The Glasgow Coma Scale by Neil Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

some more significant difficulties he had with alcohol. ‘We were friends, more than anything. She confided in me. But lately she’s been . . . well, I don’t know. Maybe she sensed things were changing with me and Raymond. But it’s like I can feel her pulling away. She keeps secrets from me now, which she never used to. She doesn’t come round so often, and when she does, it’s – different. I’ve started to dread her visits. I had to email Raymond this week, to tell him she was coming this weekend, and I . . .’ She laughed curtly, unhappily. ‘I felt so ashamed, like he might think I was trying to steal her away from him. Or poison her against him.’
    ‘Ach, stuff whut he thinks. Correct me if ah’m wrang, but he didnae exactly treat ye like a princess, so how come you’re makin allowances for his hurt feelings?’
    ‘But he’s her father’ – frowning, as though Angus was a half-wit. ‘I’m just the outsider. She might take his side, and I have to prepare myself for that. Only, I’m afraid that when I see her at the weekend, I’ll overcompensate, scare her off by saying how much I’ve done for them both over the years.’
    She was breathless, and that was her own fault for draining all the oxygen from the room. It occurred to Angus that she’d throw anything at him, any drama, to try and hold his interest, or solicit from him some reciprocal disclosure. Instead, serenely, he continued to explain her own life to her. ‘Things’re bound tae be weird after a break-up. But it’s a big gap between thirteen and, whit, sixteen, seventeen? Auld enough tae make up her ain mind. Hang in, doll, she’ll come round.’
    It was bog-standard psychology of the what’s-fur-ye-willnae-go-by-ye variety, but Lynne seemed to swallow it. Then, rattling like a tin full of wasps, she burst out: ‘Did you – do you have children?’
    ‘Me! Christ, no. At least ah hope not. Jesus, ah’ve
been
a kid – ah cannae imagine anyhin worse than huvin one ay ma ain. Ye hud the best ay it, bein sortay step-godmother. Bit like me wi ma students, the ultimate father figure.’ He had meant it as a joke, but Lynne sprang up from the table without a word. ‘Whit ye daein? Ye awright?’
    ‘Going to my room. If that’s okay.’
    ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ And off she flounced, leaving Angus bemused. He’d thought it might break the ice, a light allusion to what had failed to occur between them all those years ago. Why was she carrying this torch? He wanted to call after her: ‘Ah didnae winch that girl Elena either, if that’s whit’s upsettin ye. Could’ve, but didnae. That make ye feel better?’
    Lynne drew the curtains and knelt by the bed. One thing she could not allow herself to do was believe that Angus’s reappearance in her life was part of some divine plan. Profane thinking. What would he constitute, anyway, the test or the reward? It was hopeless: love had come up around her again, a nimbus, and Angus insisted on speaking to her lightly, ironically, with no sense of any emotion invested in her, as someone who meant nothing to him, someone he barely knew. Okay, that was true, but did he have to make it so obvious?
    She was nothing to him: when he talked to her, he was talking to himself. He was smug and implacable: he knew full well what she was desperate to hear, and wouldn’t say it. This situation, or so she repeated to herself, hoping she might start to believe it, would not, could not, work out the way she had hoped, because what she was hoping for was a paradox. For anything to happen between them, both she and Angus would have had to be quite different people. Logically, it followed. So why couldn’t she listen to herself?
    She was asking guidance on this and other matters when Angus himself came crashing into her room. ‘Lynne, doll—’ She rose in haste. ‘Oh. Sorry.’ His face blazed: what did he imagine she’d been doing? No, she could tell by his look of impish delight exactly what he