Chapter 4

Buying the flat was anti-climactic, like all of the business transactions Andrew had been part of, there was a lot of signing his name on various forms. Mind you at least he could sign his name now and didn’t need to get Leslie or his father to do it. But it was over by 10.00 and Andrew received the keys as Mhairi received the title documents which she would file with the Registrars of Scotland.

“I will get the title registered this morning, I will send one of the assistants over to Register House to get it filed right away. I will see you tomorrow night.”

Andrew left and walked back to the car where Suzanne was patiently waiting. They drove up to the flat, finally found somewhere to park and walked back to the flat. Without furniture it looked big but he was pleased at the state of the place and started to imagine the changes he would make. The inspection had found nothing so bad that it was a deal breaker but there were several things he was going to upgrade. The two of them wandered about for a bit before heading out again. As Andrew closed the door he could not help feeling that he needed to plan better. Suzanne alone in his new flat and they never took their clothes off. Andrew smiled and shook his head only to see Suzanne standing there, bottom lip firmly trapped between her teeth. He chased her all the way back to the car.

The rest of Friday was spent on the preparation for his party. It was going to be around 35 people with his Grandma as the oldest. It would have been Rowan as the youngest but since she was no longer attending there would be no one younger than 18 at the party. Andrew had never been much of a drinker, watching the farmers out at Harry and Josephine’s New Year party grimly drink themselves into oblivion had had a profound effect on him at 14 years old. It was something he was going to be careful with at Cambridge especially in Fresher’s Week. So not for Andrew a horde of late teenage men and women drinking too much and causing mayhem. He wanted to have a party as a thank you to family and friends for everything over the last five years. So had invited an eclectic mix of people from the various parts of his life for a thank you celebration. The numbers had gotten a little out of hand but he was looking forward to it. The issue with his parents he just shoved down deep, buried it within his psyche, and concentrated on the practicalities instead. A lot of the rest of the day was spent making sure that the caterers were organised, confirming there was enough food and going to the off-licence and buying the booze. He probably bought way too much but he was sure the Campbells would use up in short order.

That Friday evening he was thinking about his empty flat, the one his parents knew nothing about, and thinking about Suzanne. He quietly went to the storage cupboard in the house and found the inflatable camping mattress and his sleeping bag. He stashed them outside the front door and went and called Suzanne.

“Do you have a sleeping bag?”

“What? Andrew, is that you? What are you going on about?”

“Do you have a sleeping bag?”

“Yes, but again why?”

Andrew said nothing but just waited. Suddenly Suzanne caught up.

“Andrew!”

“I will be there in 20 minutes.”

Without waiting for confirmation he hung up and headed out. The atmosphere had been frosty all night and so he saw no reason to let his parents know where he was going. Just the previous evening his father had complained that ‘you treat this house like a hotel’. If he was going to be accused of it...

Suzanne alternated between giggling and whacking Andrew on the drive over to the flat.

“I called Mary, had her call me back and am allegedly staying with her tonight. I don’t think Mum believes a word of it judging by her smile.”

It had been far too long since Andrew had held a naked Suzanne in his arms. Their first orgasms were over in mere seconds for both of them but that was just clearing the pipes. There was nothing subtle about their fucking that night. Andrew was trying to make Suzanne pass out from orgasms and she wanted to ‘make him come so hard he pulled a muscle in his arse’. Neither of them succeeded but they gave it a damned good try. With the days counting down until they were apart the two of them fell asleep pressed tightly together, there was a ferocity to their snuggling. They might have been young but their feelings were deep and confused.

The consequences of not washing the night before were felt in the morning. There were more than a few eye-watering moments as they separated their groins. But they managed to get themselves apart and neither ended up with a home-made Brazilian. Andrew pulled and bent the air mattress so that it was partially on the floor and partially on the wall and leaned back. Suzanne shuffled her legs and body up before lowering herself onto his dick. As so often after a torrid night before this was less about coming again and more about connecting, just holding the other person. They both held it together but the tears were roiling beneath the surface of their eyes. There would be plenty opportunities to talk but they weren’t sure if they would get the chance to make love again before Suzanne left for Glasgow.

They showered even before going across the road, scrubbing the excesses of the night before off their bodies before having a lazy swim. Warrender was quiet first thing and they had the place almost to themselves. Andrew dropped Suzanne off at the end of her street, no point in flinging the reality in her parents’ face, and she smiled and proceeded to sashay down the street. Never has the phrase I hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave been more apt. Suzanne got to her gate and looked back. Like there would be any doubt that Andrew would be sitting there watching. She entered her drive with a very knowing smile.

As Andrew parked the car near Tony’s shop he knew it was going to be an odd day. From sleeping with Suzanne on a camping mattress in an empty flat to then going to review naked photographs of Maggie with her and Tony to then having a party; it was not a typical day in the life of Andrew McLeod. The shop was already open and Andrew was surprised to see Stacey working, in addition to the usual Saturday part-timer.

“Go on through Andrew. They are upstairs waiting on you.”

“Thanks, what are you doing in today?”

“Tony asked me to cover today for him as he is getting ready for a party tonight. My Mum is watching the little ones so I can get the overtime.”

A customer came up to the till so Andrew stepped through the back and left her to it. He climbed the stairs, calling up as he climbed to give them a warning he was there. But they were sitting in the kitchen, the large kitchen table clear other than an incongruous pile of girlie mags. There must have been close to 30 of them by now. Maggie stood up and hugged him and almost pulled him over to the table. Tony laughed and went to a cupboard and pulled out all the packets of prints.

“She has been pestering me for hours to see these. You wouldn’t believe what she was offering to do.”

Tony had already danced back from the whack heading his way. The threats of being cut-off and the faux grovelling apology took a minute or so before domestic harmony was restored. Tony first laid out the shots from Blackford Hill. Andrew wasn’t someone who tooted his own trumpet but he was really pleased with a lot of the shots. Andrew had taken three rolls of 24 and one of 36 frames so there were 108 prints. None of them were awful but there were 40 that they all agreed to remove. Selecting the best from there was tougher and they finally ended up with 43 prints laid out on the table.

There were four scenarios of roughly 10 prints each. The first was a progression of prints from the back where Monica pulled the jacket up, pulled it aside, removed it and slung it over her shoulder and finally discarded it. The boots seemed to lengthen her legs, and what was strange was the shots with the jacket at least partially on were better than Monica in just the boots. And it was the same from the front. One of the best shots, in the top five, was Monica with the coat open, hands on her hips, legs slightly apart. It was a visual epitome of Maggie in her Monica persona. Completely naked, commanding boots and just radiating an attitude of ‘don’t fuck with me’. That print was put to the side. Everyone’s favourite sequence was Monica bending over and looking back at Tony, out of shot on the right of the frame. There were two prints that stood out. The first was her look of surprise when she spotted Tony behind her, Andrew had captured Monica’s mouth in a perfect ‘o’. But there was a shot, three frames on, probably no more than five seconds of time, where Monica had spread her legs slightly and the look of mischievousness was epic. No one was ever going to photograph that view but from the look on Tony’s face as he thought back to what he had seen, he wasn’t going to forget it any time soon. These two prints were also put aside. The last sequence of shots was Monica facing east, her body clear, the only shadow the crease under her boobs. None of the shots were bad but there was one where the brim of the hat just obscured enough of Monica’s face, all you saw was the left hand side of her mouth, her teeth showing as she smiled, and her chin. There was no way to tell it was Monica, or more importantly Maggie. There was a sharpness to the image, a tight focal range with everything behind her a complete blur.

“Any of these could be published in one of these magazines. That is why they are out.”

Andrew wasn’t sure if that was the case. He was a self-taught glamour photographer who had only worked with one model. He did agree that the shots of Monica were great but there was no objective way to judge how good he was. Monica did not want her photographs published. Which did leave the one shot with the hat. Andrew wondered if Tony had had a word with Maggie.

“Do you want to submit the photograph with my face hidden by the hat?”

“Do you want me to? Do you want thousands of men, and women, looking at your naked body?”

Maggie was silent for a moment.

“As always the answer is yes and no. The dream, the fantasy is yes, but the reality, the downside danger is no.”

Andrew had his answer. Maybe she would change her mind in the years to come, they had the picture if so, but he really didn’t care. He wasn’t a glamour photographer, he was Maggie’s friend. There was nothing wrong with the shots at Tantallon Castle, but there was nothing unique about them either. Even a year after the shoot at Craigmiller Castle and there would have been a freshness to the shots but it was too soon. They didn’t dawdle over the shots. Whereas the shots on Seacliff Beach were pored over for a long time. Andrew had taken a small string of shots where he had focused off at the people who were furthest in the distance, and then with each shot had refocused on a progression of the next closest people. In the first shot Monica was nothing but a pink blur in the foreground, as if Andrew had part of his thumb on the lens. But as Andrew’s point of focus came closer and closer Monica appeared in ever more detail until she was back to being the centre of the shot. With Monica down behind the windbreak it was almost a studio shot with an unusual backdrop and realistic sand on the studio floor. It was only as she got higher that the true nature of the shoot was revealed.

But all of that was secondary to the final progression of shoots. The different looks on Monica’s face were epic. As Andrew had instructed she told him what Tony was doing without ever saying a word. Now maybe it was because they had all been there but all three of them could see the different emotions play out across her face. And the orgasm shot was real, even simple little details like her knuckles being white from grasping the poles so tight. Rather than say anything about the shots they all just sat and looked at them for quite a while.

“These will be difficult to beat. How do you top them?”

This was when the pile of girlie magazines was useful. They went through them all, again skipping the articles, to see if there were any ideas. But three quarters of the shoots were beautiful women in a bedroom wearing, and then discarding, lingerie before posing in a variety of degrees of explicitness. In 30 magazines and more than 150 shoots there were exactly three shots where the model was outdoors. They were on their own.

“I won’t junk all these but I don’t think there is any point in buying any more. So talk to us Andrew, what are you thinking about?”

“If you know Edinburgh then you can tell where we have shot, maybe not exactly but you can roughly work it out. Do any of your friends, either of you, work anywhere interesting, distinct? Let me give you an example. Mum is into her gardening and she would often take Scott, when he was a baby and a toddler, down to the Botanic Gardens. Now it is too open there for us to try anything, I think we would get caught, but maybe if you knew one of the gardeners who could sneak us in early, or let us stay late, something like that.”

A deafening silence greeted that example.

“I have only climbed the Scott Monument once, bloody freezing it was in March, maybe April, Easter time anyway. But when I was up there it was deserted, not a soul. So that is an idea. There is a great view over to the Castle and you are surprisingly high up. The other thing to bear in mind is that it will be December before I am back. Not exactly ideal weather for a naked stroll.”

The two of them did appear to be trying to think of something but it was Andrew who was having the ideas. As always when he was dealing with them as a couple and talking about modelling, there was a certain surreal nature to the conversation. But it looked like they didn’t want to stop anytime soon. He would worry about it later. After a quick lunch he headed off knowing he would see them that evening. Maggie had reconfirmed that there was going to be no mention of Monica that night.

The party was a big success. That short sentence encapsulated a lot of different aspects that contributed to the success. The family arrived early so that they could get settled and Andrew could tell that they were in good form. His Grandma had kept off the bottle that afternoon and so had a thirst on her that only sherry could quench. He left the bottle beside her on an occasional table and got a pat on the hand as a thank you. He chatted away to his aunts, uncles and cousins about the people that were coming, telling them about most of the guests, but not all. The Campbells were lovely hosts, welcoming and working to put everyone at ease. But there was no way to not look at the elephant in the corner of the room; that they were hosting the party rather than Andrew’s parents. But a rush of people all arriving at once got them past the moment. Leslie, Julian and his parents all arrived together in a cab and Andrew greeted them all with hugs and handshakes. He had invited his close friends from school and so Suzanne, Pete, June, Don White and Mary Jones were all there. Andrew decided to invite some teachers and so Mrs. Graves from the library, Travis from the CCF and his two fellow hockey coaches were all there. Everyone could bring a guest but of the teachers only Mrs. Hendricks came with her husband, everyone else was solo. Andrew had asked his double bass teacher but she had declined as she was performing that night. Mhairi, Creighton and Doug Somers all came, the latter two with their wives and Mhairi with her fiancé. Dave and Gord came from the Food Bank and arrived just in front of Maggie and Tony. They looked the most nervous of the attendees. Finally Andrew’s Member of Parliament Malcolm Rifkind arrived with his wife. Not that he had ever voted for him, much to his chagrin. The general election had been held on June 9^th 1983, two days before his 18^th birthday meaning he had been unable to vote by those two days. Bah. These 20 plus people all arrived within 10 minutes of each other.

Everyone had a drink and grazed past the buffet and were starting to mingle. The jokes and stories were starting already but it was good to see so many different people from different lots in life mixing so well. Then the doorbell rang again and when Andrew got there standing on the doorstep were Nikki and Fran together with Lord Barnes and Freya Moray. He ushered everyone in and decided to confront this one head one.

“Nikki, Fran, I don’t know if you had a chance to introduce yourselves yet but this is Lord Barnes and Freya Moray. Lord Barnes is a Court of Session judge and Freya is the Deputy Secretary at the Scottish Office. Lord Barnes, Freya these are two of my closest friends Nikki Papadakos and her partner Dr. Francesca Conte. Nikki works at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and Fran is a pediatric surgeon at the Sick Kids in Glasgow.”

There it was, the gauntlet thrown down; but it was just stepped over and ignored. Lord Barnes and Freya could not have been more polite and gracious. The chatted away with Fran and Nikki as they went further into the house following the noise of the party. The older Julian Strong saw Lord Barnes and made a beeline over, Rifkind saw Freya and he headed over, Nikki saw his Grandma and dragged Fran over to say hi. Andrew took the chance to introduce Lord Barnes and Freya to their hosts.

“Brian, Mary, let me introduce Lord Barnes and Freya Moray. I had dinner with them last week and invited them to the party.”