Playing to Win (26 page)

The solemnity in Jeremy’s dark eyes made Andrew’s smirk vanish. “What are you on about? Who needs me?”

“The Union.” Jeremy glanced around, then withdrew his own phone from his pocket. “A new YouGov poll’s been released.”

Andrew frowned. The gap between Yes and No had closed from fourteen points to six within the last two weeks. “What’s our lead now? Five?” When Jeremy didn’t nod, Andrew asked, “Four?” His heart began to pound. “Not three?” That could be a statistical tie, depending on the sample size.

“See for yourself.” Jeremy handed over his phone. “Try not to scream. We don’t want to frighten the children. Though God knows they should fear for their future.”

Andrew couldn’t scream if he wanted to. All his breath had been stolen by the pollster’s headline.

‘Yes’ campaign lead at 2 in Scottish Referendum

For the first time ever, Yes was ahead. Scotland wanted independence.

S
TANDING
OUTSIDE
THE
Drumchapel tower blocks, Colin scowled down at Andrew’s latest tweet.

Lord Andrew Sunderland: Congrats, fellow Scots, we’re famous! The whole world is now watching our descent into madness. #laughingstock #VoteNo

But even Andrew’s derision—and the danger it might put himself in—couldn’t dim Colin’s euphoria over the latest YouGov poll: 51% Yes, 49% No.

He’d arrived early for the canvass—which he was helping coordinate, being a local resident—and found the carpark flooded with new volunteers, all in a party mood. Saltire flags flapped in the breeze, which carried scattered strains of “Flower of Scotland” and other patriotic songs. Dozens of smiles reflected Colin’s own feeling of dazed disbelief.

We can do this.

The tide had turned the last two weeks, after the second Salmond-Darling debate and Better Together’s release of an ad suggesting women shouldn’t trouble their wee minds with politics when there were dirty dishes to wash. Meanwhile, the hard work of dozens of grassroots organizations was finally paying off. Though it was the Scottish National Party who had originally asked for the referendum, the independence movement’s strength lay in the men and women on the ground—people who belonged to no party. People new to politics, shedding lifelong cynicism. People like Colin, who’d never dared hope he could make a difference.

He was sitting at the main signup table, dispensing canvassing materials to excited volunteers, when a hand brushed his shoulder and a familiar voice spoke his name.

Colin looked up to see the return of Adam Smith.

He leaped from his chair and hugged Andrew. “You made it!” Despite his lover’s tweets and disguise, Colin was thrilled to see him. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he whispered in Andrew’s ear, noting the absence of cologne.

“Of course I came. Mind my glasses.” He stepped away and straightened the black frames, then gave the three high-rise tower blocks a look of trepidation.
 

“Don’t be feart,” Colin whispered to him. “Poverty’s not contagious.”

Colin’s original plan had been to take Andrew canvassing in one of the nicer areas of Drumchapel, not the high tower blocks where he lived. But the toff’s callous tweets showed he needed a dose of reality.

He introduced “Adam” to Roland, the local campaign coordinator. To Andrew’s credit, he didn’t hesitate to shake Roland’s hand or take the materials offered. “This is my first canvass,” he said. “I’ll try not to make a state of it.”

Roland smiled. “You’ve a good coach here in Colin. But I always have to warn the new guys—don’t flip anyone from Yes to No by being a zealous prick.”

Before Andrew could get any ideas, Colin steered him away from the table. “Fancy a contest? See who can turn more No voters to Yes?”

“Ugh, I couldn’t live with myself. The fact I’m not tossing these leaflets into the nearest bin is a testament to my integrity.”

“You sure? Your choice of prize.”

Andrew sighed and adjusted his glasses. His face was drawn this morning, with purple-gray semi-circles beneath each eye. Perhaps he was simply knackered after the late-night flight from Turkey, but he looked…depressed.

“If I win,” Andrew said, “you must never speak of independence in my presence again.”

= = =

“Is this where you live?” Andrew asked Colin as they approached the tallest and shoddiest of the three tower blocks. Its facade was made of dilapidated ribbed concrete panels of the most ghastly brain-gray Andrew had ever seen.

“No, that’s ours.” Colin pointed to the middle tower, which like the one beyond it, featured a fresh palette of slate and white with blue accents. “The housing authority refurbished them last year. All new insulation, plus new windows we don’t need to hang blankets over to keep out the wind.” He opened the lobby door for Andrew. “This building here’s to be demolished.”

Andrew entered the lobby, which was as dismal as the exterior. “Where will these people live?”

“Elsewhere.” Colin examined the canvassing sheet on his clipboard. “Why do you care? They’re just ‘subsidy junkies,’ right?”

Andrew groaned. “What I meant in that one tweet was that Scotland as a nation
looks
like subsidy junkies to the English. Because we each receive twelve hundred pounds more in benefits per year than the rest of the UK.”

“And we provide seventeen hundred more in revenue. Arithmetic tells me we’re each owed five hundred quid a year.” He turned for the ground-floor corridor. “But I know that’s pocket change to you.”

Andrew hurried to catch up, dismayed he and Colin had started the day by bickering, especially after their week apart. “That extra revenue comes from oil, not taxes. Why should it be part of the equation?”

“Because if we were independent, we’d keep most of the oil money ourselves. We deserve it, because when there’s an oil spill, that black sludge won’t wash up on English shores, will it? It won’t kill English birds and fish.” Colin stopped suddenly, then tapped his palm against the wall, the lower half of which was painted a hideous 1970s tangerine. “I don’t want to fight just now.”

“You started it. I only asked—”

“I did start it. I’m sorry.” Colin rubbed his eye, then came over and gave Andrew a soft kiss. “C’mon, let’s make this fun.”

As they took the lift to the tenth floor, Colin started humming Major Lazer’s “Come On to Me,” a song they’d danced to in Edinburgh. That night seemed to belong to another lifetime, when they’d cared only about having fun. Before he’d had a taste of Colin, before he’d seen that tattoo on his back and realized the depth of this man’s wounds, Andrew would’ve been happy with just one night.

But here he was, more than a month on, following a radical revolutionary on his quixotic quest. A quest that now seemed impossibly possible.

As they headed down the hallway, Andrew wrinkled his nose at an unpleasant smell he couldn’t quite place. It reminded him of a swimming pool, but it wasn’t chlorine.

“We’ll take it in turns to make the contest fair,” Colin said. “I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done.” He stopped at the second door on the left, checking the flat’s number against the list on his clipboard. “There’s a script in your packet of materials, but I like to improvise.”

Colin knocked on the door. While he waited, he swayed in time to the song he was still singing under his breath. Andrew took a moment to glance at the canvassing script. The patter was straightforward and polite, but utterly devoid of charm.

The door opened to a middle-aged man in a too-small T-shirt. Colin smiled and said, “Hiya, mate. I’m Colin, this is Adam. We’re just out today having a chat with folk about—” The door was slammed in his face. “—the referendum. Cheers. Bye.”

Unfazed, Colin made another note and continued down the hall.

Andrew passed him, snatching the clipboard from his hand. “My turn.”

“You sure?”

“You told me not to be ‘feart,’ so yes, I’m sure.” Andrew found the next name and flat number on the sheet.

He knocked on the door, which opened almost immediately, revealing a woman in her late twenties. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m just now away to the—oh.” Her eyes met Andrew’s. He unleashed his highest wattage smile, and she let out an audible sigh. “Y-yes?”

“Ms. McAllister, how do you do.” Going full gentleman, Andrew introduced himself, apologized for interrupting her busy day, and asked after her well-being.

“I’m good.” She smoothed back her red-blond hair and shifted the blue baby blanket in her hands. “Call me Wendy.”

When Andrew gently probed Wendy for her stance on independence, she turned out to be a No-leaning undecided voter. A quick glance into her sparse flat showed she was frugal, voluntarily or not.

“Unemployment and income inequality are grave concerns,” Andrew said, “and yet Scotland is forced to spend millions of pounds every year on an outdated nuclear submarine missile system.”

Wendy nodded and frowned. “Aye, the Trident.”

“Precisely. An independent Scotland would scrap the Trident program.” He recited figures he’d learned from Colin about all the free childcare the Scottish government could supposedly provide with the money saved. Wendy mirrored Andrew’s posture as he spoke, nodding when he nodded and smiling when he smiled. This was criminally easy.

“So you see, Wendy,” Andrew readied his ridiculous catch phrase, “we need welfare, not warfare.”

They left the flat having bagged a new Yes voter.

“I’ve been perfecting my canvassing patter for months,” Colin said, “and now you swoop in and get it right the first fucking time.”

Andrew glowed inside at Colin’s praise, though the Tory in him wanted to retch at the words that had just poured out of his own mouth. “I was merely lucky to find such an open mind as Wendy’s.”

“You stole my Trident argument,” Colin said with a smirk.

“I borrowed it. You should be glad I won her over with the power of reason.”

“You won her over with the power of dimples.”

“I have dimples?” Andrew touched his own cheek. “Never noticed. It’s one-nil, by the way.”

Colin seized Andrew’s other hand. “Admit it, the politician in you enjoyed that.”

“Very much.”

“Hah!” He twirled Andrew around, singing the chorus of the Major Lazer song again.

As they danced together down the hallway, hips shimmying to Colin’s Caribbean patois, Andrew’s spirit soared, leaving him with one shining thought:

I would enjoy anything with you.

= = =

“I can’t,” whispered the tight-faced middle-aged woman from behind her barely ajar door. “Boss says I’ll lose my job if I vote for independence.”

“What!?” Colin looked livid. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I telt her she should quit,” a voice thundered behind the woman. A large man opened the door wide. “It’s against the fuckin’ law to threaten people for exercising democracy.”

Andrew wasn’t sure that was true. “Mrs. Shaw, did your employer perhaps mean your company would move south in the event of a Yes result?”

“Let ’em go!” her husband shouted. “Let ’em all fuck off to England. Bunch of fascist pricks.”

Mrs. Shaw gave Andrew a forlorn,
here we go again
look. Colin tried to insert a rational word or two between the man’s ravings about “Freedom!” and “Westminster wankers,” but seemed to quickly realize it was futile. He recorded them as a Yes and a No, then wished them a good afternoon.

“I only read the
Sunday Herald
!” Mr. Shaw shouted as Colin and Andrew continued down the hall. “The other papers are full of Tory lies!”

Andrew held in his laughter until they were in the stairwell. “Such a high level of discourse from your allies,” he said as they descended to the next floor.

“Shut it. Your side’s telling people they’ll get the sack for voting Yes.”

“How would her employer know? It’s a secret ballot.”

“They can ask her how she voted,” Colin said. “Most people are terrible liars.”

“Including you?”

“Aye, I’m the worst.” Colin stopped and turned to him at the bottom of the stairs. “Or maybe I’m the best. What do
you
think?”

“I think you’re somewhere in between.” Andrew gave into the impulse—the
need
—to pull Colin close. “I like that. You keep me on my toes.”

“Toes, naw.” Colin glanced down. “I like you better on your knees.”

Andrew gave a soft groan, then took Colin’s lower lip between his teeth. They kissed, deeper and deeper, their bodies adhered to each other at chests, hips, and thighs, until Andrew could barely breathe.

When Colin finally pulled back, his eyes gleamed with something more complicated than desire—
affection
, almost. “I missed you too,” he whispered.

Andrew took a deep breath to clear his head, and as he did, he caught a stronger whiff of that same unmistakable odor. “What’s that smell?”

Colin glanced away, his gaze suddenly shuttered. “I don’t smell anything.” He spun away and opened the door to the next level. Andrew followed, but as he shut the door behind him, he saw a dark, diffuse stain along the top of the stairwell window.
Oh.

In the hallway, Colin was already knocking on the next door, though it was Andrew’s turn. A baby was crying behind it, a noise that came closer with a set of light footsteps.

“Just a sec!” a female voice called out, then softened. “Wheesht. We’ve visitors, okay?”

The door opened to a blond teenage lass holding an infant in the crook of her arm. Her harried face lit up when she saw Colin. “Oi, you!”

He gasped. “I didnae know you lived in the towers too.”

“Aye, with my parents and this yin.” She beamed down at the gurgling, red-faced baby. “Jack, mind the nice lad who stopped your diaper bag spilling all over the street?” Then she looked at Andrew. “Oh my God, it’s the guy from the photie.”

Andrew stepped back and adjusted his glasses. Had he been recognized?

“It is him.” Colin put an arm around his shoulders. “Mate, this lassie and her wean were on the bus with me that day after the rave. She’s the one recommended I draw on the pic you sent me.”