Screen Savers

Chapter 31

Outside, Glasgow moved slowly through the night, gearing itself up for the start of a new week. Our apartment sits high above the city, looking south towards and beyond the River Clyde. No one can see in, and the view from the big windows, which reach down to floor level, is too interesting and too beautiful for us to think of closing the curtains.

Sat up in bed with my back against the high wooden headboard, I could see the traffic as it made its way across the Kingston Bridge. The main Clyde crossing is never quiet, not even in the middle of the night. A steady stream of cars, vans and heavier vehicles flowed in either direction on business legitimate, and no doubt in a few cases, slightly dodgy.

Prim stirred beside me; she sort of snuffled in her sleep, then mumbled, ‘G’roff. .’ I couldn’t help smiling at her as she lay there. It’s the only time she ever looks vulnerable, like a kid. Awake, she’s always in control, always in charge of herself; at times, I confess, I look at her with a sort of private awe.

I love her for all of it, though, and I respect her. Most of all I like her. I’m a lucky man, blessed with a host of interesting, intelligent and amusing friends, but above them all is Primavera Phillips. When she came into my life the effect was explosive; at first I was overwhelmed by it but when the shock waves died away the landscape of my life was different, and I could see things more clearly than ever before.

She took me from Jan, yet she led me to her also; a lesser woman would have been embittered by the unwitting cruelty I showed her then, yet when that was over and I needed a crutch to keep moving, there she was propping me up. She didn’t push herself back into my life; indeed she wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t asked her. Yet I hadn’t hesitated. There’s a Paul Simon song, ‘Something so Right’; if I’m ever on Desert Island Discs, or anything like it, I’ll have them play that for Prim.

Right then, looking down at her, I saw the lids of her left eye unstick themselves. ‘S’up?’ she mumbled. ‘Heartburn? Y’ know you shouldn’t eat garlic.’

‘What’s up with you?’ I chuckled. ‘You sounded as if you were giving someone the message there. What did I do?’

‘Not you,’ she said, awake now, and rolling over on to her side. ‘My Mum. I was having a dream about our wedding; I was in this fluffy white dress and she was fussing all over me.’

‘Fluffy white dress? You never told me that.’

‘Of course not. That’s women’s work.’

‘Fine, but you? In a big flouncy dress?’

She smiled. ‘It’s okay, it won’t be a Royal Wedding job. It’ll be tight-fitting and simple, like I usually dress when we go formal. I’m even going to have it re-modelled afterwards so I can wear it again.’

‘Very economical. But what if I hadn’t overheard this dream of yours and I’d turned up in jeans, alongside you in the white dress?’

She snorted. ‘As long as you turn up, I don’t care if you’re in your M and S boxers. But don’t worry about that; Susie’s helping me with the dress, and it’s Mike’s job to make sure that you turn up appropriately clad. The white tux that you wear on the telly sometimes, that’ll be fine.’

‘Sod that. You’re wearing new — I’m wearing new.’

‘That’ll be good news for Slater’s,’ Prim murmured. Then she yawned. ‘But come on. You still haven’t answered my first question. What’s keeping you awake?’

‘My brain.’ I told her. ‘My over-active brain. I’ve been thinking about my Dad’s throwaway line today, and about what Liam said tonight. They’re right, both of them. Just lately, everywhere I’ve gone, mayhem’s dogged my fucking footsteps.

‘Susie comes to see us, and someone cremates her car right on our doorstep. I meet Noosh in Aberdeen and some gangster takes a shot at her. I go down to London with the GWA and two guys turn up looking to break my arms. I take the boys out for the day and someone shoves wee Colin into a bloody great hole.

‘On the basis of all that, my love — and I’m not even going to think of some of the other things that have happened over the last couple of years — am I, or am I not, an unlucky guy to be around?’

Prim laid her left hand flat on my stomach. ‘On the basis of most things that have happened to me since I met you — and I’m not just talking about the silly money that seems to flow in our direction all the time — I’d say you’ve brought me more luck than anyone I’ve ever met.

‘Don’t get paranoid over a couple of silly remarks, Oz, please. Luck had nothing to do with any of those things, anyway, and none of them save one had anything to do with you. Someone — Stephen Donn, from the looks of it — had made a very specific threat to Susie before her car blew up. Noosh What’shername seems to have brought some heavy baggage back from Russia. As for Colin, we had that report of youngsters being seen in the vicinity, and shoving the wee chap into that Dungeon was so reckless and stupid that it only makes sense as a kids’ prank.’

She paused, stifling another yawn. ‘The only thing that concerns you directly, is the London incident. We don’t know for sure who sent those men to do you. Maybe it was Stephen Donn giving you a warning not to get too close, maybe it was your rejected admirer or her husband, maybe it was someone completely different.

‘Whoever was behind it was in deadly earnest. Luck didn’t come into that, either.’

‘That’s a comforting thought.’

‘You haven’t had any trouble since, have you?’

‘Not personally, no.’

‘Right, forget it.’ Her arm slipped round my waist and pulled me gently down until I was lying beside her, my face close to hers on the pillow. ‘Now, since you woke me at this unsocial hour, the least you can do is. .’

Clearly, my luck had taken a turn for the better.