Resolution

Chapter 32

Leslie didn't want to go to the country but she had promised to humor Maureen for a week and, anyway, she had nowhere else to go. Maureen lit two cigarettes and handed her one as she rattled the old van down the slip road from the motorway and stopped at the roundabout.

Lanarkshire is fine countryside. Lush old trees hung over the road or sat softly on the rolling hills. Past the concrete sprawl of Motherwell, residents had paid enough to relish the luxury of privacy and there were few houses near the road. Behind hedges and trees, the hills were scattered with new bungalows and solid old houses built when the area was farming land, before its proximity to Glasgow made it commutable. The road was narrow and busy at weekends. The only set of traffic lights in the area caused tailbacks of up to half a mile on Sundays, when the car-trunk sale was open. As the van passed a field with opaque Nissen huts cloaked in rippling cellophane, Maureen spotted a signpost. "There," she said. "Dreyloan." She checked the address in the phone book on her lap. "That's it. Left up here."

Leslie turned the van over the old stone bridge. Far below they heard the sound of cool water splashing through a rocky crevasse.

Dreyloan village was picturesque and litter free. The cars parked in driveways were new and expensive. Even the Saturday visitors from the city looked healthier than average and certainly better dressed. Their shoogly van attracted interested glances as they parked by the green. Leslie pulled on the hand brake and turned off the engine, pocketing the keys. She waited for Maureen to get out so she could shut the passenger door from the inside but Maureen didn't move. "Will we get out?" said Leslie.

Maureen was smiling straight ahead, her head tipped to the side. In front of the windscreen, on the edge of the village, a small office in a pretty pink cottage had a large to-let sign nailed above the door. It was McGee and McGerty, estate agents.

"That doesn't mean anything, really," said Leslie, worried by how pleased Maureen seemed. "There could be a lot of other explanations."

"Aye," said Maureen. "Could be."

The village green was a long, bumpy stretch of grass. In the center, at the intersection of two diagonal paths, stood a solemn monument to the war dead from the village. Around the perimeter of the green, villagers and visitors were catered to by a cake shop, a camping-equipment store, a curry house and an olde authentiky coach house pub, doing three-course meals for a fiver. Around and about, visiting families climbed out of cars after long drives in hot weather; a couple of men in obscenely clinging Day-Glo outfits stood next to fancy racing bikes drinking from water bottles and panting, wiping sweat from their necks. Maureen and Leslie headed straight for the estate agent's.

The cottage was a squat single story, with deep windows and a step down to the entrance. McGee and McGerty had one window of the cottage; the other was occupied separately by a small post-office-cum-newsagent. The window display only showed six houses for sale but they were laid out tastefully on gray cards, without prices. They were cottages, a barn conversion and a manse, photographed in perfect sunshine and with bare, expensive graphics laying out the details. Maureen looked at them and it occurred to her that she could sell her house, take the money and just piss off.

"Posh," said Leslie.

Inside the front door the two businesses had built their own entrances, diagonal doors facing the main entrance like a moral choice. Maureen pushed the door, setting off a tinkling bell, and stepped into a small room with plush carpeting and a single desk. The man behind the desk, elderly, in a pink and baby blue Pringle sweater and gray flannels, was on the phone. He looked as if he had been pulled off a golf course and made to sit there. He clearly wanted the person at the other end of the line to think he found them hilarious. With sorrow-sodden eyes he laughed and nodded, texturing his laughter with high and low intonation, rocking back and forth in his chair. Maureen and Leslie sat down across the desk from him. He mouthed at them that he'd just be a minute and laughed some more before hanging up and looking sadly at them. "What can I do ye for?"

"We're interested in the lease for this place," said Maureen.

He smiled insincerely and looked at them. "Can I ask what you do?"

"We're Web designers," said Leslie.

He frowned at his papers. "Really?"

"Yeah," said Maureen.

The man didn't know what else to ask them because he didn't know anything about Web design, which was just as well because they didn't know anything about it either.

"Are you handling the lease?" said Maureen.

"Yeah." He pulled open a drawer of his desk and lifted out a summarized schedule on stapled sheets.

"What's the walk-through like here?" said Leslie, making Maureen flinch. Even she knew that Web designers didn't care about trade from idle passersby. The estate agent, however, didn't seem to be aware of this.

"Well," he said, sitting back, pressing his fingertips together, making a church of his hands, "it's good for the area because of the post office next door and the pub across the way. Also, because there's damn all to do in the village, lots of people walk around the square." He pushed the schedule across the table as if he couldn't be bothered talking anymore. "It's a big village for the overall area and people come here to shop. There's a Spar around the back of the kirk."

"Nice," said Leslie.

"So, is this room all that's included in the lease?" asked Maureen.

"No, no, there's this room and a back office and upstairs as well."

He stood up to show them round but Maureen waved him back into his chair. "We're looking at a lot of places," she said. "You said the walk-through's good, so why are you leaving?"

"No, no," he said. " 'S nothing to do with this place. The business is winding up."

"Going bankrupt?"

"No," he said defensively, "just dissolving. The senior partner's retiring."

"And the junior partner?"

The man broke eye contact.

"He's not… as experienced."

Maureen smiled. "It's McGerty who's got the money, then?"

The man looked up at them. "Who are you?"

The olde authentiky pub had a lot of young bar staff decked out in black uniforms with fussy white pinnies over them, serving the tables. Maureen ordered a pint and Leslie asked for a cheese and ham toastie and a bag of smoky-bacon crisps. She asked Maureen to have something while the tweeny waitress stood there and smiled at them. "I'm all right," said Maureen, lighting a cigarette.

"What are ye going to have for lunch, then?" said Leslie.

"I'm not hungry," insisted Maureen. "I'll have something later."

"Have something now."

Maureen looked at the waitress. "That's all for now, thanks," she said, and waited until the girl had written everything down in longhand and gone away. "How's the stomach now?"

"Wee bit better," Leslie said, wrinkling her nose. She looked out of the window at the McGee and McGerty office. "It doesn't mean anything."

"McGee's business is going down the tubes and it doesn't mean anything?"

"Well, lots of people change what they do for a living. It doesn't mean the automatic next step is moving in to whoremastering."

Maureen smiled knowingly. "Do you think Si McGee is the sort of man who could happily take a drop in his income and social status?"

"How do you mean?"

"You were right," she said. "It's not about the money at all. McGee's not interested in money. It's about status, proving he's as good as the other good old boys. It means everything to him."