special place is just outside the Almeida Theatre, where he made his first professional stage debut; for Meg it’s Golden Square in Soho; for Osh the centre of the Millennium Bridge at dusk, gazing out at the lights of London appearing either side of the Thames.
‘All cities have the potential,’ Meg assured me during one of my late-night wobbles in the weeks before I travelled. ‘You just have to turn off the guidebook in your head and feel the city in your heart.’ I hope she’s right.
Tobi serves dinner and we work our way through two more bottles of wine. My head will hate me in the morning but tonight I don’t care. I’m celebrating.
Ah Glasgow. Hello, old friend.
I’m aching and tired from the journey, but the sight of Glasgow Central’s vast, glass vaulted ceiling fires my body back into action. I take my time collecting my things and stepping down from the train, the need to hurry gone. My fellow passengers have mellowed somewhat, too, many of them lulled to sleep for part of the journey creating a symphony of snores around me, which amused me no end. I swear a couple of them even managed harmony at one point. Even so, when they disembark I see their steps quicken as our merry company disbands to our own adventures once more.
I reckon I slept too, a few half-hour snoozes at most, although my memory of the journey has already passed into a sludge of sameness. One thing’s for certain: I’ll sleep tonight. Especially if there’s alcohol involved.
I managed to get a message to Donal before reception deserted my phone completely and the reply I received was typical him:
Nae bother, pal. BEERS tonight!
Man, I’ve missed that guy.
I thought about Phoebe a lot, as the towns and cities passed into green and the hills rose to become mountains. It rained almost solidly from Lancashire onwards but as soon as we crossed the border the rainbows began. I can’t remember the last time I saw a rainbow, but on this journey I’ve seen seven. I’d forgotten that about this train journey. But now I remember travelling south from Edinburgh to Carlisle as a kid: me and my brother with our snotty noses pressed against the train glass, spotting rainbow shards illuminating passing glens and moorland.
Does Phoebe like rainbows? I didn’t ask, but I’m guessing she does. They’re bright and unexpected, completely spontaneous and elusive, and I kind of think that would appeal to the woman who’s just stolen my heart.
But a year apart from her…
I know what we said before we left London, but it struck me as I was travelling here just how much of a challenge we’ve set ourselves. Emails and postcards and once-monthly chats are all very well, but twelve months without her in my arms is suddenly a towering wall of a task. Can I do it? Can she?
I have stuff to do this year and I owe it to myself to focus on that as I planned. But I’m going to need strategies to keep perspective. At the end of this, I have to know for certain Phoebe is what I want. I owe it to both of us to be sure.
Leaving the station I ease back into Glasgow time like slipping on a favourite old pair of boots. It feels like home, even though I’ve never actually lived here. Weekends and Hogmanays and occasional weeks spent here with Donal and Kate over the years have endeared this city to my heart. As I walk its streets now, I don’t feel like a visitor. The dry humour, the unapologetic moxie of the people around me and the rise and fall of the accent welcomes me like a long-lost son.
I’ve missed this.
Don’t get me wrong, I love London. It’s my home, my place of business: my stomping ground. But I miss the humanity sometimes. The humour. The way you’re in the middle of a conversation before you know it; how every other person on the street beside you is one joke away from being a pal for life. It can be suffocating when you’re in it, but when you’re not it’s the thing you miss.
Home. Phoebe asked if I was going home and it’s only now, as I jump on a bus that will take me out north of the city to the town where my friends live, that I realise I already feel more at home in the forty minutes I’ve been here than I’ve done in London since Laura left me.
And when I get to Mull? Will that feel like home, too?
I push the concern away, along with the ghosts from my past, stuffing them all into a cupboard marked ‘LATER’. That stuff can wait. I watch the city slouching past the window, not minding the slow progress of the traffic-slowed bus to Port Glasgow. At long last, I have time. To think or not. To just be. That’s a luxury I haven’t had for years.
My stop is at the bottom of a hill that overlooks the River Clyde, the road rising steeply ahead. Though the water is some distance away, the shimmer of early evening sun on the dark river framed by purple hills on its far shore seems close enough to touch as I walk up the hill to Donal and Kate’s place. Their house is almost at the top, just where the road curves for its final ascent. The sight of Donal’s ancient yellow Mini parked on the drive makes me smile. How it’s still roadworthy is a mystery to everyone but he loves that rusting heap almost more than life itself. I have many fond and not-so-fond memories of cramming equipment into its interior and praying it up hills as we travelled to gigs across Scotland.
Donal misses the band and I get the impression he doesn’t play as many gigs locally now as he’d like. He’s one of the most gifted guitarists I know and it’s a shame more people can’t hear him play. But he’s also Dad to three of the most awesome kids on the planet, so that audience rightly gets first dibs on his time.
The front door whips open before I even set foot on the drive and I’m almost knocked off my feet by an excited clan of Cattenachs. The last time I saw the kids they were tiny; now the twins Addie and Ivor are almost level with my shoulder, and their not-so-baby sister Lexie can reach my waist when she hugs me. I’ve seen the kids in our Skype chats a couple of times a year, but being with them in person brings home to me how much they’ve grown. Somewhere in the middle of the giggling horde is Donal; Kate follows behind, her smile as bright as the sunlight dancing on the Clyde.
‘Let your poor uncle Sam get some air,’ she laughs, giving in when she’s ignored and joining the hug instead.
When they finally let me go, my sides are hurting from laughter and over-enthusiastic embraces. ‘Where the heck did you lot come from? What’s your mother been feeding you? Great big towering giants!’
‘Maybe you’ve shrunk, Sam,’ Lexie giggles, her father’s wit clearly inherited.
‘Aye, maybe I have. It’ll be all that incessant English rain falling on me, eh? I’ve shrunk in the wash!’ It’s an old joke, but like the house and the kids and the sunshine yellow Mini beside us, it’s familiar and warm and wonderful.
We pile inside the house, everyone talking at a million miles an hour, words and laughter crashing together, a joyous cacophony of noise that wraps around us. I’ve been here less than five minutes and it already feels like home. The last time I visited was almost six years ago and I’m shocked by how much has changed. I see it most in the kids, of course, but the house is different, too. Donal started the renovations they’d talked about for years just after he lost
