The Glasgow Coma Scale by Neil Stewart Read Free Book Online

‘Christ, we’re a couple ay wee saouls, urn’t we?’ Then a sly look entered his eyes. ‘Ah remember, one time in the studio, ah came over tae see whut ye were working oan, and as soon as ah came near, ye threw a sheet over yir easel, stuck oot yir chin and went, whit wis it, “Children and fools—” ’
    ‘Shouldn’t see unfinished work.’ She beamed. Here was a breakthrough, acknowledgement that the Lynne he was talking to now was the same person he’d once taught. ‘Something my mother used to say when I’d come into the kitchen and see her cooking. Handling the raw meat, rubbing the lard and flour for pastry. I thought all that stuff was disgusting.’
    ‘Couldnae believe ma ears. Children and fools! Talk aboot the mouse that fuckin roared.’ He shook his head in admiration. ‘Ma point is, that didnae sound like sumdy lackin spontaneity – who didn’t ken her ain mind.’
    They
had
kissed. It had happened, even if Angus had forgotten the fact; even if for the scant seconds it’d lasted Lynne herself had not been fully able to enjoy it because of the immediate low-level fretting it had sparked in her. They’d kissed and, because of the person Lynne was then and continued to be, her first thought had been to worry whether the futon she slept on then would comfortably accommodate two.
    Nonetheless, ‘You could stay, you know,’ she’d blurted. ‘Stay the night – what’s left of it.’ She had addressed this invitation first to the tumblers she was rinsing of suds, then, having run out of props, and remembering that barbed word
sensible
, she had turned to look Angus unflinchingly in the eye. ‘If you’d like that.’
    ‘Oh,’ he’d said, surprised, stepping back, and she’d seen instantly she’d got everything wrong. ‘Oh, well. Lynne.’
    ‘It’s fine,’ she’d interrupted, desperate not to hear what he’d come out with next. ‘You don’t have to—’
    ‘The thing is, Lynne . . .’ He butted his shoulder against the kitchen wall. A faint quavering in his tone, the big man; she’d found him so sweet then, until he brought his eyes to her, brows raised, caricaturing sincerity. ‘Ah like ye, but ah don’t fancy ye – ah mean, ah do, but ah don’t. So as long as that’s . . . understood?’
    ‘No.’ It was not. She did not. Effortfully, she reformulated what she’d been about to say. ‘No, you’re quite right. It’s the student and the teacher, isn’t it? I have this rule, you see, about who I let myself get involved with.’ A lie, invented on the spot, that must have made her sound conceited, forever fending off the attentions of unsuitable men.
    ‘Ah’m no yir teacher any mair,’ Angus had pointed out equably. It wasn’t meant to persuade her: it was a way to withdraw his almost offer without offending. In the next room, she heard Elena crossly addressing the lavatory as she tried to get it to flush. They had seconds, and all she’d done was stare at Angus wide-eyed, trying to transmit wordlessly what she wanted – barely knowing that herself.
    Then Elena had come striding back in: ‘Fucking Christ, Creature, that toilet of yours, I’m telling you. Look, it’s five in the morning and I’m due in work at eleven, so I’m calling a cab. Angus? Go halves?’ And it had all been over: Angus shrugging, daring to shrug, at Lynne before he followed Elena out into the hallway, where she was already on the phone haranguing a taxi company. Lynne could invent no pretext for making him stay behind. In any case, she wouldn’t have dared suggest it a second time. Her nerve had failed her; seemed for a while, as it always did on those infrequent, uncharacteristic occasions when she screwed up her courage and did something reckless – like applying to art school in the first instance – to have failed her in perpetuity, at least until it happened again.
    Lynne had sought Elena out in the week that followed, shown far more interest in deepening their friendship than she