Page 57 of Merry & Bright

He was about to slam the Volvo’s boot shut when he remembered the bottle of Champagne that had been languishing in his fridge since he’d arrived here, a present from his parents when he’d moved to Inverbechie ten months before.

“Save it till you’ve got something to celebrate,”his mum had said.

Somehow, a suitable occasion had never arisen—until now, anyway. Tonight he would celebrate getting away from Inverbechie for a couple of days. He’d pretend he’d never left Glasgow, never made any of the mistakes of the last ten months.

With that determined thought, Cam strode back to the cottage, dragging his keys out of his pocket to open up again.

Just stepping inside brought his mood down. Recently, he’d come to hate the place, which was sad considering how many happy summers he’d spent here when he was a kid, and that it was the memory of those summers that had made him decide to set up his business here.

Back then, the cramped conditions and ancient furniture had been part of the fun, but now he hated the lumpy, threadbare sofa and the bulky, old TV. Hated the tiny, tiled dining table in the corner of the living room where he ate his meals—who the fuck chose totilea table?—with its too-small chairs. Worse was the shoebox kitchen that only had a hotplate to cook on. No oven. Jesus, he couldn’t even console himself with frozen pizza.

Everything in the cottage was run down and ancient. Falling apart, just like his life. The boiler was just the latest casualty.

Stomping through to the kitchen, Cam yanked the fridge open and extricated the Champagne from its hiding place behind a half-empty jar of mayonnaise and a tub of cream cheese so elderly Cam suspected he’d find nothing but mould if he opened it. Tucking the bottle under his arm, he strode out again, locking the door behind him with an overwhelming sense of relief.

Ruthlessly, he shoved away the thought that he was going to have to come back in a few days, concentrating instead on stowing the bottle of fizz in the empty ankle sheath of a walking boot to make sure it wouldn’t roll around before slamming the boot shut and getting in the driver’s side.

He held his breath when he turned the ignition, waiting for the engine to spring to life—and it did, the little beauty.Not quite down and out yet.

With a grim smile he reached for his seatbelt, snapping it into place at his hip with one hand while he steered the car out onto the road. And then he was off, off to Glasgow for a long, debauched night out on the town.

He could almost taste his first drink already.

***

BY THE TIME CAM REACHEDArdkinglas, he knew the Volvo wasn’t happy. Even so, he kept going, coaxing the car along the long, winding road that led up and up. At the high point of the road was the Rest and Be Thankful—or ‘The Rest’ as the locals called it—the point on the road where travellers used to stop after the arduous ascent to rest their horses, and still stopped now, to take a picture and buy some chips from the snack van in the car park.

Every time Cam changed gears, there was an ominous scraping noise that made him wince. He tried to be gentle on the clutch, taking care to move the gearstick smoothly and carefully, but with every change, the noise grew worse and Cam grew more tense.

“Just get me to Glasgow, you fucker,” he muttered as he took a deep, curving bend. “I don’t care if you die once we get there, but you have to get me there.”

He was driving uphill and the slow climb was excruciating. On his left, the hillside soared, and ahead of him, the narrow road unfurled like a ribbon. It was slow-going, but this was the ‘quick way’ to Glasgow. The alternative was an even longer drive via Oban.

Cam had travelled this road many times in his life. When he was a kid, his mum had inherited a modest lump sum from his grandmother, just enough to buy the cottage. After that, they’d spent every holiday in Argyllshire. The cottage had been a bargain even then, thanks to its dilapidated state and eccentric wiring.

God, all those childhood journeys. Him and Eilidh and Ross in the back singing, playing games and fighting, sharing the space with bags of groceries, piles of board games, tennis rackets and sleeping bags. Everything they needed for a whole summer just doing stuff kids love.

The McMorrow family had come to Argyllshire each summer to “get away from it all” and that was exactly what they did. The kids left school behind, and so did their geography teacher Dad. As for Mum, she stopped nagging them about keeping their school uniforms clean and tidying their rooms. All the boring, normal stuff like going to bed early on school nights and doing chores got left at home.

When Cam had decided to start his business here, he’d had some nebulous idea that maybe he’d be able to recapture that feeling—that sense of simplicity—again. Now he realised that the thing that was so heady about coming here wasn’t that it made the family’s worries and responsibilities disappear, it just put a few miles in the way. The worries and responsibilities were still waiting for his parents back in Glasgow.

Cam hadn’t been able to escape his worries when he’d moved to Inverbechie—they’d come right along with him. Now, ironically, he found himself driving back to Glasgow to get away from them, and the closer he got to his old home city, the lighter his heart felt.

He was almost at the Rest now and, after that, it’d be downhill all the way to Arrochar. From Arrochar it was just a hop, skip and jump to the A82 and the rest of the drive to Glasgow should be a breeze if the snow held off.

But would it?

Cam squinted at the sky. Already a clutch of sooty storm clouds was scudding across the horizon, bullying the last of the weak, winter daylight away and ushering in a violet-grey dusk. In that strange half-light, the colours of the landscape were oddly intense—the darkly vivid green of the sweeping hillsides, the rusty amber of the dying bracken, the silver grey of the road itself, meandering through the glen.

This view took Cam’s breath away, even now, as he longed to be somewhere else.

But the ache he felt when he looked at these soaring mountains was very far from the simple contentment he’d felt when he used to drive this road and dream of making a life here. Now he found himself wondering whether, in choosing Inverbechie as the location of his new business, he’d unwittingly staked something he’d never have wanted to risk—the love he had for this place and the uncomplicated happiness it had once brought him.

And shit—he was thinking about the business again, just when he’d been so determined not to.

Cam pushed those thoughts firmly from his mind and made himself think instead about the night ahead, about drinking Champagne and cocktails at Eilidh and Kitty’s tiny flat in the Merchant City, then getting a few more drinks in at the pub down the road from Gomorrah before going to the club itself. He couldn’t wait to be out in the city again, was even looking forward to queuing for Gomorrah, sharing that weird buzz of anticipation with the other clubbers as they waited to be let in, taunted by the fat, driving beats that escaped every time the bouncers opened the doors to let someone in or out.

He couldn’t wait to dance. To dance on a floor that was packed with hot, sweaty bodies. To gaze at other men openly and invite them closer with nothing more than a look. To tear off his expensive shirt and shove the tail in his back pocket so he could display a chest that he knew without vanity was second to fucking none.