I’m forty in four years’ time, and I worry she’s right. When you pass on something that has good things about it, but isn’t good enough, you’re gambling that something one day will feel better, aren’t you? Stick, or twist. I’m getting old enough to say: I might be wrong about that.’
I pause. ‘Fuck, you sound like my mum! Don’t tell me Mum was right about Mark!’
‘Well. She remarried a “human burp”. Equally you can be too accommodating.’
I honk loud enough that the barman looks over.
Fin’s phone, lying on the bar, bursts into light. Not only a call, a full-screen picture, a FaceTime. Featuring first a red-haired woman, then jostled by a small red-haired boy. I think: bit late to have a child up? Then remember New York is hours behind.
‘Oh, speak of the devil,’ Fin says, with a startle at Romilly’s features. ‘I best get this.’
‘Of course,’ I say, swigging the last of my drink and pushing down off my stool.
‘Meet at nine in the lobby for the grand tour of Leith?’ Fin says.
‘You’re on!’
Upstairs, I get into my room, pull my pyjamas on, tease my hair out of its pins and brush it smooth under the bathroom light.
As I pad through to the bedroom I see my phone flashing on the nightstand. I pick it up – it’s an unknown caller, an international number with mysterious digits.
Out of the sheer intrigue, I answer it.
32
I lie prone with hot tears coating my face, my mobile handset still a warm slab of glass in my hand from the recent call. A green light unexpectedly winks on the landline by my bed. For the second time inside twenty minutes tonight, I break my own rules and answer blind.
‘Hello?’ I say, blearily.
‘Hi it’s me,’ Fin says. ‘I didn’t wake you?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t have a spare iPhone charger, would you? Mine’s frayed and the battery’s inching up by one per cent a half hour.’
‘Oh,’ I sit up and glance at my open case. ‘Actually, yes. Think I do.’
‘Mind if I come get it?’
I have to heave back a sob and say: ‘Sure,’ which comes out as a squeak.
‘Are you alright?’ he says.
‘Not really,’ I gasp.
Fin pauses.
‘I’m on my way.’
A soft tap at the door moments later and he’s outside, in his t-shirt and sweatpants. Even with hiking socks, it’s a good look for him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he says, as I hand him the charger. I try to speak and instead I burst into fresh tears, clamp a palm over my face. Fin steps into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
‘Mark called,’ I say, when I get the power of speech back. ‘My ex? In America. He’d seen something on Facebook today about Susie and called me to see how I was. He was so shocked and his shock made me shocked all over again.’
Fin nods, face grave. ‘Yeah. Telling people, talking about it, is a series of aftershocks.’
‘Yes! He was so sympathetic, it really did for me.’
During our conversation, I could hear the snuffling and occasional ragged cry of a newborn in the background of the conversation, an unknown female voice shushing. The connection had that slightly echoey, windy quality of long distance.
Standing in the anonymous surroundings of this grand hotel, it was what Susie and I used to call a ‘searchlight in the prison yard’ moment. When you’re caught in the bright, unforgiving glare of an inspection you’ve not prepared for.
I didn’t want to be with Mark. Yet somehow, his being so distant in sunnier climes, and my being here in cold, lonely dark ones, amid such grief – it made me feel my life had comprehensively fallen apart, since I declined to share his. It felt like judgement, by a higher power.
‘Mark’s memories of Susie caused me to think, you know, in a way I hadn’t, about how we all were,’ I hear my tremulous voice in the quiet of a plush, noise-proofed hotel room. ‘About a time gone past. Racing around in our twenties, when things were hopeful and choices were unmade and Susie was with us. When I could’ve warned her not to get out of taxis early to smoke. It’s all gone,’ I say, looking at Fin with streaming eyes, wiping my face ineffectually with my pyjama sleeve. ‘It turns out that nothing worked out. My friends were the bit of my life I’d got right and now everything is sick and strange and fucked up forever.’
Finlay is frowning in concern, but letting me talk.