The note said, Dear Uncle Mohammed. I'm sorry. By the time you read this I will be on a train to London. Thank you for all your kindness; all will be explained. Forgive me. Love, Isis.
P.S. Posting phone back.
I got up as the train was slowing, took my travelling hat down from the overhead luggage rack, lifted my Sitting Board and walked up the carriage to collect my kit-bag. I passed an elderly couple sitting in seats whose reservations labels read from Aberdeen to York, and pointed Uncle Mo out to them, asking them to wake him before York and make sure he got off. They agreed and I thanked them.
There was a train like ours pulling into Newcastle station from the south just as ours arrived from the opposite direction. I talked to an official on the platform who told me the other train was a delayed Edinburgh-bound service. I sprinted over the footbridge and was back heading north even before the train carrying Uncle Mo set off again.
CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO
I arrived back in Edinburgh with an hour to spare. It was a pleasantly mild day under high, patchy overcast; I went to the main Post Office, purchased a padded bag and posted Uncle Mo's telephone back to his address in Spayedthwaite, then I walked to the Royal Commonwealth Pool, stopping at a bookshop en route to search a motoring atlas for the town of Mauchtie, in Lanarkshire. It was there, indeed, not far from the town of Hamilton.
I continued on to the pool, in the shadow of Arthur's Seat. I took a walk round it and saw what had to be the flumes, at the back of the building; huge coloured plastic pipes which looked a little like the rubbish chutes one sees on buildings under renovation. There were four of these tubes: a broad meandering white one with an upper section which was either transparent or opaque, two steeper convoluted flumes in yellow and blue, and an abrupt black example which looked almost as steep as a rubbish chute.
I sat on the grass on the slopes of Arthur's Seat for a while, looking out across the buildings and soaking up a little soft, cloud-filtered sunlight, then presented myself at the ticket office of the pool, descended to the changing rooms, squeezed carefully into my tired and tight old costume (it was once yellow, but after years of swimming in the silty old Forth it had long since turned oatmeal) and - after some difficulty stuffing my kit-bag into the narrow locker I had been assigned - spent the next twenty minutes swimming lengths, admiring the sheer size of the place and taking an interest in the flumes, the four of which were entered via a tall circular staircase and three of which decanted into their own small pool. The fourth flume - which appeared to the one with black tubing I'd seen outside earlier - deposited its patrons into a long water-filled trough. Judging from the occasional shrieks and the speed with which people were ejected from the black mouth of this last flume, I gathered that this one was the most thrilling.
I'd been keeping an eye on the exits from the changing rooms, and after twenty minutes saw somebody I was reasonably certain was the young man Cousin Morag had called Ricky, whom I had met at La Mancha a week earlier. His trunks were brief and he presented a fine figure of a man: he was tanned, blond and muscled, and I was far from the only female looking at him. I imagined a fair few males were sizing him up too, most with jealousy. He walked halfway along the edge of the pool and stood at the side, his feet spread, his arms crossed bulkily beneath impressive pectorals. There was a frown on his face as he stared round the pool. I did the backstroke past him a couple of times but he didn't seem to notice.
Cousin Morag appeared five minutes later, and drew even more stares. She wore a one-piece, as I did, but there the resemblance ended. Her costume was glossy black. It rode high on the hip and featured sheer-looking black mesh side panels which rose from hip-hem to armpit, huggingly displaying her narrow waist. The swimsuit possessed what was technically a high neck, the concealing effect of which was, however, entirely undone by another deep and wide see-through panel which exhibited the swelling tops of her considerable breasts.
She joined the young man at the side of the pool, gods amongst mortals. They both looked out over the swimmers and those walking or sitting around the side; Morag glanced up at the flumes. She wore her long chestnut hair gathered up into a bun held with a black band. I raised my hand and waved as her gaze swept past me.
She waved back, an uncertain smile on her face. I turned onto my front and swam over to them, reckoning that - if she still believed herself to be in some way threatened by me - Morag would feel less so if I was in the water and beneath her and the young man.
I pulled in at the side; Morag squatted; the young man remained standing, looking down, frowning.
'Hello,' I said, nodding and smiling at both of them.
'Hi, Is. You've met Ricky, haven't you?'
'Yes. Hello again,' I said cheerily. 'How's Tyson?'
He scowled, and appeared to think. 'All right,' he said eventually.
'Good. I'm sorry if my friends and I alarmed you, back at La Mancha.'
'Wasn't alarmed,' Ricky said indignantly.
'I should have said annoyed,' I said, apologetically. 'Sorry if we annoyed you.'
'All right,' Ricky said, apparently appeased.
'So, how's things, cuz?' Morag asked with a small smile.
'Oh, pretty traumatic,' I said, smiling bravely. 'But I'm surviving.'
'Good,' she said, standing. She nodded across the pool to where the circular stairs led to the flume's entrance. 'Shall we flume?' she asked.
'Why not?' I said.
Morag dived gracefully overhead, entering the water behind me with a dainty splash. Ricky launched himself a moment later, creating a disturbance hardly any greater. I kicked away from the side and splashed inelegantly after their sleek shapes.
'Flumes are like life, see?' Cousin Morag said, as we neared the end of the queue on the spiral steps and approached the platform which supported the entrances to the four flumes. An attendant in white shorts and T-shirt was supervising the people - mostly children, already damp - who were queuing for the fun.
'Like life?' I said, shuffling forward and talking round Ricky's bulk. He had insisted on standing between Morag and me, seemingly not yet content that I wasn't in fact a stalker with murderous intent, though quite where he thought I could have secreted a weapon I couldn't really see. Perhaps he suspected I was going to up-end Morag over the side of the spiral railings and send her hurtling to the tiles below.
'Yes,' Morag said, round Ricky's impressive biceps as she came to the front of the queue. 'You can take the short fast fun route, like the black chute here, or the long slow leisurely route like the white one, or something in between, know what I mean?'
'Sort of,' I said.
Morag got the nod and padded over to the mouth of the black tube, watched all the way by every pair of eyes within range. She lifted herself athletically into the gaping mouth of the black hole. Lights above the tunnel mouth changed from red to green. She pushed herself away and down, disappearing with a joyous whoop.
Ricky turned to me, grinning. 'She always does that,' he said. Then he strode across the moist tiles to follow her, hurtling silently down into the blackness a little later.
I thought it would seem churlish not to take the same route. I settled myself in the mouth of the drop, grabbing the chrome handles at the side of the flume entrance. When the red light went off I let myself go.