Back in the day, when I had a name, I’d occasionally agree to take on keen youngsters looking for work experience. I’d a test, got the idea from Rabbitte, the band manager in The Commitments, asked: ‘Who are your influences?’
Any mention of Pilger, they got shown the door.
Amy, on the other hand, came up with this ripper: ‘Lois Lane!’
I thought she must have imagination or at least ambition. All she did have, however, was a burning desire to find her Superman. In the end she got shown the door. An Ubermensch, I wasn’t. But in those days she was jail bait, and I was very married. The girl before me now had, how can I put it, developed.
I pulled off the tie. Felt fortunate to be standing beside a bin, said, ‘It wasn’t my idea.’
Amy laughed. ‘Hello Gus — you look great.’ She gave me a smile. One of those welcoming, from the heart jobs. It made me melt.
‘Thanks. You’re a great liar.’
The headlight smile came on again. She gave off an air of total calm. I wondered if this was really the same Amy who had once been walked out the office by a security guard after a foot-stamping display of undying love for me before the entire newsroom.
‘I’m on my way to a lecture,’ she said, ‘but it would be nice to, you know, catch up over coffee some time.’
‘You’re a student, then.’
‘Sorta — it’s art school.’
It sounded just the thing for Amy, put her excess energy to use. ‘Art, wow… you look so focused now.’
A laugh. ‘Changed days, eh?’
‘No, I didn’t mean… I wasn’t trying to have a go.’
She reached over, touched my arm. ‘Gus, I know. I’m only messing.’
‘Sorry.’
‘So, coffee then?’
I hesitated, then thought, why not? I had little else in my life. ‘Okay. Great.’
She rummaged in a huge bag and produced what looked to be a complicated phone, said, ‘Can I beam you?’
‘Come again?’
‘Have you got Bluetooth?’
‘God no! I’ve a pen.’
She rolled up her sleeve. ‘Write your number on there.’
As I wrote I felt suddenly self-conscious, like I was being watched. I shook it off, thought it was probably just nothing but when I raised my head I got a definite eyeball from a man in the street.
He was short, heavy in the build, a cube of a man carrying a three-day growth. As I caught his eye he took a newspaper out of his back pocket and started to read, leaning up against a lamp post, far too casually I thought.
‘Friend of yours?’ I asked Amy.
‘No. Never seen him before. You okay for about five?’
‘I’m good for five,’ I said dipping into Friends speak. I blushed, then said, ‘Er, five o’clock’s fine.’
‘Great. I’ll text you to make sure, but will we say in there?’ She pointed to a Starbucks, one of about fifty that seemed to have sprung up in Edinburgh in the last year or so.
‘Christ, do we have to?’
‘They do good coffee. You’ve not gone all health-nutty in your old age, have you?’
‘That’ll be right — Starbucks it is, then.’
She leant over and gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘It’s really good to see you again, Gus. It’ll be good to talk — you know, clear the air as it were.’ She turned quickly and gave a childish little wave as she went.
When I looked around the man with the newspaper had gone.