Poisoned Cherries (8 page)

“What do you think?”

“A pair of boxers is probably all you’ll need.”

I hung up, and thought of Alison; our thing had been doomed from the start.
 
I could never take her as seriously as she had taken herself. I used to call her “Tomorrow’; she thought it was after the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, but actually, it was because she never came.
 
Eventually I found someone who did, and that was that.
 
Okay, I was a rat in those days; I admit it.

I looked at the number Liam had given me; then I switched on my mobile and keyed in a text message giving her my landline number and inviting her to call me.

I switched on the telly and was getting into David Attenborough telling me how important field mice are to the ecosystem, when my cellphone bleeped twice to tell me that I had an incoming text message.

I accessed it and read.
 
“Can’t phone.
 
Can we meet?”

Strange, I thought, but I sent back, “OK.
 
Where?
 
When?”

Two minutes later, I bleeped again.
 
‘9:30 tonight?
 
Cafe Royal?”
 
I read.
 
I frowned; I was getting into those field mice and there was a rerun of the afternoon’s premiership match on Sky afterwards.
 
Also, I didn’t fancy the Cafe Royal; it’s always busy and I’m at the stage of being recognised and accosted by punters I don’t know.
 
I don’t mind, but they can be hard to shake loose.
 
So I thought about it, then sent another message.
 
“Time okay, but not CR.
 
George Hotel bar.”
 
I waited, only partly focused on the mice.
 
It took her less than a minute this time.
 
“OK.
 
C U’.

There is no doubt about it; text messaging is changing the face of the English language, as it is rote.

thirteen.

The great thing about my new temporary home was that it was less than ten minutes’ walk from anywhere in central Edinburgh.
 
As I had hoped, the George Hotel bar was quiet; there were a couple of Japanese tourists and a table of loud American golfers, but otherwise only the barman and me.

He had just finished pouring what looked like a perfect pint of lager when Alison Goodchild appeared in the doorway... at least I guessed it was Alison.
 
When we had been together, she had been a thin, pale, understated wee thing, with poorly cut mid-brown hair, little or no make-up, and a bad habit of catalogue shopping for clothes.
 
In fact when I’d been watching Attenborough’s mice, she had come to mind.

This woman had changed, and how.
 
Her hair was shoulder-length, shiny, and honey-coloured, high-heeled blue patent shoes made her look a few inches taller, and her clothes were closer to Gianni Versace than Great Universal.
 
Other things were different too; she wore eye make-up, and either she had switched to Wonderbra, or she’d been enlarged.

Still, it had been a while.
 
I’d changed too, I guessed.
 
I waved to her, then glanced at my reflection in the bar mirror.
 
I was bigger in the shoulders than a couple of years before, and there were grey flecks in my side-burns and lines around my eyes that would be new to her.
 
My clothes were much the same though, even if I was wearing Lacoste jeans rather than the Wranglers of old, and my jacket was antelope rather than cowhide.

“Vodka and tonic?”
 
I asked her as she approached.
 
My memory was spot on, because she smiled and nodded.
 
The smile was new, as well.
 
Where before it had been hesitant and a little pinched, to hide her slightly undersized teeth, now it was wide and open.
 
I realised that she’d had them all expertly crowned.
 
(You can tell these things when your old man’s a dentist.)

“Thanks,” she said, ‘but slimline, please, and just a spot of lime juice rather than lemon.”

The barman nodded and told us that if we’d like to go to a table he’d bring the drinks over.
 
I dropped a tenner on the counter; I was pretty sure than a fiver wouldn’t have been enough.
 
I looked around for a spot as far away from the Japanese, and especially the Yanks, as we could get.
 
As I did, a chunk of their discussion floated over.

“Hey,” one of them called out, intending that the whole bar should hear.
 
“Hey, did you guys hear that the Republican Party is changing its symbol from an elephant to a condom?
 
It’s perfect, see.
 
A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.”

I threw the guy a ‘sad bastard’ look and steered Alison towards a table under the window.

She eyed me up and down as I settled into an armchair.
 
“You look just the same,” she said.

“Check your contacts, honey,” I told her.
 
“I don’t.”

She shook her head.
 
“Oh you’re older, sure, and there’s a harder edge to you, more serious, but essentially you’re just the same.
 
I don’t know, maybe I thought there would be sparks shooting off you now you’re famous, but there aren’t.”

“I still pee standing up,” I said.

“I hope you hit the bowl more often,” she murmured.
 
Now that definitely was not the old Alison.

“So tell me about you,” she went on.
 
“I’ve read the odd article about you, but they weren’t very informative.
 
What have you been doing since you and I split up, apart from becoming a film star, that is?”

“I’m not a star,” I corrected her.
 
“I’ve taken to acting and I’ve been lucky to have made a couple of movies, but I’ll never be top billing.
 
Apart from that, I’ve just been living a life.
 
I’ve been married, widowed, and married again.
 
Now I’m in the process of getting divorced, and I’ve just had a child by a woman I don’t live with.
 
That’s it.”

Her face fell a little; I wondered if she had pumped herself up somehow for our meeting.
 
“I knew the last part,” she said.
 
“That was in all the Sundays last weekend.
 
But I didn’t know you’d been widowed.
 
I’m sorry, Oz.”

“It’s not something I discuss with journalists.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t like to discuss it with anyone.
 
Now tell me about you, for you very definitely have changed.”

“For the better?”
 
she asked.

“I don’t know yet.
 
I don’t know anything.
 
I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“I’ll come to that.
 
Okay, about me.
 
I’ve you to thank for it, in a way.”

“Why?”

“For chucking me.
 
You were as nice as you could be when you did it, of course, but you still left me feeling that I’d bored you to tears.
 
So I took a look at myself, and when I did, I realised that I bored even me.
 
I looked like a bloody Sunday School teacher, I was hiding a pretty good body in drab, awful clothes, and I didn’t even have the confidence to smile properly.”
 
She paused as the barman arrived with our drinks and my change ... even less than I’d expected.

“Plus,” she said quietly as she picked up her vodka, “I wasn’t any better when the lights were out..
 
. Not that you were any great shakes yourself, mind you.
 
All cock, no technique, that was you.”

“Thank you very much, ma’am,” I muttered into my lager.

“Don’t take it to heart; we didn’t really interest each other so we didn’t try very hard.
 
That’s the truth of it.”

I thought about it; she was probably right.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I gave myself a makeover.
 
I started with my teeth, then my hair, and then my wardrobe.
 
I chucked my job, too.
 
Remember I worked in the Scottish Office Information Department?”

“Yes.”

“Well I left, and got myself a job as an accounts manager with a public relations company.
 
I did very well there and was promoted after a couple of years.
 
I also got myself a fiance.
 
He worked for a rival firm, so we didn’t announce our engagement, in case our respective bosses didn’t like the idea, but we couldn’t keep it secret forever.
 
Neither of us was fired when it became public knowledge, but our client lists were scrutinised to make sure there was no conflict.
 
I was taken off one account as a result, and I wasn’t allowed on new business pitches in case I wound up competing with David.

“It wasn’t an ideal situation for either of us, so we did the obvious thing.
 
We both quit and set up on our own.”

As she told me her tale, I sensed something else that was new about her; she seemed to be brittle inside, in a way she never had been before.
 
The old Alison might have been quiet, serious and ultimately boring, but she had never been nervous, or anything approaching highly strung; yet that was coming across the table in waves.

“So how did it go?”
 
I asked, as she paused for refreshments.

“Very well,” she replied.
 
“We called ourselves Goodchild Capperauld ..
 
.”
 
She picked up on my frown at once.
 
“His cousin,” she said, forestalling my question.

“Does the name help in business?”

“It does until the prospects see the letterhead and realise it isn’t him.”

“Still..
 
.”

“No, it doesn’t work that way.
 
He and Ewan don’t get on; David’s younger by about ten years, so they weren’t close as children.
 
Then something happened between them, when David was at university, and they haven’t spoken since.”

“Let me guess, it involved a girl.”

“Naturally.
 
She was a student too; David was going out with her and he took her to Ewan’s younger sister’s wedding.
 
Big mistake!”

“It’s worked out okay for you, though.”
 
I glanced at her left hand, as she picked up her glass again.
 
There were no rings; curious.
 
“Are you Mrs.
 
Capperauld now?”

“I was going to be,” she answered.
 
“We were going to get married last year, but we had so much business that we postponed it.
 
We took on three new clients and set up a lobbying division, to help people put their cases to the Scottish Executive.”

“First things first, eh.”

“It’s not like that,” she said, defensively.
 
“We love each other.”

“Lucky you.
 
And you get your priorities right too.”

“We think so.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you.
 
Now, before you eat the rest of that vodka, and the glass as well, do you want to tell me what this is about?
 
You’re in love, I’ve got a new baby, we could have said all this over the phone, but you wanted to meet me.
 
Why?”

For a moment the old Alison seemed to creep out from behind the teeth, the hair and the make-up.
 
“I want to ask for a favour,” she murmured.
 
I shrugged my shoulders.
 
She gathered her confidence around her, sat up in her chair, and went on.

“I have a client who runs an office equipment business.
 
His name is James Torrent.”
 
I recognised it from vans I had seen around town, in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
 
“He supplies everything other than stationery; furniture, fittings, computers, photocopiers, the lot.

“It’s a really big company; Mr.
 
Torrent plans to go public in a year, but first he’s moving into new corporate headquarters on the outskirts of Edinburgh, near the airport.
 
He’s a very important client for us, our biggest, in fact, but the thing is, he’s very difficult to deal with.
 
What he wants he gets, and if you can’t give it to him, you’re out; fired, no appeal, that’s it.

“My problem is that when we got the business, part of my pitch said that we would arrange a big opening ceremony for the new headquarters, and that we would have a national celebrity to cut the tape.
 
That’s where I was hoping .. .”

I gasped; I couldn’t help it.
 
“You want me to open this guy’s office?”

She flushed, and let out a nervous sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
 
“Well, not exactly... I mean it would be great if you could come on the day as well, but..
 
.

“The thing is, Mr.
 
Torrent wants Ewan to perform the ceremony; in fact he’s told me that if I can’t get him to do it, he’ll give his business to another company.
 
He means it too.
 
It would be a disaster for us, Oz, if we lost that account so quickly.
 
He’s our biggest client and word would get around the marketplace like wildfire.
 
On top of that, he owes us quite a bit of money.
 
He’s a very slow payer, and I reckon that if he fires us we’ll never see any of it.
 
We’ve bought in things for him, printed material, high quality photography, and we’ve paid our suppliers already.
 
We could go belly-up if he defaults on us.”