We all live multiple lives, Surtsey thought, play different roles as a daughter, friend, student, lover

Surtsey grabbed a towel off a nail stuck in the wall and dried her face, hair and arms, then dabbed at the front of her dress. She left the shed and went back out into the street, closing the door as quietly as she could. She stood breathing for a few moments, trying to get her heart to slow, then lifted the latch on the back gate and walked through, clattering it shut behind her.

When she turned round, Halima was smiling from the kitchen, already pouring a glass of red wine for her.

“Hey, babes, you’re back early.” Halima handed the wine to Surtsey before she was even through the sliding doors.

Surtsey tried to keep her hand steady as she took it, then had three gulps, almost finishing the glass. Halima smiled. “Date didn’t go well, huh?” Surtsey shook her head. To cover for her and Tom over the last few months she’d sold Halima a line about trying online dating behind Brendan’s back.

Since she and Halima lived and worked together, she needed something to explain her absences, and that was the perfect cover story.

It made Halima into a co-conspirator with Surtsey, gave them a secret they shared, and made sure she wouldn’t ever blurt it out to anyone. Plus she knew Halima wouldn’t judge her.

Simmering

“So who was this ‘catch’?”

“Just a hipster in a folk band. Loved himself.” “His loss.”

Halima wandered over to the stove where a pot of something was simmering. It smelt spicy and sweet and Surtsey felt hungry, then disgusted with her body for carrying on regardless.

“Ready in 10 minutes,” Halima said. “Get yourself settled and we can have a boozy night in.”

She waved her glass, the wine almost spilling over the side. “Drink our troubles away.”

Surtsey finished her wine then filled both of them up from the bottle.

“Sounds great,” she said.

The stainless steel hash pipe seemed to glow as Halima handed it to her. It was the size of a credit card, small bowl at one end, fern leaf engraved along the edge.

It was Halima’s 21st birthday present from her mum and dad.

The Maliks didn’t conform to the strict Muslim parent stereotype, second-generation Scots-pakistani hippies who ran a drop-in centre for troubled teens in Glasgow and grew asparagus and courgettes on their allotment.

The warmth of the pipe in Surtsey’s hand sent a tingle along her fingers. She sparked the lighter, held the flame to the grass in the bowl and took a hit.

The crackle of burning grass and the gas fizzing in the Zippo filled her brain. She felt thirsty and took a careful gulp of Shiraz, then placed her glass down and handed the pipe back.

“I’m wrecked,” Halima giggled.

“Yep.”

The news was on television in the corner of the living room. Surtsey blinked and looked round. All her mum’s stuff still here, despite the fact she didn’t live here any more.

The whitewashed wooden bookshelves full of geo-physics and earth science books, the saggy brown leather sofas, the worn Indonesian rug on the floorboards, the out-of-tune piano against the back wall.

And the Celestron telescope set up in the bay window, pointing at the Inch. Surtsey had used it earlier today before she left for her rendezvous. She stared at it now.

She turned and tried to focus on the photographs lining the mantelpiece.

Her graduation picture in that stupid gown next to a snapshot of Iona taken when she didn’t realise – the only way Louise could catch her younger daughter on camera in the last few years.

Family trip

Then a holiday photo of the three of them squinting into the sun at Pompeii, Louise’s idea of a fun family trip, traipsing around hundreds of mummified people killed by a volcanic explosion.

She tried not to think about Tom on the island. She should’ve found a blanket for him, taken the bedding from the hut, kept him cosy against the wind. “What you thinking about?” Halima said.

Her voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well.

Surtsey took in Halima’s glossy black hair, dark eyes, sly smile. They’d been best friends since freshers’ week six years ago, meeting on a dumb Geosoc pub crawl down Cowgate.

They’d immediately clicked, bunking off halfway and pitching up at some dive on Niddrie Street, an old man’s pub with bright strip lights, stuffed animals on the gantry and empty ashtrays still on the table.

At first they bonded over mockery of the straighter students on the course, but that acerbic fluff gradually gave way to something deeper, a shared understanding of the importance of friendship and family.

Hal was the youngest of six siblings and was forever heading off in a bright sari to some cousin’s wedding or aunt’s birthday, rolling her eyes at the conformity but also revelling in it.

We all live multiple lives, Surtsey thought, play different roles as a daughter, friend, student, lover.

Surtsey remembered that Halima had asked a question.

“Mum,” she said.

“Oh, babes.” Halima reached over and touched Surtsey’s hair.

She ran a finger around the edge of her ear and Surtsey shivered, then she touched Surtsey’s loop earring, a tiny tug that pulled at the lobe.

Now Surtsey really was thinking about her mum. They’d spent three years apart when Surtsey left school, the usual quest for independence.

Surtsey split rent with Halima on a student flat in Sciennes, five minutes from the action of George Square.

But Louise got the diagnosis at the start of Surtsey’s final year and she moved back in to help out, tearful at first but some laughs along the way, Iona storming around as if their mum dying was a personal affront, something she still did.

Anger

Surtsey could understand that anger, God knows she felt it too, but in the end what good did it do?

Six months ago, with Louise deteriorating fast, they managed to get a place in the hospice five minutes up the road.

Surtsey didn’t have it in her to keep changing grown-up nappies, cleaning up sick and helping her mum to the toilet. Louise hated all that too, ashamed of being babied by her own daughter.

Through all this, Iona kept stomping around, refusing to accept, a human storm cloud rumbling through life.

So this house was Surtsey and Iona’s home now, and Halima was here too having moved in partly to keep Surtsey company, partly because it was rent free.

Louise was never coming home, that was the truth. The only way she was leaving the hospice was in a wooden box. Surtsey felt sick thinking about it.

More tomorrow.