I’m not Jason Robertson, he said again.
Security’s coming, Jase, the one they called Kevin or Gavin said.
Kimberley McKinlay raised her eyebrows. Jason Robertson rolled his eyes. Kevin or Gavin stood behind the door with the leafblower held above his head, as if to smash it down on whoever came in.
The security man’s name is Rod, Kimberley said to Jason Robertson. He’s in his late fifties. His wife doesn’t keep well. And you’re being recorded on the closed-circuit cameras.
Jason Robertson’s eyes, deep in behind the roughly cut wool, were like if eyes had no face.
We taped over the car number plates with that brown parcel tape, he said. The back and the front. There’s no way they could trace it, like.
What he meant was, if she didn’t give it away to anyone, who they were.
Tell him to take his shears off the neck of my employee, Kimberley said. She looked straight back at the eyes. She didn’t blink.
Imagine having a hand that isn’t yours, a hand that isn’t a hand. Imagine not having the hand you were born with. Kimberley, driving home now from work, watches her hand changing gear. It is such a natural thing to do with your hand, change gear. You do it without even really knowing you’re doing it. Her hand is well-manicured. Nowadays it is a manager’s hand. She turns it over, palm up, glances down at it then back at the road ahead. This is the part of herself she would have lost if she was him. She knows where her heart line and her head line and her lifeline are. The right is the hand of realization, what you actually do with your life, the left is the hand of potential, what you’re served at birth, she knows from books. Imagine not having your lines, leaving them somewhere, like a fox or a rabbit leaving a paw in a trap. No, much worse than a trap. He will have come off the bike at speed and hit the ground or wherever it was he hit at a rate that lost him his arm there and then, maybe, not even feeling it because of the adrenalin, off to the hospital not even knowing. Or maybe it was burnt too badly and later they had to remove it. She doesn’t know. She knows he was on a motorbike, and a car or something came round the corner and he swerved to avoid the car and he hit something on his bike and the bike went up in flames, and at the hospital they had to do surgery on his face. She can’t remember what he looked like before. He was a boy at school with light-coloured hair. Afterwards he left school. She was once in a pub and he was there too, afterwards. She hadn’t looked, and then when she got home and went to bed she was ashamed of herself in the dark, that she hadn’t.
She indicates left though there’s no one behind or ahead of her.
Then old Rod the security man came in. He stood in the middle of the room and stared at the boys in the hats with the holes in them as if he’d just woken up. He looked too old. The colours in the place always make him look it.
Kimberley assured him there was no trouble.
I saw something on the monitors, he said. He spoke only to Kimberley. What’ve they the things on their heads for? he said.
Kimberley shrugged. Don’t ask me, she said.
Fashion statement, Jason Robertson said.
They’re trying to sell me their old gardening junk, she said. They’re just leaving. Michael’s just getting them their order. Michael?
Michael’s been sick on the floor, Dallas said.
Dallas, get the mop and clean that, Kimberley said. She stood behind the other till and rang her codenumber in. The till lit up. Now, what was it you were wanting again, boys? she said, and all three of them turned and tilted their heads, still in the wool hats, up at the menu boards above her.
Kimberley, who is good at reversing, reverses neatly into a small space and turns the engine off. She sinks back in the seat. She looks at the front of the house where she lives. Her sisters are asleep inside it, one at the back of the house, one at the front. Those curtains could do with a wash; she will be sure to remember to do it tonight before she goes back to work. She rests her head on the steering wheel.
Sit down, she said to them after she took their order, I’ll bring it over.
Rich Riach took the hat off his face at last and the other one took off his too, they were sweating and red-faced under them; bits of fluff were stuck in the creases round the other one’s nose. She definitely didn’t recognize him. It was funny to see Rich Riach again, looking that much older. She remembered him when she saw him. Jason Robertson left his on. He stayed up at the counter to help carry the stuff over. Rich is poor; Jason Robertson told her Rich is in debt and wanted the money to take his wife on holiday because she doesn’t believe he loves her since she found out he had an affair with a barmaid at the Lochardil Hotel. The one called Kevin or Gavin is out of work, he used to work on the rig site; he wanted the money so he could pay for an operation to have his ears pinned back, he thinks they stick out too much and that this has ruined his life so far, though Kimberley took a look at him and couldn’t see anything wrong with his ears, they maybe stuck out a bit, not that much. He looked really happy when Rod bought the leafblower off him for fifteen quid before he went back to security, though fifteen quid won’t make much difference, Jason told her the operation will cost a fortune if he wants it private. Kimberley asked what Jason Robertson wanted. I don’t want anything, he said, I hate the food here. Kimberley laughed. Do the closed-circuit cameras record things twenty-four seven? Jason Robertson asked her.
He told her they’ve got hold of the blueprints the company use for all their burger places and they’re all the same, wherever you go in the country. Up at the counter he asked her to tell him where in the building they keep the safe, so that the next place they decide to do they’ll know exactly where to go. In the store, she said, and pointed with her eyes.
What Kimberley McKinlay wants herself is a new car. She wants to not still be paying so much money every month for this useless car which only starts if the weather’s dry and what use is that? She wants a holiday. She wants some time in the sun. She wants to be able to sleep when it’s dark, for once. She wants to not have to know that there are bits of food going round and round in the air-conditioning. She wants the last four years back. She wants to be the one going to the college this September and studying media studies, whatever the hell they might be when they’re at home. She wants to be twelve again and to not have to think about anything, to be twelve and be able to go into a burger place on a summer’s day like today and order things and eat them at a table, and she wants someone to be up when she gets out of this car in a minute and goes into the house, and she wants someone to have made the bed she’s about to get back into, the one which will still be exactly as it was when she got out of it yesterday afternoon. She wants the same things that everyone wants and over and above those she wants it known, without her having to do the embarrassing telling of it herself, that there’s no spitting or wanking on her shift like there is on other people’s shifts, that there’s no messing with Kimberley McKinlay mark my words.
She took the money for the food they ate out of Rod’s fifteen pounds and gave them back the change and they left. Then she sent Michael Cardie home in a taxi.
You were amazing, Dallas said. You came, like, roaring out of nowhere, like a lion, he told her. You were shouting about get those filthy blades away from my food area, there’s no gardening tools allowed in this restaurant, and if you chip my paintwork, and you could be giving Michael Cardie tetanus, and if you hurt any of my staff. Man, it was something to see.
And I’m telling you, Kimberley McKinlay roared last night on the graveyard shift like a lion in a rage out at the burger place at Tesco Village: listen to me, she roared. If you lay a finger on, if you even sneeze on, if you even so much as give a single member of my staff a single germ I mean it you loser I don’t care who you are there’ll be hell to pay.
She takes the key out of the ignition, opens the door and the heat of the sun is on her back already. She doesn’t really know that boy Dallas; he is usually on Paton’s shift. She likes him. He’s a good worker. She will ask the head of division
if she can have him moved to her shift and if she does the asking right she will maybe get her way.
All the way up the front path she keeps one hand behind her back and throws the car key into the air with the other, catching it single-handed as it comes down.
It is a beauty of a day and Gemma the Cruise Assistant is stuck down here for the whole turnaround hour of the longest sunniest day of the year guarding four boxes of crisps and half a shelf of whisky miniatures from two of the fuckers.
It is so hot today that the flooring beneath her feet is dry. It is never dry down here. It is never this hot. It is the kind of day it is possible to get sunstroke on, and she is missing it. It’s true, the scenery will be amazing today. She is supposed to love it. She does. She wouldn’t be Scottish if she didn’t. She is supposed to be proud of it. She wouldn’t be Scottish if she wasn’t. They will be taking film of it. They wouldn’t be fuckers if they didn’t. They will be taking pictures of themselves standing in front of it. They maybe wouldn’t know they were alive if they didn’t, it would maybe mean they were dead, or lost, or somehow naked, if they weren’t looking through a camera at where they were. They film the water in front of them hoping something’ll come up out of it and they’ll be the ones who have it on tape. They lean over the rails and they film the surface of the water as the boat cuts through it. They film any old rubbish. They film cars going along the loch road. They film the trees on either side of the loch. They love to film all the palaver of going through the locks. They always film the castle, it’s a heritage site, and they film the boats from the other companies that go past full of other fuckers filming them back. There’s always at least one fucker wanting to take film of her too, and a lot more than just the one on the days it’s raining and they’re all squashed in downstairs freezing cold with their cagoules zipped up and the boat moving making them feel sick, sitting there filming the rain on the windows and her standing like she is now behind the bar.
Today, though, almost the whole one hundred and thirty-nine capacity (two exceptions: the woman going on about how sore her head is in German and the foreign girl reading the book) spent the cruise up on the deck, except for when they were queueing down here. They came down sun-dazed into the dark, holding the walls to get their bearings, walking blindly into the benches screwed to the floor, squinting up at the bar list and down at the money in their hands, talking about what a beautiful day it is, and it is a beauty, she’d hung around up on deck for as long as possible after departure before Andy, good morning ladies and gentlemen, I’m Andy, your skipper on the Bonnie Prince, welcome aboard for today’s trip along the Caledonian Canal and into Loch Ness, one of the world’s most beautiful waterways, famed beauty spots and home of the famous Nessie, yeah, right, skipper, and him not even able to swim for fuck sake and God knows what would happen in an emergency, sent her down to open up, but not before she’d got some sun at least and made a twenty quid tip into the bargain. You will need it for your studies, the lady said. She was an old lady; she was staring at the hills, she said her family was once from here; beautiful, she said in her accent and looked lost and hurt, and pressed the money really hard into her hand. Her husband held his Sony up. He was old too. Twenty pounds for being nice to two old people from Canada for a minute or two. She didn’t want their money. But they wanted to, that’s why she took it, and she always gives the fuckers what they want. It is part of the job. It is like pedestrians having right of way in the Highway Code. Anyway she is out of here in three months’ time and away. That’s only twelve weeks. She is out of here in less than that; ten and a half weeks to be exact. It is not that long. It isn’t hard to be polite. They’re on holiday. They don’t care that most of the photographs are faked, or that the most famous one, of the neck and the head coming out of the water, is a newspaper scam that fooled people for decades.
Course there is. Course I do. I wouldn’t be Scottish if I didn’t.
No no, there’s hundreds of local people’ve seen her over the years. Hundreds of people in history too, including saints, and why would a saint lie?
Well, she’s very shy, but keep your eyes open and you never know.
Well I haven’t myself yet, but there’s always today, eh?
Aye, it’s a very mysterious place, you never know your luck.
Aye, of course you can, on you go. Is it running? Okay? Welcome to the Highlands, and to the Bonnie Prince, the chief Highland Cruises cruiser. This is Loch Ness, the home of the monster, and it’s Thursday the twenty-first of June. Will that do? Gemma. McKinlay. McKinlay. It is, actually; it’s related to the Buchanans, and apparently they’re maybe the oldest, the first, clan society in the whole of Scottish history. Uh huh, of course, I think a kind of a yellowy red one, and there’s blue and green in it too. I know! No, my holiday job. College. Ha ha, well, you know, actually there is such a thing, I’m not going to be studying it myself, like, but there are people who study the loch all the time, and you know apparently the loch floor, the soil down there, like right at the very bottom, the deepest parts, it’s very deep, the loch, and the soil from it is really rich with nematodes that they can’t find a match for anywhere else in the world or in the history of nematodes. Nematodes. Eh, I don’t know how. En ee em eh tee oh dee ee es? I think. Ha ha, probably! That’ll be right! All the best! Eh, Gemma. Gee ee double em eh. Like Emma but with a G. No, no, don’t be daft, I’m not needing any –. Aw. Are you sure? Well, thank you, it’s really awful nice of you. Thanks again. Och no. Have a good holiday. See you later. All the best.
Of course there is. No question. It’s a very mysterious place. People, scientists, have actually seen things on echo-sounders that they can’t identify or anything. Uh huh, down the stairs on the lower deck, a range of hot snacks, light refreshments and we also have a licensed bar.
Well I haven’t myself yet. But there’s always today, eh?
Course I do. Course there is. Well, I haven’t myself, but I know she’s there, and you never know, today might be the day, it’s a beautiful day for it, eh?
Beautiful. She is stuck on the boat for another four hours, stuck behind here till they all get back on the boat, free admission to the castle included on their cruise ticket then Highland Cruises charge the stupid fuckers another fifteen quid for a ticket back on the boat again if they don’t want to take the bus, and there’s going to be nothing but complaining all the way home about how there’s no soft drinks and how it’s lunchtime and there’s only crisps left, and she will be stuck behind here taking the complaints all the way back to the canal bridge.
The German woman is on her back with her eyes closed on the bench. Gemma knows she is German because she was speaking German when she came down the stairs holding her head, and her Loch Ness leaflet, on the floor, Gemma will have to pick it up later with all the other stuff that gets dropped on the floor, is in German. The girl reading the book by the door is something else, Gemma doesn’t know what, her clothes look expensive, she is pretty, handsome almost, dark and continental-looking, from somewhere else, somewhere that’s always warm, and she is not the least bit interested in the loch or the trees or the castle or the monster or any of it, she’s been down here by herself reading that book since the boat left. She looks like she’s reading it backwards. She looks about the same age as Gemma. Why would you go on a cruise of Loch Ness, why would you buy a ticket for it, if you didn’t want to see the things you were supposed to see on the cruise? That girl is not in the least interested in the fact that she’s free to choose to read a book in the dark on the sunniest day there has ever been in the whole of Highland history while other people are stuck down here for four more hours of missed perfect sun and the Cokes practically all gone as early as Dochgarroch this morning and the mineral waters sold out, and fuckers really like to buy water, and the hot snacks finished and she’s very low on spirits.
But in ten and a half weeks’ time she will be studying what images mean and how they mean in contemporary culture as it says in the prospectus.
She will be living in a big city she has only been to twice before. Nobody will know who she is. Nobody will care what she does. She will not be anywhere near this beautiful (she wouldn’t be Scottish if she didn’t) place she is so proud of, nowhere near this boat, the boring beautiful trees, the endless queues of people from other places all looking at the boring beautiful water. She will not have anyone telling her when she’s allowed in the sun and when she isn’t, or anyone breathing down her neck every time she goes into the stock cupboard at the office, pushing in behind her looking for what he can get then when he doesn’t get it watching her like he’s making sure she’s not taking anything out of there that’s not hers, reminding her who owns the boat, who’s paying her wages, and on a beauty of a day like it is today she will be free to go home after classes, or whatever it is the shape of the days in the new place will be, and there’ll be nothing on her back, nobody else she has to be watching out for or worried about. The lady over the road whose niece teaches at the school stopped her in the street and told her, on the quiet on her way home from work yesterday, that Jasmine is telling people at the school, and not just any old people but her guidance teacher, that their parents drowned, it was in a speedboat accident apparently. When she got home last night Jasmine was out. She was still out after midnight, and this morning Kimberley was asleep. In ten and a half weeks Kimberley will have to be the one who worries about twelve-year-olds being out after midnight and wherever the hell they are, because she herself will be somewhere else, elsewhere, far from here, finding out what images mean and why they are important.
Imagine if, after all, they actually were in a speedboat that overturned and threw the both of them flailing across a stretch of water, and down they went into the dark of it. That would be almost nice. It is quite inspired of Jasmine really. At least you would know where they were. At least you could look at the surface of the water and know that this was where they’d gone down. At least they would be dead and it would mean something, instead of just living somewhere else with other people they’re having sex with. She imagines them in their best clothes, light holiday clothes, and they have a camera, like every other fucker, and they’re filming the future come speeding towards them from behind what seems the safety of the windshield of the speedboat, and the nose of the boat is up as it cuts the loch, and it’s the moment before it curves too fast and the front rises and rises in the air until it flips itself over like an omelette, or a pancake, which is something she remembers her mother making one time when they came home from school, on the Tuesday in spring you are supposed to have the pancakes on. She imagines the two of them standing awkwardly together like in the old wedding photographs, just standing with each other in the same space, and now their clothes are dated, but even so, it doesn’t matter, and even a fast-moving engine-vibrating doomed petrol-explosion of a space, a space that is any second about to overturn, is a good option. Then both of them are shooting through the air, their arms and legs waving about, his silver-ribbed watch glinting as it flashes past on his hairy wrist, her sudden panic about what will happen to her hair when she hits the water, then if someone presses the button they can be paused like a freeze-frame on the video machine, held in air the moment before they disappear, and her and her sisters watching it not happen on the TV in the background as they sit round the table eating the pancakes with sugar on them and lemon, and a lemon was exotic, something they hardly ever had in the house, and Jasmine was only a tiny baby then and she herself was so small that the half-lemon, she remembers, was huge in her hand.