Stonemouth полностью

‘Didn’t last, of course. Cried myself to sleep for a week, raged and screamed at you, wished I had been more…vengeful. Used to fantasise, used to obsess about us meeting again and me walking up to you and slapping you so hard your teeth rattled. Put my reaction on the night down to shock, some misguided sense of loyalty to you or a residual need to protect you because I still loved you, or…Found an old shirt of yours, in my wardrobe,’ she says. ‘Still smelled of you.’ Another shake of the head. ‘Tore it, ripped it until it was practically confetti, until it looked like it had been through a shredder — and been out in the rain, because I was crying, howling so much — and while I was doing that, I really did wish you’d still been inside it, really did want you to have been the thing, the one that got torn to scraps and ribbons.’

She doesn’t look at me, just shakes her head, staring at the timber of the hide’s walls.

‘But I got through it. Things sorted themselves out. Things always do. We de-organised the wedding, I got on with my life, started going out again, meeting people. In the Toun and Aberdeen, and just chose not to hear the whispers and the murmurs, sympathetic or otherwise.’ She looks down, runs her hand along the worn smoothness of the bench. ‘Met Ryan. Well; started to see him as a man, not a boy? And so began another exciting adventure.’ She smiles at me. Ellie wears a watch. She checks it now. ‘Thought my stomach was trying to tell me something.’ She looks at me. ‘You hungry?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Want to come to mine for something to eat? It’ll just be pasta or stir-fry or something. You picked up any special dietary requirements while you’ve been in London?’

‘Thanks, I’d love to. And no; still omnivorous.’

At the same moment, though, I lose any appetite I had, as my belly contorts itself with another little tremor of fear. Or anticipation. I honestly don’t know myself.

We stand up. ‘This isn’t, you know, “coffee”,’ she tells me with a small smile. ‘You know that old thing?’

I manage a smile too. ‘From more innocent days.’

‘Just a meal, then I’ll take you back to your folks’.’

‘I know. Appreciated.’

‘Come on then.’

Going down the dark, grass slope, under skies turning orange and pink with the start of sunset, she slides her arm through mine. ‘Want to drive?’

‘Okay.’

‘No heroics? Nothing lairy?’

‘Promise.’

‘Deal.’ She hands me the Mini’s key.

So I drive us back to the converted mansion called Karndine Castle. I take it slow. It’s still not the smoothest of drives but that’s not my fault; the roads really are much more worn, rutted and potholed than I remember and there’s a lot of little jinks and sudden steering adjustments required. Respect to the girl; I hadn’t realised, earlier, how good a job Ellie was doing avoiding all this shit. I’m glad I’m not sixteen right now; this stuff’s bad enough in a car but potentially lethal if you’re riding a motorbike.

At the castle we climb a couple of grand, creaking old staircases — largely ruined by the fire doors and walls required for multiple occupation — and go on up a further curving flight to her apartment in a big, square, airy tower with three-sixty views over parkland, fields, forests and hills. No lurking Murston brothers leap from the shadows and pull me screaming down to some torture cellar. My insides relax a little and suddenly I’m hungry again.

She goes to the loo. I’m told to put some music on, make myself at home. What to choose? Be too trite to select something we both loved.

She was always a bit more into old Motown and R&B in general than I was. I go for R&B just as a genre and set it to play from the top, then quickly have to skip as the first track up is Amy Winehouse and ‘Rehab’. Given El’s day job that might sound contrived. Not to mention morbid. Next album. Angie Stone; nope, don’t know. Next: 75 Soul Classics; that’ll do. Archie Bell and the Drells with ‘Tighten Up’. Never heard of it. Also, I have absolutely no idea what the fuck a drell is meant to be.

Skip, skip. Aretha Franklin and ‘Think’. Finally.

I take a look about as the music starts to play. The furnishings are tasteful but sparse and there’s a careless, almost slapdash feel about the place, like she still hasn’t settled in yet or even entirely unpacked, though she’s been here over a year.

El reappears, minus fleece, with an open shirt, light blue, worn loose over her tee. ‘You can help if you like,’ she says.

‘Love to.’

The kitchen’s big; double-aspect to the south and the east. I sit at the breakfast bar as she sets a pan boiling for noodles and heats a wok for a stir-fry. I help her chop the veg, to be topped up by pre-prepared stuff from the freezer. We drink chilled green tea.