fat and bald then that last comment was insanely insensitive. I’m not helping by going on about it now, am I? I really don’t know when to shut up in emails. But anyway, I hope you’re well, irrespective of your current waistline and hair, or lack thereof.
And so to the point. I’ve been roped in by some of the illustrious ladies of our year at school to help organize a class reunion. I don’t really have much to do with it, to be honest, but one of them rang me up and asked if I wouldn’t mind trying to get in touch with a few people. When they mentioned your name I’ll admit that my interest was piqued. So what the hell have you been up to for the last 15 years? Are you married? Kids? Are you even still male? (These days, anything can happen, you know, I’m not casting aspersions on your manhood or anything – look, here I am talking drivel again.)
Anyway, the reunion is organized for next Saturday, that’s the 16th of August, in – believe it or not – Bally’s. I know, it’ll be bloody terrible probably but, well, I’m going and it would be nice if you could make it. I believe Bally’s is now officially called the Waterfront or something, but everyone still calls it Bally’s.
It would be great if you could come, but if you don’t fancy it I understand. Either way, it would be good to hear from you. Feel free to give me a phone anytime you like if, for example, you think you need a bit more persuading about this whole Arbroath thing. Or just for a chat. It would honestly be great to talk to you.
Right, I’ve taken up way more of your time than I meant to so I’ll leave it at that. Take care, and I hope you get in touch.
See ya,
Nicola xxx
mob: 07970 132 265
Nicola Cruickshank
Historic Scotland – Safeguarding Scotland’s Built Heritage
His head was spinning. Nicola Cruickshank. He hadn’t thought about her for years, but for what seemed like a lifetime he had fancied her at school, never getting up the bottle to go for it. He had always put it off and put it off, waiting for the right time, which inevitably never came. All through their drunken, hormone-addled sixth year they had flirted and danced around the issue, without ever getting anywhere. He waited and waited and waited for the right time and then… well, then there was the accident. And nothing was ever the same again.
He had never been back, not in fifteen years. That was helped in no small part by the fact that his parents had absconded to France, retiring to do up a barn in Limoges ten years before it was a trendy thing to do. Just as well, he would’ve struggled to go back to Arbroath, back to the place where his best friend had died. And now, here was a call from someone he was besotted with at the time, asking him to do just that. Jesus.
David drifted through the day. His hangover gradually receded, but the buzz of Nicola stayed at the forefront of his mind. He re-read the email umpteen times, even printing it off to take with him into the bogs where he read it twice before having a quick snooze, his cheek pressed against the cold ceramic of the cistern.
He noticed that her message had managed to tell him virtually nothing about herself. She still had the same surname, so did that mean she wasn’t married? He didn’t suppose it meant anything much these days. She worked for Historic Scotland, wasn’t that in Salisbury Place? Only about five minutes from his Rankeillor Street flat in the Southside of the city. How long had she been in the same city as him? She had gone to Glasgow Uni, he remembered that much, but then a degree only took four years, what the hell had she been doing for the other eleven?
He couldn’t stop thinking about her during the afternoon meeting, when they were informed that if productivity didn’t improve there would be more layoffs. He wasn’t being paranoid, there really were pointed looks in his direction at the mention of this, but the two pints at lunchtime helped him to ignore that.
By five o’clock he was thinking about Nicola more than ever.
Nicola had clicked ‘send’ then had a tiny panic attack. Why had she written to him first thing in the bloody morning, before