‘That’s a hassle, Laura. They’ll hardly get there, and they’ll have to turn around and come back.’
‘Not really; it’s only an hour on the plane and they’ve got an in-service day at the school on the Monday, so they don’t need to be back until Monday night so that gives me an extra day with them.’
‘How—?’
Laura interrupted him. ‘My mum’s going to bring them down; all you need to do is drop them all at the airport for 3 p.m.’
‘You’ve worked it all out, huh?’
‘I’m organised, Nathan.’
‘You said your flat’s tiny.’
‘It is, but we’ll manage as it’s only for three nights.’
Nathan had detected a hint of regret in Laura’s voice on the phone each evening. Perhaps having the girls over a weekend would be a good thing and she might realise how much she missed both them and him. Well, them, at any rate.
Nathan hadn’t imagined Laura would completely abandon her kids, but he’d expected her to fly up and down at the weekends, not drag them all down there. So far, she’d only made it home once since leaving, but she said this had been down to having to work extra hard, including weekends, to ‘make her mark’ in the office.
On the following Friday he dutifully drove everyone, including his mother-in-law, to the airport and waited until the flight took off before heading home to an empty house. He hadn’t made any plans to do anything so when his friend Graham phoned and suggested a beer he readily agreed.
Nathan arrived at the pub first, but, it only being five minutes from his house, this wasn’t a surprise. He ordered two pints and went to sit at a table near the back where he could see the TV. Some lower-league football match played out for single lonely males who had nothing better to do on a Friday night. Nathan’s local wouldn’t be described as lively; it lacked the thumping dance music and flashing lights of uptown bars. The muted dark atmosphere attracted a certain clientele, older with less testosterone. During the week some of the patrons were local MSPs from the parliament building nearby.
As it was a Friday most of the MSPs had returned to their constituencies, but Nathan recognised Steven Cowley, a large sweaty man sitting alone at the bar nursing a glass. He’d been all over the news in recent weeks, having been caught having an affair with a young intern. His wife had taken their children and left.
The affair had been revealed on the Channel 5 breakfast show hosted by ex-celebrity chef Lance Donaldson. The show tended to focus on the more salacious news items and frequently wheeled in those in the public eye who’d become embroiled in some scandal or other, though Lance’s team wasn’t averse to using ordinary members of the public if celebrity scandals were thin on the ground.
Nathan didn’t usually take much notice of such things, but this stuck in his mind because the intern had been exceptionally pretty, and he couldn’t understand what a young girl saw in such a fat oaf as Cowley. Power must be a powerful aphrodisiac to attract someone like that to him. Well, he’d paid a high price, as the intern had dumped him in the end, unable to cope with the publicity.
He got pulled from his thoughts by the arrival of Graham, who waved across the bar and made a drinking motion with his hand. Nathan shook his head and pointed at the two drinks already on the table. Graham sat down opposite him.
‘How’s things?’
‘Oh, fair to crap, I suppose.’
‘Laura’s taken them all weekend?’
‘Yeah, the flat’s so quiet.’
‘I wish Alison would take our two and disappear for the odd weekend.’
Graham had two children, Jack and Emma, with his partner Alison. They weren’t married, which didn’t appear to be an issue for either of them.
‘Yeah, but it’d be different if Alison had left you. You wouldn’t be so keen then.’
‘Does that mean you’re going to sit and mope about for three days?’
‘I like moping about.’
‘It’s not good for you.’
‘How would you know? Have you been studying up on the dangers of moping?’
‘It’s not healthy; you need to get out and about, do something new.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know – maybe you should try and find a girlfriend.’
‘What?’
‘A girlfriend. Laura’s not coming back, you know.’
‘How do you know that? You know nothing about it.’
Graham smiled. ‘I know enough about you two to know you’ve been unhappy for years. One of you had to make a move and now that she’s done it, she’s not going to come back.’
‘She might realise how much she misses our life and—’
‘You make each other miserable.’
‘We don’t.’
‘You do. I’ve listened to you for years go on and on about it; so has Alison.’
Nathan sank the rest of his beer in silence, knowing his friend was right but not wanting to admit it in public. Graham went to the bar and came back with more drinks and changed the subject. ‘I’ve got some work coming in over the next few weeks that I can send your way if you’re up for it?’
‘Yeah, of course, I’ve not got a lot on the go right now, so that would be really useful.’
‘Okay, the first one is from one of our farming clients. It’s not a huge account but they need a campaign put together to sell their range of nettle drinks.’
‘Nettle drinks – what, like stinging nettles?’
‘Yeah, they had fields full of nettles, so they decided to harvest them and make them into a range of drinks. Nettles are good for you.’
‘Is that the slogan you want me to use?’
‘Mm, maybe something a bit more imaginative will be needed; the public perception of nettles isn’t great.’
‘What kind of drinks do they make from nettles?’
‘Well, they make nettle-ade, which is I suppose is like lemonade with nettles instead of lemons, and they have nettle iced tea, which is like—’
‘Yeah, okay, I get the picture.’
‘I’ll send you some of it over on Monday, so you can try it.’
‘Have you had some?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well?’
‘I suppose you’d say it’s an acquired taste.’
‘You mean it’s disgusting.’
‘Yeah, pretty much.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
‘You’re welcome. The other thing I’d like you to look at is in the pet-care line, but I’ll send it over rather than try and describe it.’
‘Pet-care?’
‘Yeah, I’ll talk to you once you’ve seen it.’ Graham smiled. ‘We’re definitely not out on the pull tonight, then?’
Nathan looked around the bar. Besides Steven Cowley still drowning his sorrows