Leaving the station I ease back into Glasgow time like slipping on a favourite old pair of boots. It feels like home, even though I’ve never actually lived here. Weekends and Hogmanays and occasional weeks spent here with Donal and Kate over the years have endeared this city to my heart. As I walk its streets now, I don’t feel like a visitor. The dry humour, the unapologetic moxie of the people around me and the rise and fall of the accent welcomes me like a long-lost son.
I’ve missed this.
Don’t get me wrong, I love London. It’s my home, my place of business: my stomping ground. But I miss the humanity sometimes. The humour. The way you’re in the middle of a conversation before you know it; how every other person on the street beside you is one joke away from being a pal for life. It can be suffocating when you’re in it, but when you’re not it’s the thing you miss.
Home. Phoebe asked if I was going home and it’s only now, as I jump on a bus that will take me out north of the city to the town where my friends live, that I realise I already feel more at home in the forty minutes I’ve been here than I’ve done in London since Laura left me.
And when I get to Mull? Will that feel like home, too?
I push the concern away, along with the ghosts from my past, stuffing them all into a cupboard marked ‘LATER’. That stuff can wait. I watch the city slouching past the window, not minding the slow progress of the traffic-slowed bus to Port Glasgow. At long last, I have time. To think or not. To just be. That’s a luxury I haven’t had for years.
My stop is at the bottom of a hill that overlooks the River Clyde, the road rising steeply ahead. Though the water is some distance away, the shimmer of early evening sun on the dark river framed by purple hills on its far shore seems close enough to touch as I walk up the hill to Donal and Kate’s place. Their house is almost at the top, just where the road curves for its final ascent. The sight of Donal’s ancient yellow Mini parked on the drive makes me smile. How it’s still roadworthy is a mystery to everyone but he loves that rusting heap almost more than life itself. I have many fond and not-so-fond memories of cramming equipment into its interior and praying it up hills as we travelled to gigs across Scotland.
Donal misses the band and I get the impression he doesn’t play as many gigs locally now as he’d like. He’s one of the most gifted guitarists I know and it’s a shame more people can’t hear him play. But he’s also Dad to three of the most awesome kids on the planet, so that audience rightly gets first dibs on his time.
The front door whips open before I even set foot on the drive and I’m almost knocked off my feet by an excited clan of Cattenachs. The last time I saw the kids they were tiny; now the twins Addie and Ivor are almost level with my shoulder, and their not-so-baby sister Lexie can reach my waist when she hugs me. I’ve seen the kids in our Skype chats a couple of times a year, but being with them in person brings home to me how much they’ve grown. Somewhere in the middle of the giggling horde is Donal; Kate follows behind, her smile as bright as the sunlight dancing on the Clyde.
‘Let your poor uncle Sam get some air,’ she laughs, giving in when she’s ignored and joining the hug instead.
When they finally let me go, my sides are hurting from laughter and over-enthusiastic embraces. ‘Where the heck did you lot come from? What’s your mother been feeding you? Great big towering giants!’
‘Maybe you’ve shrunk, Sam,’ Lexie giggles, her father’s wit clearly inherited.
‘Aye, maybe I have. It’ll be all that incessant English rain falling on me, eh? I’ve shrunk in the wash!’ It’s an old joke, but like the house and the kids and the sunshine yellow Mini beside us, it’s familiar and warm and wonderful.
We pile inside the house, everyone talking at a million miles an hour, words and laughter crashing together, a joyous cacophony of noise that wraps around us. I’ve been here less than five minutes and it already feels like home. The last time I visited was almost six years ago and I’m shocked by how much has changed. I see it most in the kids, of course, but the house is different, too. Donal started the renovations they’d talked about for years just after he lost his mum eighteen months ago. His way of dealing with it, I think. When my ma passed, I wrote songs and jumped on any tour I could for a year. Syd spent six months in Ghana after his mum died, finally meeting the family she’d talked about but never visited. Losing someone puts brakes on everything else; changes how you see your priorities.
I only met Donal’s mum a handful of times, but I think Taral Cattenach would have approved of her son’s handiwork. She was an artist in India when Donal’s dad met her on an exchange visit from the company he worked for in the early 1980s, and the home they made together back in Glasgow was filled with her vivid oil paintings.
A hand slaps my shoulder and Donal grins at me. He still looks as young as he did the first day of university, the only hint at the years that have passed the first peppering of silver in the splendid jet beard that’s become his trademark.
‘One of your ma’s?’ I nod at the painting above the fireplace. A white lotus flower, its petals edged with gold, on an azure blue pool, delicate Henna-style patterns picked out in bright ochre framing the canvas.
His blue eyes glisten. It was the first thing I noticed about him when we met in the registration line in Freshers’ Week – that and the Glaswegian accent, which I’m ashamed now to say I didn’t expect, either. ‘Aye. I reckon she’d be happy to see it there.’
‘Place looks great, man.’
Donal nods. ‘Cheers. Didn’t think we’d get there but the kids helped me finish it off.’
I glance at Addie, Ivor and Lexie, still giggling with their mum. ‘I bet they’re all artistic.’
‘They’re annoyingly talented at everything,’ he chuckles. ‘No idea where they get it from. Kate and I were lucky to graduate. Addie’s taught himself so many instruments I’ve lost count, Ivor’s studying piano at the conservatoire on Saturdays and Lexi’s pretty much fluent in Gaelic, singing and playing guitar with a trad band at school.’
I love the pride with which Donal speaks about his kids, but I think he’s selling himself short. ‘I hope you’re planning on getting that guitar of yours out while I’m here.’
‘Show him the lair, Donal,’ Kate grins, and instantly the clan are dragging their father out of the patio doors into the garden. He protests, but it’s nowhere near convincing.
A large wooden building sits at the end of the garden, more a pine lodge than a shed. When we step inside, it’s a tiny studio, complete with a square vocal booth and a rack of amps and processors my studio partner Chris would be envious of.
‘Dad’s doing an EP,’ Lexie says, looping her arm through mine. ‘Mum’s singing on it, too.’
‘You kept that quiet,’ I smile at my friend who beams back.
‘Well, it’s only a bit of messing around, you know. I just figured it was time I sorted it out and rescued my guitars from the attic.’
Kate joins her daughter beside me. ‘Don’t believe him, Sam. He’s been gigging most weekends this year and he’s already working on album projects for a couple of local bands.’
‘Then it’s a business?’
Donal shrugs, but his eyes sparkle. ‘Could be. Part-time for now, but if I can get a good number of clients, who knows?’
I’m proud of my friend but also sad that I’ve only learned this now. I retreated after Laura, more concerned with my own studio venture. This year will be different, I promise myself. This year my friends come first.
After dinner the kids are grudgingly coaxed up to bed and Donal and I finally collapse in the living room at 9 p.m. I have no idea