— Aye, is that right? Jim smiled.
Then the lights flicker on, but Melanie keeps her eyes shut, trying to force herself back into the satisfying stew of memory and dream. It isn’t working; Jim’s face fades under the glow burning through her lids and she blinks awake to note that, thankfully, she’s missed breakfast. The remains of a croissant are visible down the front of the fat man.
Disembarking at Terminal 5 in Heathrow, she heads to the Plane Food restaurant, orders some eggs and checks her phone. There is a call from a Santa Barbara number she doesn’t recognise, and a message on her voicemail. She plays it and her blood runs cold.
— I’ve been drinking. I may even have a problem. Harry’s voice is sullied by bitterness. — So now maybe I’ll be interesting enough for you to acknowledge that I fucking exist. Wouldn’t that be something? People like you. . women like you. . you know nothing. Nothing!
Melanie can feel the noise of the fork in her hand rattling involuntarily against the plate. She wants to erase the message, obliterate those dumb, sneering tones. But she doesn’t, she plays it again, empowered by the fact that he has compromised himself. She calls Jim, but there’s still nothing except a strange tone that’s meaningless to her. Boarding the connecting flight to Edinburgh, Melanie has only a vague idea as to where Elspeth’s place is, having been there with Jim several years ago, before Grace was born.
Landing at her destination, her neck and spine sore after all the flying, she finds herself almost hallucinating from the combination of jet lag, exhaustion and the curious exhilaration of being back. She had never planned to go to Edinburgh to work, it had been an exchange programme for a year between the Scottish prison service and the California correctional system. But Melanie had taken to it. Yes, the city is as cold and grey as she remembers, but it is also breathtakingly beautiful. Sitting in the taxi, listening to the driver’s banter, she recalls why she loved the place; the majestic vistas, the fresh air, but most of all the militant, almost paradoxically dramatic, unpretentiousness of the locals.
She has to find Frank, and curses herself for not getting the number for Elspeth, or even his exes. The mothers of his sons. It still astonishes Melanie, given the strong, warm, gentle and exclusive way he is with her and the girls, that there are other women with whom he had children. That he’d previously led a different, more desperate life was something she had known from them meeting in prison; this had been intellectually and emotionally absorbed. But the hardest bit is acknowledging the existence of, and dealing with, those who had shared that life.
Checking in to the familiar small hotel on Dalkeith Road, Melanie hasn’t asked specifically for room 8, but that’s the one she’s allocated. Lying down on the bed, she recognises that this was the scene of their first time together as lovers, and memories come flooding back. This was where she and Jim went every Monday, when he was given day release from prison on the Training for Freedom project. — I could fuck you senseless, he said. — But I’d really like you to show me how to make love.
— I’m happy to do that, Melanie replied, — provided you agree that we fuck each other senseless after.
The deal was struck, and had to be honoured. It was so straightforward, because Jim couldn’t have fucked her senseless. He was lost, rendered impotent in all but mind, useless among real people, like so many men who had undergone long-term prison sentences or were compulsive viewers of pornography. Melanie was patient, and in her hands his sexuality was carefully restored. It seemed to her that he was keen, even relieved, to be able to start from scratch.
But now she is here, alone. Where would she find him? It has to be Leith. The old bars. Tracers blazing behind her retina, she resolves: I’m not going back without him.
But she can’t do anything without proper sleep.
27. THE COUPLE
The pub is in a narrow south-side backstreet, close to Holyrood Park. It has avoided the slow gentrification of the neighbourhood, still managing to feel smoky, even though no cigarettes have been burned in there since the ban many years back. Franco instantly thinks of June’s lungs as he heads to the battered wooden bar and orders a drink.
Turning to scan the hostelry, he spies John Dick sat in the corner, waiting for him. Dick has a pint of Guinness in front of him, but notes with approval the glass of orange juice Franco brings to the table. — Still off the sauce, I see.
— Choose life, Franco says, sinking into the padded seating next to the prison service man.
— You’ve made a pretty decent yin for yourself!
A couple sitting across from them, by the dartboard and a jukebox with an OUT OF ORDER sign, are having a heated quarrel. — You ken how! the woman, squat frame, dark curly hair and pinched face, challenges.
— Thanks to you, Franco says to John, glancing over at the couple.
— Thanks to you, John points at him, — having the intelligence and the courage to see that the other one was going nowhere and rebuilding it. He takes a sip of his pint. Then his voice goes low in reprisal. — Now you’re going to throw it all away, and for rubbish that’s jail-bound anyway.
— Think so? Franco says, hearing the defiance flood into his voice, knowing that his prison mentor will perceive it as empty as he does.
— Frank, I thought that making bad decisions in life was a habit you’d got out off. John’s tongue darts out to remove the foam from his top lip. — Now you’re getting back in the gutter with a wee creep like Anton Miller.
Feeling himself regressing to a sullen teenager, Franco decides that it’s time to get a grip. — I’ve never seen the boy, he explains patiently. — Wouldnae ken him if he walked in here right now.
— But you’ve been asking around for him. And I hear he wants to see you, John fixes him in that owl-like stare. — Why are you doing this?
— Daein what?
— Sticking around. Sean’s gone, John says coolly, — There’s nothing for you here. Nothing but Miller and other trouble. He looks over at the screeching couple. Knows they are on Frank Begbie’s radar. — Go back home to Melanie and the kids, Frank. That’s your life now.
Franco draws in a deep breath, and looks intently at John. — I dunno who you’ve been talking to, he calmly protests, — But the fact is that I’ve not asked one single thing about Miller. It’s other people that’s been dropping his name here, there and everywhere, saying that he was involved with Sean.
They are disturbed by a roar from across the bar. — CAUSE YIR FUCKIN STUPIT! YOU’VE EY BEEN FUCKIN STUPIT! the man shouts at the woman, who seems to shrink into herself, then seethe in a silent rage.
— Whether he was or wasn’t, it’s not your battle. John Dick shakes Frank Begbie’s wrist gently, to get his attention back from the couple. — He’ll exterminate you, Frank. You’re just an obstacle. He’s cold-blooded, there’s no ego at work there, just superpowered insect brain. It’ll be a bullet in the head from a drive-by, you won’t even see it.
— Cheer me up some more, Franco says, looking at his orange juice on the table. He has no intention of drinking that shite, any more than he has of taking alcohol. Scotland? They’ve never fuckin seen real orange juice.