Faith - Lesley Pearse [143]
It was people she met that week that set her off on a new road. Up till then she didn’t have any real friends; she knew women from Barney’s school and the old neighbours in Caledonian Crescent, but they were people she only had the occasional chat with, they weren’t mates. Even Katy and the other girls from the studio had held themselves apart to begin with. To them she was ‘posh’ because she came from London and lived in Edinburgh. People in Glasgow tended to think anyone from Edinburgh was stuck up.
Yet when they saw she liked Glasgow, that she didn’t look down on them for living in tenements or council flats, and could party just like them, all the barriers came down. They saw her as one of them.
Laura smiled wryly as she remembered how good it felt to be accepted back then. The irony of it didn’t escape her. All her adult life she had struggled to erase her true background and climb the social ladder. But there she was at thirty-one, mixing with and loving people who lived and behaved much like the people back in Shepherds Bush. She’d come full circle, except it was a much darker circle, for instead of the women doing office cleaning or working in factories, they were in the sex industry. And the men in Glasgow didn’t work on building sites and go to the pub in their working clothes, they wore sharp suits, drove smart cars, and their work was dealing in drugs, pimping and extortion.
But of course she didn’t see that at the time. All she saw was that these were people who lived life to the full, they were generous and fun. She put down their living in bad housing as part of that curiously Scottish trait of not caring too much about their surroundings. The men went out with wads of money in their pockets, and they spent it carelessly. She felt excited by the hint of underlying aggression, she loved their humour and their warmth. In a way it was like going home.
‘You look so tired,’ Jackie exclaimed when she brought Barney back on the Sunday before he was to start school.
Laura hadn’t been home more than a couple of hours, just enough time to have a bath and change her clothes.
‘I’ve been working extra hours, what with the Edinburgh Festival on,’ she lied. ‘And I did some bar work too at night. But you two look marvellous!’
Barney had run in to greet her shouting at the top of his voice, climbing up her like a little monkey. He was deeply tanned, and Jackie had had his hair cut short ready for school. In a white tee-shirt and little blue shorts he looked good enough to eat.
‘Auntie Jackie let me sit in the front seat and we had the hood down,’ he said excitedly. ‘I’ve got a new pencil box and a real leather satchel. And I can read lots of new words too.’
‘It’s been such a joy being with him,’ Jackie said, looking sad that it was now to end. ‘I wish I could persuade you to come back to live in London, so I could see more of you both.’
Laura knew Jackie was sincere, and part of her loved her for saying it, but the other part felt irritated. ‘If I came back to London I couldn’t afford to live in Kensington, like you,’ she said. ‘I’d be in one room in Hackney or somewhere grim.’
‘It’s high time you went to a solicitor and got a divorce and a settlement from Greg. You could buy your own place then.’
‘I don’t want anything from that bastard,’ Laura snapped. ‘I can keep myself and Edinburgh is my home now. I like it here.’
‘I love Scotland too,’ Jackie said wistfully. She didn’t appear to have noticed her friend’s sharp tone ‘If you won’t come to London, then perhaps I’ll come here to live permanently. I really don’t want to go back.’
‘Stay with us, Auntie Jackie,’ Barney piped up. ‘You can sleep in my bed and I’ll go in with Mummy.’
Jackie looked at Laura, apparently waiting for Laura to endorse Barney’s idea. But Laura said nothing; she wanted to be alone, she was strung out and she intended to take a Mogadon the moment Barney was in bed and catch up on all the sleep she’d missed in the past week.
‘I’d like that, sweetheart.’ Jackie bent to kiss him. ‘But I’ve got things