Now, as she sat on the sofa she’d slept on all night, grateful for every small kindness, she knew that she’d never give them another second of her life.

  Richard closed the door behind him, and Alice immediately ripped open the muffin, took a small piece and popped it in her mouth. She switched on the television with the volume turned down, just feeling the need to see that the world was still turning, still existing out there. The first programme that came on was a property show, so she pressed another button. The next channel had some tall, leggy brunette in a bikini top and sarong, walking along a beach on a travel show. Alice fixed her gaze on the screen, took in the crystal turquoise seas, the golden sands, the wooden bungalows on stilts that stretched over the water. They’d once taken a holiday to a place like that. Larry had ordered fine wines and smoked huge cigars, but he’d had no interest in joining her and Rory as they’d paddled on canoes near the shore.

  She remembered thinking that one day she’d go back there without him and she’d breath in warm air, feel the heat on her skin and she would be free.

  There was no way that she could ever afford a trip like that now, but she didn’t care about the sun or the sand. Until yesterday, she’d trained herself to be patient until that twenty pounds she tucked away every week could buy her freedom.

  Now, she wasn’t sure she could wait that long.

  16

  RORY

  Rory’s first reaction when he woke was to wonder if a transit van had run over his head during the night. His second reaction was to swear that he would never drink again. Never.

  He waited for the wave of nausea to pass before even trying to move. It was just as well, because when he tried to push himself up off Albie’s impossibly fricking uncomfortable sofa, he realised that the transit van had stopped, turned around and then run right over his body as well.

  Shit, what a state he was in. He managed to get himself to sitting, and squinted open one eye, to find that the world was still there, and he seemed to be alive and sitting in the middle of it, in Calvin Klein boxers, next to an empty tequila bottle and the remnants of a kebab.

  He heard a noise behind him, realised it was a female voice, grabbed at the grey furry throw he’d been using as a blanket and pulled it across him to protect his modesty until he could work out what the hell was going on.

  ‘Bye, sweetie,’ he heard next, then the sound of blowing kisses, before Belinda from the Comedy Den bar appeared from the direction of Albie’s room and walked right past Rory on the way to the door, wearing her usual kaleidoscope of primary colours that belonged on a kids’ TV presenter from the nineties. ‘Sorry, Rory,’ she said with a breezy shrug as she passed him. ‘One day you’ll be crushed that I’ve chosen Albie, but I couldn’t wait forever for you. You’ll never know what you missed.’ And with an uproarious cackle, she opened the front door and was gone, leaving Rory wondering if he’d just imagined that.

  The sight of an unkempt and crumpled Albie shuffling out of his room next, in just pants, hair pointing in a hundred directions, accessorised with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, told him that it had probably been real.

  ‘I think she broke me,’ he croaked, before slumping down on the other sofa.

  It took Rory a minute to react, because he was still trying to rewind the hours to work out what had happened. Yesterday, after Albie had left him in the pub, he’d made the decision to go see his mother. It hadn’t been an easy one. The prospect of seeing his dad had no appeal, but just before contact with his parents had been broken off, he’d learned that Larry had started working as a taxi driver, so he was banking on him being out at work.

  Decision made, he’d grabbed his jacket and hailed a taxi outside the bar. The streets had been busy, probably a mixture of tourists and the Glasgow locals whose Scottish DNA insisted that at the first glimpse of sunshine, you had to get outside because you didn’t know how long it would last or when it would reappear.

  On the journey, he’d changed his mind a dozen times. The address had been imprinted on his brain, because it was only one street away from where his mum had met him and Julia in their car that night, when they’d made the deal that had forced him to cut off all ties with her. It had devastated him. He’d pleaded with her to let him help, to allow him to pay for somewhere else for them to live, or even to move in with him and Julia. His mother had refused. Now he wondered how Julia would have reacted if she’d said yes. Would she have called it quits back then, pulled the Band Aid off quickly, instead of waiting another year for the infected, seeping wound to kill them?

  He'd asked the taxi to wait when he’d pulled up at the house, only a few miles but a world away from the mansion he’d grown up in. It was a row of five houses in a terrace, and theirs was at the end. As he’d gone up the path, the only sign of life had been the music thumping from the house next door.

  He’d rung the doorbell, waited, but there was no answer. He’d rung it again. Still nothing.

  He’d peered in the front window, but it was difficult to see anything through the net curtains.

  After trying the door a couple more times, he’d given up, defeated. Disappointed. All he’d wanted was to see his mum, to check on her, to tell her what had happened, and call quits on the separation she’d forced on them.

  Crushed, he’d jumped back in the taxi, then come back to Albie’s place, because he wasn’t really sure where else he wanted to go. What did a bloke who’d just been dumped and fired usually do with his days?

  Apparently, the answer was day-drink with his mate, then go out for burgers and beers, while contemplating the meaning of life and uncertain futures, before going with Albie to his comedy set, then having an after-party at the flat that only ended when their downstairs neighbour banged on the ceiling.

  In the midst of the revelry, he did remember Belinda declaring her undying love in the kitchen. He recalled telling her as gently as possible that he wasn’t ready for a new relationship, and then trying to make up for it by calling Uber Eats and requesting the delivery of a dozen kebabs. It had made sense at the time. He’d also stopped drinking at that point, because he had a deathly fear that if his fingers fell under the control of Budweiser, they might decide it was smart to text his wife and tell her that… Actually, now that he was sober, albeit hungover, he had no idea what he’d have said, which is probably why it had been a good idea to switch to water at that point. His next memory was of everyone leaving and him crashing out on the couch from pure exhaustion, and that was it until he’d been woken by the dulcet tones of Belinda’s heartfelt departure.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind me surrendering to Belinda. I’ve always had a thing for her, to be honest. I like a woman that can pull off purple, green, yellow, red and blue all at the same time,’ Albie was telling him now.

  Rory shook his head, and even though it hurt to grin, he went for it. ‘I think I’ll cope. I like her though. She’s a good contrast to your deep dark cynicism and general disdain for the world.’

  Albie scratched at the crazy mass of ginger spikes on his bedhead. ‘You might be right. I almost feel cheery this morning. I’ll go lie down until it passes. What’s your plans?’

  Rory took a slug from a bottle of water he’d found under the blanket, not sure of the answer. There were so many things that should really be on the list. First, check his emails to see if the terms he’d agreed with Roger yesterday had been sent in writing. He was almost certain they’d be there. It had been made perfectly clear that Rory was a boil on the arse of the Fieldows’ existence, so now that they had a way to cut him off, they’d want to get it done quickly. He had a couple of mates that were lawyers and he’d already decided to appoint one of them to deal with Fieldow going forward, until everything was settled. He could quite happily live without seeing his father-in-law’s face ever again. He’d add their fee to his termination package.

  Next? Just trifling issues like retrieving his personal belongings from his marital home, then finding a place to live, a new job and a new purpose for his entire future. Oh, and coffee and a shower were on the list too. Probably at the top.

  However, the unsuccessful trip to see his mum was really bugging him, so the big stuff was going to have to wait until he’d gone back to her house to see if she was there now.

  After Albie shuffled back off to bed to restore his dark soul, Rory put a mug in the coffee machine and pressed ‘pour’. While his large black extra-strong Americano was brewing, he jumped in the shower, washed his hair, brushed his teeth and then dried off. Back in the kitchen, he retrieved his coffee and drank it while he was getting dressed, pulling a black T-shirt from a hanger on the curtain rod, and a pair of black jeans from another. He found one of his Nike Low Dunks under the couch, but it took him a few minutes to locate the other, which was, bizarrely, behind the living-room curtain.

  His final task was to blow on the breathalyser he’d bought a few years ago, when Scotland’s new drink-driving limits had come into force and there were stories in the press day after day about people being stopped, breathalysed and arrested for drunk driving the morning after a night out because there was still too much alcohol in their system. That was before his father and the scandal had become the daily headlines in the papers.

  Thankfully, switching to water last night had paid off, and the breathalyser told him he was now good to go, so he grabbed his wallet and his keys and headed out to the company car that had been included in yesterday’s negotiation. He made a mental note to make sure all the paperwork was sent to the DVLA next week to make it official.

  It took thirty minutes to get back to the same door he’d knocked on yesterday. Today being Saturday, the street was busier, with a few kids out playing football on the communal grass area, and an elderly man cutting his lawn a couple of doors along.

  Rory parked up the Audi, and paused, staring straight ahead, taking a minute to prepare himself for the possibility that his father would answer the door. Every time he’d imagined this moment, he’d wondered how he would react to coming face to face with the man who’d barely acknowledged him his whole life, except if they were in public, when he played at being dad of the year. Now he knew how he’d handle it – the same way his dad had treated him when they’d lived in the same house for eighteen years and he’d rarely looked in his direction – he’d ignore him. He was here to see his mum, that was it. He had zero interest in any dialogue with Larry McLenn.

  Psyched up, Rory got out of the car and retraced his steps down the path, nodding a hello to the fellow who was cutting his grass while now watching Rory’s every move. Rory knocked on the door again and waited, surprised to feel a swirl of anxiety in his stomach. Or maybe that was just the after-effects of last night’s tequila.

  He knocked again. Waited. Still nothing.

  The lawnmower stopped. ‘They’re not in,’ the elderly man shouted from his garden. ‘When he’s there, he parks his red Skoda behind next door’s transit.’

  Rory gave him a wave of thanks. ‘Cheers, pal. I’ll try again later.’

  He started to walk back down the path, but he wasn’t getting away that easily. ‘Are you polis, son?’ The neighbour shouted, using the Glaswegian colloquialism for police.

  Rory stopped at the gate. ‘No. Just a friend.’

  He was about to go through the gate and get back in the car, when something stopped him.

  ‘What made you think I would be police?’ he shouted back over, curious about the assumption, wondering if it meant his dad was in trouble again.

  The old man took a sharp intake of breath, shook his head, his face twisted with disapproval. ‘Because that’s a bad yin that lives in there. And I wouldnae be scared to tell him that to his face either. Real arsehole. I wisnae happy when he moved in here either. This is a decent street and we don’t want the likes of him here lowering the tone.’

  Two thoughts immediately collided in Rory’s head. The first one was that the old man was right. That was swiftly followed by a sweet sense of justice that his dad’s former elite circles weren’t the only people who now shunned him as scum.

  ‘I don’t disagree with you.’

  ‘Aye, when I’m right, I’m right. Mortifying it is, when I see that arse’s name in the papers. I tell folk I don’t know him and he disnae live here. I said the very same thing to ma pal in the bookies this morning.’

  Again, Rory was about to move and then stopped. ‘Hang on, was he in the papers this morning?’

  ‘Aye. Totalled his motor. It was on the front page of the Glasgow Chronicle this morning. Couldnae happen to a nicer guy.’ The sarcasm was dripping off his words, before he leaned over, restarted his lawnmower, making it clear that the conversation was over.

  Rory’s anxiety got a new layer of urgency as he rushed back to the car, not for his father, but for his mum. Was she in the accident too? He jumped in, pulled out his phone and googled his dad’s name, then scrolled down to the website of the Glasgow Chronicle. The headline was the first thing he saw:

  DISGRACED MP IN HORROR CRASH

  Right below it was a grainy photo of a red Skoda in the middle of a motorway. It had obviously hit the central barrier because it was crumpled on one side.

  Rory’s eyes speed-scanned down the rest of the article, taking in flashes of information. Male driver. Reported to be Larry McLenn. Resuscitated at scene. Why had his mum not called? They’d broken off all communication, but she knew where to find him in an emergency. She could have phoned the office and got a message to him. He kept on scanning and it felt like his heart stopped. Female passenger. Injured at scene. Taken to Glasgow Central Hospital. No further information on her condition.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. That had to be his mum. Was she hurt? Worse? He didn’t give a toss about his dad, but his mum was a different story. It had always been her and him against the world, even when that fight meant they’d had to cut off contact for a while to get the press off his and Julia’s backs. Now the reasons for that, his mum’s insistence on protecting his marriage and career were no longer in play, had he… He could barely finish the thought. Had he left it too late to see her?

  Thunder pounding in his head, hands trembling, he pressed the ignition button on his car and pulled off. This morning he hadn’t been sure where he should go today.

  Now he knew the only place he had to be was Glasgow Central Hospital.

  17

  VAL

  I’d never heard or seen anything like it. Carol’s phone had been pinging all day long, and she’d spent hours on it, filtering through all the messages and checking all the comments that had come in since our live chat this morning.

  ‘I’ve uploaded it to my Stories and to YouTube, and we’ve had over fifty thousand views, more than ten thousand comments and around the same number of shares. I’ve had messages from two newspapers, wanting to share your story – I’ve told them I’ll get back to them on Monday if your rings still haven’t been found, Aunt Val.’

  ‘Thank you, ma love. Have I said how much everything you two are doing for me means to me? I love you both with all the bits that are left of my heart.’

  Carly leaned down, draped her arms over my shoulders and hugged me.

  ‘It’s because we’re so loveable. Although my kids seem to have forgotten that. I haven’t heard from Mac or Benny since yesterday morning when I texted to say I was coming up here.’

  Carol glanced up from her phone. ‘I’ve had three calls from Charlotte, but only about borrowing clothes and warning me there’s a photo online of her snogging some random bloke who looks like Harry Styles. Apparently it’s not him, but I’m holding out hope.’

  My cloak of guilt about taking them away from their normal lives and their families got just a tiny bit lighter.

  It wasn’t just the help and support that these girls were giving me that was holding me together and allowing little glimmers of optimism to flutter through my brain for the first time since Don’s mahogany casket had been lowered into the ground. It was just having them here, chatting about the normal stuff, about kids, and jobs, and marriages and life. I’d missed the feeling of having people living in the house with me. I saw that now. For the happiest part of my life, we’d been a busy, chaotic, family of four, bursting with love and laughs. But then Dee was taken away and our Michael got married and moved out. And the last few years… Well, I’d tried my best to put a smile on my face every day while Don had been in the grips of his disease. I’d had smashing support too. There had been a stream of lovely carers in and out doing their best for him, and our pals Nancy and Johnny, and Tress and Noah were here at least once a week. Our Michael had been a godsend, spending all his days off with his dad to give me a break. But all of that had been centred around Don’s illness, the invasive, evil lodger that had come to destroy our lives. Now, having Carol and Carly here – despite the absolute bloody heartbreak of the situation – felt like real life. Like the way it used to be when Don was well, and the kids were around, and there was an endless stream of pals and family coming in and out the door for food, encouragement, a shoulder to share their woes and some chat and laughs at this table.

  ‘Right, Aunt Val, are we ready to do this?’ Carly asked, as she slipped into a chair and began fiddling with some buttons on a box on the table. Apparently, the microphones in front of us were all linked and this was how they broadcasted their live podcast. In my day, we just called it a radio show and I would never have believed I’d ever be doing something like this from my kitchen. Although, when I thought about it, I got so nervous I wanted to put my head between my knees in case I fainted, so I was just going to block out the fact that there would be thousands of listeners.

  ‘We don’t usually video the podcast, but we’re going to do that today and then upload it to YouTube and we’ll send traffic there later.’