Blood Lines. Grace Monroe

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter Two

      ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but you’ve achieved in months what no man has done for the past two hundred years – you’ve united the Bar. Unfortunately, it’s against you.’

      Lord MacGregor, my newly found grandad, was sputtering his words out. I was still coming to terms with things. Until recently, I had thought of another woman as mother, another man as father – albeit an absent one – and didn’t think I had a grandad to call my own. It was a lot to take in – on top of that came the spectacle of the man who was universally recognised as one of the greatest legal minds to ever come out of Scotland lying half-naked on a table in front of me. Behind him, the masseur gave a deep-tissue massage to help loosen the old man’s blue-veined limbs, which were becoming knotted with arthritis. I didn’t want to imagine the conversations Malcolm, my mother’s gay personal dresser/masseur friend, could be having with the pillar of the legal community when I wasn’t there. What could they possibly have in common? Apart from a genuine admiration of Kailash Coutts, I couldn’t come up with anything.

      I shook myself out of my reverie.

      ‘Have you finished yet?’

      ‘You’ll know exactly when I’ve finished with you, young lady.’

      This was something else I was having to get used to. To him, I wasn’t kicking thirty now, nor did I have a career of my own – I was just the wee lassie who needed to be kept in line.

      It irked and delighted me at the same time. His face was turning puce, whether from temper or the pain of the massage, I couldn’t tell.

      ‘Grandad, I was speaking to Malcolm.’ It still felt weird that, a year ago, I had virtually no family to speak of, and now, here I was calling one of the most important and influential men in Scotland ‘grandad’.

      ‘Five minutes, Brodie. I told Lord MacGregor that if he cancelled this appointment, I couldn’t fit him in for another ten days. I’m very busy with colonics these days, you know.’

      ‘If you’d arrived when you were supposed to, Brodie,’ started my grandad again, ‘I’d have met you with my breeks on. But that’s the state of Edinburgh today – I can’t get help with my arthritis for the citizens of Edinburgh wanting the shit washed out of them. More money than sense. In my day we went to the toilet ourselves.’

      Malcolm rolled his eyes dramatically. As usual, he was immaculately turned out in purple and green tartan trews. His black patent dress brogues twinkled beneath the massage table as he pushed and pummelled my grandad. The scent of warm lavender oil filled the air. Pig farmers have been known to use that essential oil to stop sows eating their young – but it wasn’t working on my grandad and his savaging continued.

      ‘Kailash? Kailash? Where are you, girl?’

      Lord MacGregor looked like an old tortoise without a shell as he craned his neck upwards to shout for my birth mother.

      Malcolm pushed his client’s head down onto the table. Lord or not, Malcolm would allow no one to be harsh with Kailash.

      ‘She’s making some tea. It’s no good getting yourself all hot and bothered – you only make your blood pressure go sky-high.’

      Malcolm was from Inverness via San Francisco. His curious lilt soothed the belligerent old man in front of him; either that or it was the vision of loveliness that kicked open the door carrying a butler’s tray of steaming cups.

      Kailash floated in, dressed in soft white linen. Her black hair rippled around her shoulders. It was obviously freshly washed, whereas mine felt itchy and I fought the urge to scratch the crown of my head until her back was turned. To make things worse, the smell of Malcolm’s unguents and potions were bringing on my hangover again. Seriously dehydrated, I almost snatched the mug of steaming tea from Kailash’s beautifully French-manicured hands. Rats were chewing at the base of my skull and I gingerly reached out to find a seat.

      ‘Are you still on that diet?’ Kailash queried.

      ‘I didn’t know I was on one,’ I answered.

      ‘I could have sworn last time we spoke you mentioned something.’

      I knew what she was doing. Her underhand tactics weren’t going to work on me, but maybe I could lay off the booze for a couple of days. Or months. In truth, I was quite impressed that she had managed to cotton on so quickly to that mother’s way of hiding insults behind innocent comments. I bit my bottom lip.

      ‘Show it to her, Kailash,’ interrupted my grandad. ‘I don’t think she’s seen it.’

      Kailash reached down to a chair and picked up today’s paper. They had all paused their various activities to look at me. I sensed that it was going to be news best taken standing so I feigned disinterest and moved over to stare out of the window.

      Kailash’s voice was slow and warm. I tried to listen with half an ear, sure that that the words she spoke were not going to be good. I stared out of the windows in Ramsay Gardens and watched the people scurrying below in Princes Street. I loved my grandad’s flat. There wasn’t a garden but the place snuggled in deep beside Edinburgh Castle. Built before planning regulation, it was a delightful hodge-podge СКАЧАТЬ