in his eye as he crossed his arms and leant back on the stool. ‘Cam,’ he said. ‘The last of the honourable men, brought thudding back to earth by a mystery woman. Who the heck is she?’
Cameron closed his eyes and ran his index finger and thumb hard across his forehead. ‘She’s no-one you know. And this subject is now closed.’
‘Fine with me.’ Hamish held both hands in the air, then glanced at his paint-splattered watch. ‘I have somewhere else to be.’
‘We have work to do, McKinnon,’ Bruce cried. ‘Where else could you possibly have to be?’
‘I have a date waiting for me on the exterior-window cleaning trestle. She should be at about the thirtieth floor by now, so I’ll just go grab the champagne and get harnessed up.’
Cameron didn’t even bother telling Hamish where to go, he just slid from the stool and walked away.
‘Where’s he think he’s going?’ he heard Bruce ask as he reached the lift door.
‘If he’s trying to cut in on my date,’ Hamish said, ‘It’ll be pistols at dawn.’
There was a pause, then Bruce said, ‘I thought you were kidding about the girl,’ as the lift doors closed. Cameron was only half-sorry he missed Hamish’s response.
He reached the top floor before he knew it. The lift doors opened to a cacophony of noise as glaziers, construction workers and plasterers chatted, banged, drilled, swore and gave the place the kind of raw energy that usually invigorated him.
It meant progress. Honest work, honestly executed by honest men. Sweat of the brow stuff. He was proud of the healed blisters on his own hands for that exact reason.
But as he hit the spot on the roofless penthouse floor, where the night before Rosalind had sat upon a crate, looking out over his city, and with her mix of ruthless candour and subtle beauty had managed to smooth over his perpetual dissatisfaction, the noise faded away.
He leant a foot against the edge of the roof and looked out over the horizon where streaks of cloud were just beginning to herald the rising of the sun.
He held out his hand at arm’s length and a span above the horizon; just where she’d said it would be, there it was: Venus. A glowing crescent in the pale-grey sky.
His hand dropped. Somewhere out there, beyond the borders of the noisy, thriving city he loved, she would be sitting somewhere quiet looking at the exact same point in the sky.
And while she was thinking trajectories, gas clouds and expanding universes, he was thinking about her. About seeing her again tonight. It would be their third date in as many nights, which was more time than he’d spent with one woman in as long as he could remember. More time than he ever let himself see Meg or Dylan.
A thread of guilt snuck beneath his unusually unguarded defences. He’d kept those he loved most at the greatest distance so as to save them from being tainted with the hurtful knowledge about his father’s weak character he always carried with him. But something Rosalind had said made him wonder: was keeping them at bay hurting them as much?
If he really wanted to see them he knew where they’d be that weekend, all in the one place at the one time, which was usually an impossible feat.
He ran a hand over his mouth. If he went to his father’s birthday party, he pretty much knew what would happen. Brendan would swagger, Dylan would win money on a bet he had made somewhere about the date of his return home and Meg would squeal, leap into his arms, then try to set him up with a girlfriend. And his mother would probably cry.
His stomach clenched on his mother’s behalf. The clench turned to acid as he thought of how shabbily she’d been treated by the one person who was meant to care for her. The idea of putting on a show at a celebration of that man’s years on earth turned to dust in his throat.
He needed to put it out of his mind for good. He checked his watch. Twelve hours to go before he was due to pick Rosalind up at the planetarium. Not soon enough.
‘Cam?’
He turned to find Hamish standing in the lift, holding the door open.
‘Anything else you want to go over before I do head off?’
Cameron had to think, the usually crisp, clear list in his head squished at the edges, having been pushed aside by other pressing thoughts. ‘If there