Chapter 2: One Bed, Several Whiskies
Your mother hugged him before she hugged you.
You watched it happen in slow motion: Soap stepping off the train with your suitcase in one hand and his kit bag over his shoulder, opening his mouth to say hello, and your mother simply walking into him and wrapping her arms around his ribs. He froze for half a second, the way men like him freeze when they're touched by surprise, and then he put the bags down and hugged her back, properly, both arms, the way you'd seen him hug no one ever.
"Mrs Campbell," he said over her head, in a voice you'd never heard from him, warm and slightly cracked. "It's grand to meet you."
"Oh, call me Fiona." She pulled back to look at him, and her eyes went straight to the mohawk, and stayed there. "You're not an accountant."
"No, Fiona."
"You're a soldier."
"Aye." He didn't look at you. "Changed careers. Your daughter put my leg back together, and I'm no' the sort to let a good woman go."
Your mother looked at him for a long, long moment. Then she looked at you. Then she grabbed your left hand, saw the ring, and burst into tears on the platform at Pitlochry, and Soap caught your eye over her shoulder and mouthed, very clearly, told you.
By dinner, he'd met everyone. You'd forgotten how many everyone was.
The hotel sat right on the loch, a long white Victorian building with a conservatory full of wicker chairs, and your family had taken over all of it for the weekend. There was your sister Kirsty, who was marrying a nice, worried man named Euan and had the eyes of someone who'd been planning this since February and would kill anyone who ruined it. There were Euan's parents. There were three of your aunts, all of whom asked Soap to stand up so they could see how tall he was, and then looked faintly disappointed, and then forgave him once he made them laugh. There were cousins. There were small cousins, who discovered within minutes that he could do a convincing helicopter noise and could not be stopped.
There was your gran, who sat at the end of the conservatory in a high-backed chair like a minor monarch and watched him the way a heron watches a burn.
And there was Graham, who stood by the bar in a gilet with his arm round a tall, glossy woman you assumed must be Saffron, and who looked across the room at Soap with exactly the expression you'd hoped for when you'd lied to your mother six months ago. Now that you were getting it, it felt less satisfying than you'd expected. Mostly you felt Soap's hand, warm and steady at the small of your back. Rule one, technically. Above the waist.
"Which one's the ex?" he murmured.
"Gilet."
"Ah." A pause. "Is that a gilet he's wearing at a rehearsal dinner?"
"Yes."
"Over a shirt and tie?"
"Yes."
"You dated that for four years?" He sounded honestly baffled. "Hen. You deserve so much better than a man who wears a fleece waistcoat to a do."
"You're wearing a kilt to a rehearsal dinner."
"That's tradition. That's culture." He was. He'd come down the stairs in it twenty minutes ago, and you had been completely unprepared: the deep red of the MacTavish tartan, a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, thick socks, brogues, the sgian-dubh tucked into the sock, and his forearms. You were a physiotherapist. You had seen a lot of forearms. You'd had to sit down. "That," he said, nodding at Graham, "is a crime."
The trial came after dinner. It always did.
Your father didn't say much to anyone. He'd been a quiet man your whole life, a retired surveyor who loved three things: your mother, Partick Thistle and single malt. When the plates had been cleared he stood up, nodded at Soap, and walked out to the hotel bar, and every Campbell at the table went quiet, because they knew what that meant.
"Should I go?" Soap whispered.
"You have to go," Kirsty whispered back, across you. "He did it to Euan. Euan was sick in a plant pot."
Soap squared his shoulders, adjusted his sporran, and went.
You lasted four minutes before you followed. You stood in the shadowed doorway of the bar and watched your father line up three unlabelled tasting glasses on the counter, each with a finger of amber in it, and push the first one across.
Soap smelled it. Sipped it. Held it in his mouth for a second.
"Speyside," he said. "Sherry cask. Bit of age on it. Fifteen, eighteen year?"
Your father said nothing. He pushed the second glass across.
Soap sipped. Thought. "Highland. Lighter. Honey and heather. Lovely, that. Is it local?"
The faintest motion of your father's head. Yes.
The third glass. Soap barely got it to his lips before he recoiled.
"Och, that's an Islay," he said. "That's a peat bog in a glass. That's a Laphroaig or I'm a Sassenach." He set it down. "Sorry, Mr Campbell. I can't stand the stuff. Tastes like a hospital fire."
The silence that followed was very long. You held your breath.
Then your father picked up the third glass, drank it in one, set it down, and said, in the longest sentence you'd heard him speak in a year: "Thank God. Neither can I. Fiona's brother brings it every Christmas and I've been pouring it in the bin for twenty years."
He held out his hand. Soap shook it. Your father poured them both a large measure of the second glass, and as you slipped away from the doorway you heard him say, "Now. What's all this about the army, son?"
The room had one bed.
You'd known. You'd booked it six months ago for you and a man who didn't exist, and when Soap had asked about sleeping arrangements on the train you'd said, airily, "Oh, it'll be twins," and prayed. It was not twins. It was a high, old-fashioned double with a tartan throw, a window looking out over the black water of the loch, and nothing else to sleep on but the floor and an armchair the size of a footstool.
"I'll take the floor," Soap said immediately.
"Your hamstring..."
"I've slept in a ditch in Urzikstan with a goat on my chest. A hotel carpet's the Ritz." He was already pulling a spare blanket from the wardrobe. "Rule one. Nothing below the waist. I'm a man of my word."
You lay in the big bed in the dark and listened to him trying to get comfortable on the floor. He wasn't quiet about it. There was a lot of rustling and a muffled curse when he kicked the leg of the armchair.
"Johnny."
"Aye?"
"Why did you really offer?"
The rustling stopped. Outside, the loch made a soft sound against the shore.
"Told you. Bored."
"You told my dad about your mum," you said. "At the bar. I heard."
A long silence.
"My mam died when I was in basic training," Soap said eventually. His voice came up out of the dark, quieter than you'd ever heard it. "My da and I don't really talk. There's an auntie in Stirling who sends me a card at Christmas and that's about the size of it. And I'm good at my job, I'm good at it, and I've got lads who'd walk through fire for me, and I'd do the same. But it's no'..." He stopped. "It's no' this. A big daft family that hugs you on a train platform. A gran who knits scarves for a man she's never met." You heard him swallow. "You were on the phone with your mum that day, going on about the venison, and I thought: I'd give a lot to get one weekend of that. Even pretend."
You lay there with your heart in your throat.
Then you shifted over to the far edge of the mattress, pulled the duvet back on the empty side, and said, "Get in the bed, MacTavish."
"Rule one..."
"There's a whole mattress. Stay on your side and nothing will be below anyone's waist. Your hamstring needs support. That's a clinical recommendation."
A pause. Then the floor creaked, the mattress dipped under a lot of weight, and he lay down very carefully on the extreme edge of the bed with his back to you, like a man lying down beside a sleeping bear.
"Night, hen," he said.
"Night, Johnny."
You fell asleep listening to him breathe. At some point in the night you woke, and you were not on your side of the bed anymore, and neither was he. His arm was heavy across your waist (above it, technically) and his breath was warm against the back of your neck, and you lay there not moving for what felt like an hour, being very careful not to let yourself think anything at all.
Kirsty knocked at half seven.
You stumbled to the door in your pyjamas while Soap leapt out of bed like it was on fire, and your sister pushed past you into the room with her hair in rollers, a garment bag over one arm, and a folded square of paper in her other hand.
"This fell out of your fiancé's wallet at the bar last night," she said, very calmly. "Dad found it. Dad gave it to me, because Dad is a coward." She unfolded it. It was a page from a prescription pad. "Rule four," Kirsty read aloud. "No kissing unless strictly tactically necessary."
She looked up.
"Care to explain," said your sister, on the morning of her wedding, "what's tactically necessary about my maid of honour's engagement?"