Heart of Us Read online

  The area in Edinburgh which we moved to, Duddingston, seemed to house mostly bankers, lawyers and other upper middle-class people: it was clear from the start that we didn’t fit in. Still, to begin with, everything was good. It seemed like things really had changed for us. There was a piano in the house, and Dad would play songs he had picked up over the years on it. Mum sang her out of tune songs in the kitchen again. We would take trips into town to see the sights, and we made friends with the next-door neighbours, the Reids. They had a girl my age, Julia, a boy, Jack, who was two years older, and baby Josie. Julia and I were in the same primary one class at school together and were soon best friends. And whilst it was obvious to us that the Reids were in a different social class from us, they didn’t seem to notice, and we all became good friends. The Reids were good people, and, whilst they had their struggles like everyone else, there was a sense that you were loved and accepted in their house. I would go over and jump on their trampoline with Julia after school, and on weekends we would all go to the play park on Arthur’s Seat or to the beach in Portobello together.

  What Mum and I didn’t know was that Dad had started drinking again. He hid it well this time. Then one day when I was six, he didn’t come home, and when he returned the following day, head sore and with a bottle in his bag, Mum cried. Over the next few weeks, the singing stopped, and she pleaded with him to stop drinking before it was too late, but things only got worse and soon he lost his job. And then it wasn’t long before he was gone for a few weeks.

  Mum tried her hardest to pretend everything was fine to the world around us. And I think people believed us – at least to begin with.

  ***

  Jack

  The first time Miranda came to our house to play with Julia, I threw rotten pears at her.

  It was Julia’s first time having a friend over without parents and, though I was two years older, it bugged me that she wouldn’t let me play with them. So, when they went outside with some dollies, I went outside too, and happened upon the rotten – and just mushy enough – pears under the tree.

  It turns out throwing pears at girls wasn’t a particularly effective strategy. Although I did get quite a few squeals out of them before Mum came out. With a long speech which mainly consisted of you’re bigger than they are and should know better being repeated in different ways, she took away privileges and made me apologise to Miranda, who was crying.

  I quickly found I didn’t like it when Miranda cried. The tears coming down made little paths through the dirt on her face, which she had ended up with after being chased round the garden whilst being pelted with rotten pears. Her dark brown hair was frizzy and stood on end, making her look like a little troll with her small nose and freckles.

  I felt a sting of regret. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her – just to be included. Instead, Miranda ended up going home early, and Julia was so angry she wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the day.

  The next time, I did better. Miranda showed off big blue bruises down her arms and legs where the pears had hit, as though they were battle wounds. I apologised again, and it wasn’t long before we were all good friends.

  And when I say we were good friends, I mean I was the leader, and they were my fan club and were up for everything I challenged them to. Honestly, nothing builds self-confidence like having a fan club.

  Everyone should have one.

  ***

  Miranda

  After Dad started drinking again, there came a few years of him going backwards and forwards between us and the bottle. During this time, it felt like not much had changed since we had left Glasgow. We were still the same people with the same issues that never seemed to leave us.

  The difference now was that in Edinburgh we were trying to fit in with the people around us. People that didn’t have the same problems as we did, who easily earned five times as much as Mum did on her cleaning salary every month, and who seemed to live the perfect lives.

  I don’t know what we would have done without the Reids.

  After trying to keep up the charade for a while, Mum broke one evening when Karen asked her if Dad was ok, as she hadn’t seen him in a while. I overheard them talking in the kitchen as Julia and I were playing Uno in the living room, and that evening we stayed for dinner.

  Mum’s eyes were puffy when we went home, and I wondered what would happen next. Would Karen stop inviting us over? Would they start looking down their noses at us? But it turned out sharing with the Reids was the best thing Mum could have done. John started checking on Dad regularly, taking him on fishing trips during the summer months, and walking in the Pentland Hills. Dad had never been very outdoorsy, and I expect he struggled with the walking, but being around John seemed to ground him. And it was always clear the Reids had no expectations of him. Dad could take or leave their offer of help, and whether he took them up on it or not didn’t seem to make them think differently of him.

  Mum would go along to church with Karen, and brought me along, too. Sunday school was a new experience to me and I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I liked hearing the stories of how the big fish swallowed Jonah, or how Joseph’s brothers threw him down the well and then sold him as a slave, or how David killed Goliath with his slingshot.

  And as Dad wasn’t working, Mum took on more hours at the hotel, and I ended up spending more time at the Reids’.

  I didn’t mind that at all.

  Julia and Jack had the best games, and even their baby sister Josie was nice to be around. Julia and I would entertain her with peek-a-boo games, and we worked hard to teach her how to walk and talk and all the rest. But best of all was when Jack would play with us and we would pretend to be pirates or spies.

  One day we were playing pirates. Captain Jack – we had to call him that or he threatened to stop playing with us – required that we show proof of how loyal we were to our captain. What would we do if we were in a shipwreck? Would we be deserters, or would we be prepared to eat anything in order to survive and stay loyal?

  Captain Jack presented Julia and me with a worm each, which he had dug out of Karen’s vegetable garden, and dared us to eat them.

  ‘Do we bite it, or just swallow it whole?’ Julia asked, equally fascinated and disgusted by the whole idea.

  ‘I think we should swallow it whole. Otherwise we have to taste its guts.’ I said, my stomach turning at the idea, even as I admired Jack for coming up with it.

  ‘Then again…’ Jack had a twinkle in his eye. ‘If you don’t bite it, then it will keep on living in your stomach.’

  ‘Ewww!’ Julia’s face scrunched up. She put her worm in her mouth, took a quick bite, and swallowed before running into the house to get a glass of water.

  I watched her run as I took a deep breath.

  ‘You’re not chicken, are you?’ Jack taunted.

  Chicken? Chicken??

  Defiantly I put the worm on my tongue, crunching down on the slimy thing slowly, before swallowing it.

  It was the most disgusting thing I had ever eaten – slimy and chewy – but I didn’t let on. I licked my lips and raised my eyebrows. ‘Where’s your worm, Jacky? Are you not going to eat one, too?’

  His smile grew into a grin and soon he was laughing so hard he struggled to stand up.

  ‘What?’ I asked. My stomach was still deciding what to do with the worm I had just swallowed, and I was starting to feel a little defensive.

  Jack tried to pull himself together enough to speak coherently. ‘Birds and fish eat worms. Do I look like a bird or a fish to you?’

  Eyes narrow, I glared at him as he kept on laughing. ‘You look like a chicken to me.’

  But me calling him a chicken didn’t seem to get the same rise out of him as he got out of me. Instead, he kept on laughing, and I went to get a glass of water. Then Julia and I spent long hours thinking up ways to get revenge.

  ***

  Julia and I thought we’d never got our revenge. Instead life went on and we kept thinking up adventures
to play, and soon the worm incident was just a memory Jack would rib us about occasionally, but mostly we handled it pretty well.

  A few months later, it was August. We had spent the whole summer in each other’s gardens, and we had noticed there were quite a few cats in our area. We would speak about them from time to time, and would try to engage them in our play, but most of the time they would run away when we tried to approach them.

  Then, one day, I saw one of the cats lying on Mum’s sun chair, and this time it let me pet it. After a while, I picked it up and carried it over to where Jack was sitting. ‘Look!’

  He glanced at me with the cat. ‘Huh.’ A calculating look came into his eyes. ‘Did you know cats clean themselves by licking themselves?’

  ‘Uh-huh, so?’

  ‘They also lick their bums.’ Jack scrunched his nose. ‘So, they’re basically just spreading their poo all over themselves.’

  ‘Really?’ It sounded more like Jack was envious of me after he had been trying to get the cat’s attention all summer, than as though he knew what he was talking about. Still, I realised I could use this to my advantage.

  ‘Yeah. Cats are disgusting.’

  ‘Well, maybe it needs a bath then.’

  Jack’s eyes lit up. ‘I’ll get a bucket of water and we can wash it. Then it will be nice and clean for real.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I nodded, pressing my face into the cat’s back to hide my smile.

  A couple of minutes later, Jack had found a bucket of water.

  ‘Here, give me the cat,’ he said and held out his hands to me.

  I gave the cat a last stroke, muttered a ‘sorry’ in its ear, before handing him the cat. Jack proceeded to try to dip it in the bucket, much to the cat’s frustration. The cat, which had been docile and lovely whilst sitting with me, turned into a raging creature. Its hair stood up straight, and it gave an outraged meow as it scratched Jack’s arms and tried to climb up and out of the water.

  It was over in five seconds, and the cat escaped without injury. The tip of its tail might have gotten slightly damp, but otherwise no harm came to the cat. Jack’s arms, on the other hand, were scratched up to the point of bleeding, and he looked at me as though it was all my fault.

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask about his injuries. Instead I laughed until I cried whilst he muttered something about mean little girls and went home to be bandaged up.

  Chapter 5

  Present

  Miranda

  I was thankful I didn’t see Jack for the next few days. Things were busy at work, and I spent most of my free time working on doing research for the social enterprise – Project Cup – Julia, Sophia and I were starting. I investigated about fifty different ways of sourcing period cups of different qualities and prices, and spent hours crunching numbers to work out what was feasible.

  So, it wasn’t like I was avoiding him. Not at all. It was just that things were really busy.

  Then, early on Thursday morning, I went outside to go for a quick run before work and found him sitting on the steps to the house, like he had done lots of times before. He smiled as I came out, and my breath hitched. With the memories came all the feelings. Feelings I wished I had put to rest a long time ago. I gave my head a shake and bit out, ‘What are you doing here this early?’

  He stood up and raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Good morning Jack, it’s nice to see you. How are things?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I turned to lock the front door and tried to push the feelings out of the way in order to try to focus on being friends with my ex-fiancé. That was what I wanted, after all.

  ‘I’m good, thanks for asking. Lovely morning for a run, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mhm.’ Eyes narrow, I looked at him again. His hair was a mess, and his blue eyes twinkled as he looked at me. He was wearing a loose-fitting hoodie over a tighter shirt and tracky bottoms. He was dressed to lounge around the house, or… He didn’t think he was coming with me, did he?

  His smile grew wider, and my stomach sank.

  He did.

  I took a deep breath and stretched my neck, which was feeling more tense by the minute. I had not prepared myself sufficiently for this.

  ‘Fine. You can come with me if you don’t talk.’ I avoided looking at him by making a show of putting my earphones in and checking my phone to make sure my running app was on.

  I could feel the smile in his eyes as we set off at a comfortable pace, down the road toward Portobello and the beach. Running had always been a way for me to clear my head, but this time my mind was overwhelmed. Jack’s long legs easily kept pace with me as we ran, side by side. We were silent, but on the inside my thoughts and feelings were tumbling around in a jumbled mess, getting louder and louder the further we ran. The two kilometres passed quickly, and soon we were on the prom.

  Normally, I would head up or down along the beach for a couple of kilometres before going back, but I didn’t have time today. Instead, I threw Jack a quick glance before speeding up and running through the sand down to the water, where I bent down to touch the sea before running back through the sand to where Jack stood waiting.

  He bit his lip, as though to keep himself from smiling as he looked at me.

  I could tell my running down to touch the water had triggered a series of memories for him, but I wasn’t about to go down memory lane with him. ‘I haven’t got time to go further today,’ I muttered.

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I keep going?’

  ‘Not at all!’ I smiled for the first time that morning, relief flooding my mind as he gave me a knowing look before taking off down the beach toward Joppa and Musselburgh. I watched him leave – wondering how it was possible to still feel so much after six years – before shaking my head and heading back home.

  I wasn’t someone to bury my head in the sand, but this morning I was thankful for the spreadsheets I could immerse myself in at work. At some point I would have to come to terms with the fact that Jack – and all the emotions he brought up – were not about to go away, but that day was not this day.

  ***

  On Saturday, Sophia rang my doorbell at nine o’clock – on time for once. She put a container of brownies on the counter, put the kettle on and proceeded to make us drinks as she talked about her week. ‘I can’t tell you how thankful I am it’s finally the weekend. I’m already ready for a holiday, and I just came back from one a few weeks ago.’

  ‘You’ve had a pretty intense workload recently, though,’ I said as I put some bread in the toaster. ‘You’ll probably be alright if you get to sleep in and rest a little. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yeah, but you go ahead.’ Sophia got a plate out for the brownies and set them on the table as I buttered my toast. ‘I almost stayed in bed this morning. But then I couldn’t stop thinking of all the progress we’re making with Project Cup, so here I am.’ She gave a quick shrug before turning back to the kettle and pouring water into the cafetière. ‘What kind of tea are you having?’

  ‘Ginger. I’ll make it, though.’ I got a grater out of the drawer and a ginger root out of the fridge and grated a bit of ginger over my cup before pouring over the hot water.

  ‘Julia overslept, and is running late.’ Sophia put her phone on the table as she sat down with her coffee opposite me.

  ‘She’s probably exhausted after the first few weeks of going back to teaching.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She looked me in the eye as I took a sip of my drink. ‘So, are we going to talk about Jack being back?’

  The tea burned my mouth and I winced. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Sophia gave me an unimpressed look. ‘Of course we are; don’t be silly. You can’t pretend he’s not here, and he obviously meant a lot to you at one point. It’s got to be difficult to see him again. Right?’

  I ran my tongue over my sore gums. ‘Yeah, okay, fine. It was a bit of a shock to see him last weekend, but it’s alright. I got over him a long time ago, so I’m thinking we can be friends.’

&n
bsp; Sophia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Friends?’

  ‘Or acquaintances.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Acquaintances?’ Sophia’s tone held a lot of suspicion.

  ‘Well, I’m sure Karen is hoping we’ll get back together and everything will be right in her world again, but that’s not going to happen. I’m sure we can probably be friends, though.’ I wasn’t sure at all. I had no idea how on earth a friendship with Jack was meant to work.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The suspicion in Sophia’s voice was still strong. ‘Have you guys talked at all?’

  As breezily as I could, I said, ‘Yep, we had a little chat after we’d been to the pub last weekend, and then we went for a run on Thursday.’

  She wasn’t buying my blasé attitude. ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’

  ‘I don’t see what there is to talk about. We broke up a long time ago. Anything we wanted to say about that has been said. No need to dredge up old stuff now.’ There was probably loads that could be said. But what would be the point? I didn’t want to cause any hurt, and I was done feeling sad about something that happened years ago.

  ‘Are you sure that’s how you want to play this?’ Sophia frowned. ‘I know it was a long time ago, but I saw your face as he walked through the door on Sunday.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I thought about it, and there really isn’t much to say. He had to do his thing back then, and I understood.’ I tried to give her a reassuring smile. ‘I got over him, you know.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Sophia seemed unconvinced but let it go as Julia came through the door. With rain streaking down her face, she looked as dishevelled as I felt.

  I breathed a sigh of relief to not be the focus of attention any longer and got up to pour Julia a cup of coffee. ‘Rough morning?’

  She took a big sip and sighed. ‘I slept in, missed the bus, had to wait in the rain, and then mum rang to tell me she needs me to come to church again. And I haven’t had coffee yet.’

  ‘Oh.’ I scrunched my nose. Her hair was wet, as were her jeans. ‘Maybe keep drinking your coffee?’