Fiona Gibson - The Mum Who Got Her Life Back

‘And this year?’ Nadia asks with a smile.

‘I’ll see her on Boxing Day when I’m back in town. I’m off to my parents’ first thing in the morning. They’re up in Perthshire, near Crieff but out in the country. They have a dairy farm …’

‘Is that where you grew up? You’re a farmer’s boy?’

‘That’s right.’ I smile, reluctant to bore her to death with my entire life history – although her interest seems genuine. ‘But I moved here when I was nineteen,’ I add.

‘Desperate to get to the big city,’ she suggests.

‘God, yes. No doubt I still smelt of the farm …’

Nadia flashes another smile. ‘Do your parents still have it?’

‘Yes, incredibly – they’re both seventy this year.’

‘Pretty young parents,’ she remarks.

I nod. ‘Yeah – they were still teenagers when Craig, my big brother, was born. He and his wife handle a lot of the day-to-day now.’

‘And there’s just the two of you? You and your brother, I mean?’

‘Erm, we had another brother,’ I murmur, ‘but there was an accident …’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ Nadia exclaims.

‘A long time ago now,’ I say briskly; Christ, the last thing I want to do is heap all that stuff on this beautiful woman whom I’ve only just met. I mean, for fuck’s sake, it’s Christmas Eve, she is utterly lovely and I’ve somehow swerved onto the subject of death … ‘So, how about you?’ I ask quickly.

‘Um, you mean … my background and stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘God, where to start?’ She laughs, and her eyes meet mine, and there seems to be a kind of … moment between us. An understanding, perhaps, that we will talk about other, deeper things; not tonight, but later on, when we know each other better. Because there will be a later on, I’m sure of it already, and I sense she feels it too.

‘I grew up in Ayrshire,’ Nadia is telling me, ‘and we moved to Glasgow when I was a teenager. There’s just me and my sister, Sarah – she’s the truly grown-up one. A fully formed adult by the age of ten. Then I moved to Dundee, went to art college …’

‘You’re an artist as well as working at the shop?’ I cut in.

She colours slightly. ‘Well, um, I kind of … dabble .’

‘Right. I have to say, I can’t even draw stick men. So, how long’ve you worked in—’

‘Would you like another drink?’ she asks quickly.

‘Oh, erm – yes, but I’ll get them …’

‘No, it’s my round.’ She has already leapt to her feet. ‘Same again?’

‘Yes please.’

I watch her as she wends her way through the crowds towards the bar. Fair enough, I decide; she probably doesn’t want to be quizzed about her shop job right now. Maybe she’s just picked up some seasonal shifts.

‘Whereabouts d’you work, Jack?’ she asks as she returns with our drinks.

‘I manage a charity shop,’ I reply.

‘Really? Which one?’

‘We’re just a small operation really – half a dozen shops across Scotland, but just the one in Glasgow. The charity’s called All For Animals, we fund sanctuaries – it’s a bit of an unfortunate name as it’s often referred to as AA …’

She chuckles. ‘I know your shop. I’ve been in a couple of times, actually. It’s lovely. I mean, I know charity shops have raised their game, displaying things nicely, organising the clothes in colour groups – but yours is a cut above.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, surprised and flattered by her enthusiasm.

‘I bought Molly a Biba-style top and some vintage magazines for myself,’ she continues. ‘I was chatting to the guy who was manning the till – a tall man, very chatty, said he’s in charge of the book section …’

‘That’s Iain …’

‘He seemed lovely.’

I smile. ‘He is. He has his issues but he really does care about the shop, and the other volunteers. Makes everyone coffees …’

‘How kind of him.’

‘… with water from the hot tap,’ I add with a smile.

Nadia laughs kindly. ‘So, it’s not all volunteers, then? I mean, you’re not one?’

‘Nope, the managers are paid.’ I smile. ‘Honestly, it is a proper job. I also do some freelance proofreading for publishers and authors …’ I pause. ‘I’m sure you’re wildly impressed,’ I joke.

‘I am. I really am.’ And so the evening goes on, with both of us covering vast swathes of ground, personal-history wise, and the-state-of-our-lives-now wise: our families, our work (she happily tells me that she models occasionally for life drawing classes, but still seems reluctant to talk about her job at the shop). There is barely a lull, and every now and then, one of us breaks off to apologise for ‘going on’.

‘You don’t really want to know about dairy herds,’ I tell her, noticing now that we have pulled our chairs closer and are leaning towards each other, across the table.

‘I do,’ she says. ‘All the books I loved as a kid were set on farms. I longed to sleep in a hay barn and collect eggs. Did you have sheepdogs?’

‘Well, yes, because we had sheep too …’

‘The ones with black faces?’

I can’t help smiling at that. ‘Yes. We still have them. Scottish Blackface …’

‘Is that what they’re called? I love those!’ She grins at me. ‘Any other kinds?’

‘Um, a few Shetland and Hebrideans. They’re good if you want to do things organically. They’re smaller, very hardy, coming from the islands originally—’ obviously ‘—so they’re not as reliant on feed, they can graze on rough ground, on heathers …’ I break off and chuckle. ‘I’m telling you about the dietary needs of sheep.’

‘But only because I asked.’ We laugh, and she touches my hand across the table, which has the effect of shooting some kind of powerful current through my body. I want to lean over and kiss her beautiful mouth right there. I don’t, of course, because you can’t just swoop on a woman like that, can you? I catch her studying me with an amused glint in her eyes, and there’s a small pause in conversation that feels anything but awkward.

Because we know, I think, that this is definitely the beginning of something. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sure of anything in my life.

Of course I’ve dated women in the nine years since Elaine and I broke up. There was Amanda, who was a regular customer to the shop, but it never really felt as if it was going anywhere, and eventually she moved away down south. My thing with Zoe last year was more fiery – she collected Mexican death masks and painted pictures with her menstrual blood. She was striking, passionate and unpredictable; one minute, she’d be insisting that we should move in together and the next, that I wouldn’t see her for six weeks as she was off to some Pagan drumming thing on a remote island. When we broke up, she egged my car. ‘What a waste of eggs,’ Lori chuckled as we sluiced the windscreen down.

For a brief period, I succumbed to my mate Fergus’s nagging that Tinder was the way forward. It wasn’t just for young people looking for casual hook-ups, he insisted. ‘Old fuckers like us use it too now,’ he enthused. Although I met a couple of perfectly lovely women, it felt terribly random, and I couldn’t be doing with all that swiping business. I know everyone meets online these days – Elaine’s had a couple of relationships that started this way – but it wasn’t for me. I started to think that perhaps nothing was for me.

But now, as the evening rolls on, I wonder if this was what I was holding out for: just a lovely, normal night in a pub with a gorgeous, sparky woman.

‘What about your kids’ dad?’ I ask, having given her a brief summary of the Elaine business.