Tombstoning Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Doug Johnstone is a writer, musician and arts journalist based in Edinburgh. He has a PhD in nuclear physics. He is also a singer and multi-instrumentalist in a band, Northern Alliance, who are part of the Fence Collective. He is married and has a son. Tombstoning is his first novel.

  Tombstoning

  DOUG JOHNSTONE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in Penguin Books 2006

  1

  Copyright © Doug Johnstone, 2006

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-192657-5

  For Andrew and Eleanor, Trish and Aidan

  ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’

  William Faulkner

  1

  The Antiquary

  It all started with an email.

  David stumbled into work just before ten, his short hair pointing several ways at once, his jeans a gritty grey-blue, with a whiff of last night’s booze about him. As he swiped his card by the front door two removal men emerged, shuffling their way out with a battered pool table. There goes the last of the games room, thought David. It figured.

  Still Waters was a thrusting, vibrant web-design company. At least it had been, almost, when the company launched five years earlier. Now that the dotcom dream had well and truly dissolved they were laying people off, frantically exaggerating to clients in a desperate attempt to win contracts, and sheepishly flogging all the superfluous, gimmicky crap they’d initially bought to attract graduates. The Playstation was long gone, as was the table football, and now the pool table was going the same way. David was surprised it had taken so long. After all, they’d already given nearly a dozen employees the bullet. Naturally, there were half a dozen directors still on the payroll, clocking up miles on the company Mercs and spending the afternoons at lunch or on one of Edinburgh’s more exclusive golf courses. But further down the food chain they were reduced to a handful of designers, programmers and developers, all so disenchanted with pay-cuts, increased hours and lack of recognition that there might’ve been a mutiny on the directors’ hands, if anyone could’ve been arsed.

  David shrugged past the removal men into his cubbyhole corner of the office, keeping his head down to avoid being seen. Still Waters occupied the first two floors of a crumbly old stone building hidden down a cobbled alleyway off the main drag of Stockbridge. The walls were thick, the windows small and the ceilings low. Nestled between bohemian antique sellers and the poshest charity shops in the country, Still Waters was within a few yards of umpteen restaurants, cafés, delis, bistros and boozers, the last of which David and his disgruntled colleagues made good use of whenever they could sneak out.

  David was probably still a bit pissed from last night. Nothing special, just a few pints after work followed by cracking open the bottle of Lagavulin when he got back to the flat. He would probably have to knock that whisky nightcap thing on the head, even if it was excellent fifteen-year-old stuff.

  He fixed himself a coffee, fired up the PC and settled in for a day of surfing, with the occasional work-related moment thrown in to keep folk off his back. Christ only knew how long the company would stay afloat. David was surprised that he hadn’t been amongst those already booted out. He could do the work, it was a piece of piss to be honest, but he just so badly couldn’t be bothered exerting himself for a company that was about to go tits up anyway. Today’s hangover wasn’t exactly helping. At the moment he was supposed to be working on a site for some ridiculous motivational guru, Frank Lavine, whose command of office buzzwords, feelgood gobbledegook and doublespeak was something to behold. David was tempted to stick some made-up, meaningless platitudes in there, see if old Frank noticed the difference.

  He started wading through his emails. Twenty-four in the inbox since he’d left at five last night, including all the usual spam and junk – cock enlargement, Viagra, Prozac, lap-dancing clubs, buy yourself a degree, online mortgages – did anyone ever fall for this shite?

  Then he saw it, that name, sitting amongst all the drivel. Nicola Cruickshank. A coincidence? There must be loads of Nicola Cruickshanks in the world, it wouldn’t necessarily be from her. He clicked it open and as he read down he felt a tightening in his gut that couldn’t solely be put down to his hangover.

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: hullo you

  Date: 8 August 2003 9:15:37 GMT

  To: [email protected]

  David,

  Is this you? I’m pretty sure it is, because I saw your profile on the Still Waters website and it sounds like you. Anyway, hullo, how’s it going? Long time no see and all that crap. Oh yeah, this is Nicola, as in Cruickshank, dunno if you remember me from all those years ago at Keptie High? Can’t really believe that was 15 years ago, it seems like hardly any time. Then again it also seems like a lifetime ago, so who knows? I’m rambling.

  How’s life? Hope you’re doing well, life’s been good and that you haven’t gotten fat and bald. Actually, scratch that, because if you are fat and bald then that last comment was insanely insensitive. I’m not helping by going on about it now, am I? I really don’t know when to shut up in emails. But anyway, I hope you’re well, irrespective of your current waistline and hair, or lack thereof.

  And so to the point. I’ve been roped in by some of the illustrious ladies of our year at school to help organize a class reunion. I don’t really have much to do with it, to be honest, but one of them rang me up and asked if I wouldn’t mind trying to get in touch with a few people. When they mentioned your name I’ll admit that my interest was piqued. So what the hell have you been up to for the last 15 years? Are you married? Kids? Are you even still male? (These days, anything can happen, you know, I’m not casting aspersions on your manhood or anything – look, here I am talking drivel again.)

  Anyway, the reunion is organized for next Saturday, that’s the 16th of August, in – believe it or not – Bally’s. I know, it’ll be bloody terrible probably but, well, I’m going and it would be nice if you could make it. I believe Bally’s is now officially called the Waterfront or something, but everyone still calls it Bally’s.

  It would be great
if you could come, but if you don’t fancy it I understand. Either way, it would be good to hear from you. Feel free to give me a phone anytime you like if, for example, you think you need a bit more persuading about this whole Arbroath thing. Or just for a chat. It would honestly be great to talk to you.

  Right, I’ve taken up way more of your time than I meant to so I’ll leave it at that. Take care, and I hope you get in touch.

  See ya,

  Nicola xxx

  mob: 07970 132 265

  Nicola Cruickshank

  Historic Scotland – Safeguarding Scotland’s Built Heritage

  His head was spinning. Nicola Cruickshank. He hadn’t thought about her for years, but for what seemed like a lifetime he had fancied her at school, never getting up the bottle to go for it. He had always put it off and put it off, waiting for the right time, which inevitably never came. All through their drunken, hormone-addled sixth year they had flirted and danced around the issue, without ever getting anywhere. He waited and waited and waited for the right time and then… well, then there was the accident. And nothing was ever the same again.

  He had never been back, not in fifteen years. That was helped in no small part by the fact that his parents had absconded to France, retiring to do up a barn in Limoges ten years before it was a trendy thing to do. Just as well, he would’ve struggled to go back to Arbroath, back to the place where his best friend had died. And now, here was a call from someone he was besotted with at the time, asking him to do just that. Jesus.

  David drifted through the day. His hangover gradually receded, but the buzz of Nicola stayed at the forefront of his mind. He re-read the email umpteen times, even printing it off to take with him into the bogs where he read it twice before having a quick snooze, his cheek pressed against the cold ceramic of the cistern.

  He noticed that her message had managed to tell him virtually nothing about herself. She still had the same surname, so did that mean she wasn’t married? He didn’t suppose it meant anything much these days. She worked for Historic Scotland, wasn’t that in Salisbury Place? Only about five minutes from his Rankeillor Street flat in the Southside of the city. How long had she been in the same city as him? She had gone to Glasgow Uni, he remembered that much, but then a degree only took four years, what the hell had she been doing for the other eleven?

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her during the afternoon meeting, when they were informed that if productivity didn’t improve there would be more layoffs. He wasn’t being paranoid, there really were pointed looks in his direction at the mention of this, but the two pints at lunchtime helped him to ignore that.

  By five o’clock he was thinking about Nicola more than ever.

  Nicola had clicked ‘send’ then had a tiny panic attack. Why had she written to him first thing in the bloody morning, before coffee? Was she nuts? She re-read what she’d sent and cringed – it was even more rambling than her usual emails, and that was saying something. She didn’t have much demanding work today, just filing and processing, so she could’ve left it until she was a tad more coherent. Then again, she had been putting it off for ages, so at least now it was done.

  David Lindsay. No one from Arbroath had heard anything from him for fifteen years, not since the accident and then the funeral afterwards. After she’d been called up about the reunion it had taken about half an hour of googling to find out that he designed web pages for a company in Stockbridge – quite a flashy and well-to-do one, judging by their website and list of clients. So he was still in Edinburgh after all this time, living in the same city as her for the last four years.

  She didn’t have a problem with Arbroath, but she much preferred her life in Edinburgh, and her job at Historic Scotland was just about perfect, allowing her to get stuck in to history, architecture and archaeology without any of the pompous stuffiness of academia. The office was fine, if a little gossipy for her liking, and she worked on site a fair bit, which always made her feel like she was doing a proper job, not just penpushing.

  As for her life outside work, that was dominated by Amy. She had been a grumpy little madam this morning when Nicola walked her to Sciennes Primary. Just like her mum, she was definitely not a morning person. Nicola pictured the two of them at the school gates, straggly haired, bleary eyed and buttoned up all wrong, two generations of the same family both struggling with the concept of an early rise. Sometimes it scared the shit out of her, how much Amy took after her, then at other times Amy seemed like an alien from another planet, with all these weird ideas of her own. Such is parenthood, Nicola thought with a sigh.

  She tried to remember what David looked like. Tall, definitely – at least as tall as her, and pretty cute in a gangly, unformed kind of way. Plenty of buzz and chat and daft ideas, she remembered, mostly fuelled by booze, but he was still pretty good company to be with. She had fancied him, she supposed, although thinking about things in such terms now at the age of thirty-four seemed more than a little ridiculous. They had kissed, hadn’t they? A couple of times at parties or down at Bally’s or something, but she couldn’t really remember. She hadn’t taken it any further. They were all heading off to uni by the end of the summer anyway, that was the plan. She was going to Glasgow, he was off to Edinburgh, not exactly much of a distance away, but when you’d grown up in Arbroath such places seemed like a different universe. And besides, he hadn’t really said anything about fancying her. God, listen to yourself, she thought, talking about fancying each other, it’s as if all this reunion chat is making you regress into a former life.

  She wondered what he would make of her email. What did she make of it herself? It didn’t matter anyway, it was out there, in the ether, winging its way to his inbox and that was that. She had issued the invitation to the reunion as instructed, so it was up to him now what he did about it.

  Nicola was looking forward to the reunion, just out of amiable curiosity more than anything else. She was back in Arbroath quite a lot, letting Amy spend time with Granny and Grandpa and all that, but she rarely went out when she was back, and she hadn’t seen most of the folk from their class in years. She heard plenty of gossip from her folks; in a town that small it was inevitable that everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. She wasn’t sentimental; would never have logged on to Friends Reunited expecting an unchanged world. But now there was this reunion, she was genuinely interested in how everyone’s lives had turned out. Hers had been gently adventurous, and she had Amy to show for it, so there must be dozens of other mini-adventures out there waiting to be discovered. David had blue eyes, she suddenly remembered, really cute blue eyes. She shook her head a little to clear the thought, and got up to make that coffee.

  David turned into St Stephen Street in the muggy afternoon heat and descended into the subterranean gloom of the Antiquary. Spook and Alice from work were already in, and Spook was at the bar so he put in his order and headed towards Alice amid the burnished oak scruffiness of the pub. Alice was an irrepressibly chirpy English web designer, ten years younger than David, who managed to be relentlessly upbeat despite the perilous state the company was in. The fact that she did so without getting on anyone’s nerves was something of a miracle. Spook, on the other hand, was a dishevelled slacker goon who was obviously completely uninterested in his job, an attitude David had some sympathy with.

  He couldn’t shake the image of Nicola from his mind. He’d already googled her, but rooting around the Historic Scotland website hadn’t come up with anything. He pictured her standing outside Boots, next to the steeple in the centre of Arbroath, that last New Year there. She was wrapped up in a massive red duffel coat and woolly hat and they had their Hogmanay kiss, which kind of extended itself into a snog. He didn’t know how long they snogged for (in fact, he couldn’t recall much more about that evening) but he did remember that they were interrupted by someone getting thrown through Boots’ window by opportunist looters, and they all had to scarper quick. He and Nicola had been drunk. At least, he had been drunk,
and assumed she was too. Anyway, that was the closest he’d got to her. He had completely forgotten about it until this morning. Parts of his brain not used in fifteen years were getting powered up and made to process information. How could one little email manage that?

  Spook and Alice got talking about work, but David wasn’t listening. They were joined by a couple more of the company’s bottom feeders, keen as ever to slag off the directors and the owner, safe in the knowledge that at least the next forty-eight hours were work-free and theirs to fuck up whichever way they chose.

  David still wasn’t listening. He was thinking of the time he and Nicola had sat beside a fire on Elliot Beach, huddled together on a blanket against the North Sea chill. Several others were sitting around drinking and a few couples had sneaked off to the sand dunes for more privacy. Two brave idiots were skinny-dipping. They hadn’t even kissed then, David just enjoying the proximity to her, feeling her long, fair hair against his cheek, looking at that beautiful, slightly crooked nose of hers that she wiggled when she was amused like that woman out of Bewitched, and gazing at the long bony elegance of her neck.

  But one memory leads to another and another, and once he was on Elliot Beach he was straight away thinking of Colin, how the two of them used to walk Colin’s Irish setters in the afternoons along there, fooling the dogs into the water after imaginary sticks and arguing about the problems with Arbroath FC; excited about how Colin was going to make a difference when he joined the club.

  And once Colin was in his mind, it was a small step to the funeral a few weeks later, up at the Western Cemetery. Standing there, utterly numb, in a borrowed suit several sizes too big, his school shoes and his dad’s black tie, wondering how the fuck such things could be allowed to happen.

  This is why he hadn’t thought about the past, why he hadn’t been back to Arbroath, this knot in his stomach even now, fifteen years later, thinking about the wasted life, the wasted opportunities, the stupid, pointless waste of it all. He hadn’t consciously thought about Colin for years before today, but now the memories filled his mind. The oddly curly black hair that framed a face which seemed to make every girl (and every girl’s mum) in town swoon, with a disarming little smile and a glint in his dark eyes that said he knew he was good-looking but wasn’t going to abuse that fact. The way he was also the strongest and fastest person David had known, yet you only saw that on the football pitch. He was also bloody smart academically and could’ve gone to uni, but kept quiet about it. The way he was so effortlessly good-natured was something that used to simultaneously produce awe and irritation in David. How could someone be so nice all the time? But he was, he was nice all the time, but never sickeningly so. And he’d been dead now for fifteen years.