‘He’s missing out on a fair bit of rental income, then,’ said Mr Byrne.
‘Yes, but you can easily get to Alison’s from the ring road,’ said Mrs Byrne.
‘I’ll go and get the keys, anyway.’
‘I’ll go and fetch the street map, and show you exactly where she is.’
While they departed on these errands, I sipped my tea and munched on my scone and looked out over their back garden. It was a lovely big garden, stretching down to the edge of the reservoir in a series of falling terraces. Beyond their fence I could see the path that led around the reservoir. You could walk this path in about thirty minutes, I seemed to remember. I had done it with Alison once. I would have been about fifteen. It was not long before our families went to the Lake District together. I’d probably come round to see Chris but somehow I’d managed to end up walking round the reservoir with Alison, who was a couple of years older than me, and with whom I’d always had an odd, not-quite-flirtatious friendship. (I somehow felt that I was meant to find her more attractive than I actually did, if that makes sense.) Should I go and see her in Edinburgh? Drop in for a cup of tea? I hadn’t seen her since Chris’s wedding, more than fifteen years ago. It couldn’t do any harm, I suppose …
Mr and Mrs Byrne returned at the same time, their minds still running on parallel tracks.
‘When do you have to get to Shetland, exactly?’ Mrs Byrne asked.
‘Here they are,’ said Mr Byrne, handing me a set of keys. ‘By the way, is that your Prius outside?’
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter much, as long as I’m there by the end of the week,’ I said to Mrs Byrne. ‘Yes, it is,’ I said to her husband. ‘Only for this trip though.’
‘Well then, why don’t you have dinner with Alison and Philip tomorrow night?’
‘How are you finding it? Is it a good drive?’
I assumed that Philip was Alison’s husband. The name seemed vaguely familiar.
‘That won’t work, I’m afraid. I’m seeing Lucy – my daughter – tomorrow night. In Kendal. Yes, I’m loving it. Do you know I averaged sixty-five miles to the gallon on the way here? And the SatNav is amazing.’
‘Kendal? What’s your daughter doing in Kendal?’
‘Sixty-five isn’t bad. Mind you, there are some small diesel cars which can manage almost that, these days. How big’s the engine?’
‘Well … Caroline left me, you see. About six months ago. She and Lucy are living in Kendal now. I don’t know how big the engine is, sorry – it probably says in the manual.’
‘Oh, Max – I had no idea. You must be devastated. Why didn’t Chris tell us about it, I wonder?’
‘I heard that the acceleration is rather poor. Not much power if you want to overtake in a hurry.’
‘Yes, it’s been a … disappointment. The biggest disappointment of my life, in fact.’
Mr Byrne stared at me in surprise, until his wife tapped him reprovingly on the knee.
‘He’s talking about the break-up of his marriage, not the acceleration on his car. Can’t you listen?’ She turned to me and said: ‘A lot of relationships go through a blip, Max. I’m sure it’s only temporary.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘They’ve moved to the other end of the country. It feels pretty permanent to me.’
‘Did you try counselling, and so on?’ asked Mrs Byrne.
‘Were you shagging around or anything?’ asked Mr Byrne.
‘Donald!’ said his wife, exasperated.
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I mean yes, we did try counselling, and no, I wasn’t shagging around.’
‘Max,’ said Mrs Byrne. ‘Why don’t you stay to dinner? I’ve made a chicken pie, and there’s plenty for three of us.’
‘I wasn’t being rude,’ said Mr Byrne. ‘It’s just that strange things happen to men when they hit their mid-forties. For some reason they get an uncontrollable urge to have sex with twenty-year-old girls.’
‘That would be lovely,’ I said. ‘I mean, staying for dinner, not having sex with twenty-year-old girls. Which would also be lovely, of course, but … But anyway, I’m afraid I can’t. Dinner, I mean. I’ve got … I’ve got plans for tonight.’
‘Oh dear. Well, I’ll make another pot of tea, anyway.’
She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me and Mr Byrne alone for a few minutes. For a horrible moment I thought that he was going to attempt a heart-to-heart with me about the break-up of my marriage, but I needn’t have worried. We talked about the Toyota Prius instead. He told me about an article he’d read which claimed that the manufacturing process was so long and complicated that it actually cancelled out the environmental benefits of the hybrid engine. Also, apparently, there was a big question mark over whether it was possible to recycle the battery. He seemed to know an awful lot about it. But then Mr Byrne, like his son, had always struck me as being well informed. He was another of those men blessed (unlike me) with a hungry, enquiring mind.
Mrs Byrne was away for about twenty minutes. I wasn’t sure why it should be taking her so long to make a pot of tea. When she finally reappeared, however, all was made clear.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I’ve been on the phone to Alison. I thought I’d call her on the off chance. She says she’s at home all week, and she’d love to see you on Wednesday.’
‘Oh,’ I said, rather taken aback. ‘Well that’s great, thank you.’
‘Philip’s in Malaysia at the moment, so she’s booking a restaurant in town for that evening, and the two of you can go out and have a cosy dinner. The boys are both at boarding school now, of course.’
‘I’m very grateful, but –’
‘Ah!’ Mr Byrne jumped to his feet. ‘That gives me an idea.’
He left the room, while I struggled to get my head around this new development. It would mean adding an extra day to my journey, catching the ferry from Aberdeen on Thursday evening and arriving in Shetland on Friday morning. Was this a problem? Not necessarily. The other three salesmen would probably have reached their destinations and gone home by then, but why should that bother me? It wasn’t a race. Or if it was, I was never going to be the first one home. I was hardly the Robin Knox-Johnston or Bernard Moitessier in this scenario, after all. And besides, I was already well on course to win the other prize – the one for petrol consumption.
‘Well, that would be … that would be terrific, actually. Yes, why not? I’d love to see Alison again.’
‘And I’m sure she’d love to see you. Splendid. That’s all arranged, then.’
She beamed at me happily, and passed me another scone. I saw my own reflection leaning across to take it from the offered plate, reflected in the glass panels of the conservatory. Outside it was now almost dark. A bleak evening lay ahead of me, alone in my room in the Quality Hotel Premier Inn, yet I couldn’t bring myself to accept the Byrnes’ offer of dinner at their house. There was still a limit on how much human company I could tolerate in one day. I ate the scone in silence while Mrs Byrne talked to me soothingly, filling me in on news about friends of hers who I’d either never met or couldn’t remember meeting. Then, after a few minutes, Mr Byrne returned, huffing and puffing and carrying a big cardboard box.
‘There!’ he said, depositing it on the floor of the conservatory with an air of triumph.
‘Oh, Donald!’ said his wife. ‘Now what are you doing?’
‘This is from the attic,’ he explained.
‘I know where it’s from. What’s it doing down here?’
‘You said you were sick of the sight of it.’
‘So I am. That’s why I took it up to the attic. What have you brought it down again for?’
‘It doesn’t belong in our attic. We’ve got enough clutter up there. It’s Alison’s.’
‘I know it’s Alison’s. I keep asking her to take it away with her, and she keeps forgetting.’