not to go on at you, okay?’

She sniffs. ‘Just behaviour and things.’

‘Right. So what kind of—’

‘Dad,’ she says impatiently, ‘just being late for lessons, stuff like that.’ She sighs, and I decide to let it go for now as we tuck into our lunch. ‘So, where are we off to next?’

‘Fancy seeing a film?’

‘Yeah! What’s on?’

Consulting my phone, I run through the list. It’s a madcap comedy we go for, and as Lori and I snigger our way through it – at one point a piece of popcorn shoots from her mouth – I sense my worries about her ebbing away. Never mind her lateness, the school dance, or whatever might be going on in her mother’s life (‘Everything’s fine, Jack! Why wouldn’t it be?’). I have friends whose teenagers would never deign to go to the cinema with them, and it’s one of my greatest joys that Lori doesn’t yet find my company repulsive.

Back at her mother’s pebble-dashed terrace on the Southside, Elaine oohs and ahhs over the presents I’ve bought Lori, which she insisted on opening immediately, littering the living room with torn paper.

‘All that Lush stuff!’ Elaine marvels, arms folded across her dark green sweater. ‘You’re a lucky girl. It’s not cheap in there, you know.’ Behind her, a miniature fake Christmas tree is sitting a little askew on a side table. ‘Get me some henna next time you’re in, will you?’ she adds. I smile; Elaine is the only woman I know who still hennas her hair. Sometimes it’s a startling orangey colour, at other times a deep shade of rust; as a colouring agent it seems rather hit and miss.

Now Lori is enthusing over further gifts of new jeans, a top (incredibly, she still allows me to choose clothes for her), a voucher for trainers and a small wad of cash.

Lori hugs me goodbye, and disappears back into the living room as Elaine sees me out. ‘You’re so good to her,’ she says. ‘Thanks, Jack. So, are you off out tonight?’

‘Maybe. No plans as yet. How about you?’

‘Nope, just a quiet night in for us two.’ She pauses, and as I glance across the garden I can’t help noticing that one of her wheelie bins – the one for glass – is crammed to the point where its lid won’t shut.

‘Look at the state of that,’ she retorts, catching my gaze.

‘It’s pretty full,’ I concede.

She steps further out into the garden, her breath forming white puffs in the chilly air. ‘That’s people dumping stuff in as they walk past.’

I look at her incredulously. If Elaine wanted to lie, couldn’t she have blamed the bin men for failing to empty it? ‘You mean passers-by lean over your wall, open your bin and drop their empties into it?’ I almost laugh.

‘Yeah,’ she exclaims. ‘Can you believe it?’

‘Not really. Not when there’s a perfectly good council bottle bin down the road …’

Elaine purses her lips. Her partying days are long over, she’s always keen to assert; now, it’s just a glass or two of wine in the evenings, and what’s wrong with that?

‘I’ve told you about this before,’ she adds, frowning, although she hasn’t; last time it appeared to be overflowing, she insisted it was ‘mainly olive oil bottles and pickle jars’ (Christ, it sounds as if I’ve created a hobby of monitoring the fullness of Elaine’s bin!).

‘Maybe you should put a lock on it?’ I suggest, at which she regards me coolly.

‘Jack, what are you trying to say exactly?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Obviously you are. Why not just come out with it—’

‘No need to be so defensive,’ I say lightly. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, let’s not start bickering now …’

‘If I’m defensive,’ she shoots back, ‘it’s because you’re bloody sanctimonious!’

Hell, why did I touch on the matter of her drinking now? I should have known better – it achieves nothing – and if we were going to talk about it properly, then it wouldn’t be in her front garden with Lori just a few feet away, inside the house. ‘I don’t mean to be,’ I say levelly. ‘I know I’m not perfect, and I’m not trying to judge—’

‘Not trying to judge?’ she splutters. ‘Well, you are judging. You always have and you’re even worse now, with your running … ’

‘What? I jog up and down the river about three times a week …’

‘… with your personal bests and your fancy sports watch …’

‘Can we leave it please, Elaine?’

She glares at me. ‘Or we could empty the bin if you like, and count the bottles?’

Oh, for crying out loud, why did I let us get into this? ‘Jesus, just forget it okay?’ She blinks at me and, alarmingly, her eyes have filled with angry tears. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, stepping towards her.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she mutters, and I glimpse Lori, briefly, at the living room window before she disappears again.

‘But you don’t seem—’

‘Just go, Jack,’ Elaine adds, turning away, ‘and enjoy your Christmas. Have a fantastic time, tanking into your dad’s Italian wines with your brother …’

‘Elaine …’

‘But that doesn’t count as drinking, does it?’ she snaps. ‘Not when it’s good stuff. It never does.’

That went well, I reflect bleakly as I drive home, hoping that Lori didn’t overhear any of it, and reminding myself that Elaine is an adult woman of forty-five, who can make her own choices in life – and is a pretty good mother by all accounts. Lori is apparently well cared for, adequately fed and sent off to school on time. She never has any untoward stories to tell. I’ve tried to quiz her – gently – about whether everything’s okay with her mum, but Lori just snaps, ‘She’s fine, Dad. Why’re you asking?’ I’ve even made it clear that, if my daughter ever wanted to live with me full-time, that would fine with me, we could make it work – but she’s dismissed it. ‘Mum’s just been a bit unlucky,’ she admitted recently, and maybe it’s true.

When Elaine recently lost her administrative job at a community project, it was apparently due to cuts, and not the copious sick days she always claimed were due to her asthma, and never hangovers. When she fell downstairs and broke her arm last summer, it was apparently due to her tripping over the laundry basket on the landing. Lori backed up her mum’s explanation, and I didn’t want to go on about it. Anyway, without installing CCTV in Elaine’s house, it’s impossible to know exactly what goes on.

Back home now, I let myself into my tenement flat in the part of town that’s being flaunted as ‘the new West End’, which just means cheaper than the West End, and less desirable. I like it though, with its muddle of individual shops with their mysterious vegetables piled up in boxes outside.

In my living room, I open a couple of Christmas cards from cousins down south and place them on the mantelpiece with the others. I, too, have a Christmas tree; Lori would be appalled if I didn’t. And while I can’t claim to have had ‘tons’ of festive nights out, there was a jovial pub gathering with a few of us who’ve knocked around together since I was nineteen, when I first moved here from out in the sticks, up in Perthshire. And now – Mr Popular! – my phone pings; a text from my mate Fergus, reminding me that a bunch of them are meeting for drinks in town. It’s tempting to join them right now but, with the drive up to Mum and Dad’s tomorrow morning, I decide to delay the pleasure of a few beers by going for a run first.

A short while later I’m pounding along beside the river. The Clyde shimmers beneath the dark sky, and traffic nudges slowly over the bridge. I keep close to the railings, wondering now about Mags and Iain, and how they’ll fill their days until the shop opens up again after New Year.

I had considered opening up for those in-between days so they’d have somewhere to go. ‘That’s a bit bonkers, Jack – you need a break too,’ Dinah the area manager had said, and she was probably right. Now it’s Elaine who’s snuck back into my thoughts. Will she remember to defrost her turkey and not try to nuke it in the microwave as she did a couple of years ago? Of course she’s capable of cooking a bird, I tell myself, annoyed with my inability to switch off and ‘get in the zone’, as proper runners are supposed to do. I jog on, all of this stuff whirling in my head like a gigantic stew, and then it all stops – suddenly – when I see her in the distance.

I’m sure it’s her – the woman who helped me in Lush. Yes, it’s definitely her. With her creamy skin and abundant dark brown hair, there’s something incredibly striking about her. She is strolling towards me, head slightly dipped. I slow my pace, wondering if she’ll recognise me and thinking perhaps it’s best if she doesn’t, given I’m wearing my ratty old running gear and slathered in sweat. Of course she won’t; she’s on her phone, seemingly deep in conversation. She stops and rakes a hand through her hair. I stop too, and pretend to check the sports watch I bought in the hope that it would turn me into a bona fide athlete, but which serves only to plague me with its mysterious vibrations and bleeps.

We’re closer now – close enough for me to catch her conversation. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ she exclaims, phone clutched to her ear. ‘It sounds like you’re being pressurised, love …’ I fiddle with my watch, wondering why a picture of a weight lifter has appeared on the screen. ‘For God’s sake, Alfie,’ she blurts out, ‘what about the nut roast?’

There’s more muttering, and just as I’m thinking, What d’you think you’re doing, eavesdropping on a stranger’s personal conversation? she finishes the call and shoves her phone into her bag. She stands there for a moment, staring out over the river as if trying to gather herself together, then strides on.

My watch bleeps again. I look down, still catching my breath but cooling rapidly now. Inexplicably, the word ‘Move!’ is flashing on the screen. It’s so bossy, this hideously expensive gadget. I couldn’t make head nor tail of its functions as I squinted at the instructions with the ant-sized print. But now I’m thinking: perhaps it is useful after all? Maybe, on top of monitoring my pulse rate and pace, it can sense my indecision and give me some indication of what to do next?

‘Move! Move!’ my watch commands me.

I move.

Chapter Six
Nadia

Well, that’s just great. Alfie, who has already delayed his homecoming by some days, isn’t spending Christmas Day with me after all. ‘You don’t mind if I spend it at Cam’s, do you?’ he just asked me, when I was expecting him to be rattling towards Glasgow on the train. Cam – Camilla – is his new girlfriend with whom he appears to be smitten.

Do I mind? Of course I bloody mind!

‘So when will I see you?’ I asked, feeling horribly needy as I marched along by the river. I only came down here because he called, otherwise I’d have headed straight home on the subway. Now I’m so agitated I’m just stomping along, trying to calm myself. But there’s no point in getting angry; I know that. He doesn’t care about the nut roast I’ve already made to take to my sister Sarah’s tomorrow.

In truth, I’m not entirely happy about this vegan business – especially as he let slip that Camilla happens to be vegan too. ‘Don’t make yourself anaemic just to impress her,’ I wanted to say when he declared his new dietary principles a few weeks ago – but I had the good sense not to. Instead, I merely suggested that he should read up on nutrition and treat it seriously. Of course I will, he retorted. I’m doing it properly, y’know. I’m not an idiot … Hmmm. I still wasn’t overly delighted. I’m sure veganism is fine, if you’re motivated enough to swot up on all the food groups and soak things for billions of years. I just couldn’t quite imagine my eighteen-year-old son, who used to virtually faint with delight at the sight of a steak, involving himself with pulses.

‘Aw, Mum, I’ll see you the day after Boxing Day, okay?’ he muttered a few minutes ago.

‘The day after Boxing Day?’ I exclaimed.

‘Well, there are no trains till then.’

‘I could come up and fetch you. How about that? Have Christmas with Camilla, and then I’ll drive up and—’

‘Yeah, but they have a massive party on Boxing Day,’ he continued blithely, ‘and Cam says it’s brilliant. Everyone brings musical instruments, there’s a whole jamming thing going on, it sounds mental. There’s so much food and drink, her dad saves his special wine for it and I really wanna be there for that.’ Ah, right. How fantastically fun. Clearly, the thought of us lot sitting around eating Twiglets and playing Pictionary can’t compare to Camilla and The Special Wine. ‘Your nut roast’ll keep, won’t it?’ he added, trying to placate me now.

‘I’m not sure,’ I huffed. ‘I’ll probably have to freeze it. It’s this gigantic boulder made from ground hazelnuts and about sixty-five other ingredients and it’ll take about three weeks to defrost.’

Alfie chuckled. ‘Sounds awesome, Mum …’ No, it didn’t. It sounded as if it’d have him hurtling to the lavatory. ‘So, I’ll see you on the 27th, all right?’ he added. ‘We’ll have a nice time then.’ Which felt like being offered the flat gold-wrapped toffee from the Quality Street tin after all the best ones have gone.

Never-fucking-mind, I think tearfully as I stride onwards now, my breath forming clouds as I exhale fiercely into the crisp evening air. I’m being silly, I know. It’s only Christmas, and Molly is home with me already; she arrived yesterday. But then so have her friends, so I’ve just seen her as a blur who’s darted in and clogged up the loo with an avalanche of paper before rushing back out again. She found me later, trying to unblock it with a wire coat hanger. ‘What’re you doing?’ she asked.

‘Panning for gold,’ I replied.

‘You’re pretty handy, Mum,’ she said, grinning. ‘Let me know if you find something we can sell.’

The thought of my daughter’s audacity lifts my spirits as I glance across the shimmering river. Christmas will work out okay, I tell myself. Perhaps I should be more like Danny, who never gets in a state about stuff like this; to him, the festive season merely represents an interruption to his work schedule. He spends time with the kids, and sometimes he even pops round to see me – minus Kiki, with whom I have a polite-but-distant relationship. She’s fine, actually. I only tend to see her occasionally, in passing, and apart from her obvious gorgeousness there’s absolutely no reason to feel iffy about her at all.

Anyway … sodding Christmas. It’s up to Alfie where he spends it, I guess, and I just want to kick back and enjoy the holidays with my family. I’ve been working flat-out lately, finishing jobs in the early hours, sometimes tumbling into bed when the birds had started to tweet outside. On top of the textbooks, I’ve completed a series of greetings cards, a travel guide to Scotland and a department store’s stationery range recently. When I finally cleared my workload, and with Molly and Alfie’s homecoming imminent, I scrubbed the flat from top to bottom (as if they’d notice and praise my efforts!). I even bought them new bed linen, as if they’ve been at sea for six months. I don’t plan to spoil our precious time together by moaning about their toast crumbs or tendency to lie in till noon, or constantly demand to know where they’re going and what time they’ll be home—

‘Hi! Excuse me?’

I stop and glance around. At first I’m not sure who called out, assuming it wasn’t directed at me anyway. But then I see a man in running gear striding towards me. As I pat my pockets instinctively, thinking I must have dropped something, and he’s kindly picked it up, it dawns on me that it’s him: the man I encouraged to buy numerous unnecessary products for his daughter.

Oh, God, he’s going to say he knew all along that I was a phoney! And he’ll ask me if I have any other hobbies, apart from impersonating the salespeople in Lush …

‘Hi,’ he says again, smiling hesitantly now as he approaches.

‘Hi,’ I say brightly.

He stops in front of me and wipes his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Erm, you probably don’t remember me, but you helped me in—’

‘Yes, I do remember,’ I cut in quickly as various thoughts dart around my brain, such as: Shall I admit I don’t work there, and how can I do so without sounding mad? And: How is it possible for a man to appear so attractive in jogging bottoms and a running top, all claggy with sweat?

‘Well, um,’ he says, ‘I just thought I’d say hi. Nice to see you again.’ He shuffles from foot to foot. ‘Guess you’re looking forward to your break?’

‘Er, yes. Yes, I really am.’ Because it’s exhausting, being trapped in the back room, slicing up soaps! I’m aware that my smile has set.

‘Pretty hectic in there, isn’t it? In the shop, I mean …’

‘It is, yeah.’ I laugh in a tell-me-about-it sort of way.

He looks up and down the riverside walkway and clears his throat. ‘So, erm, anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for helping me choose all those—’

‘Oh, it’s fine, really …’

‘Just doing your job, of course …’

‘Yes!’ I beam at him, wondering how my cheeks can possibly burn so hotly on a cold December night.

There’s a moment’s pause. ‘Er, so, are you heading straight home now?’ he asks.

‘Erm, yes, I s’pose I am.’

‘To wrap presents?’

‘All done …’

‘Well done you!’ We laugh awkwardly and look at each other, and now I’m thinking rather hopefully: yes, I am going home, but I don’t have to stay there all evening. I could come out later as Molly’s bound to be out again, and my son has chosen to be with his girlfriend whom he has known for all of five minutes instead of his family, and—

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ he adds, ‘but you seemed a bit upset just then.’

Christ, he noticed? ‘Oh, that was just my son,’ I say quickly, ‘telling me he won’t be coming home for Christmas with me after all.’ I shrug.

‘Really? That’s a shame.’

‘The lure of the girlfriend. I suppose I don’t blame him really …’

‘Yeah. Hard for you, though …’

‘I’ll just have to manage without him.’ I smile, aware of that flat-toffee feeling ebbing away rapidly.

The man grins, rather shyly, and I sense that neither of us wants to move on. ‘Um, I don’t suppose you’d like to meet for a drink sometime?’ he asks, pushing back his sweat-dampened hair.

‘Oh.’ I realise I am beaming now, and wonder if he’s noticed the absence of a wedding ring – or perhaps it’s the way I said ‘Christmas with me’ and not ‘us’? ‘Yes, that’d be lovely,’ I say, even as I’m wondering what on earth I’m going to do about the Lush issue. How would I keep up the pretence, if he we did meet up? But what the hell – it’s just a drink he’s suggesting, and if the subject comes up, I’ll swerve him off it …

‘You’re not free later this evening, are you?’ he asks.

‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ I remind him.

‘Yes, it is.’ He gives me what I can only interpret as a hopeful smile.

‘Don’t you have plans?’ I say.

‘Um, well, my daughter’s at her mum’s tonight. Some friends of mine are meeting up later, but it’s nothing definite, nothing important, I mean …’ He pauses. ‘I’m Jack, by the way …’

‘I’m Nadia.’

So we agree to meet. I sense a surge of delicious anticipation as we exchange numbers and say goodbye, with me heading for the subway and Jack jogging home.

Back at the flat, I shower and blow-dry my hair, then rake through my wardrobe, dismissing pretty much everything as being either too scruffy or try-hard. Why don’t more outfits fall into the ‘middling’ category? Now, I’m wishing Molly was here, to vet my outfit (she just knows when things are right). But she’s out on the lash, as far as I can gather – she’s pocket-dialled me twice. All I could make out was a load of exuberant people shouting.

So I end up fishing out a dress that must be eight years old; mid-blue, bias-cut, hovering just above the knee and perhaps a tad dull – but at least it doesn’t scream ‘date’ and is infinitely flattering across my ample bottom and hips. Make-up is applied – twice, as I mess up my first attempt due to being in a fizzle of nerves. Finally, cutting it fine time-wise now, I am ready.

Christ, I reflect, checking my reflection once more: I am meeting a man I wasn’t set up with by my friends. He wasn’t picked for me in a well-meaning attempt to coax me ‘out there’ again; I chose him by myself. I have texted Corinne, who replied, simply, Yesss!! And then Gus, who sent me a selfie with an enthusiastic thumbs-up, captioned GET IN.

I virtually skip out of my flat and into the waiting taxi. And when I step into the thronging pub and see Jack waiting at the bar, all my hurt and upset over the nut roast seems to have miraculously disappeared.

Chapter Seven
Jack

My God, but she’s lovely. I’d thought she was gorgeous in her work clothes, all casual, but in her simple blue dress she really is something else.

‘Are you sure your friends won’t be missing you?’ Nadia asks as – miraculously – we find a tiny table tucked away at the back of the pub.

‘I’m sure they’ll cope without me,’ I tell her as we sit down. ‘So, what else would you have been doing tonight?’

She smiles. It’s a lovely smile: generous and open, but a little hesitant. Her eyes are an incredible shade of green, her skin glowing, her hair long, dark and shiny, falling around her shoulders in soft waves. ‘If Alfie had come home, we’d probably have watched some Christmas movies together,’ she explains. ‘We’d have cracked open the snacks – the nuts, the Twiglets, all the festive delicacies.’ She chuckles, and her eyes seem to actually sparkle, which does something peculiar to my insides. ‘We really know how to have a good time,’ she adds.

‘Alfie’s your son?’ I ask, unnecessarily.

‘Yes – he’s a twin. Molly, his sister, is home already, but I’ve hardly seen her. And Alfie’s spending Christmas at his girlfriend’s parents’ hunting lodge up in the wilds of Aberdeenshire …’

‘A hunting lodge?’ I repeat.

Nadia sips her white wine. ‘That’s kind of misleading. You’d think it might mean a little wooden shack out in the hills, wellies piled up at the front door …’

‘That’s exactly what I’d think,’ I agree, although I can’t say the subject has ever crossed my mind before.

‘Yes, well that’s what I assumed. Alfie keeps insisting they’re not that posh, but I managed to coax him into telling me the name of their place – this lodge – and of course I googled it immediately …’

‘Of course! Who wouldn’t?’

She chuckles. ‘Yep, well, it’s actually a Baronial mansion with twenty-four rooms and a dedicated annexe for falcons.’

‘Falcons. Wow.’

‘Someone’s specifically employed to be the falcon keeper. I mean, that’s all they do.’

‘They probably involve quite a lot of care and attention,’ I suggest.

She laughs and pushes a strand of hair from her face. ‘Sorry. I’m really going on. It’s the time of year, y’know. It’s all a bit … heady.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say, thinking: heady is precisely the right word, and I want this kind of headiness to stretch on and on. I do hope she’s in no hurry to go home.

‘So, what are you doing for Christmas?’ she asks. ‘You mentioned your daughter …’

‘Yeah, Lori’s fourteen – she’s my only one – and me and her mum take it in turns to have her on Christmas Day.’ I grimace. ‘Have her. I mean, enjoy her delightful company …’

‘And this year?’ Nadia asks with a smile.

‘I’ll see her on Boxing Day when I’m back in town. I’m off to my parents’ first thing in the morning. They’re up in Perthshire, near Crieff but out in the country. They have a dairy farm …’

‘Is that where you grew up? You’re a farmer’s boy?’

‘That’s right.’ I smile, reluctant to bore her to death with my entire life history – although her interest seems genuine. ‘But I moved here when I was nineteen,’ I add.

‘Desperate to get to the big city,’ she suggests.

‘God, yes. No doubt I still smelt of the farm …’

Nadia flashes another smile. ‘Do your parents still have it?’

‘Yes, incredibly – they’re both seventy this year.’

‘Pretty young parents,’ she remarks.

I nod. ‘Yeah – they were still teenagers when Craig, my big brother, was born. He and his wife handle a lot of the day-to-day now.’

‘And there’s just the two of you? You and your brother, I mean?’

‘Erm, we had another brother,’ I murmur, ‘but there was an accident …’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ Nadia exclaims.

‘A long time ago now,’ I say briskly; Christ, the last thing I want to do is heap all that stuff on this beautiful woman whom I’ve only just met. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it’s Christmas Eve, she is utterly lovely and I’ve somehow swerved onto the subject of death … ‘So, how about you?’ I ask quickly.

‘Um, you mean … my background and stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘God, where to start?’ She laughs, and her eyes meet mine, and there seems to be a kind of … moment between us. An understanding, perhaps, that we will talk about other, deeper things; not tonight, but later on, when we know each other better. Because there will be a later on, I’m sure of it already, and I sense she feels it too.

‘I grew up in Ayrshire,’ Nadia is telling me, ‘and we moved to Glasgow when I was a teenager. There’s just me and my sister, Sarah – she’s the truly grown-up one. A fully formed adult by the age of ten. Then I moved to Dundee, went to art college …’

‘You’re an artist as well as working at the shop?’ I cut in.

She colours slightly. ‘Well, um, I kind of … dabble.’

‘Right. I have to say, I can’t even draw stick men. So, how long’ve you worked in—’

‘Would you like another drink?’ she asks quickly.

‘Oh, erm – yes, but I’ll get them …’

‘No, it’s my round.’ She has already leapt to her feet. ‘Same again?’

‘Yes please.’

I watch her as she wends her way through the crowds towards the bar. Fair enough, I decide; she probably doesn’t want to be quizzed about her shop job right now. Maybe she’s just picked up some seasonal shifts.

‘Whereabouts d’you work, Jack?’ she asks as she returns with our drinks.

‘I manage a charity shop,’ I reply.

‘Really? Which one?’

‘We’re just a small operation really – half a dozen shops across Scotland, but just the one in Glasgow. The charity’s called All For Animals, we fund sanctuaries – it’s a bit of an unfortunate name as it’s often referred to as AA …’

She chuckles. ‘I know your shop. I’ve been in a couple of times, actually. It’s lovely. I mean, I know charity shops have raised their game, displaying things nicely, organising the clothes in colour groups – but yours is a cut above.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, surprised and flattered by her enthusiasm.

‘I bought Molly a Biba-style top and some vintage magazines for myself,’ she continues. ‘I was chatting to the guy who was manning the till – a tall man, very chatty, said he’s in charge of the book section …’

‘That’s Iain …’

‘He seemed lovely.’

I smile. ‘He is. He has his issues but he really does care about the shop, and the other volunteers. Makes everyone coffees …’

‘How kind of him.’

‘… with water from the hot tap,’ I add with a smile.

Nadia laughs kindly. ‘So, it’s not all volunteers, then? I mean, you’re not one?’

‘Nope, the managers are paid.’ I smile. ‘Honestly, it is a proper job. I also do some freelance proofreading for publishers and authors …’ I pause. ‘I’m sure you’re wildly impressed,’ I joke.

‘I am. I really am.’ And so the evening goes on, with both of us covering vast swathes of ground, personal-history wise, and the-state-of-our-lives-now wise: our families, our work (she happily tells me that she models occasionally for life drawing classes, but still seems reluctant to talk about her job at the shop). There is barely a lull, and every now and then, one of us breaks off to apologise for ‘going on’.

‘You don’t really want to know about dairy herds,’ I tell her, noticing now that we have pulled our chairs closer and are leaning towards each other, across the table.

‘I do,’ she says. ‘All the books I loved as a kid were set on farms. I longed to sleep in a hay barn and collect eggs. Did you have sheepdogs?’

‘Well, yes, because we had sheep too …’

‘The ones with black faces?’

I can’t help smiling at that. ‘Yes. We still have them. Scottish Blackface …’

‘Is that what they’re called? I love those!’ She grins at me. ‘Any other kinds?’

‘Um, a few Shetland and Hebrideans. They’re good if you want to do things organically. They’re smaller, very hardy, coming from the islands originally—’ obviously ‘—so they’re not as reliant on feed, they can graze on rough ground, on heathers …’ I break off and chuckle. ‘I’m telling you about the dietary needs of sheep.’

‘But only because I asked.’ We laugh, and she touches my hand across the table, which has the effect of shooting some kind of powerful current through my body. I want to lean over and kiss her beautiful mouth right there. I don’t, of course, because you can’t just swoop on a woman like that, can you? I catch her studying me with an amused glint in her eyes, and there’s a small pause in conversation that feels anything but awkward.

Because we know, I think, that this is definitely the beginning of something. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sure of anything in my life.

Of course I’ve dated women in the nine years since Elaine and I broke up. There was Amanda, who was a regular customer to the shop, but it never really felt as if it was going anywhere, and eventually she moved away down south. My thing with Zoe last year was more fiery – she collected Mexican death masks and painted pictures with her menstrual blood. She was striking, passionate and unpredictable; one minute, she’d be insisting that we should move in together and the next, that I wouldn’t see her for six weeks as she was off to some Pagan drumming thing on a remote island. When we broke up, she egged my car. ‘What a waste of eggs,’ Lori chuckled as we sluiced the windscreen down.

For a brief period, I succumbed to my mate Fergus’s nagging that Tinder was the way forward. It wasn’t just for young people looking for casual hook-ups, he insisted. ‘Old fuckers like us use it too now,’ he enthused. Although I met a couple of perfectly lovely women, it felt terribly random, and I couldn’t be doing with all that swiping business. I know everyone meets online these days – Elaine’s had a couple of relationships that started this way – but it wasn’t for me. I started to think that perhaps nothing was for me.

But now, as the evening rolls on, I wonder if this was what I was holding out for: just a lovely, normal night in a pub with a gorgeous, sparky woman.

‘What about your kids’ dad?’ I ask, having given her a brief summary of the Elaine business.

‘We get along fine,’ she replies. ‘Even the break-up wasn’t that traumatic, not really. It was my decision, finally, but he didn’t fight it. Danny said he almost felt cheated that no clothes had been torn up, no prawns stuffed in curtain poles, not a single incident of screaming.’

I smile. ‘So, you’ve divorced now?’

‘Oh, we weren’t married. But we were as good as, of course. The kids were eleven when we split …’

‘And their dad really was okay about it?’ I ask.

‘It seemed like it at the time,’ she replies. ‘I mean, he started dating fairly soon, and he met his current partner a year or so after we broke up. They’re still together – very happy, by all accounts. But maybe …’ She shrugs. ‘Later on, Danny told me he’d been devastated. I said, “Really? I didn’t think you minded that much.” And he said, “You make it sound like you just put an old armchair out for the council collection men.”’

I can’t help laughing at that.

‘Have you heard of Danny Raven?’ she asks.

‘Yes, of course …’

‘Well, that’s him.’

‘Really?’ For some reason, this feels like a punch to the gut. Her ex is Danny Raven, fêted film-maker, for Christ’s sake. So why’s she spending her Christmas Eve in the pub with the manager of a—

‘Jack?’ Her voice cuts into my thoughts.

‘Yes?’

The smile seemed to illuminate her face as she leans more closely towards me. ‘It’s very, very over between him and me. We get along fine, and we raise our kids together. But I am most definitively on my own now. I mean, there’s no one …’ She pauses. It feels as if my heart has stopped. Even closer she comes, her beautiful face before me now. As she kisses me lightly on the lips, I feel as if I might topple off my chair.

We pull apart and look at each other. Somehow, our hands have entwined under the table. There’s so much I want to say to her, I hardly know where to begin. ‘I’d really like to see you again,’ is all I can manage, ‘if that’s all right with you.’

Nadia nods. ‘I’d really like to see you too. But, um, there is something …’

Oh, shit – here it comes: the ‘but’.

‘Uh-huh?’ I say, feigning nonchalance.

‘There’s, er … a thing I need to tell you.’

I inhale deeply, various possibilities already forming in my mind: she’s in love with someone. Or something’s wrong – maybe she has an illness? Or an issue with her kids? – and she doesn’t want to get involved with anyone right now. Fine, it’s been a lovely evening; but maybe I really should get home, seeing as I still have a pile of presents to wrap for my parents, my brother and sister-in-law …

‘What is it?’ I ask lightly, draining my glass.

She looks down. ‘I have to tell you … I don’t actually work in Lush.’

‘What?’

She reddens and nods with a closed-lipped smile. I’m baffled now; so why did she spend twenty minutes chatting to me about bath bombs? ‘I’m so sorry,’ I murmur, shaking my head. ‘I just assumed …’

‘Yes, of course you did.’ She is laughing now.

‘But I accosted you and asked you all those questions about skin stuff! Why didn’t you just tell me to leave you alone?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to leave me alone.’

‘But what must you have thought?’ I laugh, mortified by my mistake.

‘You didn’t accost me,’ she insists. ‘Look – it’s me who should be apologising …’

‘Why?’ I am genuinely bewildered.

‘Well, I, er …’ She looks down at her hands, and then, as her gaze meets mine, something seems to somersault in the pit of my stomach. ‘I let you think I worked there,’ she says, smiling. ‘Actually, I sort of pretended …’

‘You pretended? Why?’

She pauses and pushes back that wayward strand of hair. ‘Because,’ she says simply, ‘I just wanted to talk to you.’

Part Two
Sex and the Empty Nester: Things to Know

 • Your friends will go on about how you can ‘swing from the chandeliers’ – or your IKEA ‘Maskros’ pendant lamp – now the kids have left home. There may be an expectation that you are doing it constantly. You might feel obliged to say you are.

 • Even ordinary sex is better now that you don’t have to be silent.

 • You might find yourself being super-noisy and shouty – more than you ever were pre-children – just because you can.

 • Being able to wander about in the nude feels like a wonderful novelty of which you will never tire.

 • It’s important to enjoy this stage while it lasts – because it might not.

Chapter Eight
Four months later
Nadia

Molly once explained to me how a microwave works, how its radio waves ‘excite’ the atoms in food, causing them to jiggle about in a frenzy, making everything hot. I feel this way whenever I’m with Jack, even several months in – not hot in a menopausal sweat kind of way, but sort of shimmery and super-charged.

At certain times my setting switches to FULL POWER: e.g. during sex. To think, I’d almost forgotten what the point of it was, apart from making babies. Like knowing who’s number one in the charts, I’d begun to assume it belonged to a previous era of my life; something I could get along without quite contentedly.

The full-power thing kicks in even whenever Jack just happens to stroll nakedly across my bedroom. I should be used to him now, as we have been seeing each other regularly since Molly and Alfie headed back to uni after the Christmas break. But I wonder if the novelty aspect will ever wear off, as I still want to shout, ‘There’s a beautiful naked man wandering casually across my bedroom!’ And I want to take a quick snap of his luscious rear view with my phone and beam it onto a huge building. Yep, I want to objectify him, plus lots of other things, because the truth is – although he’d deny this to the hilt – he has a lovely body. It’s not intimidatingly buff, and that’s a plus, in my book, as I’ve always found the idea of a six-pack disconcerting (especially as, size-wise, I am a generous fourteen). Jack has more your casual runner’s-type physique: fairly slim, although he insists that’s just the way he’s built – ‘A bag of bones when I was kid’ – rather than due to his endeavours on the fitness front.

I have to say, his bottom is especially lovely. Corinne has a word she uses, to describe an attractive male rear: biteable, adjective, meaning ‘evokes lust’. It suits Jack’s perfectly. I do have a few pictures of him on my phone – not of his bottom, but his lovely face, and of the two of us together; selfies taken when we’ve been out and about, doing the kind of things newish couples do: strolling through parks, visiting galleries, having picnics and walks along the river. When no one’s looking I’m prone to browsing through them. My boyfriend. It feels weird, using that term at fifty-one years old, but nothing else seems quite right. Jack is the kind of man I’d imagined, occasionally, might be out there somewhere: the one I’d kept missing as we went about our business in the same city all these years.

The long, cold winter has blossomed into a glorious spring, and by now I have met his friends and the volunteers at his shop. Iain claimed to have remembered me from when I popped in, and I was treated to one of his hot-tap coffees before Jack could dive for the kettle himself.

This coming weekend, significantly, I am meeting Lori. He’s been suggesting it for a while now, but I’ve been nervous. He’d also told me about his ex Elaine’s litany of boyfriends, and how they’ve tended to just appear at her house, to be presented to Lori, and then in a few weeks they’d be gone.

‘It’s not like that with us,’ Jack has insisted, ‘and she knows all about you. She really wants to meet you and thinks I’m hiding you away – or making you up.’

‘What, even though you’ve shown her pictures of me?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. She’s starting to think her dad’s a sad bastard who’s taken pictures of some random woman off the internet and is pretending she’s his girlfriend.’ He laughed, then turned serious. ‘She also knows your kids are academic types, at uni, and she said, “You’re not ashamed of me, are you, Dad?”’

Well, that did it. We agreed that I could go round to his place one Saturday, when Lori was there, and he’d make lunch.

Naturally, I’ve been to Jack’s place countless times, but when the day rolls around my mouth is parched, my hands sticky with sweat, as I emerge from the subway station and make my way to his flat. Determined to make a good impression, I’m wearing a summery cotton dress, plus cardi and minimal meeting-the-boyfriend’s-offspring-type make-up … at least, I hope that’s what it is. I’ve never been in this situation before. Jack has already filled me in on the fact that, whilst Lori isn’t terribly keen on school, she does love her drama club – which seems appropriate as I feel as if I am on my way to an audition.

In fact, it’s Jack who seems the edgiest when I arrive, and he fusses over serving our lunch: a big bowl of spaghetti puttanesca, slightly over-boiled, which is unlike him; Jack’s pasta is usually cooked to perfection.

I like Lori immediately. For one thing, she looks so like him; I knew that already, from photos he’d shown me, but it’s even more apparent in real life. As she tucks into her lunch, she’s relaxed and chatty, answering my questions about her drama club. And as I watch them together, I’m overcome by a surge of love for Jack.

‘Lori’s an actress who doesn’t want to be famous,’ he remarks, and they catch each other’s expressions and smile.

‘I so don’t,’ she declares. ‘But some of them do.’ She looks at her father. ‘Shannon does …’

‘That’s Lori’s best friend,’ he explains.

‘Yeah.’ Lori spears her spaghetti and smirks. ‘I love her but, you know. She’s kinda …’ She glances back at her dad, as if checking for confirmation. ‘Shall I show Nadia what she’s like?’ She nudges her phone, which is parked right at her side on the table, and he nods.

‘Go on then.’ He grins.

‘I feel mean,’ she adds, wincing. ‘She’s a really sweet person …’

Jack chuckles. ‘But.’

‘But,’ Lori repeats, smiling now as she flips to her friend’s Instagram account and shows me a series of selfies. She is deeply tanned, displaying colossal false lashes and those extreme brows that tend to look too defined: sharp-edged, as if cut from black fabric and stuck onto the face.

‘Wow,’ is all I can say.

‘I know,’ Lori murmurs, continuing to scroll through her friend’s pictures.

‘Those lips,’ I exclaim at one point.

‘They’re fillers,’ she says sagely, and I notice she’s edged her chair closer to mine.

‘Lip fillers? I mean … how old is she?’

‘Fourteen, same as me. And yeah – loads of girls are having them …’

‘But … how much do they cost?’

Lori shrugs. ‘About three hundred quid.’

‘Three hundred quid?’ I exclaim, hoping I don’t sound like some buttoned-up aunt.

Lori nods, and she and her father start laughing, clearly enjoying some shared joke. ‘She had them done for an audition,’ Jack tells me.

‘Oliver,’ Lori adds. ‘She’s into musical theatre. Wants to go to London …’

‘Or work on cruise ships,’ Jack cuts in.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘And how about you?’ I catch myself. ‘Sorry. I know people always do that, ask what you’d like to be—’

‘… when I grow up,’ Lori says with a grin. ‘Don’t know really. I just like my drama club. We do improv, we write little plays – it’s just … good.’ She shrugs and smiles. ‘I don’t want to be up on some stage, belting out ballads, doing the big-eyes-and-teeth thing …’

I nod, and because it seems okay to do so, I tell her all about Danny, and how some of the actors in his films were discovered working in cafés, or in school plays. She’s vaguely aware of his better-known films, and I’m happy to share what I know about the film-making process. Then once again I am privy to her Instagram feed – specifically pictures of Lori and her drama club friends involved in various acting workshops.

‘That’s Shannon?’ I ask, picking her out from a group picture, and Lori nods.

‘Lor,’ Jack says as he clears away our bowls, ‘tell Nadia what happened last time the two of you were left alone at your mum’s …’

‘Dad,’ she groans, feigning horror, although I suspect she wants me to know. She turns to me. ‘Shannon threw up all over the living room carpet.’

‘Oh no!’

‘Orange sick,’ Jack adds with a grimace. ‘Lori’s adamant that Shannon brought the booze …’

‘She did, Dad! Where else would it’ve come from?’

Jack eye-rolls, clearly enjoying playing the part of the disapproving dad.

‘She has a fake ID,’ Lori tells me, ‘so she can buy anything …’

‘Plus, she looks way older than she is,’ Jack remarks, at which Lori nods.

‘I’d never get away with it, even with a fake ID. I don’t drink anyway. I don’t like it.’

‘Well, you’re only fourteen,’ I remark, hoping that doesn’t sound patronising – and I’m fully aware that lots of kids of that age do drink. There were certainly a few incidences where both Alfie and Molly had tottered in, clearly tipsy well under-age.

‘I don’t think I ever will,’ she adds lightly, and I catch a quick look between her and her dad, before she blurts out, ‘I forgot! I made brownies for you coming.’

‘Really?’ I am extremely touched by this. Without wishing to read too much into the gesture – perhaps she just enjoys baking, like Alfie used to? – I decide to interpret it as a sign that she really was looking forward to meeting me today.

The afternoon flies by, and when it’s time to leave I am almost sorry to go.

‘Great to meet you, Lori,’ I say, as I pull on my jacket.

‘You too,’ she says with a smile.

Jack sees me out. ‘Did that go okay?’ I ask.

‘What do you think?’ He pulls me closer and kisses my hair.

‘I think she’s lovely. She’s a real credit to you.’

He smiles and shrugs off the compliment. ‘She’s very much her own person. But thanks, darling. We, um, had a quick word, when you were in the loo …’

I feign a terrified face. ‘What about?’

He laughs now, brushing away a strand of hair from my face, the way he does sometimes. ‘She just said you were lovely too. And normal!’

‘She said I’m normal?’ I remark, laughing now.

‘Yeah. “Not weird”, she said. You know how everything’s “weird” these days? I mean, someone only has to scratch their ear in public to be classed as “weird”. She said I was weird, the other day, for singing while I was cooking—’

‘Did she? Christ – I sing all the time …’

‘Apparently you’re not weird, though,’ he says, kissing my lips. ‘But you are very gorgeous.’

I smile, fizzling with happiness. So I’ve passed the test, I reflect, as I stride towards the subway. I am filled with the most delicious, chewy brownies (top marks to Lori), and a feeling that Jack and I have somehow moved along another small but significant step.

So his daughter thinks I am actually all right. I know I am grinning madly – I literally cannot stop – as I descend the escalator to the train. And I also know that if Lori could see me now, she’d think I was far too weird for her beloved dad.

Chapter Nine

It’s Jack’s turn to be vetted a couple of weeks later, when my sister invites us for Sunday lunch. Jack offers to drive us to her renovated farm on the Ayrshire coast. I glance at him as we near her place, reflecting that a newish relationship presents a series of these ‘firsts’, these meetings during which everyone pretends there’s no ‘checking out’ going on (when of course there is). Anyone who cares about you wants to appraise the person you’ve fallen in love with.

Jack and I have already had drinks with a couple of old schoolmates of mine, plus other friends I’ve got to know through the children, their various activities and the life modelling circuit. He’s handled it well, being his natural, extremely likeable self, despite his slight shyness and the fact that he might have started to feel like a new puppy being given his first tour of the park.

Naturally, he met Corinne and Gus early on. Corinne enjoys referring to him as Mr Lush, even to his face, which Jack always takes in extremely good spirit. A terrible flirt, she made a huge fuss over him that first time we all went out, and insisted on a selfie with him, crammed into the corner of our booth in the pub, later to be captioned: ‘Stole Nadia’s new boyfriend for five minutes, took him round back of pub and God he was GOOD.’

Jack pretended to be mortified when I showed him her Instagram post, but I could tell he was secretly amused. ‘Always nice to get a positive review,’ he chuckled. Meanwhile Gus, who seems to find it hilarious that Jack is all of two years younger than me, refers to him as my ‘toyboy’, a term I’d assumed had fallen into obscurity a long time ago. One lunchtime, when we nipped out for a sandwich together, Gus spotted a portly young man sauntering towards us wearing a T-shirt bearing the charming slogan: ‘MILF-CHASER.’

‘Get one for Jack?’ he whispered, swerving to avoid my punch to his arm. Later, we spotted another guy – bearded and lanky, sporting a wiry man-bun – whose T-shirt read: I’M RAISING A TRIBE. And that, we concluded, was far more offensive as slogans go. Gus took a candid picture of the man with his phone and sent it to me.

‘Look at this,’ I said later, showing it to Jack.

‘Oh, God,’ he groaned. ‘The smugness. It should be banned under some kind of offensive clothing bylaw.’

‘Yeah. We wanted to tear it off him and pelt him with rusks.’

He spluttered.

We just ‘get’ each other, Jack and I; and if we had raised a tribe, I’m pretty sure he’d have just got on with the job rather than wearing a T-shirt to advertise the fact.

And now, as the Ayrshire coast opens up before us on this clear-skied May afternoon, I allow myself a moment to reflect that perhaps this wouldn’t have happened if Alfie and Molly still lived at home. At least, it might not have seemed quite so easy. As it is – particularly as Lori spends at least half the week at her mum’s – Jack and I have been able to spend time together without being answerable to anyone. There was no one else hovering around in the morning the first time he stayed over at mine. I’ve been able to stay at his place without letting Alfie and Molly know I wouldn’t be home until morning. At first it was something of a novelty, waking up in Jack’s light-filled, airy bedroom, and sipping his far superior coffee while he pottered about warming up croissants and festooning me with his extensive selection of jams. (‘I have such a sweet tooth,’ he admitted. ‘The palate of an eight-year-old. It’s embarrassing really.’)

Of course, I do miss my kids, in that I’d love to see them more often. But I have to say it has also been extremely liberating, living my life unpoliced, in this way.

‘It’s the next turn-off to the right,’ I tell Jack, as we pass a familiar row of ancient stone cottages, then a farm shop and a B&B.

‘It’s lovely out here,’ he remarks. ‘I don’t really know this part of the country at all.’

‘We used to come here all the time when we were little,’ I tell him. ‘We loved the coast. It was only a half-hour drive from home but it seemed like a real treat. Sarah’s always stayed in the area.’ I wonder now when Jack might tell me more about his childhood; specifically, about his younger brother, Sandy, who died. Obviously, whatever happened must have been horrific, but whenever Sandy’s name has been mentioned, I’ve sensed Jack shutting down, as if sending out the clear message that he really doesn’t want me to ask about it.

Fair enough; I’d never want to pry. But I’d like to think that, at some point, he might feel able to tell me what happened.

I glance at him. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, of course.’ He smiles.

‘Like I said, Sarah’s lovely – but we’re very different …’

‘I’m ready for my interrogation,’ he teases.

‘She won’t interrogate you. She does enough of that at work.’ Although not remotely intimidating off-duty, I suspect that my sister can come over as pretty scary when in professional mode; she is in charge of a team who inspects care homes and children’s nurseries. Meanwhile, Vic, her husband, is a car auctioneer, which I’m sure Jack would never have guessed, as they come out to greet us and, after warm hugs and handshakes, my brother-in-law struts around Jack’s battered old Fiat, as if sizing it up for sale.

‘This is your motor, Jack?’ he asks with a smirk.

‘It is, yeah,’ Jack says with a nod.

‘Ha! Surprised you got here in one piece …’ He crouches to poke at a corroded wheel arch.

‘C’mon, Vic,’ Sarah says tersely, ‘leave Jack’s car alone.’

Vic grins at Jack. I’m fond of my brother-in-law; he’s a caring and generous husband of the traditional type. He barely cooks, but gardens enthusiastically, and their cars’ tyres will forever remain at the correct pressure whilst there is breath in his body. Plus, he’s a fantastic father to Scott and Ollie, who are in their mid-twenties and still live locally. Both boys are immensely practical; Scott rewired his parents’ house, and Ollie fitted their new kitchen. Sarah and Vic couldn’t hide their horror when, on a visit to my place, Alfie seemed utterly confused when I asked him to replace the bulb in the table lamp.

‘You’ve got a rust issue there, Jack,’ Vic observes, frowning.

‘Yeah, it is a bit of a wreck,’ Jack concedes.

‘You want to catch that before it goes any further. Got an abrasive wheel?’

‘Erm, I don’t think I have,’ Jack admits, as my sister and I exchange glances.

‘Well, you want to get one, or at least some sandpaper. Rub it down nice and smooth until it’s shiny metal. Get your primer on, then your paint and your topcoat …’

‘Yep, I’ll do that,’ Jack murmurs, and I’m overcome by an urge to hug him for playing along with this blokes’ talk.

‘I take it this old wreck’s just a stop-gap,’ Vic remarks.

‘Erm, well, not really,’ Jack admits, as Sarah tugs on Vic’s arm, coaxing her husband away from the car like a mother pulling her child away from the chocolates in the checkout aisle.

‘Maybe Jack’s perfectly happy with it,’ she retorts as we all head inside. Vic shrugs good-naturedly and fetches us drinks, and soon Scott and Ollie arrive, plus Ollie’s girlfriend Morvern, whom he lives with. I hadn’t expected such a gathering. Sarah had merely said the boys ‘might drop by’. But there are enthusiastic hellos and hugs, and it feels like quite a houseful as numerous dishes are brought from the oven, and we all settle around the huge kitchen table.

Occasionally, during my seemingly endless years as a single person, Sarah would call to ask, ‘Are you … okay?’ All by yourself is what she meant. Of course I was. In fact, I slightly resented the implication that I might be falling apart without a man to look after me. But then, Sarah has always been protective, and since our parents died, eight years ago now, she has edged herself into a sort of motherly mode with me, despite being only four years older.

As I chat to the boys and Morvern – whom I’ve met several times before – I become aware of my sister gently quizzing Jack about his life. ‘A charity shop? That sounds interesting. Oh, animal sanctuaries! That’s fantastic. Does all the funding come from the shops, or d’you have benefactors, or …’ On she goes, wanting to know all the details in the way that, when she inspects a care home, she leaves no stone unturned.

Vic turns to me with a grin. ‘So, Nads, is your Alfie still seeing that posh bird?’

‘Yep, they’re planning to go travelling together this summer,’ I reply, at which Vic looks at Morvern.

‘He ditched us at Christmas for the aristocracy. Our own nephew!’ He laughs. ‘Our roast potatoes aren’t good enough for him anymore.’

‘Have you met them, Jack?’ Sarah asks. ‘Alfie and Molly, I mean?’

‘No, not yet,’ he replies.

‘I, erm, thought we’d wait till the summer break,’ I remark, sensing that an explanation is needed. ‘They’ve been home on visits but it’s always seemed so rushed. Anyway, they’re back in a couple of weeks …’ I don’t add that I’ve felt slightly apprehensive about that first meeting, having never been in this kind of situation before. Easter had felt a little too soon to introduce them, even though Jack and I had been seeing each other regularly – spending at least half the week together – since the Christmas holidays had ended.

Vic turns to Jack and grins. ‘Well, good luck with that, mate. They’re bloody terrifying, that pair …’

‘Vic!’ I splutter. ‘No, they’re not …’

‘They’ll have you strapped to a rack, thumb screws on, dazzling light shone in your eyes: “And what are your intentions with our mother?”’ He sniggers and takes a big swig of wine.

‘Dad,’ Scott exclaims as Jack laughs off the comment. ‘Jesus …’

‘Sounds like I’ll have to start revving myself up for it,’ Jack says with a smile.

‘Yeah,’ Vic asserts. ‘I mean, singly, they’re quite a force, but together …’

‘First the rust, and now this,’ Sarah groans, rolling her eyes.

‘What’s that about rust?’ Morvern asks.

‘Vic was haranguing poor Jack about his car,’ Sarah explains with a shake of her head. She turns to me. ‘Are the kids coming back for the whole summer?’

‘Yes – at least, Molly is. She’s been offered work at her friend’s dad’s garden centre. You know what she’s like. Loves to earn a few quid and doesn’t mind grafting.’

‘So that’s your fun spoiled, Nads,’ Vic remarks with a grin.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I say, aware of my cheeks flushing as I laugh.

‘And what about Alfie?’ Sarah asks.

‘He’ll only be around for a few days, then his girlfriend’s coming down to our place, and they’ll head off. They’re going Inter-railing around Europe …’

‘Oh, I’m glad he’s met someone nice, Nads.’

‘Me too.’ My sister and I exchange a look across the table. She knows how much I worried about Alfie as he went through secondary school. Whilst he had a couple of close friends, he was always quiet and studious, a sensitive type who enjoyed drawing and baking and had no interest in sport. Unfortunately, this made him a target for bullying in his early teens, and the fact that his father is a film director only seemed to attract more unwanted attention (Molly exuded such self-assuredness, no one ever dared to hassle her about it). On one occasion Alfie was hurt pretty badly in a fight after school. The school tried to deal with it, and the problem seemed to abate, but since that time Alfie has always been rather awkward socially. He’d never had a girlfriend until he met Camilla at university, so I suspect a new start, in a different city, has helped to boost his confidence.

‘It’s been good for Nadia, you know,’ Vic observes as he fetches Jack, the only non-drinker at the table, another ginger beer from the fridge. The rest of us are knocking back the wine with some enthusiasm. ‘Getting the kids off her hands, I mean,’ he adds. ‘I don’t mean that in a bad way, do I, Nads? It’s not like you were counting the days till the buggers were off your hands—’

‘No, you’re right,’ I concede. ‘It has been good for me.’

‘We’d started to think ours would never leave home,’ Sarah tells Jack with a smile. ‘Scott was twenty-three when he finally moved out …’

‘And Ollie hung on in there till he was twenty-bloody-five,’ Vic exclaims.

‘That’s nice, Dad,’ Ollie exclaims with a snort.

‘Too bloody comfortable, that’s why,’ his father adds.

‘Ollie still says he misses your gravy, Sarah,’ Morvern says, grinning, and it strikes me that this scene isn’t so different to that lunch at Jack’s, when I met Lori: an easy gathering, with friendly and generous people who are happy to welcome in someone new. I find myself hoping that I can create a similar atmosphere of relaxed jollity when my own offspring return home.

There’s a clattering of crockery as everyone helps to clear up, and afterwards the TV is put on far too loudly, as per Vic’s wishes, with everyone talking above it, and over each other.

‘Go on,’ Morvern urges Jack, flushed now from the wine, ‘what’s the worst thing you’ve ever had handed in at your shop?’

‘There have been so many,’ he says, pausing, perhaps to choose an example that’s not too disgusting. ‘Um, last week someone brought in an ancient pressure cooker that still had soup in it. All fuzzy with mould …’

‘Ew!’ Morvern shudders.

Jack is further quizzed until, finally, I suggest that we really should be going.

After promises to visit again soon – and Vic’s parting shot of ‘Remember to catch that rust, Jacky-boy, before it catches you!’ – we drive home to Glasgow, chuckling over the rust issue, and how weird it is that some men find it impossible to comprehend that not every other male shares those typical masculine interests (i.e. cars).

‘They’re lovely people, though,’ Jack adds.

‘Yes, they are.’

I think about how Sarah thought I was crazy to split up with Danny; or, rather, she reckoned I should ‘hang on in there’, as she put it, until our kids left home. It served only to crank up my guilt, because wouldn’t a break-up have hurt them at any stage? And what was the alternative: to sit tight, pretending, until our facade of togetherness crumbled in front of our children? A failed relationship is nothing to be proud of, I know, but I’m not so sure it was a failure really, when we have Molly, who excels at her studies despite her hectic social life, and Alfie who, despite his shyness, seems to have found his niche in Aberdeen.

‘So, d’you reckon you’re ready to meet them, then?’ I ask, studying Jack’s expression.

‘Molly and Alfie?’ He glances from the driver’s seat. ‘Yes, of course I am.’ He grins. ‘Although, if it’s easier, you could just pretend I’m a friend …’

‘Yeah,’ I say, smiling. ‘“This is Jack, my new friend, who I’m not remotely attracted to …”’

‘“I’m very fond of your mum,”’ he chips in, ‘“but don’t worry, there’s no physical attraction whatsoever …”’

‘They do know I’m seeing you,’ I remind him.

‘And they were okay about that?’

‘Of course they were,’ I say firmly, ‘although I’m not sure they were listening. Whenever we talk, it’s always, “yeah-yeah”, like they’re desperate to get off the phone …’ I look at him. ‘They’re nice kids, Jack. Alfie can be a little awkward like most boys of his age – but they’re decent, well-mannered people …’

He touches my knee, which sends a ripple of pleasure right through me. ‘I’m sure they are.’

‘You do know Vic was winding you up, don’t you?’

‘’Course I do.’

We fall into silence as we join the motorway, then I ask, tentatively, ‘Are you nervous about meeting my kids?’

There’s a beat’s silence, and he glances at me with a teasing smile. ‘Absolutely crapping myself,’ he says.

Chapter Ten

The following weekend, it’s one of Jack’s rare Saturdays off work. Lori is with her mother, and Glasgow shimmers in the bright May sunshine beneath an unblemished blue sky.

Jack and I have already browsed the shops in the West End, and strolled through Kelvingrove Park. We should stay out, we both know it, but after a quick lunch we end up back at my flat, kissing on the sofa. That was something else I used to assume had shut down permanently: my ability to enjoy kissing as a thing in itself. But God, no. Proper kissing, I’ve realised since meeting Jack, does not come under the same banner as crocheted bikinis and novelty hair accessories; i.e. it’s not just for the young.

We are lying there together, entwined and naked now (at some point during the proceedings our clothes have come off). ‘We probably should go out,’ I murmur dozily, making no move to go anywhere.

‘D’you feel like we’re wasting the afternoon?’ Jack teases.

‘Totally,’ I say with a smile as he pulls me closer. And so we waste yet more time, delighting in our indulgence and the fact that no demands are being made upon us whatsoever. My heart soars as it did on Christmas Eve, on our first date, when Jack and I kissed in the pub, and then outside the subway station before we said goodbye. I replayed that evening over and over, all through the next day when Molly and I went to Sarah’s. As I tucked into turkey and all the trimmings, a single thought looped around my head: I kissed Jack last night! We snogged in the street, like young things, even though we both possess reading glasses and have a combined age of a hundred! That evening, my head was so full of Jack, and our kiss, I didn’t manage to answer a single Trivial Pursuit question correctly.

Now our perfect Saturday has somehow tipped into late afternoon, the light turned golden now. ‘Jack,’ I start, ‘would you like to go away somewhere this summer? Just the two of us, I mean?’

‘I’d love to,’ he says. ‘Any ideas where?’

I rest my head in the crook of his arm. ‘You know that series of Barcelona maps I’ve been asked to do?’

‘Uh-huh?’ While Danny seemed to regard my job as a hobby, Jack expressed a keen interest right from the start. All his questions, and requests to browse through my work; it almost made me squirm, the way he was so complimentary and enthusiastic.

‘Well, I could do them without actually going there,’ I continue. ‘That’s what I usually do. But I thought it’d be more fun to really immerse myself in the city – so why don’t we go together?’

‘On a sort of research trip, you mean?’

‘Exactly. We could get to know all the different neighbourhoods, so each map would have its own distinct feel … Could you get some time off work, d’you think?’

‘I’m sure I could,’ he replies. ‘Helen used to manage the shop, and she’s usually happy to come back and do my holiday cover. I’m not taking Lori away until August, so … when were you thinking?’

‘As soon as possible, really – after Alfie’s headed off on his travels …’

‘But won’t you be busy sketching and making notes? I don’t want to get in the way of your work. I shouldn’t distract you …’

I laugh and kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘You can distract me anytime you like.’

‘And what about Molly?’ he asks. ‘She’s here all summer, isn’t she?’

‘Jack, she’s nineteen. She’s lived independently for nearly a year now so she’s perfectly capable of looking after herself.’

He nods. ‘So she wouldn’t mind us nipping off to Spain together …?’

‘Of course not,’ I say, grinning now. ‘She’ll probably be glad to have the place to herself for a week or so …’ I squeeze Jack’s hand. ‘Neither of my kids particularly care what I get up to these days,’ I add, ‘and even if they did …’ I tail off and kiss him again. ‘Well, I’m a fully grown adult …’

‘Of course you are,’ he says firmly.

I beam at him. ‘Anyway, it’s a research trip, remember?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘A vital part of your work—’

‘Actually,’ I cut in, smiling, ‘I just want to go away with you.’

I get up, and fetch our dressing gowns from my bedroom – my boyfriend keeps a dressing gown here! – plus my laptop and diary (I still use a proper paper one; I’ve never managed to switch over to digital). Back on the sofa now, wrapped up in our gowns, we peruse dates and apartments in Barcelona. We shortlist three in El Raval, a district close to the Ramblas that was once, apparently, a bit on the shady side but is now peppered with cool coffee shops, bars and galleries. Jack texts his friend Helen, who agrees to cover the shop for the dates we’ll be away. We book flights, having our first minor tussle over money – Jack is insistent about transferring his share of the cost to my account immediately – and that’s all done.

‘That was simple,’ I remark, setting my laptop on the coffee table and snuggling back into his arms.

‘Eerily simple,’ he says. ‘I guess it is, when it’s just the two of us.’

‘Yeah,’ I agree, still thrilled by the novelty of it all. ‘God, the debates we used to have, when it was Danny and me and the kids. He didn’t believe in package holidays. Said he’d rather have sawn his hand off than go anywhere with a kids’ club …’

Jack chuckles. ‘Those terrible kids’ clubs with all their toys and games and enthusiastic staff …’

‘“I’m not parking our kids in a facility,” he used to say. A facility!’ We laugh, and then we are kissing again on the sofa, our gowns tossed onto the floor as he holds me closer and— he stops abruptly and pulls away.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘I thought I heard something?’ He frowns.

‘Just someone on the stairs,’ I remark, unconcerned until I hear another, more distinct sound: that of a key being poked into a lock. No, not a lock, but my lock. And now my front door is opening …

I shoot a look of alarm at Jack. ‘Is that someone coming—’ he starts.

‘Who is it?’ I call out. Thoughts shoot through my head: I’m being burgled. No, burglars don’t have the Yale key for my door. Is it Danny? Has he held on to his keys all these years, and if so, how can he possibly think it’s okay to let himself in?

Jack and I scramble up. ‘Hello?’ I call out, more forcefully now as footsteps sound in the hallway. The front door closes with a heavy clunk, and Alfie’s voice rings out: ‘Hey, Mum, are you there? It’s me.’

Chapter Eleven

For a single, mad moment, I consider pretending we’re not in. We could duck down behind the sofa in the hope that Alfie might dump his stuff here, then go out. But where would he go? He’s only just arrived – a whole week early. And our clothes are strewn all over the floor …

‘Mum?’ Alfie calls out again, his footsteps growing closer in the hallway.

Miraculously, Jack has already tugged his dressing gown back on.

‘Just a minute, love!’ I call out in an oddly tight voice as I snatch mine from the floor and clutch it in front of myself.

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