man and a woman stood on the steps outside the hostel smoking thin roll-ups. The man seemed to be wearing every piece of clothing he had ever found; none of it fitted, and a grey overcoat tied with a piece of string covered it all. Black dreadlocks hung around his shoulders, and on top of his head was a big Jamaican knitted beret. His age was indeterminable, his face covered by a salt-and-pepper beard, but he smiled at me and pointed to the bike. Harleys were a great icebreaker. The woman held a tin of super-strength lager in her hand. She was the size of an undernourished ten-year-old, but in spite of the abuse she’d clearly been through, her body had a youthfulness to it. I have to admit that my jaw slackened when she revealed a completely toothless grin. I smiled back at them and moved inside the door, where heat and the smell of food hit me. I hesitated for a moment, wondering whether I’d made a mistake. It was incredibly unlikely that Marshall would be here–but there also weren’t many men who looked like him in Edinburgh, so who could I have possibly mixed him up with? No, it was Marshall I had seen, and I needed to find out what he was up to.
‘If you’ve two hands and are ready to use them, come in. If not, stop cluttering up my lobby,’ a Leither shouted from inside the Mission. The owner of the voice, a wizened pensioner in an oilcloth apron, smiled at me and held out her hands. She looked as tough as leather but her eyes were calm and contented. ‘Ina Gibbon,’ she said, and touched my elbow as if she wanted to share her world with me.
My nose wrinkled at the smell of the place. I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of this, but I did need to speak to Graham Marshall. I allowed myself to be taken to the kitchen. Industrial-sized vats of soup were being mixed by this thimble-sized woman; she was struggling, so before I’d even had time to remove my leather jacket, I started stirring the ham and lentils. I expected her to ask what the hell I was doing there, a stranger in this world, but she took a different tack after having a good look at me, maybe also just a bit pleased that she had another pair of hands in the place, however temporarily.
‘What’s your name, hen?’ she asked.
‘Brodie. Brodie McLennan.’
‘Brodie? What kinda name is that?’ I smiled again, not really knowing how to answer such a question, and waited for a moment when I could ask about Graham Marshall. A shadow of recognition passed across her face before she smiled back at me. I wasn’t prepared for what came next. ‘Brodie!’ she chortled. ‘Oh, aye. I only remember one wee lassie with that name. Wis your mother Mary McLennan from the flats?’
Ina Gibbon had managed to link our worlds after all. Everybody in Leith knew my mum, and the flats where I’d lived. And the fact that my mother had chosen to name me after the tea factory that could be seen from our window had been a source of amusement to everyone as I was growing up. I nodded. ‘A very nice woman, your mother…what brings you down here, Brodie?’ she asked, suspicion still written all over her face. ‘You’re no’ a journalist, are you?’ she asked.
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