Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

She looked at me and smiled. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘First you play big brother for your big sister. Now you’re getting assertive with me. After a lifetime of pretending to be Tonto, you’ve turned into the Lone Ranger.’

I stared back at her, conspiratorially, from under hooded eyebrows. ‘It’s the Spanish influence at work. Incidentally after the Black and White Minstrels, The Lone Ranger is the most politically incorrect TV programme ever made. In Spanish, Tonto, as in His Faithful Indian Companion, means stupid. But I’ll stop short of turning into the masked man, if you don’t mind. Kemo Sabay, phoneticised, translates roughly as smartarse … and …’

‘… nobody loves a Smartarse,’ we said, in unison.

Jan was still grinning as we left the Old Inn and headed up to town. She settled comfortably into the passenger seat as I drove through the night.

The yellow lights of Edinburgh bore down on us quickly as we listened to a Tom Waits tape which she had plugged into the cassette player. ‘You sure Noosh doesn’t have a problem about me staying?’ I asked once more as I turned off London Road and headed into Holyrood Park.

‘None at all. Hey Oz,’ said Jan suddenly, as we passed St Margaret’s Loch, and its geese, curled up asleep on its grassy banks. ‘How come you never ask me about your loft, and about your tenant? Never once have you asked me who I’ve put in there, or for references. Why is that?’

‘Simple. I don’t want to know. I loved my loft. Still do. If I have a mental picture of the person living there, I’m afraid that I’ll start to feel jealous. Then I might get nostalgic for it, and even out in Spain, I might feel homesick. Does that make sense to you?’

She nodded. ‘Perfect sense. You don’t want anything to disturb the Spanish idyll.’

‘No,’ I protested. ‘That’s not it.’

‘Oh no. So you’re still the same old softie at heart, then.’ For a while, there was silence in the dark. ‘Let’s drive past it anyway,’ said Jan, finally.

I swung out of the park, made the turn at the foot of the Royal Mile, then turned again. Less than a minute later, I could see the old building, with its belvedere, a familiar part of the Old Town nightscape.

‘Stop there,’ said Jan, quietly, as we reached it. ‘Just pull into your parking space. There’s nobody in.’

I did as I was told, without thinking. Something about Jan’s voice had my complete attention. She stepped out of the car as soon as it came to a halt, taking her jacket from its hook by the hand grip and reaching into the pocket.

I followed her. ‘Jan, what is this?’ I asked at last.

She gazed at me, across the red roof of the Fiesta. Her face had an odd look, and even at that distance, I could see that she was trembling. ‘Anoushka and I have split up, Oz.’ She kept her voice steady with an effort. ‘I’m your tenant.’

I felt my jaw drop for an instant, and snapped it shut. ‘But … When …’

‘About a week after you left for Spain.’

‘Why?’

She turned towards the door, beckoning me to follow. ‘Come on. I don’t want to talk out here.’

I followed her into the building and up the twisting stair which led to my old home. She unlocked the door, then stepped straight into the toilet, off the tiny hall. I was in the kitchen opposite, watching the kettle and waiting for it to boil, when she emerged. Her face and eyes were clear of make-up.

Standing in the doorway, she smiled at me awkwardly. I pulled her to me and hugged her. ‘Jan, love. Why didn’t you tell me before?’ She wrapped her arms around me and put her head on my shoulder, pressing her eyes hard against the wool and cashmere blazer that I had picked up from my dad’s.

‘I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to tell you.’

‘Who else knows about it? Christ, I can’t believe that we went through last night and I never picked up a hint.’

She gave me a quick hug, released me and stepped across to the work-surface, reaching out for the coffee jar. ‘Only Ellie knows so far, and she promised not to tell a soul, not even you. I’m still working out what to say to Mum. All that grief I put her through, making her realise that she had a gay daughter. Now …’

I took her face in both my hands and turned it up towards me. ‘My old girl, just tell her. She’s your mum, and she loves you. End of story.’

On the counter, the kettle hissed steam, until the thermostat cut out. I took the jar from her and made coffee for us both, reaching into the fridge for the milk without even looking.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Upstairs and tell me all about it.’

She led the way up to the living area, turning the dimmer switch to raise the wall lighting, an array which I had planned myself. Everything was as I had left it, almost. The furniture was still there, but slightly rearranged. The sofa-bed was on the other side of the room from where I had liked it. The desk faced away from the window. The curtains were tied back with neat bows. But up on the raised sleeping area, the bed was still in the same place, with, above it, the ladder which led up to the belvedere, where Wallace and I used to sit in serenity, my dinosaur sunning himself while I read the Sunday papers.

I took the occasional chair, facing Jan as she slumped into the sofa.

‘Honest to god, love,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t a clue. I mean, your telephone number’s the same …’

‘It’s my business number, remember. I had it transferred the day I moved in.’

I sipped my coffee. It was still piping hot. ‘So what happened? Did Anoushka find someone else? I thought she doted on you.’

Jan shook her head, and turned her gaze away from me, looking at the glazed French doors which led out to the tiny balcony. ‘Noosh didn’t find anyone else, Oz. I did.’

I gulped. To my complete surprise, my old friend the hamster began to run around in my stomach. ‘Eh?’

‘I found me again, Oz. I found Jan.’

I stood up and walked to the doorway, almost forcing her to look at me. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked her, gently.

‘I suppose it was you leaving that made me look at myself. While you were here, I think you helped me cling on to my own self. The fact that you and I went back so far, and that I could still count on you, helped me to hold on to my own personality, and assert myself every so often.’

She must have caught a flicker at the corner of my mouth. ‘Oh, I don’t mean that you were here to give me a good shag if Noosh and I had a fight and I felt like really getting even with her.’ She laughed softly; Jan has a lascivious chuckle which for some reason always makes me think of brown sugar. ‘Yes, boy,’ she said, ‘I admit it, I used you like an old pair of gardening gloves.’ She paused, and her expression became earnest again.

‘But don’t you get the idea that I had turned to Noosh on the rebound, after you started to push me away. She seduced me, Oz, like I told you way back, and I loved it. The sex was great at first, ten out of ten. After a while it settled into a consistent eight, but that’s higher than most straight couples score. Satisfying and without risk. Nothing wrong with that, and I’m not being defensive in the slightest.’

I nodded. ‘Understood. So what happened, after I left?’

‘It started even before then,’ she said, ‘when I saw you and Prim together for the first time, and realised how it was going to turn out. It wasn’t like that when you had other girlfriends. I knew they wouldn’t last. This time, I began to feel alone, and I began to look at my relationship with Ms Turkel.’

She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again there was a momentary, and uncharacteristic tremor in her voice. ‘As soon as I did, I realised what I had become. She was the dominant partner. I was the subordinate. It may have been two names beside the doorbell, but Noosh saw us, in straight terms, like she was the husband and I was the wife. We split the overhead down the middle, but I was the housekeeper. From the start that went without saying. I had been able to live with it because I was earning good money, and contributing, able to tell myself that we were equals; but that wasn’t how Noosh saw it and that wasn’t what she wanted.’