Hannah raised her hand and brought it down on Emilia’s cheek so hard that the woman almost lost balance, bumping into the doorframe with the baby, who screamed, tears in her eyes and snot from her nose.

Hannah stood there breathing heavily, her body shaking with adrenaline.

Emilia slowly righted herself, put her hand to her reddened cheek, then smiled at Hannah.

‘I want her arrested for assault,’ she said.

Hannah felt her other arm being grabbed by the uniformed cop and pulled behind her. She looked at the faces in front of her and tried to think of a time before all this, as the cop shoved her down the steps towards the police car.

155

30

JENNY

‘Cheers.’

She smiled at Craig across the table. She was mad at herself for being here but it also felt comfortable. She looked round the beer garden of The Pear Tree, full of students, leftover tourists and what she would’ve called crusties back in the day, not homeless exactly, but happy living on the edge of things. There were a lot fewer crusties than there used to be, the subculture either moving on or disappearing altogether as the world became more uniform.

She turned back to Craig.

‘What are we doing, Mr McNamara?’ she said.

‘Just having a drink, Ms Skelf.’ He sipped his pint.

She drank from her double gin. ‘Really?’

He bowed his head in mock reverence. ‘And I’m saying sorry by buying the drinks.’

She shook her head.

After meeting Orla she’d wandered around Teviot and Southside wired from the lunchtime booze, soaking up the sun, watching the students. In her head she was still Hannah’s age, but that delusion was busted every time she caught her reflection in a shop window. Walking amongst the energy of these kids, Hannah’s contemporaries, made her feel young again.

She’d sat in the Meadows, the grass still a little damp despite the sunshine, and watched young parents with toddlers in the play park. So now she was the creepy middle-aged woman hanging around the play park. She missed that time with Hannah, being needed. Larkin got it wrong, it wasn’t your parents who fucked you up, it was your kids. They need you for everything, make 156themselves the focus of your entire world, then the years slip away and they don’t need you anymore, and you have a gaping hole in your heart where your life used to be. And she didn’t even have a husband to share that emptiness with.

She’d walked back to the house and there was Craig standing at the front door, about to knock, with a beautiful orange orchid in his hand.

So here they were, drinking in the late afternoon as a wasp sniffed around the sticky rings their drinks made on the table.

‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ Jenny said.

‘I left early.’

‘What about Fiona?’

‘What about her?’