So every day off, every night shift, I went up in the afternoon. We didn’t do anything except talk. She made coffee, and we would sit on the settee together, just blethering. It was funny, I mean we barely knew each other, but within a short time, it’s like we had known each other all our lives. Talk was easy, laughter easier. She told me how she’d never known her dad. She figured her mum never really knew who he was.
There’d been a procession of men who’d come and gone at their two-bedroom tenement flat in Tantallon Road. Sometimes they brought Mel presents. Just to shut her up, she thought, to get her out of the way. There had never been any affection. Except from her mum. ‘You know when someone loves you,’ Mel said. ‘They don’t even have to tell you. It’s just how they are with you. You feel it.’ And she glanced at me, a funny little sideways look that made me blush.
And then I went and spoiled the moment by saying, ‘Do you feel that with him?’ I couldn’t even bring myself to use Jardine’s name, and she turned her head away quickly, rising then from the settee to head for the kitchen.
‘Another coffee?’
I could have bitten my tongue out.
The turning point in our relationship, I guess, came one Tuesday afternoon. I could see immediately that there’d been violence over the weekend. She’d always said that he stayed off the booze during the week, but made up for it Friday and Saturday nights. She’d tried to cover the bruises with make-up, but the damage was still plain to see.
As soon as I got in, I turned her face to the light. ‘He fucking hit you again.’
She tried to laugh it off. ‘Witch hazel’s not working, then?’
It made me so mad. I was physically shaking. If Jardine had been within striking distance in that moment, I’d have fucking killed him. ‘Mel, this can’t go on.’
She pointed at her face. ‘You mean this?’ And hesitated. ‘Or us?’
I knew there was no us. Not really. I mean, we hadn’t even kissed, for God’s sake. Not that it would have made the slightest difference to Jardine if he knew I’d been coming to the flat. I took her by the shoulders and said, ‘I can’t let him go on hitting you.’
But she pulled away. ‘I can take care of myself, Cammie. I can. I wouldn’t have survived this long if I couldn’t.’
‘Leave him.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why.’
I didn’t, not really. Couldn’t understand for the life of me why she would stay with a man who beat her. It made no sense. I’d have taken her away from all that shit in a heartbeat. I’m sure she knew that. But he had some kind of hold on her. Something I can’t even begin to explain.
She had walked away to the window, and was staring out into the wet afternoon. And suddenly she gasped. ‘Oh, my God! He’s back! Oh, my God, Cammie, you’ve got to go.’ She turned to face me with real fear in her eyes.
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay there and have it out with him, but she was very nearly hysterical. In the end I just walked out. Slammed the door behind me. By the time I got to the end of the hall, I could hear the elevator coming. I hesitated for a very long moment. I knew I could take him. But I knew, too, that it could only end badly for me. An off-duty cop beating up the abusive boyfriend of the woman he was in love with. It didn’t matter how platonic my relationship with Mel had been so far, it would not play out well.
Reluctantly I slipped into the stairwell as the lift doors slid open. I stood there listening as he went down the hall. The door of the flat opening. Then silence, before I heard raised voices. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. It took a major effort of will to stop myself from going after him, banging on that door, and beating the crap out of him when he opened it. In the end, I just turned away and began the long descent down the stairs from the fifteenth floor.
I didn’t go back for a whole week. I don’t know who I was punishing more — me or her. The only winner was Jardine. I felt Tiny’s eyes on me when we were on shift together. You know, kind of... appraising. We’d never talked about Mel or Jardine since that first encounter. But somehow he knew. Finally, he said, ‘Are you seeing that girl?’
‘What girl?’
He made a face. ‘Don’t come it, Cammie. It’s me you’re talking to, and you know who I mean.’
I refused to meet his eye. ‘No,’ I said, and because I wasn’t seeing her right then, it didn’t feel like a lie.
He gave a little snort of exasperation and turned away, and he never mentioned her again. Until that day in the locker room.
I went back at the end of the week. Absolutely crapping it, in case she told me to sling my hook. I’d watched Jardine roar away in his fucking Mazda, and after riding the pissy elevator to the fifteenth floor, I almost didn’t have the courage to knock on her door.
My heart was in my mouth when she opened it. She stood staring at me for a long minute before she nodded towards the open sitting-room door and I went through. I heard the front door shut behind me, and as I turned, she threw her arms around me and buried her face in my chest. I didn’t know what to do straight away, I was so taken aback. Then I put my arms around her, too, and felt her whole body quivering. We’d never been this close before. I’d never felt her body against mine. It was electric.
‘I thought you’d given up on me,’ she said.
I made her stand back from me, and took her head in my hands, smearing away her tears with my thumbs. ‘I’ll never give up on you, Mel. Never.’ And I never did.
She tried to control her breathing between sobs. ‘You can’t come back here, though. You can’t. I’m sure he suspects. I’ll meet you somewhere. Somewhere in town where he’s never likely to see us together.’
Which is when we started meeting at the Cafe21 in Merchant City. It was one of those cafés that was all wood and brick and steel on the inside, and glass and marble outside. Typical Glasgow, they put cane tables and chairs out on the pavement, more in hope that it wouldn’t rain than in any expectation of sunshine. You could try all you like to pretend it was Paris, but in Glasgow that never really washed.
The Merchant City was one of the oldest parts of the town. It’s where all the wealthy merchants from the days of empire had their warehouses, shipping tobacco and sugar and tea. Then later it was home to the city’s fruit and vegetable and cheese markets. By the time me and Mel were meeting at the Cafe21, it had become the in-place for posh folk who didn’t mind spending a bit of cash in the boutiques and gourmet restaurants. Not a place Jardine or any of his cohorts would ever be seen dead in.
We always took a table up on the mezzanine. Mostly we just had cappuccinos, but sometimes we would get stuff off the menu if we were hungry, or they were busy and we wanted to keep our table. They had wraps, and toasties, and nachos, as well as pizzas and stuff. It was okay, but it wasn’t cheap.
I didn’t care, though. I was with Mel, and we weren’t worrying every minute of our time together if Jardine was going to come back unexpectedly and catch us.
I remember those days with such an aching fondness. Away from that flat in Soutra Place, she was a different person. Relaxed, so quick to laugh, interested in every little thing about me.
I told her how my mum died when I was young, and really it was my dad who brought me up, in a single end in Clydebank. He’d been an apprentice welder in the shipyards when he was young. Though, even then, there weren’t that many shipbuilders left on the Clyde, and when the yard where he worked closed down, it had been almost impossible for him to find another job.
‘There was a time,’ I said, ‘when he really thought about us emigrating to Australia.’
Quite impulsively, she reached across the table to grab my hand. ‘Oh, I’m glad you didn’t.’ And the touch of her hand on mine suffused me with such warmth, I find it hard to describe. I put my other hand over hers and hoped, somehow, that everything I was feeling would be transmitted from my heart to hers through our touching hands.