She knew this was a major card; children were bone-deep stick-in-the-muds, especially when it came to friends. They did not like change.

  Finlay seemed to consider this. “I like Flora Stevenson,” he began.

  “Well, there you are,” said Big Lou quickly. “You wouldn’t want to leave, would you?”

  “But I’ll like the other school, too,” he continued. “Especially all the dancing.”

  She nodded. “I see. And boarding? These schools are boarding schools. You have to stay away from home.” She paused. “From here.” A further pause, and then she said, “And from me.”

  She knew that she should not make that point. It was emotional blackmail, pure and simple. So she immediately retracted.

  “Of course, I’d still see you. This would still be home. You’d come back in the holidays.”

  He smiled. “I could keep my room, couldn’t I?”

  Big Lou said that he could. Her heart, though, was cold within her. “Should we go back to Babar?” she asked.

  Finlay nodded. “Poor Babar,” he said. “The bit you didn’t read—the bit where the hunter shoots his mother. I feel really sad for Babar.”

  Later, in the kitchen, as she prepared her own dinner, Big Lou rehearsed in her mind what she would say to the ballet teacher. She would point out to her that it was nothing short of cruelty to raise a child’s hopes over something that she knew might not be possible. And then, quite apart from that, there was the issue of respecting the role of parents—or carers, for that matter. She was only a foster parent, but she had fostered Finlay for some time now and had started adoption proceedings. She, more than anybody else, had the right to decide where he would pursue his education. It was nothing to do with Miss Murray, and she had no right to barge in and interfere in this way.

  This imaginary conversation with Miss Murray only succeeded in fanning the flames of her anger. But, after a few minutes, that anger was replaced by a hollow despair. Big Lou had never been successful in her romantic life. Every relationship she had had with a man had come to nothing. There had been the Jacobite plasterer; there had been the Elvis impersonator; there had been the chef who had gone off to Texas; none of these had worked out. And this fostering of Finlay had been the one area in which she had been the driver of an important relationship. He was hers. She loved him. She would do anything for him. And now, it seemed, she would have to choose between allowing him to do what his heart appeared to be set upon, or clipping his wings before he had even had the chance to unfold them.

  19

  Bruce Reflects

  Bruce Anderson—property surveyor, former boyfriend of the Australian extreme sports enthusiast Clare, graduate in land management and surveying (with a lower second), and echt narcissist—did not normally read horoscopes. Few people, of course, openly admit to reading what the stars have in store for them, and yet even serious newspapers, seemingly unabashed, continue to publish these vague prognostications. This is because, in spite of the absurdity of the basic premise—that the influence of distant planets somehow affects human affairs—we still feel tempted to flirt with the soothsayer, whatever guise such a person takes. And this is nothing new: the Oracle at Delphi was never short of supplicants, and obliged those seeking her advice by doling it out in dactylic hexameters. The fact that this advice might be hard to interpret was perhaps no accident: Nostradamus, the Brahan Seer, and the casters of contemporary newspaper horoscopes all observe the same precaution: Never give details, dates, or indeed anything specific. In this way, vague statements capable of interpretation in any number of ways will, by the sheer law of chance, occasionally be right. So to say You are in for a surprise today is going to be proved accurate more often than not, for what day involves nothing unexpected? Similarly, the prediction Romance is in the air is at least sometimes going to be true—because that is the way things tend to be.

  Bruce was the exception to the rule that most people will sneak a look at their horoscope in spite of their disbelief in astrology. He thought horoscopes silly, and not the sort of thing that a man would read. In fact, Bruce had recently said to somebody in the pub, when the subject of horoscopes happened to come up, “That’s girly rubbish.” Girly rubbish was a vague concept in Bruce’s mind, embracing romantic films and novels, sentimentalism of any sort, birthday cards, mindfulness, and any talk about relationships. On the latter, he had brisk views: “Look,” he was in the habit of saying, “boy meets girl. They click or they don’t—where’s the story?”

  On that evening, though, Bruce found himself with a few minutes to kill before going out, and happened to pick up a free magazine that had been stuffed through his letterbox. There was a short article on skin care for men, which he skimmed through—a complimentary magazine would have nothing to teach him about that—and he then found himself faced with a monthly horoscope. Your stars reveal the weeks ahead for you, ran the column’s headline. Immediately underneath this ran the boastful observation, You read it here first!

  Alongside the predictions there was a box in which the main characteristics of the signs of the Zodiac were set out. Bruce had been born under Taurus, and was pleased to read that his sign was governed by Venus. That meant that he was attractive to the opposite sex and passionate by nature. He was also likely to be solid and dependable, even if inclined to enjoy being pampered. All of that, he thought, sounded accurate enough, even if the whole thing was weak-minded nonsense.

  He scanned the page to see what the month had in store for Taureans. “You are at a crossroads,” the Oracle pronounced. “One way will lead to disappointment, possibly failure; the other will lead to achievement and success. You are not alone at these crossroads; there is a friend there who will show you the way.” In smaller text, a subsidiary prediction advised that romance was in the air, but that one should always be careful. “Your passionate nature means that the heart can sometimes rule the head. Be wary!”

  Bruce smiled. That could mean anything. Romance was in the air? Of course it was—there are any number of women in Edinburgh who have their sights set on me, he told himself. They wish! After that business with Clare he was determined to take a bit of a holiday in that department. The women could wait, hard though that might be for them. Tough. He was going to concentrate on himself for a month or two before dating anybody again.

  He tossed the magazine aside and prepared to take a shower. It had been an unusually warm day. It was early summer, when temperatures might be expected to creep up, even in Scotland, but there was still a freshness to the days that was more spring-like than summery. Today, though, a surge of warm air from the south had changed things, and Bruce had found his shirt clinging to him. Standing under the blast of his shower, Bruce applied liberal quantities of shower gel. This was followed by His Secret shampoo, Hello Good-Looking conditioner and split-end therapy, and, once the shower was over, Afterwards post-shower skin balm. Bruce then dried his hair under his Mancare hair dryer, applied his clove-scented hair gel, and was ready to take a look at himself in the mirror.

  He liked what he saw. Bruce was at an age—very late twenties—when the first signs of gravity’s effect might be detected. As he looked in the full-length mirror on his bedroom wall, he was reassured. There was not an ounce of spare flesh in sight. And this was not just a subjective assessment—Bruce kept accurate scales in the bedroom and made careful calculations of his BMI. That was perfect—as was everything else.

  He briefly flexed his muscles, adopting for a few moments the classic pose of body-builders—hands clasped together, pulling against one another, elbows raised. He smiled. Most body-builders looked ridiculous, with their oiled, over-developed muscles rippling impossibly. Women did not like that; Bruce knew what they wanted, and that was not it. Beefcake was the right word for it. Disgusting. He, by contrast, was lither, more slender, like Adonis or…he tried to remember the other one—the one who carried messages and had those useful winged sandals. Hermes. That was him. He was a bit like Hermes.

  He dressed with care, as he always did: crushed strawberry chinos, the creases impressed by his electric trouser press, an Oxford blue-stripe shirt, opened to the third button, and a light blue linen jacket he had found in Stewart Christie on Queen Street. Loafers slipped on—no socks—he gave himself another quick glance in the mirror. He studied the face that looked back at him. I am very, very lucky, he thought. I could have looked like anybody else, but I got this. I suppose I have my dad to thank. He was the best-looking man in Crieff by far, people said; maybe even the best looking in all Perthshire. Pity that he sagged.

  20

  At the Wally Dug

  A few weeks earlier, Bruce had started going to the Wally Dug. This was a pub in Northumberland Street, just around the corner from Big Lou’s, and it was rather more convenient than the Cumberland Bar for his flat in Abercrombie Place. Angus had started dropping in there too, having initially been dragged in by Cyril, who had a strange affinity with the place.

  “It’s possibly something to do with the name,” Angus remarked to Domenica. “Cyril must feel that a pub called after a dog is his sort of place.”

  Domenica was tolerant of what she regarded as Angus’s tendency to anthropomorphise—at least when it came to Cyril. He endowed the dog with far too great a degree of understanding, she thought; Cyril might be intelligent by canine standards, but he was still a dog, with all the limitations that this implied. Ultimately, it was a question of neural matter: Cyril had a dog’s brain, and that governed the extent of his abilities. Cyril would never have language; he would never have a command of logic; he would never have the ability to think out of the box that was dogness, or canininity: the state of being a dog. And yet, of course, he had emotions—and even Domenica, with all her doubts about dogs in general, had to admit that in the canine breast there were lodged the very deepest of emotions. Dogs suffered—they suffered daily; they felt the most awful pangs the moment their owner left their sight; they felt the most intense regret when they were in disgrace for doing any of the things that dogs find it so hard to refrain from doing; they pined when their routine was changed and the familiar was replaced with the unfamiliar.

  But Domenica felt that any suggestion that Cyril might respond to a picture of a wally dug on a brewer’s mirror was no more than the fondest of imaginings. Angus, she realized, wanted Cyril to be more human, and this ambition distorted his view of what Cyril might reasonably achieve, given the limitations of his species. Cyril was Angus’s best friend: she understood that, and accepted it—to an extent. She would have preferred Angus to spend more time with other people, but understood that he was one of those men who seemed to get by without seeing friends regularly. Matthew was a regular friend, and Big Lou—up to a point; and there were four or five members of the Scottish Arts Club, but apart from that she would find it difficult to name many others whom he saw all that often.

  Angus was on reasonable terms with Bruce, even if they had very little in common. If they met in the pub they would talk to one another, but Angus would quickly find himself irritated by Bruce’s vanity and self-obsession. On that evening, as Bruce entered the Wally Dug, he did not expect to meet Angus, nor indeed Cyril. The person he intended to see, though, was already there, sitting on one of the bar stools, deep in conversation with Murray Campbell, one of the bar’s owners.

  Murray had business to attend to, and went off to do this while Bruce greeted his old friend, Gav. Gav had been at school with Bruce at Morrison’s in Crieff, where they had been constant companions. They saw one another less frequently in their university years: while Bruce went off to study land management, Gav had enrolled for a course in product design at Napier University. Their meetings over the following few years had been irregular, but recently they had taken to getting together every couple of weeks, usually in the Wally Dug.

  Gav worked for a small manufacturing firm in Dalkeith, just outside Edinburgh. This firm designed silica-based pot holders, spatulas, and other kitchen implements. They also held the patent on a new method of getting recalcitrant lids off jars, and were hoping to put that into production in the not-too-distant future.

  Bruce approached Gav and shook his hand warmly. They took evident pleasure in one another’s company, reverting without difficulty to the easygoing relationship of their school days.

  “So,” said Bruce, “what’s new, Gav?”

  “Nothing, Bruce-o,” said Gav. “Same old, same old. You know how it is.”

  This exchange of words had become a private tradition of their friendship, and never changed. Thereafter the real conversation began, which was seasonal. In winter, it was largely focused on rugby, and on the prospects of Scotland in the Six Nations and in various other organized stramashes. In the summer, the rugby conversation was briefer, being restricted to a quick review of the doings of the Australians and New Zealanders. Both Gav and Bruce had been at that significant event at Murrayfield when Scotland had trounced the All Blacks so convincingly. On this particular evening, at the bar in the Wally Dug, they relived those sacred minutes, as they had done so many times since the day, before they moved on to discussing affairs of the heart.

  “How’s that woman of yours?” asked Bruce.

  “Sally? Oh, same old, same old.” Gav paused. “And you? Breaking anybody’s heart these days?”

  “Fighting them off,” replied Bruce. “You know how it is.”

  “Jeez!” said Gav. “Some guys have all the luck.”

  “You could say that,” said Bruce. “Still, I do it all for Scotland!”

  Gav took a swig of his beer. “Jeez, I needed that.” He paused. “You know something, Bruce-o? I think I may have met somebody who’s just right for you.”

  Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes? Italian fashion model? Drives a Lamborghini?”

  Gav laughed. “No, not quite. But not too bad otherwise.”

  Bruce looked at his friend. “You don’t think I need any help, do you? Because let me tell you, I really am fighting them off, you know.”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that,” said Gav. “It’s just that…well, I think you’re at a bit of a crossroads, Bruce-o.”

  Bruce was quiet. You are at a crossroads. He remembered the words of the horoscope he had read only half an hour earlier. You are at a crossroads. One way will lead to disappointment, possibly failure; the other will lead to achievement and success. And here was Gav, of all people, uttering exactly the same pronouncement. It was quite uncanny.

  “Crossroads?” said Bruce.

  “Yes,” Gav replied. “I think you are. You have to decide, pal. You have to get yourself fixed up.”

  “Fixed up? Why?”

  Gav made a gesture that was hard for Bruce to interpret. It might have signified acceptance, or it might have meant that a conclusion had been reached only reluctantly. “You don’t want to be single forever,” he said. “Cooking your own dinner when you’re forty. How sad is that?”

  “I’m not forty. Far from it. I’m not even thirty yet.”

  “No, but you will be one day, mate. And then what?”

  Bruce waited.

  “Sally has this friend, see. And she saw you—this woman—she saw you at a party, and asked Sally whether she knew you.”

  “She asked Sally? This woman asked her if she knew me?”

  “That’s it. Apparently, she said, ‘Who’s the dead sexy guy with the hair?’ That’s what she said, Sally told me.”

  Bruce shrugged. “So? That’s what they all say.”

  “Yeah, sure. But let me tell you something about this woman. Something seriously interesting.”

  21

  Where the Thickos Go

  Seated at the bar in the Wally Dug, Bruce listened intently as his old friend from Morrison’s Academy days, Gav Macfadzean, told him the news that he thought he would find “seriously interesting.”

  “Right, when Sally told me that this girl had been asking who you were, I said: so, who is she? Do you know her?” Gav paused. “You know what it’s like at those parties? A bit of a scrum. You spend a lot of time talking to people you don’t really know.”

  Bruce nodded. “You end up shouting. And the next day you’re hoarse.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Gav. He smiled. “You remember that cosmic party that Shuggie gave when we were students? Remember it? In Tollcross. Bob and Fridgie were there, I think, and we…”

  Bruce rolled his eyes. “We broke things. Yes, I remember.”

  “That was some party,” said Gav.

  “And then, when we went on the rugby tour of Ireland,” Bruce said. “Boy oh boy…”

  “Who could forget that? Remember that guy down in Limerick who had that muckle great house and that pack of dogs? Chap with a great conk of a nose. Some sort of Irish earl or lord or something. Remember him? And he was the patron or chairman, or something, of the local rugby club and he invited us all out to his place after the game.”

  Bruce smiled at the memory. “And we played rugby in his library? We used that old globe as the ball? Remember? Not that he minded. The Irish are like that. They don’t really mind.”

  “Great people,” said Gav. “And he had that Brazilian girl working in the kitchen. Remember her? She had come to Ireland to learn English and had ended up working in the kitchen and looking after their goats. Remember the goats? Johnny Ferguson tried to ride on one of the big ones and got butted in the stomach. Stupid git.”

  “He was a good prop, though,” Bruce mused.

  “Yeah, sure. But he was pretty thick, wasn’t he? Went down to that university just outside Newcastle where they send all the thickos. Can you remember its name?”