Escaping from Him Read online

  Dean said, "Studio manager and an actor. What a creative couple you two are."

  Callum replied, "Aye, we are that."

  "Maybe I could look into that art course … "

  Chris interrupted, "We talked about this, didn't we, babe. You don't need any of that, when you've got holidays in the Bahamas, meals at the Ivy and your very own passenger's seat in a convertible Mini, now do you?"

  Silence filled the room, as Dean clasped his hands in his lap and avoided eye contact with everyone.

  Lena said, "This is nice, everyone here. Everyone together, like a new big family. In Sweden, this is what we do. You get married, you have children, you split up, and you get married again. But it is not like you never see the other person any more, it is a different situation, a different reaction to be in. But you still see them. Sweden is a small place, so you must know you will see them some other time soon. This, is like that, I think." She smiled.

  More silence.

  Lena looked around the room and continued. "Chris, you have something you wanted to ask Ford, do you?"

  "Ah yes, I almost forgot. How could I forget that? It was so nice to catch up about everyone, find out what we're all doing in our new lives, just like she said." He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and started to hand it to Lena.

  She said, "You can give it to Ford if you want. It is for him."

  Chris nodded.

  I started to open the envelope and Chris asked me to leave it until after they had gone, Lena had thought that a better way round. I held it in one hand, the first inch ripped open.

  Chris said, "Well, it's been great to see you both." He looked at Lena and me. "And so nice to meet you, Kieran." He looked at Callum. "Hasn't it been nice, Dean?"

  Dean nodded. There followed an awkward combination of shaken hands and kissed cheeks, with much talk of how nice it had been, and shouldn't we do it again next time I was down in London, ending with Chris suggesting dinner at the Ivy.

  Lena walked them to the door, chatting incessantly all the way. She closed the door behind them and slumped on the sofa where Callum had joined me.

  "'Ere, you two! What the fucking fuck was that about? I thought I was going to have a fucking bloody heart attack at first."

  Callum snuggled next to me. "How do you feel now?"

  I shrugged. "Relieved, sad, happy, hungry; actually, when are we eating dinner?"

  "But not like you're going to have a heart attack?"

  "Nope, not at all. I'm sad that poor boy is making the same mistakes I did, and Chris is doing it all over again with him, with his money making up for anything of any consequence or meaning in that boy's life. Happy that it's not me. Is that selfish? I wanted to tell him, but couldn't."

  Lena and Callum laughed. Lena said, "How would you feel about seeing him again?"

  I shrugged. "It's not something I'd go out of my way to sort out, but if it happened, I'd be fine. I'm not with him any more. I'm not Darryl. I'm me, I'm Ford - hear me roar, or something!"

  We all laughed.

  Callum explained he knew I was anxious about returning to London, whether it was to see him if he'd got the acting job, or visit Lena. They wanted to show me there was nothing of Chris to be afraid of now, now he had no power over me, now he had another boyfriend over whom his power was cast.

  "How did you persuade him to come round? So far there's not much in the meeting for him."

  "You haven't opened the envelope yet." He smirked.

  It was a receipt for a new air conditioning unit, with a letter from the flat's management committee, saying they were afraid although the unit comprised part of the shared facilities, like the central heating, it had been 'wilful and wanton destruction' so they would not be able to cover its cost from the sink fund. I looked up from the letter; they were both stifling laughs. "Is this a joke?"

  Callum shook his head. "When I called him, all he could talk about was this air conditioning unit. I said if he came, I'd persuade you to do the honourable thing and pay for it."

  "The honourable thing! How about the years of abuse and control he rained down on me? I paid for his fucking car, ages ago. All of it, and now he wants this! Is there no end to the man's madness?"

  Lena stood in the middle of the living room floor and did a curtsey. "This, I think you know the answer to."

  "You two sorted all this out behind my back?"

  Callum said, "You may tell Lena our sex secrets, but I get to work out the really juicy gossip, about Chris and his madness." He winked.

  "Does he really expect me to pay this?" I waved the letter.

  "Yep. It was the clincher in the deal for him to come here." He took it from me, scanned through then waved his hand. "It's nothing. I'll pay it out of my first month at PQD."

  Lena stroked her chin. "What do you say, it is money well gone?"

  We both said, "Money well spent!"

  "That is it!"

  I took the letter from Callum. "You don't have to pay it. In fact, if you do, it's actually a bit Chris-like, and creeps me out a bit. So I'll pay it, if it's all the same with you."

  "Fifty fifty?"

  "Seventy I pay, thirty you pay, and we can negotiate the rest from a horizontal position."

  He leant forward and kissed me, with that look and grin. "We'd better start negotiations now hadn't we?" He took my hand and led me to the spare bedroom. As he kicked the door shut I heard Lena shouting that she hoped she had 'pomped up the bed hard enough' for us.

  Part Three

  Chapter 16

  Once Callum's start date at the show in London was confirmed, we booked an indulgent weekend in a luxury hotel in a castle in the wilds of Scottish countryside. One last indulgence together before moving onto the long distance relationship chapter of our relationship. Callum had offered to pay, he'd be earning plenty later, but I'd insisted on splitting it roughly in half as I didn't want to set a Chris-like precedent. He said we were to focus on the beautiful countryside, the roaring fire and the four poster bed in the room.

  Saturday morning we were in the Jacuzzi, sipping almost-champagne from flutes, the foam building in heaps around the edges of the bath as every minute passed. I had told Callum not to put too much bubble bath in, but he'd ignored me, pouring in the whole mini version of an expensive shop in Central London that sold only French style bath products, with gay abandon.

  We chinked our glasses and leant forward to kiss one another. I didn't feel anything stirring below the waterline as we'd jumped in to wash ourselves from a long session in the four poster bed, ending with us both on our backs, covered in sweat, and other things.

  I put my champagne flute on the side of the bath. "Don't you ever surprise me like that again. I don't think my heart could take it again. Seeing him, with his new little boyfriend.” I shuddered. “I'm not sure how I feel about you and, Lena working together on stuff. You two conferring and plotting behind my back. Makes me nervous."

  He put his flute down and in an exaggerated fashion peered around the enormous hotel room.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Just making sure she's not snuck in here for the weekend with us two. Nope, no sign. It's just us two." He paused and smiled. "We could Skype her if you wanted, just keep the camera above waist height, she'd never know we were naked. I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

  "Was that the only way you could think to make me less worried about visiting London?"

  He nodded quickly. "We tried to think of other ways, but every time she pointed out it all came back to him. No matter how much else we campaigned that London was huge, and the chances of you bumping into him were minute, she said you'd always feel a bit on edge, looking over your shoulder every time. And I said we couldn't have that could we?"

  "We, is it?" I smirked, sipping another bit of almost champagne.

  "Aye, we it was too right. Both of us have an interest in you coming to London. My play's not moving to Scotland, and neither's she, so you're stuck with us down there."


  "I suppose so." I shivered as I thought about the encounter, the young boyfriend, his boasting, the looks between the two of them. "Didn't you think it was a bit creepy, how he'd just gone and got a younger version of me to replace me?"

  He shook his head and handed me a hulled strawberry from a bowl on the side of the bath. "Not much. People like him have a pattern, they stick to it. It's the only way he knows to live. And the poor wee lad, he's too young to know any different 'cause he's got a rich sugar daddy paying for everything and all he's to do is everything Chris wants."

  "Until he's had enough and leaves him."

  "Aye, until that. But he may not do that. He may be able to cope with it. Some people can put up with a lot of crap for a roof over their heads and some money in their pocket."

  "That is depressing."

  "Here, have another of these." He put another strawberry in my mouth, smiling. "They're meant to go with the champagne. What do you reckon, eh?"

  "Almost champagne."

  "Aye, almost champagne. I'm gonna be richer than ever before, but I can't bring myself to spend two hundred pound on a bottle. I just can't do it."

  "You can take the boy out of Scotland, but you can't take the Scotland out of the boy.”

  Callum laughed, and splashed me with some bubbly water.

  “I've had the expensive, stuff - he used to bring a bottle home every time he made his sales, or customer, or some target or another. He'd come back, half pissed on it, with another bottle to share with me. I had to play catch up 'cause he was hardly able to stand, and I would be stone cold sober, having waited in for him to come back, with his tea in the oven." I looked out the window, across the plush cream carpeted room, through a criss crossed metal window out to the lush green grounds to a lake - a loch as Callum had reminded me - and then a pine forest.

  He shook me. "Aye, where were you then? You looked miles away."

  "And all I wanted was him to ask me how my day at the photography studio was, or if I'd heard from any of my friends, wanting to come to London for the weekend."

  "I'm guessing he didn't ask that."

  "Not so much. It was all swigging champagne from the bottle, shouting for the proper glasses, spilling a few bits on the floor and getting really angry at the mess - mess he'd made - and then off to the bedroom for … "

  "Aye, I can guess the rest. I don't need a photie for that one."

  "Shall we get out? What've we got planned for the weekend, we're not gonna stay in the room all weekend are we?"

  He gave me that grin. "Aye, if you want." He coughed. "No, I've got a big list of things we can do, or we can do none of them. Shall I get the list?"

  I nodded and enjoyed the view as he climbed out the Jacuzzi, his creamy white skin covered in a pattern of ginger hair across his chest. His thin wiry tall frame darted from the bathroom to the bedroom, wrapped in a large white fluffy towel. A bit of swearing and shouting at himself later, he reappeared with a magazine corner with some names scrawled on it. "Have you been to the Falkirk Wheel?"

  I shook my head.

  "The Wallace Monument?"

  More head shaking.

  "How about Oban? Any of the lochs?"

  To my shame, I'd not been to any of these places since moving to Scotland. I'd stuck within the confines of Glasgow, which had, up to that point, given me more than enough to enjoy and explore. I told Callum as much, and he waved his hands, told me no need to apologise, we'd do whatever I wanted, and did I want to get dressed or I'd end up all shrivelled, 'like a wee prune'.

  We climbed the hundreds of steps to the top of The Wallace Monument - a tower from a castle, but without the castle around it. He explained it was built to commemorate Sir William Wallace, a thirteenth century Scottish hero. It wasn't nearly as old as the castle hotel we were staying in, apparently it was Victorian Gothic. At the windy, cold top, Callum pointed out the Ochil Hills to one side, and the Forth Valley to the other.

  "You can see for miles, it's so beautiful," I exclaimed, taking in the view of hilly Scottish countryside all around, with the odd granite town dotted about here and there.

  "Aye, that's Scotland for you." He clamped his right hand to his heart and began humming something while stamping his feet on the floor.

  "Can you play the bagpipes?"

  "No danger! I'm humming The Entertainer."

  "Why?"

  "'Cause it's better than listening to the shite comin' outta his mouth." He nodded to a man who'd appeared a few moments before, walking around the monument, talking loudly into his mobile phone, shouting about how amazing it was, and how peaceful it was up there.

  "Shall we go? Leave him to it?"

  "Aye. Falkirk Wheel was it, next?"

  I nodded, having been convinced of this tourist attraction's benefit back in the hotel room.

  He pointed in the distance to a metal construction with a few low buildings and a car park. "That's the wheel."

  Callum had explained the wheel on the journey, but despite this, in my head it was going to be a sort of Millennium Wheel for boats, or something.

  It was nothing like I'd imagined: it was a boat lift that linked two different canals at two different heights. The wheel turned, while lifting the boat between the two different levels. Apparently there was some cantilever action going on, too, and an awful lot of water moving about. I was told by some passengers in the canal boat, as they passed, that it was better to view from where we were stood than in the boat itself. From inside the boat it was apparently, "not much to write home about."

  I thought it was pretty underwhelming from our standpoint, but didn't tell anyone else that. After a gripping half an hour or so, which seemed like about a week and a half, we saw the boat transfer between the two different heights of canals and move on down the canal, I quickly suggested we see what the gift shop had to offer.

  Callum met this, with a furrow of the brows and a, "Right enough, aye."

  I eschewed the many models of the wheel for sale and instead bought a postcard for Lena, knowing she'd marvel at how in Britain we'd managed to make a tourist attraction out of something that was essentially a level crossing for boats. There was even a tea room there, for those who felt the need to linger to see more than one boat making its transition from low water canal to high water canal.

  As you can imagine, I wasn't one of those people.

  On a boat across a loch to an island with a ruined castle, I realised we hadn't paid for any of this next part of today's adventure, except the parking. I tapped Callum's shoulder and gestured to the man steering/driving/whatever you call it, the boat.

  "No bother. He said we pay for the boat and castle once we're on the island, before we look round the castle. No bother." He squeezed my arm and pointed to the island in the distance. The loch was dark and quiet, surrounded by tall craggy mountains.

  It felt like I'd stepped into a scene from a Lord of The Rings film. I looked down at my feet and they were, comfortingly, still not hairy.

  The boat man did some skilful things with rope to secure the boat against the wooden floaty thing. He helped everyone out and pointed to the ticket office to the left on the island. The ruined castle, which on the boat trip I'd learned was called Loch Leven Castle, since it was in the middle of Loch Leven, was to the right on the island.

  Callum took my hand and led me to the right, as everyone else from our little boat made their way to the ticket office.

  "But, what about?" I tried, feeling I'd had more than just a boat trip, I'd had a mini history lesson: now I knew Mary Queen of Scots had been imprisoned in the castle, sometime, when she was alive ...

  "I wanna see it, and take some photies without the world and his wife in the way. Afterwards, we can pay once I've got me photies."

  I smiled at how he said photies, and remembered the first time we'd met in the photography studio, all those months ago.

  The castle was small - a sort of semi-detached-middle-class castle, not like the enormous Edinburgh Castle I'd seen
in pictures so many times, nestled on top of the hill. This was bijou, and much more ruined than Edinburgh Castle. Only the roof of its one squat tower remained, the rest had long gone, leaving grass covered ground floor and waist high walls separating most rooms, each with a helpful wooden sign explaining what it would have been used for.

  Callum led us through the ruin, taking photos of as much as he could, before his pictures would be invaded by cagoule wearing tourists, snapping their own photies too. I posed in a star shape, arms and legs outstretched touching the edges of what would have once been a window. Callum took another of his photies then showed me afterwards.

  With all of the castle's perimeter explored, the other tourists joined us and I asked a young couple of women if one of them could take our picture together. We stood, arms round each other's shoulders, in front of the castle by the front door - portcullis I think it was called - Callum was impressed by their composure of the picture; he even told them so, as he waved them off to explore the castle themselves.

  We sat on the grass near the water, halfway between the castle and boat. He reached into his could have been used for proper trekking backpack, handed me a Scotch egg then bit into his.

  I swigged some water from a bottle he'd produced from the bag. "Some surprise that was."

  "D'you not like today's surprises?"

  "I'm enjoying it. I can't believe it's still not rained today yet. It's gotta be some kind of world record, hasn't it?"

  "Right enough." He took the bottle from me and drank a swig.

  "Meeting Chris."

  "Aye. I wondered when you'd bring that up again."

  "You knew how much I hated him. You knew how much he scared me, and so did Lena, and you still arranged for him to see me." I paused, swallowed hard, as my mouth felt dry. "Couldn't you have done something more subtle to show me I could come to London?"

  "Aye, like what?"