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Harvey Nicks. Three hundred and fifty pounds I’d paid in the pre-Xmas sale, and now it looked like a window rag. The phone had stopped ringing. I surveyed the bombsite that was my room. My flatmate (and assistant) Louisa had called me Scrooge and then insisted on setting up a fibre-optic Christmas tree; its garish colours threw a macabre glow on the scene and didn’t add anything remotely positive.
    Stumbling across to the dressing table I picked up a photograph. Why hadn’t I just thrown it out? The frame was a plastic snow dome; in the centre of the snowstorm Glasgow Joe had a huge grin on his face as he held me in a bear hug. He smiled like a prizewinner. We were on top of the Empire State building – I should have guessed what was coming when he took me there seven months ago. Bizarrely, Glasgow Joe adores the film Sleepless in Seattle .
    Naturally, he’d taken me there to propose.
    Again.
    Being reasonably sane, I said no – on reflection, I did more than just say ‘no’. My exact reply went something along the lines of ‘when Hell freezes over.’ On the picture, I traced the contours of his face with my finger. It was the closest I had intended to get to the real thing, no matter how much Lavender pushed and shoved. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Joe, or even, God help me, not love him in that way. There were bigger problems this time – Joe wanted a baby. If there was one thing I knew, it was that there was bad blood in me, and that bloodline needed to stop when my candle snuffed.
    It wasn’t just the need for a baby that had changed him in the past year or so. Joe’s paternal streak had been manageable until he met Connie – then he’d fallen hook, line and sinker. Nothing but the best for Connie. He was reliving our childhood, except that now he had money. Eddie and Joe had stepped in to manage the football team when none of the fathers would do it, and there was constant bullying until Lothian and St Clair provided the strips. Naturally, Connie had wanted to be sponsored by Joe’s pub, the Rag Doll, but Joe and Eddie didn’t feel that gave ‘their girls’ the appropriate image.
    The phone started to ring again. Whoever was calling was bloody persistent. Normally it would be annoying, but tonight I needed the diversion.
    I knew who it would be. When Lavender got engaged she insisted I employ him full time. He needed a regular wage and I – apparently – needed to get a life. Now that I had someone to share the custodies with, I wasn’t on call 24/7. In fact, Eddie did more than his fair share, and, as Lavender made up the work rota, it meant one of two things – either she had gone off Eddie and wanted him out of the house as often as possible or, alternatively, she wanted me to make Eddie a partner. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which one she was angling for. Which was just as well, because by the time I reached the telephone my head was beginning to thud.
    ‘Brodie?’
    It was a voice I knew well. My heart sank. Trouble was in the offing. No one makes social calls past midnight. I’d expected St Leonards police station, the central holding station for the city, and I’d got Malcolm. I didn’t bother to ask him what it was; he was hysterical and not in a mood to listen, preferring to blurt everything out. ‘Derek’s been arrested and it’s all my fault,’ he gasped through tears. Dismal Derek is Malcolm’s partner. At fifteen years his junior, and although no spring chicken himself, Derek has played Malcolm for a fool. I doubted very much that Malcolm was to blame for Derek’s incarceration. Another thing I knew for sure was the last lawyer Derek would ask for would be me.
    ‘What happened?’ I asked, thankful he couldn’t see me rolling my eyes, and almost smiling at the irony that all calls would lead to St Leonards after all.
    ‘We had a tiff.’ Malcolm sounded embarrassed, which was just as well because I suspected he was underplaying what had gone on. He knew my