LITMIR.BIZ

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were creeping in through the wooden blinds of my bedroom windows. I crept through to the kitchen, pulling his T-shirt over my head as I walked, smelling everything I liked about him on it. I didn’t know whether to wake my flatmate Louisa up as I guessed she’d probably been listening all night anyway–maybe I should just get the postmortem over and done with. I decided against it. I wanted to keep this to myself, even exclude Joe, just for a little while longer.

      When I was with him, when it was just the two of us, everything seemed so right, but as soon as I started thinking about things, I went down the road that had caused us to split up more times than I could count. Where could this possibly lead? I wasn’t the type for settling down. I wasn’t maternal. It would be obvious to anyone who knew the tiniest part of my life history that what I had come from was never going to make me average wife-and-mother material, but the truth was that I did actually have lots of strong women in my life–they just weren’t enough to convince me that I could do what they had done in their own ways.

      My mother, Mary McLennan, had been my rock. I had been through the time of worrying whether I was being horrible to Kailash by still thinking of Mary as my ‘real’ mother, but Mary had done everything for me and I missed her more and more as I got older. Kailash? She had given birth to me, and she had saved my life, but she was hardly the perfect Mum. How much of that was my fault, I don’t know. Malcolm had been right when he had said that she would do anything for me, but I still reacted against that. What sort of mother could I possibly be when my own background was so fucked up?

      I knew that it was what Joe wanted–was that enough? On top of everything, I’d watched what Lavender and Eddie had gone through last year and it had broken my heart. They had wanted that baby so badly, we all had, and when Lav had had the miscarriage, I had felt so hopeless. Now, every day was a day closer to the baby she was desperate to have–but the pain wouldn’t stop there, would it? She’d be terrified all her life, never knowing if she could truly protect it. I didn’t think I was strong enough to cope with that, and I didn’t know whether I had enough love in me.

      Joe wouldn’t give in. He persevered, told me we were made for each other, and I wanted to believe him so badly–and every so often we fell back into bed again. Were we going to follow that pattern forever? This was part of it–me, alone in the kitchen in the early hours of the morning, thinking about things too much and being torn between those thoughts and yet wanting to just think about how much I…loved him. I did. I loved him. I’d be buggered if I’d tell him, though.

      ‘You thinking about me?’ came the voice from behind my left shoulder.

      ‘That you, Louisa?’ I asked, refusing to let myself soften at his words.

      ‘No offence–but do I look or sound like that weird wee lassie? Nice weird wee lassie that she is,’ Joe answered.

      ‘Want a coffee?’

      ‘No. I want to talk to you.’

      ‘Want a coffee?’

      ‘You’re not funny, Brodie,’ he answered. ‘Well, you are–but not at times like this.’ He pulled me back from the kettle to the barstool I had just left. ‘Sit.’

      ‘Woof,’ I barked back at him.

      ‘Remember. You’re not funny.’ As I sat on the high seat, I was closer to his eye level than usual and my feet dangled nervously, knowing the lecture I was in for. ‘We can’t keep on doing this. I can’t keep on doing this. Do you want the whole speech or just the highlights?’ he asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘We’re not getting any younger. Life isn’t getting any easier. But it could be, if we were together. You could have everything, Brodie–so why won’t you let yourself?’

      ‘I’ve got everything I need, thanks,’ I muttered.

      ‘You’re not a bloody teenager. Christ, there’s not much to choose between you and Connie sometimes. You after a new mobile phone or something with all that pouting that’s going on? I’ve tried it every way with you. I’ve bought you lollipops when we were kids. I’ve battered the bullies in the playground. Christ, I’m still battering the bullies–it’s just a bigger playground. I’ve run away from you, I’ve married you. I’ve ignored it when you bring shit like Jack Deans back to your bed; I’ve hit the roof when you bring shit like Jack Deans back to your bed. What’s left for me to do? What is it going to take?’

      ‘Before what?’ I asked him.

      ‘What?’

      ‘What’s it going to take before what? Before you leave? Before you give up?’

      ‘Is that what you think’s going to happen, Brodie? Is that what you’re scared of?’

      I snorted. ‘I’m scared of nothing.’

      ‘You should be,’ Joe said quietly. ‘You should be.’

      ‘Because you are going to leave, aren’t you?’

      Joe whirled the barstool round to face him and wrapped his huge arms around me. I was shaking and I hoped he’d have the manners to ignore it. He lifted me down from the seat and wrapped me up some more, moving my mess of tangled curls from my left ear. ‘I’ll never leave you, Brodie,’ he whispered. ‘Never. I can’t. But by Christ, can you make it all a bit easier? Please?’

      I don’t remember what happened after that.

      Well, I do–but I’m trying so hard to be a lady now…

       Chapter Fourteen

      After some more ladylike bedroom action, I was on my way to a routine visit of the cells in St Leonards, a courtesy call on the flotsam and jetsam I call my clients who were picked up on a variety of charges. None of them was particularly serious, and they could have been handled by Lavender’s husband, Eddie Gibb, who also worked in the practice, but I needed time to think about the consequences of my lust-driven actions of the night before. Glasgow Joe had a meeting at the casino with Kailash, and our business commitments and lack of sleep meant that we both had an excuse to leave the flat quickly without talking about anything in any more detail–that was par for the course with us, and the fact that we had almost seemed to be getting somewhere in the early hours of the morning didn’t really mean anything; I was sure we’d be back to square one next time we met. And I was sure that I would get the blame for it.

      The streets were deserted as I kicked the Fat Boy into life, turning left up the hill to Hanover Street where the black top was as shiny and black as Moses Tierney’s nail varnish. It meant only one thing; any cobbled road in Edinburgh would be as slick and dangerous as if it were covered in ice. A quick mental calculation meant I would have to take a detour through the Grassmarket. The Grassmarket is a half-trendy area filled with boutique hotels and expensive restaurants, but for years it was the haunt of the hopeless alcoholics, down-and-outs, and the homeless. A few shelters for these men and women are still there, and they manage to stop the area gentrifying into what it wants to be. It’s not a bad place–there are some nice shops and clubs, but I wouldn’t want to hang around there at night any longer than I had to, outside of Festival weeks. There are usually cops hanging around, though, so I stopped at a red light, even though there was hardly anyone about to potentially run over. As the engine idled I looked around, remembering it was Kailash’s birthday soon. I was trying to squint into the window of the cashmere shop. I had to shake my head at what I saw, not quite able to believe it.

      Dr Graham Marshall was the last person I expected to witness wandering through the entrance door of the Mission hostel. I was so shocked the bike wobbled beneath me, and for a sickening moment I thought I was going to lose control. Last time I came off the bike I broke my arm–I couldn’t afford to let that happen again. Lavender would kill me, for starters.

      What on earth was Marshall doing here? He was hardly homeless, or the do-gooder type, and, unless there was more money in begging than I’d ever imagined, he wasn’t

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