The Forgotten Affairs of Youth Read Free Page B

already done the
Scotsman
,” said Isabel. “And I don’t really need anything to read. You go and make my coffee. Then give me this news of yours.”
    Eddie left her, and Isabel glanced at Cat, who was still with her customer. Her niece noticed and nodded. Something in Cat’s expression indicated to Isabel that this customer was taking a long time to make up her mind over which tea to buy.
    Eddie produced the cappuccino with a flourish. He had recently taken to signing the frothy milk-top with a thistle, a trick he had learned from an Irish barman who served Guinness with the outline of a four-leaved clover traced on the foam. He sat down and smiled broadly at Isabel.
    “Guess,” he challenged. “Go ahead and guess.”
    She made a show of thinking. “Let me see. You’ve won the Spanish lottery.
El Gordo—
the fat one. A million euros, tax-free.”
    “Nope.”
    “All right. You went in for a screen test and they’ve just phoned to say could you come back, and bring your agent?”
    Eddie shook his head. “No, I’d never be an actor. I don’t like having my photograph taken.”
    She made a gesture of defeat. “I’m not going to get it, am I? You tell me, Eddie.”
    The young man leaned forward in his chair. “All right. Listen to this, Isabel. You know I’ve got this uncle?”
    She did not.
    “Well, I have. He’s called Donald and he’s my mother’s older brother. He used to have a wife, who was my aunt, and then she went off with this guy from Glasgow. It was her fault—my dad said that. So Uncle Donald was left by himself.”
    Isabel nodded. “Yes. These things are … well, they’re not very pleasant.”
    “He was really cut up over it for a long time. But he’s better now and he’s got a girlfriend—you should see her, Isabel—she’s amazing. Much better than his wife. So there’s Uncle Donald and he gets a letter one morning from a firm of lawyers in Dundee and they say that his cousin, who never married, has died and left him her house in Montrose. And her car. The car’s useless—Uncle Donald went to look at it and said that the gearbox was shot: it was the way she used to change gear, like stirring porridge, he said. But the house is quite nice. He doesn’t need it because he’s got his own place in Dalkeith, and he doesn’t even have a mortgage.”
    “So he’s going to sell it?”
    Eddie beamed with pleasure. “Yes. And he wants to treat me to a trip. He’s always said that he wanted to go to the United States and Canada. He’s never been, you see, but now he can afford to take a couple of months off and go all the way from Miami up to Alaska, with a bit of Canada in between. The Rockies and Vancouver. Him and me, in a car he’s going to rent. His girlfriend can’t get that much time off, but she’ll come for the first three weeks.”
    Isabel thought of driving across the Midwest and the experience of its sheer vastness. It would be like being at sea, she imagined.
    “That’s wonderful, Eddie,” she said. “All that way …”
    “Yes,” he said. “Places like Nebraska. Imagine going there. And the Grand Canyon. And Las Vegas.”
    Isabel thought. “Las Vegas …”
    “Yes,” said Eddie. “And Cat’s said that it’s fine. I’ve got a friend, you see, who can do my job here for me. He’s worked in a deli before. Cat has spoken to him and says that it’s all right.”
    Eddie finished and sat back in his chair, waiting for Isabel’s reaction to his news. She leaned across the table and patted him lightly on the forearm. She did not mean the gesture to look condescending, but she realised it did. He did not notice.
    She spoke warmly. “That’s marvellous, Eddie,” she said. “I think that’s just wonderful.”
    She did not, but that was not the point. It was wonderful for him, as it would be for any young man who had never been anywhere, other than a trip to London once and five precious, heady days in Spain as a teenager.
    He smiled at her.