Duncan was sleeping in Dan and Katelin’s spare bedroom, but Katelin couldn’t bring herself to speak to him. She told Dan to tell his friend that if Lindsay Miller set foot in the house, Duncan could sod off and sleep on the street, for all she cared.
‘I mean it, Dan,’ she said. ‘If I get so much as a whiff of her bloody cologne, he’s out.’
Dan didn’t say that Lindsay Miller wasn’t the cologne-wearing type; that instead she smelled of cigarettes and late nights at live gigs in dingy clubs. But he did tell Katelin she might try to be slightly less judgemental. He understood her feelings of loyalty to Rose-Ann; of course he did. But she’d known Duncan for a lot longer, he was a dear friend, and the guy was in turmoil. And this really was just a flash in the pan, he wasn’t with Lindsay at all, she’d just added him to her collection, and now his world had blown up.
‘Don’t make things worse for him than they already are,’ Dan said. ‘He’s suffering, but to her it’s a meaningless fling. Lindsay doesn’t need Duncan, and he’d probably be back home with Rose-Ann by now if everyone could just calm down.’
Katelin only shrugged at this. ‘He knows what to do then,’ she said.
‘What? Crawl back up to New Town in a hair shirt?’
‘Yes,’ Katelin said. ‘Why not? Those medieval Christians knew how to atone.’
‘Have you bothered to consider why he may have had his head turned?’ Dan asked, but Katelin only shrugged at this too, so he dropped it. He knew she wasn’t interested in the case against Rose-Ann, her occasional flint-eyed froideur, her tendency to slip into boardroom steeliness. In any case, this situation was as good as over. He’d met Lindsay two weeks ago, the day he travelled from London to Glasgow to see Duncan. She’d been with him in Gordon Street when Dan walked out of the station. Ripped jeans, biker jacket, Levi’s T-shirt, black Cuban heels, great cheekbones, bleach-blonde hair and a bold, unapologetic smile. She was lead guitarist, singer and songwriter for an indie-rock band called Many Minds. Together for ten years but still at the stage where even an ultimately unfulfilled promise of airtime on the radio was almost a cause for celebration. They’d had a drink together in a crowded pub, a shouted conversation over three pints of Tennent’s and a bag of cheese and onion crisps, and Lindsay sat opposite Duncan on a chair, not next to him on the bench, which Dan appreciated because it made the situation a little less odd. Duncan looked thinner, although it was only just over a week since Dan had seen him. His naturally pale complexion seemed almost bruised with fatigue, but there was a febrile energy about him, a kind of fervent light in his eyes. Lindsay chatted, laughed, asked Dan some questions, called Duncan Dunc, but didn’t really notice his evident desire to commune across the sticky wooden tabletop. She looked young and lithe and sexy, and if it hadn’t been totally out of order, Dan would’ve liked to ask her what she was playing at, hanging out with Duncan. When she’d drained her pint, she stood and made her excuses. They’d be wanting to talk about her and they couldn’t do that with her sitting there, she said, and gave a throaty smoker’s laugh, pure Glaswegian. So away she went, sashaying around the busy tables and pausing to light a fag before she’d quite made it out through the door.
‘Christ,’ Duncan said, heaving a sigh, watching until she’d gone.
Dan said nothing; instead he got up and went to the bar. He came back with two more pints, and sat down. ‘Right, Duncan, my lad. Is it all up with Rose-Ann?’
Duncan stared. ‘What kind of question’s that? I’m in love with Lindsay!’
‘I can see that, pal. I just wondered if she feels the same? Lindsay, I mean.’
Duncan didn’t answer, although he seemed to ponder the question, but then all he said was, ‘So, what do you think of her?’
‘I like her,’ Dan said without hesitation. ‘But how’s it going to pan out?’
‘Pan out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘As in …?’
‘As in, pan out.’
They regarded each other solemnly for a while, then Duncan said, ‘How the fuck would I know?’ and they both laughed, although a little grimly.
Dan shook his head. ‘Ah, Duncan.’
Duncan nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know.’
He’d been here before, standing stage right in the rubble and ruin of a relationship, with a new woman waiting stage left. Rose-Ann had once been the new woman, a wealthy American – a lawyer turned venture capitalist from Santa Monica with Scottish lineage, a house in New Town and a weakness for men such as Duncan, as unlike her as it was possible to be: engagingly down at heel, unmaterialistic, driven by hopelessly impecunious artistic ambitions. She got him because he didn’t mind being adored, but she perhaps should’ve been told that Duncan hadn’t been without a woman since he was twenty, and in the past fifteen years alone he’d left Alice for Rose-Ann, Sharon for Alice and Monica for Sharon. For a guy who by any conventional criteria was no catch, Duncan seemed to be irresistible. Lindsay, though, she was your archetypal rolling stone; there’d be no pinning her down.
‘So,’ Dan said, ‘has she asked you to move in?’
‘No! What, into the flat in Laurieston?’
‘Yeah, obviously.’
‘Och, well, it’s only a temporary thing, rent-free just now, but it’s all a bit vague. A tenement flat with, like, six or seven other people.’
‘Right, a squat?’
‘Och, well,’ he said again, wincing a bit. ‘She’s always on the move anyway, touring, y’know?’
‘Right.’
‘They do better on the continent than they do here, that’s where the work is.’
‘Yep, right.’ The picture was crystal clear to Dan, and there was nothing more revealing than Duncan’s evasiveness. He thought about Rose-Ann’s beautiful, comfortable Georgian house, and no, granted, you couldn’t stick with someone just because they had a great house … but on the other hand, a woman would have to be pretty sodding special to justify following her to a squat in the Gorbals.
Dan sighed. ‘You need to come back to Edinburgh, mate.’
‘A-ha, I know, I know that.’ Duncan nodded sadly.
‘You’ve a business to run, and, I mean, sorry to be brutal, but it was only Rose-Ann’s money that stopped that shop going under a long time ago. Come back, mate. This Lindsay thing, it’s a pipe dream. She’d do your head in, in the end.’
Duncan didn’t reply, but he didn’t deny it, either. They sat in silence for a while, Duncan staring down into his lager, Dan staring up at the old nicotine stains on the ceiling. His mind drifted to other times, and they were many, that he’d been in Glasgow with Duncan, and it was always for a gig; he couldn’t ever remember coming to this city for any other reason, apart from today. After a while he said, ‘That Comsats gig, the one we saw at King Tut’s.’
Duncan looked up and brightened immediately. ‘June twenty-sixth, nineteen ninety-three,’ he said.
‘Great night, great night. Mind you, I didn’t love that album.’
‘No. I liked it though.’
‘Yeah, but it wasn’t the real deal, not if you’d heard ’em in seventy-nine, at the beginning.’
‘Well,’ Duncan said, ‘you got me there.’
‘King Tut’s though,’ Dan said.
‘Banging, then and now.’
‘Best venue I know,’ Dan said.
Duncan nodded, took a swig of his lager, then said, ‘Oh God though, that other night as well, the Oasis night …’
‘Yeah, oh man,’ Dan said. ‘You, me and only about twelve other people in the room, and Alan McGee on his third Jack Daniel’s and Coke, stood there saying are they good or am I pissed?’
Old story, but they both laughed anyway, and now it felt comfortable again, and safe to say goodbye. Out on the street, they hugged, briefly. Duncan said he’d be back in Edinburgh soon, the day after tomorrow, or the day after that, and Dan said, ‘Good, good, OK, call me if you need to, and stay with us if you can’t go home,’ then he walked back up Gordon Street to the station, and Duncan dipped his head against the late-evening cold and headed off towards the badlands of Glasgow, to find Lindsay.
And all the time, all the time, all the time.
With Duncan, with Katelin, with anyone, Dan was holding Ali Connor lightly, constantly, in his thoughts, and if this was hypocrisy, it didn’t feel that way, and if it was infidelity, it never seemed wrong. She’d found a way to permeate his mind, so that wherever he was, so was she. He never had to summon her; she was simply there. She formed a whole world in his head, which only he knew existed, and most of it was conjecture, and he didn’t know what any of it signified, but oh God, it was a source of wonder and delight. Nobody needed to demonstrate to Dan the power and punch of a good song, and when he’d sent ‘Pump It Up’ he’d imagined her smiling, and remembering, but only that. Certainly, he hadn’t imagined this … what was it? An intimate dialogue in music, an eloquence beyond the written word. It was genius. He should market it, invent an app or something.
He wouldn’t have given Carole King the time of day when he was eighteen. But what a lovely track Ali had sent, what a masterclass in deceptive simplicity; he’d listened to it on the train and been blindsided by the emotional tug of her lyrics on his cynical, heard-it-all heart, because it was Ali Connor, Alison, that long-lost girl, speaking to him through this song, like solace for a pain he hadn’t known he had. Jesus, he’d thought; this was crazy. This was bad. In a good, good way. He’d listened three times to the track, wrung out from it every possible shade and nuance, then responded by sending M. Ward’s cover of ‘Let’s Dance’, for the mesmerising poetry of those reinvented Bowie lyrics and – there was no escaping the truth of this – the stripped-back, aching desire. She was ten thousand miles away; where was the harm?
After he’d sent it, he listened to nothing at all, and found he couldn’t write either, or read. Katelin had rung, and they talked about Christmas, his family, who would sleep where, what they would eat, an easy conversation about the real world. But he wanted to talk to Alison Connor. He wanted his phone to ring again, and it be her.
He’d stared blindly at the landscape as the train carved a path north, and let his thoughts travel to Sheffield in the bleak, black summer of 1979, and to what happened that night in July, and what he might have done differently. He thought about Duncan, and his misguided fling, unrelated and incomparable in Dan’s mind to his own feelings for Alison. He thought about Katelin, her brittle, implacable sense of right and wrong, and he thought about love in its many guises, and about loyalty, and trust. But time and again his thoughts swept back to Alison Connor, and where this was all leading, and whether he could see her again, and if so, how, and how soon. These songs were incredible, each new track the highlight of his day; but he wanted to talk to her, and he wanted to hold her again; that was all.
Late December, two days before Christmas. Alex had colonised the living room, dragged the sofa into a front-and-centre location, reconnected the Xbox to the television and was doggedly taking Sheffield Wednesday through a sensational season in the Championship, towards the play-offs and promotion. FIFA, Career Mode: a taste of power and glory for the bruised and bloodied fans of a team under siege in the real world. This was Alex’s antidote to the rigours of Plato, Kant and Nietzsche at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Owls had never had a manager as wise, steadfast and inspiring as Alexander Lawrence. There was a well-known game hack, available via a two-second Google search, to secure an unlimited budget for the transfer windows, but Alex refused to cheat. Instead, he slogged away with the funds he was allocated, growing his squad and bringing talented youth players up through the ranks. His dad was proud of him. A steady hand on the tiller, some home-grown talent, a few canny purchases from unlikely sources, and result after result that proved you couldn’t just buy success in football, you had to nurture it. This is what Dan had just said to Katelin, after she’d complained that the boy had sat on his arse and wasted two days in the front room with the curtains closed.
‘That’s just pathetic,’ she said, now, to Dan. They were out with McCulloch, hunched against the cold, walking alongside the Water of Leith.
‘Oh, give over,’ he said. ‘Give the lad a break. It’s harmless.’
‘I didn’t mean Alex is pathetic, I meant you – the way you talk about a stupid Xbox game, like it’s actually happening. Home-grown talent, canny purchases, all that bollocks.’
Dan said, ‘It’s not stupid, have you seen those graphics? Bloody remarkable. That Wednesday squad – identifiable, to a man.’
Katelin tutted. ‘Yeah, but it’s not Match of the Day, is it? There’s no real justification for you sitting in there and actually watching, is there?’
Dan laughed, refusing to be rattled. ‘Guilty as charged,’ he said. ‘But look, it was the derby.’
The aim was to go a couple of miles or so, towards Roseburn and Murrayfield, but it was hard to see the point, now they were out, and even the little dog trotted glumly at Dan’s heels, with no indication of enjoyment. Dan had intended to run with him, as he did sometimes, to get the lazy little sod moving at something other than walking pace, and he’d been all ready to go, trainers on, earphones in, iPod in the pocket of his shorts, when Katelin said she was feeling stir-crazy, needed some air, and could she come too? But Katelin didn’t run, hated running, wouldn’t even run for a bus, and so here they were, trudging. Terrible weather for it, a dreich winter’s day, damp but not raining, bone cold but not clear.
Katelin was in one of her habitual pre-Christmas funks, when the imminent arrival of his family – or, on alternate years, her own – would periodically colour her thoughts in shades of grey. She always emerged, perfectly pleasant and sociable, in time for the visit, but there was something about the build-up, the expectations, the length of the shopping list, the fridge bulging with the turkey, the veg, the beer, the wine … and the relentlessness of it all, and the inevitability, and the way it crept up by stealth, one minute October, the very next, Christmas. So annoying. Then there were the beds to make, extra mattresses for the cousins, and meanwhile the bathroom and downstairs loo – was this a universal rule? – had to be cleaner than they ever were at any other time of year, and, oh, the whole terrible festive jamboree, like a well-intentioned invasion, a three-day marathon of fairy-lit madness.
‘Hey,’ Dan said, putting an arm loosely round her shoulders. ‘Let’s turn back? Go home and pour a drink?’
She turned her face to his and managed a smile. ‘I need Alex off that sofa,’ she said. ‘It’s an awful tip in that room,’ and Dan said, ‘Agreed, Wednesday’s glorious rise to eminence must wait until after Christmas.’
‘And there’s veg to prep.’
‘Alex can do it. He’ll need something to do with his hands when he puts that controller down.’
Now, finally, she laughed, and they turned around to retrace their steps, the air around them feeling a few degrees warmer, the atmosphere palpably more relaxed. Even McCulloch looked jollier, but that might just have been the welcome change of direction, the unmistakable scent of home.
There were ten of them for Christmas lunch. Dan, Katelin and Alex, Bill and Marion, then Claire and her husband Marcus, and their three, Will, Jack and Molly. Joe was a ski instructor in Courchevel these days. He hadn’t been home for Christmas in years, skied all winter and early spring, then ran cycling tours up and down the same mountains in summer and early autumn. Alex loved his Sheffield cousins, was never happier at home than when they came to stay. There were only these three on the English side, because Uncle Joe had never had kids, but in and around Coleraine there were lots of cousins, nineteen in all, although it was only ever five, the same five, who came to stay. Katelin had four sisters and two brothers and among the six of them, their six partners and their nineteen offspring, there were a few folk she simply couldn’t abide. The Christmases past that they’d spent in the farmhouse in Northern Ireland! Like landing in a latter-day Greek tragedy: intrigue, sibling rivalry, fights over birthright and land and money, and all of it stoked by Guinness and Jameson’s and great-great-granddaddy’s poteen, made by Katelin’s father in a 200-year-old still from potatoes and the original recipe. Dan loved the whole scene, but Katelin wouldn’t go any more. She said she didn’t like herself when she was there.
No such problems today among the Lawrence clan, where a Christmas meal of epic proportions had just been merrily destroyed, the turkey a ravaged carcass, the vegetables, stuffing and gravy only memories. It was late afternoon, dark outside, and sleeting in the deserted Stockbridge streets, but the house hummed and glowed with festive cheer, and the youngsters were sorting the presents into piles, for it was that time in the proceedings when gifts were given, and opened, in a flurry of wrapping paper, a confusion of thank-yous. Socks and boxers; chocolate oranges all round from Marion and Bill; make-up for Molly; scarves, gloves, cologne, calendars, all new this year, but also somehow familiar; it was always music that passed between Alex and Dan, always an LP, Kelley Stoltz this year for Alex, Fiona Apple for Dan. In the hubbub around them, they tried to talk about what they’d given, and why, and then Dan heard Katelin say, ‘Oh, Marion, great present! I’ve been meaning to read this,’ and Dan looked round to see what his wife was holding, and it was Ali Connor’s bestseller, Tell the Story, Sing the Song.
‘Look,’ Katelin said to Dan, waving the book at him while he tried to stay cool. ‘I heard her on Woman’s Hour not so long ago. She’s Australian now, but she’s from Sheffield. I meant to say at the time, but I forgot.’
Dan opened his mouth to speak but his mum beat him to it.
‘Never!’ she said. She beamed at Dan, then at Katelin. ‘Well, I didn’t know that. I had no idea the author was from Sheffield. I just saw the book in Smith’s, and the lady said it was flying off the shelves, and I thought, Katelin might like this, because I know you like to read, love.’
‘Yeah, it’s great, Marion, thanks.’ Katelin picked a route through the gifts and the debris to give Dan’s mum a kiss on the cheek.
‘That there,’ Bill said, tipping his head towards the photograph on the back cover. ‘That there is Alison.’
It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d all said ‘Cheers’ at lunch because Bill, through deafness and old age and his tendency towards depression, was the quietest of souls, a recluse in the family throng. So his voice had an impact, drew the attention of everyone in the room, especially Claire, who said, ‘What? Give it here,’ and took the book from Katelin. She flipped it over, and saw Ali Connor’s publicity photograph – the one Dan had seen when he first found her online and that he saw still, whenever she sent him a song. Blue cotton shirt, cropped dark wavy hair, blue-nearly-green eyes, a sensual mouth, and an intelligent, slightly inquiring, slightly amused expression.
‘Oh my God, it is Alison,’ Claire said. ‘She looks the same.’ She passed the book to her brother. ‘Look, Daniel. Alison Connor! Can you credit it?’
He took it, and for the sake of appearance pretended to check out the biography on the inside front page. He didn’t read it though. Instead, he tried to formulate a sentence or two to address the look that he knew was waiting for him on Katelin’s face. She knew nothing about Alison Connor, nothing at all. By the time he’d met Katelin, he’d spent four years conscientiously forgetting her. There’d been lots of other girls, and Katelin had grilled him about each and every one. But not Alison, no. Not mentioning Alison had become a habit, born of necessity, for all of them, but especially for Dan.
Bill, sounding more animated than he had for years, said, ‘She was grand, Alison was. A smashing lass.’
‘Well, I never!’ Marion said, rather uncertain now whether she’d done a good thing, or a bad thing. She looked at Dan, then Bill, then Claire. ‘Can you believe it? What a coincidence! So she’s Ali now, not Alison? And fancy her ending up in Australia!’
‘Yeah,’ Dan said to Katelin, who was staring at him. ‘Ex-girlfriend.’
No big deal.
‘So,’ Katelin said, head cocked, arms folded, ‘did you know she’d written a novel, this Ali Connor person?’
‘Alison,’ Bill said. ‘She was Alison then.’
‘No,’ Dan said, lying easily, without conscience, because to say yes would benefit no one. ‘I’d no idea she’d written a novel.’
Will took the book from Dan’s hand.
‘Ey, she’s a bit of all right, Uncle Daniel,’ he said, which wasn’t helpful at all.
Molly said, ‘Awkward,’ in that sing-song voice the kids used. And it was, a little, because Katelin was still deciding whether to be amused or peeved about this new old girlfriend. She said, ‘Well, I thought I knew of all your exes, but here’s yet another one.’
‘Long, long time ago,’ Dan said. ‘We were only kids.’
‘She was always dead good at English though, Daniel, wasn’t she? Do you remember? She kept all her books at our house, poems and that – she’d practically moved in, hadn’t she?’
This was Claire, always so incredibly reliable at digging an even deeper hole, when everyone else had put their spades down. And Marion, trying valiantly now to haul them all out and back to safety, said, ‘Anyway, I hope you like it, Katelin love. The lady in Smith’s said it’s really smashing.’
There was a short silence, into which Katelin said nothing.
Then, ‘I’m glad Alison’s all right,’ Bill said. ‘I’ve been right worried about that lass.’