Wildflower Bay (3 page)

‘Want a bit?’

‘No. No, no. No, I’m fine. More than fine.’ Unable to look directly at him for fear of his accidental exposure, Isla peered out of the window. She had a vague idea that she was
in Bruntsfield, or Morningside – all the streets in student Edinburgh looked the same.

‘Right. Well, I’m going to –’ She looked down at her phone. It was dead, completely out of battery. Her tiny going-out bag hadn’t had room for the back-up battery
pack that she carried as a matter of course. Where
was
her tiny going-out bag? Was this what champagne felt like? Isla, who had never drunk more than two glasses before the previous night,
had a vague recollection of ordering bottles in a noisy bar in what seemed to be an underground vault of some kind. She caught a glimpse of her bag hanging from the corner of a broken wooden chair,
and stepped over another sleeping body – which lay with its head beside an ashtray, half covered with a sleeping bag – to retrieve it. It came away dripping with what she hoped was
stale beer. The alternative was too gruesome to contemplate.

‘That was a belter of a night. When you got up and sang Dolly Parton in the Taverners . . .’ Her sofa companion gave her an appreciative thumbs up.

Isla looked at him, recoiling in horror. ‘I don’t sing. And I definitely don’t sing karaoke.’

‘So you said. In fact, you told me about forty-eight times on the way home. And you told everyone in the pizza shop on the Meadows, too. D’you not remember?’

Isla felt a wave of nausea. Her skin was somehow alternating between ice-cold and clammily warm. Her head felt like someone had put it in a vice. She needed to be at home, in the cool embrace of
her perfect white sheets –
now
.

‘Oh, yes,’ she lied. ‘Yes, I remember all of it. Ha ha, the pizza shop. That was fun, wasn’t it?’

‘You’re no’ rushing off, are you?’ Brown Eyes leaned back against the sofa, pulling the stained satin bedcover over his legs. He beckoned in what he clearly thought was
an enticing manner. ‘Get a bit more sleep. Tam over there does a killer bacon roll. He’ll be up in a couple of hours.’ He motioned to the sleeping lump beside the table.

Isla shook her head politely. ‘Thanks, but I really need to get going.’ She pulled the first excuse she could think of out of the hat. ‘I’ve got to get to work.’
Never mind that it was Saturday and she was off all weekend.

‘Work?’ Brown Eyes snorted with laughter. ‘That champagne was stronger than it looked. You spent all night telling us you’d got the sack, and how some bitch called
Chantelle had stabbed you in the back.’

Isla closed her eyes. She’d forgotten, momentarily. Right, even more reason to get out of this hellhole and back to normality. A quick shower and a half-hour’s sleep, and everything
would be back to normal.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, adopting the breeziest tone she could, given the clanging in her skull. ‘Forgot that bit. Ah, well, places to go. Thanks for a lovely evening. Would you
mind just . . .’ She paused for a moment, wondering how best to word the question. ‘Where exactly
are
we?’

The taxi driver smirked as she climbed into the back of the black cab.

‘Walk of shame, eh, doll? We’ve all been there.’ He winked at her in the rear-view mirror.

Isla didn’t reply. She sat in silence, damp bag by her side, her designer jacket crushed and stinking of cigarette smoke, as they wound their way down through the narrow streets of the Old
Town, along Princes Street, which was already packed with tourists, and up Hanover Street. She looked the other way as the taxi idled in a traffic queue outside Kat Black Hair, not even allowing
herself a glance inside. The thought of Chantelle catching sight of her in this state was appalling.

At her building, too mortified to ask for change, she handed the taxi driver a huge tip and waved him away as he made for his bag of coins.

‘Two paracetamol, a bottle of Irn Bru and a bacon sandwich,’ he offered as a hangover tip, unsolicited, in exchange, ‘and you’ll be right as rain, hen.’

Giving him a thin smile, Isla clambered laboriously up the stairs to the flat. When she made it inside, slipping off her shoes and pairing them neatly by the front door, she paused only to plug
her phone in to the charger by the sofa before heading for the bathroom cabinet, painkillers, and a mercifully hot shower.

Isla stood by the sofa, not knowing where to begin. She’d slept for hours, waking only to drain a pint of water and two more headache pills before falling into another
unmoving, dreamless slumber. When she’d eventually surfaced, clambering bleary-eyed out of bed at five o’clock in the evening, it was to a phone screen plastered with notifications.

And then it all came flooding back. She’d heard the girls in the salon of a morning, groaning with recognition as their wine-fuelled exploits from the night before came back to them piece
by piece. But Isla wasn’t a drinker. She liked life ordered and organized. She had a plan. She didn’t lose focus. So it was with an unfamiliar sinking sensation that she sat down on the
edge of the sofa and remembered how last night had unfolded. She opened up her messages, scrolling backwards.

Isla swallowed back a sickening wave of hangover mixed with terror. What the hell had she done? With trepidation, she pressed the keypad, activating her voice-mail inbox.

‘Hiya Isla, it’s your dad here. Just checking you’re OK.’

‘Isla, darling, give us a call when you get this. Just wanted to say a wee hello.’

‘It’s Dad. This isn’t like you, sweetheart. I’m a wee bit worried about . . .’

Isla hit the button, stopping her father’s message in mid-flow. There was no point putting it off any longer. She hit the dial button and waited.

‘Dad, it’s me.’

‘Isla! You’re no’ dead then?’ He laughed.

‘Not quite, no. I’m sorry about last night. It was a bit of a . . .’ She paused, trying to think of a suitable word for the horrors that were coming back to her, bit by bit.
Disaster? Nightmare? Total meltdown?

‘Ach, darling, you need to let your hair down once in a while. Anyhow, I’ve taken the evening off. You about?’

‘About’ was one way of putting it, thought Isla, looking around the immaculate sitting room. Completely devoid of anything to do, with no friends and no job, was another way. She
suppressed a sigh. ‘Yes, I’m free.’

‘Give me half an hour.’

Isla pulled out her leather overnight bag from underneath the bed and laid it carefully on the table. She removed a creaseless pair of white cotton pyjamas from the drawer and stacked with them
a pair of pale skinny jeans, a beige cardigan, and one of her standard-issue white vest tops in the case. Her weekend outfits were always the same – summer was vest tops, winter was crisp
white shirts and chic scarves. Streamlining her wardrobe meant she didn’t have to think about what to wear, and she always looked immaculate. Her travel toiletries were, as ever, ready to go
– the thought that she never went anywhere except to visit her dad crossed her mind as she zipped them into the side compartment, but she chased it away, closing the case. Everything was
sorted. The flat was spotless – for now, at least. When Hattie returned tomorrow evening it would be about ten minutes before the place was in a state of devastation.

The beep outside alerted her to her dad’s arrival. He waved up at the window, grinning. She gave him the thumbs up and ran down the stairs into his waiting arms.

‘Shove that in the back, darling.’ Her dad opened the door of the black cab, and Isla slid her case into the footwell before climbing into the passenger seat and strapping herself
in.

‘Can you take me to Gilmerton, please?’

Her dad sucked his teeth, shaking his head in dismay. ‘All the way to Gilmerton? That’ll cost you.’

‘It’s fine. My dad’ll pay at the other end.’

She couldn’t help smiling despite everything.

‘Sounds like you’ve got a good dad there.’

Isla turned to look at him with a smile. ‘The best.’ He’d make everything better.

Her dad switched off the For Hire sign and, with a growl of the diesel engine, they set off through the cobbled streets to home.

The Georgian terraces of the New Town gave way eventually to the crazily stacked buildings that made up the ancient Old Town. The early evening streets were still packed, shoppers with armfuls
of bags standing waiting at the bus stops, trams sliding silently past. Her dad always took her home by what he called the scenic route, past all the old sights, up the hill past the Meadows where
students lay in lazy Saturday-afternoon piles. She averted her eyes as they drove past the late-night pizza shop where she’d stood the night before. There was no way on earth she was ever
drinking again. How people chose to do that every weekend was completely beyond her.

The genteel streets of Morningside passed by – delicatessens and cafes, old ladies with baskets of shopping returning to their pretty garden flats, mums pushing expensive prams along the
pavement whilst toddlers wheeled along on tiny wooden balance bikes. Down the hill, and out of town – the houses getting newer now, 1930s villas squatting in square gardens dotted precisely
with neat mounds of ubiquitous purple aubretia. And then they were turning left and over the flyover, down the hill and into the estate. A gang of kids were playing kerby on the pavement as they
slowed up, bouncing the ball from one side of the road to the other. A toddler pottered around on the edge of the pavement, wisps of hair flying loose from a plastic hairband, her face sticky with
the biscuit she held in one pudgy hand. She toppled forwards and in a flash a bigger girl, skinny legs in brightly coloured leggings, leaped to her rescue, scooping her up and twirling her away to
safety.

‘These kids.’ Her dad, already driving at almost walking pace, slowed down even further. ‘I tell you, someone’s going to get hurt one of these days. No’ everyone
drives at my speed. You get the hooligans coming through here in their souped-up motors . . .’ He shook his head.

They drove up the hill, through stacked blocks of identical white-rendered houses, each with a tiny patch of garden outside. Isla felt the familiar combination of security and revulsion. It was
so good to be here with Dad, but this place – she shuddered slightly.

‘Here we are,’ said her dad, as he pulled the taxi to a halt. ‘That’ll be eighteen pounds, please.’

‘Eighteen?’ Isla shook her head. ‘That’s daylight robbery.’

‘Lucky your dad’s paying, eh?’ He reached across, giving her knee a squeeze, pulled the keys out of the ignition and fetched her bag from the back.

‘Come on then, darling. You look like you need a cup of tea.’

And then she was in the hall and she was ten years old again, hands running along the bumps of the woodchip paper as she stood with her too-big schoolbag waiting for a lift to school in the
morning. Being dropped off early every day in a taxi made her stand out amongst the other kids, who walked to school in a noisy, squabbling, teasing bunch along the canal path and across the field
where the two grey ponies stood, incongruously surrounded by barbed-wire fencing with a stable made from a disused lorry container, their hay nets tied up with frazzled orange baling string. Isla
used to escape there on the weekends when her dad was working, on the days when she was sent to play with Aunty Theresa (who wasn’t even her aunt) across the road. Aunty Theresa didn’t
have any children – and didn’t want any, either, as she told a disconsolate Isla regularly, shoving a plate of toast across the teak folding table before getting back to her knitting
and watching a never-ending cycle of quiz shows on the television set that dominated her tiny sitting room. It was stuffed full of grey velvet furniture and a malevolent ginger cat that glared at
ten-year-old Isla with distaste.