Val McDermid - Northanger Abbey

At the first set of traffic lights, John resumed the conversation. ‘I could have sold it for four grand more the day after I bought it. Jacko Jackson from Oriel offered me cash on the nail the next day in the King’s Arms.’

‘Yeah, but you’re forgetting your parking permit was included,’ James pointed out.

‘Like I’d be dumb enough to sell my parking permit after the amount I had to bribe the college porter to get it in the first place. Duh.’ The lights changed so once more communication was rendered impossible.

Before long, another set of traffic signals brought them to a halt. ‘Do you like a rag top, Cat?’ John asked.

‘He means a convertible, Sis. With the top down.’

‘Oh. Well, this is my first experience, unless you count a quad bike. But yes, I can see it might be fun if you were in a proper seat and not in fear of spilling out the back every time you accelerate.’

John roared with laughter. ‘God, Jamie, you never told me she was so funny. Cat, I’m going to take you for a spin every day I’m here. With the top down.’

It wasn’t that thrilling a prospect to Cat. ‘There’s a forecast of rain tomorrow.’

‘We’ll dodge the raindrops. I’ll drive you up the coast for fish and chips.’

‘Won’t you want to take it easy after your long drive today?’

He laughed again. ‘Call that a long drive? That was just a warm-up. No, it’s a date. Fish and chips at North Berwick for lunch.’

‘Oh, me too, me too!’ Bella exclaimed.

‘Are you kidding? I didn’t come to Edinburgh to drive my sister around. Jamie, it’s up to you to amuse Bella.’

And again, conversation was stilled by acceleration as they drove out across the Dean Bridge and down Queensferry Road a way towards the flat where Mrs Thorpe and her daughters were staying, some little distance from the Book Festival and most of the venues of the Festival Fringe. The one advantage their accommodation had over the Allens’ apartment was that it lay just outside the city centre’s restricted parking zone, so all that was required to find a parking space was for John Thorpe to drive round the block three or four times.

As they walked back up the hill to the Thorpes’ flat, John fell into step beside Cat. Desperate to avoid another lecture on the subject of his splendid car, Cat cast about for something to say. Given that Bella was his sister, she reasoned that they might share some tastes in common. ‘Bella has introduced me to the Hebridean Harpies series of novels,’ she said.

‘Oh my good lord,’ he groaned. ‘Spare me! Not another one. I’ve had Bella wittering on about those bloody books for ever. I don’t have time to waste on novels, but if I did, it wouldn’t be them I’d choose. Vampires and banshees – I ask you. Those books are dumber than a deaf mute with a mouthful of superglue.’

The image was so singularly unpleasant that Cat could think of no immediate riposte. ‘So what do you read?’ was all she could manage.

‘Only what I have to for work,’ he said. ‘I don’t have time to read. How can you bear to read when there’s cars to race and dragons to slay?’ He imitated the movement of his hands on a console controller, making the revving, screeching and gunshot sounds of a computer game.

‘Surely it’s just as dumb to slay imaginary dragons and drive imaginary cars as it is to read Morag Fraser’s books?’ Cat demanded.

He snorted. ‘Obviously you’re not a gamer, sweetheart. What I do sharpens my reflexes and keeps me on top of my game. Reading those stupid books just fills your head full of nonsense.’

It was true that there had never been a games console in the Morland household. But Cat had been in other homes where the children had had apparently unlimited access to a staggering range of virtual experiences. And from those encounters, she dredged up something she hadn’t known till she’d looked up Hebridean Harpies on Wikipedia. ‘Do you play DragonSky?’ she asked.

He nodded with enthusiasm. ‘I used to play it all the time. Not so much now that Felony Driver IV came out.’

‘Did you know that Morag Fraser was one of the writers on DragonSky?’

Taken aback, he goggled at her. ‘I don’t see how,’ he said. ‘You sure she didn’t just make the credits for being somebody’s girlfriend or something?’

Before Cat could muster a response, Bella, who had been walking ahead with James, turned and pointed at the building where their flat occupied part of the second floor. ‘This is us, Johnny.’

Although she had begun to feel quite cross with John Thorpe, the warmth with which he greeted his mother and sisters restored Cat’s general spirit of goodwill. Even so, she was taken aback by the apparent rudeness of the banter the Thorpes exchanged with one another. ‘Ma, dearest,’ John said, hugging his mother so tight she squealed. ‘Where in the name of God did you get that hat? It makes you look like the Wicked Witch of the West.’

Martha Thorpe smacked him affectionately on the shoulder. ‘You are the worst boy in the world, turning up without warning.’

‘And where are the two ugly sisters?’ he called, bringing his siblings rushing from their bedroom to perform the same whooping dance he’d earlier conducted with Bella. However brutal it all seemed compared to Morland family life, it appeared to please the Thorpes.

‘You’ve put on weight, fatso,’ Jessica said.

‘And you’ve got five more zits on your nose,’ her brother riposted. ‘Ma, have you got a washing machine here?’

Martha sighed. ‘You’ve brought your washing, haven’t you?’

‘Clever girl,’ John said. ‘You guessed. I’ll bring it up later. But look, Ma, see who I’ve brought with me.’ And he hauled James, blushing, into the ring of Thorpe women. ‘You can squeeze us in here, can’t you?’

Martha looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know where.’

‘Oh, Ma, you can sleep on the sofa, and Jamie and I will share your bed,’ John said with the cavalier ease of a man who has never had to pay the piper. ‘Now, Jamie, sit yourself down and Ma will get us a coffee to revive us after our drive.’ And he was off again, regaling the company with a paean of praise to his new car.

By the time Cat and Jamie escaped from the crowded flat, Martha had accepted a collective invitation to a ceilidh that evening at the grand New Town home of one of her clients, Bella had dragged her to one side to tell her that Johnny thought she was the cutest thing he’d ever clapped eyes on, and John himself had informed Cat that he was going to dance her legs to stumps at the ceilidh. To be the centre of such attention left Cat a little breathless. It was very far from what she was accustomed to, and it was hard to sift through the swirl of mixed feelings she was enduring.

‘He’s pretty full on, is Johnny,’ James said as they set off to walk back to the Allens’ flat.

Were it not for the friendship between the two men and the flattery of John Thorpe’s interest in her, Cat might have answered with more acerbity. Instead, she simply said, ‘The whole family are pretty full on.’

‘But he’s a good guy. He’s always up for a laugh.’

‘He’s certainly never short of something to say.’

James laughed. ‘There’s no pleasing you girls, is there? You’re usually complaining that guys have got nothing to say for ourselves, but when we do talk to you, apparently you don’t like that either.’

‘Whatever. You seem to be everybody’s favourite in that family.’ The comment was innocent enough, yet James flushed.

‘They made me really welcome when I stayed with them in the Easter vac,’ he said. ‘You like them? Martha and the girls?’

‘I do, very much. Bella especially. We totally hit it off.’

‘That’s great. But then, what’s not to like? She’s smart and funny—’

‘And so beautiful and cleverly dressed and well read,’ Cat butted in. ‘Exactly the kind of girl I always wanted as a best friend.’

‘And she’s easy-going and relaxed,’ James added. It wasn’t quite how Cat would have described her friend but she let it go because James continued, ‘And she thinks you’re great too. She texted me to say she’d met you and how cool she thinks you are. And when a girl like Bella thinks you’re cool, then you know it’s the truth.’

‘Wow! She said that? Awesome. I didn’t realise you were such good mates. You know, Bro, you hardly said anything about her when you texted me after you stayed with them.’

They were in the middle of the Dean Bridge as she spoke and James turned away to lean on the parapet, gazing down at the treetops below. ‘I hoped you’d get to meet her yourself soon, and I didn’t want to influence what you thought of her. I’d be as happy as you if the pair of you ended up best friends.’ He swung round and smiled at her.

‘That’s very sweet of you, James. Oh, and by the way, what’s with the whole “Jamie” thing?’

He shrugged and resumed walking. ‘It was Bella’s idea. She said they knew too many Jameses and she didn’t want there to be any confusion who she was talking about. So she started calling me Jamie and they all followed her lead. Though, to be honest, I think Johnny’s taking the piss a bit.’ James spread his hands in a wry shrug. ‘That’s blokes for you.’

‘Still, he obviously likes you. And it was really thoughtful of him to stop off in Newcastle to see if you wanted to come all this way to see me and the Allens. He must have thought I’d be missing you all.’

James gave her a quizzical look, which she took to mean that he was surprised at her effusiveness. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Right. Thoughtful. And how is everyone at home?’

Cat’s exposition on the home life of the Morlands occupied them all the way back to Queen Street, save for one brief digression on Bella’s sense of humour. The Allens were delighted to see James, and to hear that they too had been invited to the ceilidh. Mr Allen begged off, on the grounds that he had to endure a one-man version of A Farewell to Arms, but Susie was ecstatic to have so early an opportunity to wear the dress she had bought only that afternoon from the sweetest little boutique in the Lawnmarket.

By mid-afternoon, Cat was exhausted with people and conversation and was quite delighted to sneak off up the hill to the Book Festival to listen to three Shetland poets reading from their work. Luckily they passed her comprehensibility test and they wove a web of words around her, its dreamlike quality the perfect preparation for an evening’s dancing that would be at once systematic and spontaneous. The first time she’d done Scottish country dancing, she’d been whirled around emotionally as well as physically. Who knew what the second occasion might hold?

 The Thorpes, the Morlands and Susie Allen arrived simultaneously on the doorstep of the grand mansion on Rothesay Terrace. Cat and Bella were so delighted to see each other after seven hours of abstinence that they immediately formed a two-person huddle, admiring each other’s dresses, their hair and their make-up as they moved oblivious through the gleaming marble and glittering crystal of the entrance hall and into a ballroom transformed for the night with tartan silks and indifferent Victorian Highland landscapes.

The party settled round an oval table midway down one side of the room and they had barely secured drinks and a tray of hors d’oeuvres when the ceilidh band struck up. Two fiddlers, an accordion, a keyboard player, a drummer and a pair of guitarists occupied a small stage at the far end of the room and it was quickly apparent that they were a gifted ensemble. No sooner had the dance caller announced a Gay Gordons than James was on his feet, reminding Bella that she’d promised him the first dance. Bella half-rose, then looked around. ‘Where’s Johnny?’

‘He’s gone through to the card room,’ James said. ‘He’s feeling lucky.’

Bella pouted. ‘Well, I’m not going to abandon Cat just because Johnny has no manners. If we get split up now, it’ll be the Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow before you know it and we’ll never see each other again all evening. Honestly. Men.’

James sat down, crestfallen. Cat had never seen him so eager to take to the dance floor. But at the end of the first section of the dance, he cast a beseeching glance at Bella, who rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, all right, Jamie. If you insist.’ She put a hand on Cat’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, but what can you do? He’s gagging to get me on the dance floor, it would be cruelty to refuse him. You don’t mind, do you? Johnny will be back any minute, win or lose, I promise.’

And she was gone, drawing James after her. He cast a quick look back at his sister with a worried frown, but she put a brave face on it and waved him off, even though that left her to the tender mercies of Martha and Susie and their seemingly endless conversations about fabrics and Pantone colours. Not only did she want to be on the floor, caught up in the excitement and movement of the dance, but she felt too the shame of being one of the wallflowers. In all her fiction-fuelled fantasies, she’d never been one of the disregarded ones, and it hurt to find herself overlooked. She’d read enough to know that it was the heroine’s part to suffer the smug scorn of others, but that didn’t make it any easier to keep a smile fixed on her face. But she was damned if she was going to pout or sulk over John Thorpe. She would suffer, but nobody would know.