Quintin Jardine - Poisoned Cherries

Funny , I thought, then I remembered that Alison had always been a touch weird.

‘If it makes her happy. I’ll do that. Have you been told about the cast meeting yet?’

‘No. When’s that?’

I gave him the date and time, and told him how to find the apartment. ‘See you Thursday.’

‘Sure. Hey, were you serious about the stuff in your tea?’

‘Nah. Did you mean it, about the baggy pyjamas?’

‘What do you think?’

‘A pair of boxers is probably all you’ll need.’

I hung up, and thought of Alison; our thing had been doomed from the start. I could never take her as seriously as she had taken herself. I used to call her ‘Tomorrow’; she thought it was after the song ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, but actually, it was because she never came. Eventually I found someone who did, and that was that. Okay, I was a rat in those days; I admit it.

I looked at the number Liam had given me; then I switched on my mobile and keyed in a text message giving her my landline number and inviting her to call me.

I switched on the telly and was getting into David Attenborough telling me how important fieldmice are to the eco-system, when my cellphone bleeped twice to tell me that I had an incoming text message.

I accessed it and read. ‘Can’t phone. Can we meet?’

Strange , I thought, but I sent back, ‘OK. Where? When?’

Two minutes later, I bleeped again. ‘9:30 tonight? Cafe Royal?’ I read. I frowned; I was getting into those fieldmice, and there was a rerun of the afternoon’s premiership match on Sky afterwards. Also, I didn’t fancy the Cafe Royal; it’s always busy and I’m at the stage of being recognised and accosted by punters I don’t know. I don’t mind, but they can be hard to shake loose. So I thought about it, then sent another message. ‘Time okay, but not CR. George Hotel bar.’ I waited, only partly focused on the mice. It took her less than a minute this time. ‘OK. C U’.

There is no doubt about it; text messaging is changing the face of the English language, as it is rote.

The great thing about my new temporary home was that it was less than ten minutes’ walk from anywhere in central Edinburgh. As I had hoped, the George Hotel bar was quiet; there were a couple of Japanese tourists and a table of loud American golfers, but otherwise only the barman and me.

He had just finished pouring what looked like a perfect pint of lager when Alison Goodchild appeared in the doorway. . at least I guessed it was Alison. When we had been together, she had been a thin, pale, understated wee thing, with poorly cut mid-brown hair, little or no make-up, and a bad habit of catalogue shopping for clothes. In fact when I’d been watching Attenborough’s mice, she had come to mind.

This woman had changed, and how. Her hair was shoulder-length, shiny, and honey-coloured, high-heeled blue patent shoes made her look a few inches taller, and her clothes were closer to Gianni Versace than Great Universal. Other things were different too; she wore eye make-up, and either she had switched to Wonderbra, or she’d been enlarged.

Still, it had been a while. I’d changed too, I guessed. I waved to her, then glanced at my reflection in the bar mirror. I was bigger in the shoulders than a couple of years before, and there were grey flecks in my side-burns and lines around my eyes that would be new to her. My clothes were much the same though, even if I was wearing Lacoste jeans rather than the Wranglers of old, and my jacket was antelope rather than cowhide.

‘Vodka and tonic?’ I asked her as she approached. My memory was spot on, because she smiled and nodded. The smile was new, as well. Where before it had been hesitant and a little pinched, to hide her slightly undersized teeth, now it was wide and open. I realised that she’d had them all expertly crowned. (You can tell these things when your old man’s a dentist.)

‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘but slimline, please, and just a spot of lime juice rather than lemon.’

The barman nodded and told us that if we’d like to go to a table he’d bring the drinks over. I dropped a tenner on the counter; I was pretty sure than a fiver wouldn’t have been enough. I looked around for a spot as far away from the Japanese, and especially the Yanks, as we could get. As I did, a chunk of their discussion floated over.

‘Hey,’ one of them called out, intending that the whole bar should hear. ‘Hey, did you guys hear that the Republican Party is changing its symbol from an elephant to a condom? It’s perfect, see. A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.’

I threw the guy a ‘sad bastard’ look and steered Alison towards a table under the window.

She eyed me up and down as I settled into an armchair. ‘You look just the same,’ she said.

‘Check your contacts, honey,’ I told her. ‘I don’t.’

She shook her head. ‘Oh you’re older, sure, and there’s a harder edge to you, more serious, but essentially you’re just the same. I don’t know, maybe I thought there would be sparks shooting off you now you’re famous, but there aren’t.’

‘I still pee standing up,’ I said.

‘I hope you hit the bowl more often,’ she murmured. Now that definitely was not the old Alison.

‘So tell me about you,’ she went on. ‘I’ve read the odd article about you, but they weren’t very informative. What have you been doing since you and I split up, apart from becoming a film star, that is?’

‘I’m not a star,’ I corrected her. ‘I’ve taken to acting and I’ve been lucky to have made a couple of movies, but I’ll never be top billing. Apart from that, I’ve just been living a life. I’ve been married, widowed, and married again. Now I’m in the process of getting divorced, and I’ve just had a child by a woman I don’t live with. That’s it.’

Her face fell a little; I wondered if she had pumped herself up somehow for our meeting. ‘I knew the last part,’ she said. ‘That was in all the Sundays last weekend. But I didn’t know you’d been widowed. I’m sorry, Oz.’

‘It’s not something I discuss with journalists.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t like to discuss it with anyone. Now tell me about you, for you very definitely have changed.’

‘For the better?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know yet. I don’t know anything. I don’t even know why I’m here.’

‘I’ll come to that. Okay, about me. I’ve you to thank for it, in a way.’

‘Why?’

‘For chucking me. You were as nice as you could be when you did it, of course, but you still left me feeling that I’d bored you to tears. So I took a look at myself, and when I did, I realised that I bored even me. I looked like a bloody Sunday School teacher, I was hiding a pretty good body in drab, awful clothes, and I didn’t even have the confidence to smile properly.’ She paused as the barman arrived with our drinks and my change. . even less than I’d expected.

‘Plus,’ she said quietly as she picked up her vodka, ‘I wasn’t any better when the lights were out. . Not that you were any great shakes yourself, mind you. All cock, no technique, that was you.’

‘Thank you very much, ma’am,’ I muttered into my lager.

‘Don’t take it to heart; we didn’t really interest each other so we didn’t try very hard. That’s the truth of it.’

I thought about it; she was probably right.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I gave myself a makeover. I started with my teeth, then my hair, and then my wardrobe. I chucked my job, too. Remember I worked in the Scottish Office Information Department?’