I laughed. ‘Well, he’d never have taken me hillwalking if we had. I don’t know if there are any mountains in Australia, but I’d have missed bagging all those Munros.’
She frowned. ‘Munros?’
And I explained to her what a Munro was, and that they were named after some toff called Munro who’d made a list of them all.
‘I’ll take you with me some time,’ I said. ‘When you get up there among the peaks, it’s like you’re on top of the world. Puts everything into perspective, and you realise how small your problems are by comparison.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, then laughed. ‘But I’d probably have to go into training for six months first.’
I’d been meeting her at the Cafe21 for maybe six months. Sometimes there was bruising. Sometimes there wasn’t. I never mentioned it when there was. And she never once talked about her life with Jardine. It was like, you know, a cat that hides its head beneath a cushion and thinks if it can’t see you, you can’t see it. We were just pretending we had a life together. If we didn’t talk about the rest of it, then it didn’t exist.
It was one early spring day when we met in the late afternoon and she told me she wouldn’t have to be home till late that night. Jardine thought she was going on a girls’ night out, and wasn’t expecting her to be there when he got in from work.
I remember thinking I could take her to a movie, or out for a meal somewhere. Maybe even take in a show in town. I made a couple of suggestions, and she sat there looking at her hands folded in her lap. Then she raised her eyes to mine and said, ‘Maybe we could just go to your place.’
My heart kind of thundered around in my chest for a minute before pushing up into my throat and damn near choking me. I knew this was what they called a watershed moment. The direction of our relationship was about to change course. And if we went with the flow, there would be no way back.
We took a taxi to my place at Maryhill. Sitting in the back saying nothing. But we held hands for the first time. I mean, it was really no big deal. But it kind of was. I was so nervous. It wasn’t like I’d never slept with a girl before. There’d been a few. But this was different. I wanted it to be amazing. The best ever. And I was scared it wouldn’t be.
I thought maybe she felt that way, too. But when we got back to the flat, she was all over me the minute the door was closed. Hungry for me, like she hadn’t eaten in a month. And all my fears fell away, like the trail of clothes we left on the floor on the way to the bedroom. Jesus! And it was amazing. Better than I could ever have hoped. Better than I could ever have imagined. I was so lost in her, so blind to the future, that I couldn’t see how impossible it all would become.
Addie was conceived that night, though I didn’t know that till much later. But I told Mel for the first time that I loved her. First time, actually, that I ever told anyone that. I’d never had the faintest idea what love was, or how it was supposed to feel. But I did now, even if I couldn’t put it into words.
We lay together afterwards, till it got dark and street lamps sent their orange light through the window in long boxes deformed by the tangle of quilt on the bed. We said nothing in all that time, till finally it was Mel who broke the silence. And she said, quite simply, ‘Cammie, I’m scared.’
It was strange how our meetings at the Cafe21 were never quite the same after that. Like they weren’t enough now. We both wanted more and better, but the opportunity simply wasn’t there. I’d never had any control over when, or for how long, we could meet. And before the night at Maryhill, I’d been able to thole that. Just. Now, I couldn’t. And while everything had changed for us, really nothing had, and I was just about demented.
Then fate intervened, in a way that neither of us could have foreseen. I’d met Mel briefly at Merchant City that Saturday afternoon. She’d been depressed. The weekend always did that to her. Jardine had been drinking the night before, and he’d be drinking again tonight. She always faced it with a kind of stoic endurance, but I was finding it harder and harder to take. I tried again to persuade her to leave him, and the shutters came down, just as they always did. She wouldn’t even discuss it. We had words. I gave her an ultimatum. As I had done several times before. But she knew they were just empty words. That I’d never give up on her. Because I’d told her that, hadn’t I? I didn’t ever want to lose her. And she knew it.
So we parted on bad terms that night, and I was feeling particularly low when I started on the early shift Sunday morning. I was getting changed in the locker room when Tiny came in and sat down beside me on the bench. He looked grim. ‘Got some news for you, pal.’
I couldn’t conceive of news, good or bad, being of any interest at all to me right then. I just grunted and said, ‘That right?’ and bent over to tie my laces.
Tiny said, ‘I know you’ve been seeing that girl.’ And when I straightened up to deny it, he put a hand on my arm and said, ‘I know you have, mate. And I’m figuring the only reason you’re not an item is cos she won’t leave him. Am I right?’
I tried to stare him down, but I couldn’t, and finally went back to tying my shoelaces.
‘He’s in the slammer.’
And I straightened up again so fast I almost slid off the bench. ‘Who?’
‘Jardine.’
Now I was alarmed. ‘What did he do to her?’
‘Nothing. He was out in that flash red sports car last night with a bucketload of booze in him. Over on the south side. Mosspark Boulevard. Doing upwards of ninety by all accounts. Lost control and slammed into an oncoming vehicle. A family SUV with a mother and two kids in it.’ He paused and pressed his lips together in a grim line. ‘All dead.’
‘And Jardine?’
‘A few bumps and bruises. Always the way of it, isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘Fucking horrible thing to happen. But, mate, he’s going down for a long time.’
To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything other than that poor woman and her two kids being dead, and that cunt still walking this earth. Maybe if I’d taken him on. Maybe if I’d given him the hiding he deserved and taken Mel away, things would have turned out different.
I put my elbows on my thighs and buried my face in my hands.
Tiny was concerned. ‘You alright, Cammie?’
I sat up and shook my head. ‘No. I should have fucking killed him when I had the chance.’
‘Then you’d be the one getting sent down.’ He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Mate, things just happen. Some of them you can control, most of them you can’t. I don’t know how things’ll be for you and that lassie now. And I have to admit I’ve never really understood what it is you see in her. Only you know that. But one thing’s for sure — Jardine’ll no’ be an issue now.’
Jardine’s case wasn’t in the system for as long as you might have expected. He pleaded guilty at his first appearance, when it is usual to make no plea or declaration. Maybe his lawyers told him that he’d get a lighter sentence if he didn’t put the court to the trouble and cost of a trial. The Scottish Government had just passed a law increasing the sentence for causing death by careless driving under the influence of drink or drugs to life imprisonment. Or maybe Jardine just wanted it over and done with. At any rate, I was in the courtroom the day he was sentenced, just to show support for Mel. Even though we sat well apart. There were some unsavoury relatives of Jardine’s on the public benches, too. A hard-faced sister. An aunt and a couple of sketchy cousins. As well as what I would have described as several acquaintances of dubious character. Other than that, the public benches were largely empty. Nobody was much interested in the fate of Lee Alexander Jardine.