Chapter 13

Andrew stopped at his aunt’s house on the way to Glasgow, dropping off presents for the family. She wasn’t happy that he was missing Christmas but recognised that her brother was acting the arse. She could have laid the emotional blackmail down pretty thick but gave Andrew a break and he was able to escape after 20 minutes. As Andrew drove through to Glasgow the problems seemed to diminish as the distance from Edinburgh increased. He parked the car and walked the two blocks to Nikki and Fran’s flat. Andrew was almost smothered in hugs and affection when the door opened. The open wound of families that turned their backs on them was still fresh and he hadn’t realised how much his situation affected them until they opened the door. Yet the frustration and unhappiness he had felt on Thursday had greatly dissipated by the time he sat down with the two of them in their living room. The day with Tony and Maggie, working with Naomi, the night out with Pete, they all had helped put things into perspective.

After Andrew was settled in the living room he told the whole story from when he returned the 12^th of December until that point. The problems with his family, especially his father, the revelations with Suzanne, he didn’t talk about any of the details but they knew there was a lot there, the talk about love, all the business dealings, including the amounts, the whole night at the Campbells and then a night later at Lord Barnes and finally the rejection by Suzanne of going to the party. He probably talked for an hour and other than a quickly suppressed gasp Nikki and Fran sat in silence. The only thing he completely omitted was the glamour photography.

“No wonder you came through here for a break from all that. You could write that as a script of a soap opera and no one would believe it. The interesting thing is that you were totally unfiltered. You told us very personal sexual and financial things Andrew. You really are out of sorts, aren’t you?”

“You know I am not bragging, it is for context. I seem to be able to garner the respect and admiration, even love almost, from strangers but not from my own family. The stuff with Suzanne, without going into the details I am well out of my comfort zone but she won’t go to a party with me. And Leslie has moved on, not deliberately but she is living her own life now with Julian, he has replaced me in her life and she is thriving and growing. But it still leaves me feeling out of whack.”

Fran spoke for the first time.

“So what you felt you needed to do was spend Christmas with a couple of middle-aged lesbians?”

Andrew laughed.

“Well I was going to say two wise friends who can stop some of my darker moods, but sure that too.”

The three of them went for a walk, not saying much while Fran and Nikki just processed everything that happened in the 12 days. When they got back to the flat they started to share their thoughts.

“Suzanne is young and you have a capacity to deal with older people that is very unusual for your age. Her reaction was instinctive although given everything you alluded to about the week before it was also pretty selfish. That stuff just blows my mind, to be figuring all that out on top of everything else, especially when it is not your nature. I don’t know what else to say. Anyway, moving quickly on. Everything else comes down to you doing so much good, being recognised repeatedly for that, getting love and attention because of it and yet your parents don’t seem to care. And I just don’t understand that one, even after your grandmother got involved. So tell me, what do you want to do?”

“Stay here until the 28^th, survive this party on Hogmanay and then head south on the 1^st or 2^nd and I probably won’t be back until the summer.”

That stark admission brought silence. It was also bullshit teenage hyperbole. Andrew wasn’t due to head down to Nigel’s until the 7^th, and the intervening week with Leslie and Julian, Tony and Maggie, and Suzanne would be fine.

“Okay then. You are welcome to stay here until then, I hope that you the party goes okay and when you get down south that you find some peace. I don’t think it will look so bleak once you get some separation from it. But what we need to do now is open some cheap red wine and relax. Nothing says Christmas like a stinking hangover.”

Fran was on a roll. Andrew knew that Nikki would go to church in the morning while he and Fran would stay at home. The four days with the two of them was exactly what Andrew needed. They showered him with love and affection, he cooked for them when they went back to work, drove them there or walked with them and just reset himself. Several of Nikki’s co-workers stopped and chatted to Andrew outside the Mitchell as he waited for Nikki, asking him if he was waiting for his mum. Andrew didn’t even need to say anything, although he still got a whack on the principle of the thing. As for Fran she told Andrew that he was confusing all the other doctors and nurses at the hospital by waiting for her.

“I am losing all my lesbian street-cred.”

Andrew nearly kissed her and she backed away.

“Stay away. Bad Andrew. Ewww, men!”

They couldn’t tell who laughed harder. When the 28^th rolled around they were both misty-eyed as he loaded the car and came back to say goodbye.

“You will be fine, I am like an excitable puppy that has been charging round your flat and in your life for a week. Nice to have, but even better to send me home.”

Whacked and hugged, a new low even for him.

“I can’t thank you enough for this. I really needed it and I hope that I wasn’t too much of an imposition. If I am back in Edinburgh during Easter then you must come and stay with me. I owe you both so much.”

Andrew was happy and relaxed, he had a couple of days scheduled where he was going to be hanging out with Maggie working on his photography and then just needed to get through the party. He had done no academic reading while in Glasgow although he had spent some time in Waterstones reading photography books. The week after New Year needed to be spent getting back into the rhythm of studying. He didn’t know how much studying he would get done after 7^th when he could head down to stay with Nigel. For Andrew the night of the 22^nd had been the low point, from then on things started to get better. So when he got home he phoned his Grandma and went over and saw her. Her relief at seeing him transitioned in a heartbeat to a right telling off, as only grandmothers can manage. Although Andrew asked her to let the family stuff go, she insisted on telling him that Christmas Day had been ‘frosty’. His parents were told off by the whole family and left much earlier than usual. Rowan had behaved and Scott had been too young to understand all the subtexts. According to his Grandma, Andrew’s parents were starting to realise that they had made a large mistake. Andrew wasn’t so sure himself, it sounded like it would just have made his father even more mad at him. He promised his Grandma that he would stay in touch and got the classic ‘I don’t know how many more years I have left’ guilt trip from her. Andrew had to put up with more than a decade of them and he wished there had been many more.

Once he was back in the flat Andrew found a note on the dining room table which he had not seen when he first got back. It was from Suzanne who was feeling terrible as she too realised that her instant dismissal of the party was unfair. Andrew would call her on the night of the 1^st and see her the following week. It would take a bit of time and effort to get to where they had been but he was not throwing away four years over something that was unfortunate timing. On another day and with a calmer preceding week it would not have been such a big deal. But underlying Suzanne’s refusal was an acknowledgement that this was not something she was comfortable doing. He wasn’t going to talk to her before New Year as he didn’t want to deal with her offering to attend the party with him through guilt. He would be fine on his own, and frankly hoped to sneak out long before midnight.

In the morning Andrew was up early and decided to run over to the Commonwealth and enjoy the 50m pool. He had run and exercised every day while in Glasgow but had missed swimming and 90 minutes of steady swimming later he was tired and aching but in a good way. He walked back to his flat and then drove over to Tony’s. One thing that had become clear was that Maggie was spending more and more time there. Andrew didn’t know whether she had moved in but they met there all the time. It was a nasty day, with a strong, bitterly cold wind but Maggie was prepared to give it a go. This was the last week where the shop would be busy, Boxing Day sales and people spending Christmas money, so Tony didn’t come with them. Given the weather it was unsurprising to find no other cars at the Scout Camp and they were sheltered within the trees on the walk to the beach.

The wind was coming from the north east which meant that the ‘safer’ side of the beach was very exposed to the weather. It was a fraction more sheltered to the west of the headland but there was a lot less time to cover up if someone unexpectedly appeared from the path.

“Let’s do a roll or two here and then a couple more on the other side.”

Maggie’s suggestion made sense and there was little danger of being observed. Andrew weighted a blanket down between them which would be out of shot so that Maggie could throw her coats there but it was close to hand while he changed filters. The first six shots were of Maggie with the coat closed, then still wearing the coat but with it hanging open, three of each. The final six shots were of Maggie in just her boots. Andrew was trying to add warmth to the outdoor shots. In the middle of winter it was a very flat light, the sun was rarely visible and so the light palette was pale, and given the natural pale skin of Maggie, there was always a danger of the photographs looking washed out. Andrew had never consistently used filters before and so there was a lot of experimenting to see whether any of them ‘warmed up’ the pictures. He took 12 shots with each filter, six filters in all. As he changed filter Maggie huddled in her coat and warmed up for a few moments and then they repeated the 12 shots. There was no moving around and the poses, although not identical, were very similar. Even the focus wasn’t essential in these tests so Andrew did not fuck about in the cold weather. They did not shoot with any of the filters on the windy side and just stayed in the same spot the whole time. Once the tests were all complete they moved round to the other side of the headland but the wind was just too cold. Maggie didn’t even have to take her coat off for them to realise it was too miserable a day. After less than an hour at the beach they headed back to the car.

“Well we got nice and quiet.”

Andrew snorted.

“What’s that Noel Coward song? Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. This is the Scottish equivalent. Only crazy penguins and Scotsmen go out in the winter wind.”

They quick marched back to the car and Andrew cranked the heater as high as it would go as they headed back into town.

“Tony developed the film from your session with Naomi for you. You going to come in and look at them?”

“Sure. That was good of him. I will be intrigued to see what they are like. Have you looked at them?”

“He developed them on Christmas night. Tony always goes to his uncle’s place for Christmas, his dad’s brother. But it is more out of obligation than really wanting to spend time with him. So he came back early and worked in the darkroom, listening to music. When I got there on the morning of Boxing Day the prints were drying. So while he dealt with the customers in looking for a bargain, I sat and looked through the pictures. Let’s talk about them when we get back to the shop.”

They were close to the shop and 15 minutes later Andrew was sitting at the kitchen table holding a cup of tea while Maggie showered to finally warm up and to put some clothes back on. Neither of them had thought it odd that she had left the shop wearing only her two coats and boots. How quickly the extreme had become normal. There were eight packets of prints from Naomi’s shoot and Maggie had left out some of her earlier shoots with Andrew for comparison. She came through towelling her hair and Andrew made her a cup of tea.

“Those two coats are really warm. Despite the weather being so shit, I wasn’t too bad. You have a good heater in the car as well.”

Maggie flung the towel over the back of an adjacent chair and held the cup of tea in her hand.

“It was interesting to look at the pictures of your session with Naomi. The first couple of rolls are flat, you aren’t getting much back from her. What do you think?”

“Flat is probably the right word. I remember taking some of the shots and just having lots of inner voices in my head thinking about the differences. For the first two rolls we said nothing. She said ‘ready’ when she was posed how she wanted and I said ‘okay’ when I had the shot. Other than that it was very uptight. See between these two shots, well her knickers were caught on her shoe and for a couple of seconds her legs were straight. But I didn’t take the shot. I know it is a stupid thing to say given how I was photographing her but I was shy about telling her to stick her bum out, or things like that. Now less than an hour later I am playing the amateur gynaecologist but at the start there was no rapport. Tony had given me no indication how far she was prepared to pose. 20 minutes later she rather answered that question but it was all those things. I was distracting myself for most of the first four rolls. It was only in the second hour that things started to become. Not easier but it started to flow.”