The Barra Boy

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Iain Kelly lives in East Kilbride, Scotland. He works as a television editor and is married with two children. He has previously written a trilogy of novels set in the near future: A Justified State (2018), State of Denial (2019) and State of War (2020).

  He has also written for screen.

  For more information visit his website:

  www.iainkellywriting.com

  Follow on Social Media:

  facebook.com/iainkellywriting

  Instagram: @iain_kelly_writing

  Twitter: @IainK_Writing

  LinkedIn: iain-kelly-writing

  By the Same Author

  The State Trilogy

  A Justified State

  State of Denial

  State of War

  First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,

  Harrison Road, Market Harborough,

  Leicestershire. LE16 7UL

  Tel: 0116 2792299

  www.bookguild.co.uk

  Email: info@bookguild.co.uk

  Twitter: @bookguild

  Copyright © 2022 Iain Kelly

  The right of Iain Kelly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.

  ISBN 978 1915352 767

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  For

  Chloe Dawn

  and Caden Daniel

  and Mum

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE EWAN FRASER

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  PART TWO THE BARRA BOY

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  PART THREE LAURA ROBERTSON

  23

  24

  PART ONE

  EWAN FRASER

  1

  Lights flashed and flickered and sparked in the darkness. I stood frozen and motionless and gripped on to the pole and mumbled an apology to the lady I bumped into when the carriage swayed around a bend in the track. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead and drips of moisture ran down my back. A man standing opposite me stared. I tried to breathe inside the mask that covered my mouth and nose and looked at the blank white space above the window.

  Had any of the regular commuters wedged together in the confined space noticed anything? The man standing opposite me turned away. No one seemed to be paying me any particular attention.

  Screeching brakes announced our approach to the next station. It was my stop. I wiped my brow with my sleeve and my briefcase hit the shoulder of the unfortunate lady next to me. I murmured another apology and was met with a cool stare. She noticed the sweat on my skin and inched away from me. The train juddered to a halt and the doors opened. Politeness dictated a shuffling pace as I moved towards the exit. The human cargo disgorged itself onto the crowded platform and battled against travellers coming in the opposite direction, trying to board the carriage. I reached the door and stumbled over the gap onto the platform and stepped aside and steadied myself and found myself leaning against a white tiled wall. I dropped my briefcase and bent over with my hands on my knees and took deep breaths. There was a disapproving tut as someone navigated around me. ‘Stay home,’ they advised. I raised a hand in apology, but they walked on before I could explain it wasn’t the virus.

  Then quiet. Only a few people remained on the platform. A woman wearing a sari glanced at me. I tried to give her a reassuring look before she asked if I was okay. She moved away. I pulled my facemask down and sucked in the fetid air of the underground. I took a handkerchief from the chest pocket of my suit jacket and wiped my brow.

  ***

  The morning had started like any other. I had woken up in the bedroom of my terraced townhouse. Autumn sunshine peeked in through a gap where the curtains met and highlighted dust particles dancing around the room. October had arrived but the final vestiges of summer were still clinging on. I looked out at clear blue skies and the treetops from the park beyond the row of houses were calm and still. I struggled through a twenty-minute run on the treadmill, before eating a slice of toast for breakfast and showering and changing for work. Outside the air was cool and crisp and the sun was warming away the morning frost as I walked along Mortimer Road and passed St Martin’s Church. The leaves on the trees in Kensal Green had started to turn from green to orange and red. Traffic was building as cars filled with commuters embarked on their journeys. The chatter of children on their way to school imbued the day with a welcome lightness that had been missing when the pandemic had interrupted the life of the city. Before reaching the gridlocked junction at the end of Mortimer Road, I slipped my facemask on and turned into the underground station.

  During the lockdowns I had only travelled into the office once or twice a week. There had been fewer passengers during those months. Now the commute was as busy as it had been before the pandemic had reached London. The long summer holidays were over and children were back at school. Shops, banks, factories and museums were open again. Bars, cafés and restaurants were welcoming customers, and office workers were once again making their daily journey into the heart of the city. It felt like a normal Thursday morning. There were still reminders of the last awful year and a half, like the facemasks worn by those standing on the platform in Kensal Green Station. On the train I had to make do with a standing spot instead of a seat as we made our way along the Bakerloo line. By the time we left Paddington, the carriage was overcrowded and people crammed into tight corners and stray scarves and bags were caught in closing doors. There had been some advantages to lockdown. I missed the luxury of a seat and the chance to read a book or a paper on the way into work.

  At each station everyone squeezed along to allow more people onto the train. I ended up in the central aisle between occupied seats on either side. Holding on to a strap that dangled from the ceiling, I stood facing the window as we pulled into Baker Street. There were apologies and polite nudges as those wishing to alight made their way to the doors. I was bumped on both sides and had to turn round to let someone pass. I found myself facing out onto the platform and that was when I saw his face at the window.

  I held my breath. The bustling underground station faded into the background. Forty years drained away and I was looking at that same face on a windswept beach. A boy framed against a backdrop of turquoise sea and golden sand and waves rolling into rocks and beachgrass blowing on top of sand dunes. Now he stood on a train platform in rush-hour London. He had the same mop of dirty-blond hair with a fringe falling forward over blue eyes. Lightly freckled cheeks held on to the last fullness of youth, on the edge of hardening into teenage tautness. He looked st
raight at me. Neither of us turned away. It couldn’t be the same boy. He would be in his early fifties now and those days of childhood were distant memories buried under the depths of time.

  The carriage doors closed and a garbled announcement from the public address speaker broke the spell and the noise of the outside world returned. The underground train staggered forward with a jolt and the boy slipped away. I strained to look back but he was lost in the crowd. The darkness of the tunnel swept over me.

  ***

  I was still on the platform when the next train pulled into the station. I waited until the crowd had passed and then followed them up the escalators and stairways and emerged into the daylight. I walked along Regent Street and turned up Little Argyll Street. Halfway along the narrow lane of terraced sandstone buildings was Argyll House. Holmes & Friend Solicitors occupied the fifth floor of the Georgian building. I took the stairs and was grateful that I met no colleagues on the way to my office. My assistant, Sharon, was not at her desk and I closed my office door behind me and stood leaning against the cold wood. I placed my briefcase on my chair and removed my facemask and coat and loosened my tie. The days of solicitors having a private bar in their office had passed, but a stiff shot of alcohol to steady my nerves was what I needed. Instead all I could do was look out the large window onto the street below and collect my thoughts.

  The offices of the firm’s solicitors, of which I was the longest-serving, were small but pleasant and ran along the side of the building that faced out onto Little Argyll Street. Looking down from the elevated position of the fifth floor, the commuters bustling past looked like a swarm of ants, an army of workers hurrying along. A row of bicycles in racks sat at the front of Argyll House. Occasionally a person would deposit one and someone else would pick one up. On the opposite side of the narrow lane was an identical Georgian townhouse with similar offices. Lisa appeared at her fifth-floor window and waved at me. This was our morning ritual. It had progressed from a shy wave between a solicitor and an accountant to a running joke and eventually a pleasant meeting one morning when we arrived at the same time to start work. One day I may tell her I had deliberately waited on her arrival in order to instigate the meeting. An invitation to morning coffee was accepted and we had now been seeing each other for almost a year. We were both in our early fifties, she widowed with two grown-up children and me a confirmed bachelor. It felt odd to describe Lisa as my girlfriend. We settled on introducing each other as our ‘partner’.

  I returned her wave and smiled. I noticed the flicker of concern. She could tell something was bothering me. Someone entered her office and she turned away. I sat at my desk and took out a sheaf of papers from my briefcase. A moment later my smartphone beeped. It was a text message from Lisa: Everything okay?

  All fine, I typed in reply. Coffee at eleven?

  See you then.

  I put the phone down and began to read the top piece of paper on my desk. It related to the case of Mister Faruq Shah and the settling of his will and estate. Siblings from his first and second marriages were disputing the breakdown of his assets and it needed to be resolved before it got out of hand. I underlined a section in red pen and made a scribbled note or two in the margin. Sharon knocked on the door and entered.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Fraser. Coffee or tea?’

  Sharon had recently taken over as my personal assistant. She had been promoted from the team of clerical staff within the firm to replace Ms Whittaker, who had decided to take retirement after forty years with Holmes & Friend, the last decade of which she had spent as my personal assistant. The settled routine that Ms Whittaker and I had practised for so long was lost, and the youthful Sharon and I had still to establish a working relationship we were both comfortable with.

  ‘Please, Sharon, call me Ewan,’ I repeated, as I had done every morning for the last month. Ms Whittaker and I had always referred to each other by surnames. Ms Whittaker was ten years older than me and had been at the firm longer so the deference to each other seemed appropriate. Sharon was half my age. Every time she referred to me as ‘Mr Fraser’ I felt like a teacher being spoken to by a pupil.

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled. She wore a white blouse above a black pencil skirt and her dark hair was tied in a neat bun. She dressed the same each day, a monochrome professional hiding any clues that might reveal an individual personality. Ms Whittaker had always added a splash of colour to her outfit with a blue scarf or a green brooch or a red belt. I wondered if Sharon saved her personality for her gym wear. She arrived at work from the gym every morning and returned there for another fitness class every evening. The exhaustive effort showed in her figure and it had been that which had inspired me to try and halt my middle-aged spread with a regime of pre-breakfast jogs over the summer and autumn months.

  ‘Tea or coffee this morning?’ she repeated.

  ‘No, thank you, Sharon.’ I had always allowed Ms Whittaker to make my morning coffee. She knew exactly how strong my coffee needed to be first thing in the morning and how to gradually weaken the brew through the day. Sharon belonged to the generation who shunned coffee and caffeine for stimulation and instead relied on water and fruit drinks and exercise and healthy lifestyles. I found it easier to make my own coffee instead of trying to educate Sharon on the finer points.

  ‘You have Sir Peter at ten,’ she informed me. ‘Nothing else for the morning.’

  ‘Right. Thank you.’

  Sharon backed out of the room and closed the door. One day I would be able to break the ice with her but so far I hadn’t found a topic on which we shared any views. With Ms Whittaker it was easy because of our Scottish connection. Although she was from Edinburgh and I was from Glasgow, there was a bond of nationhood between us. Her soft Embra accent was a familiar comfort among the myriad dialects in the urban maelstrom of Central London. It manifested itself most often in our morning observations of the weather: a grey, wet day was ‘dreich’ and if the sun was shining it was ‘braw’. Although I had lost the harsh sounds of the Glaswegian dialect of my youth, we could still slip into our native accents when chatting and return to formal elocution when clients and colleagues arrived. On Sharon’s first day with me, I had arrived soaked from an unexpected downpour. I mentioned how ‘drookit’ I was.

  ‘Pardon?’ Sharon had looked up from her desk.

  ‘Drenched. Soaked through.’ I gestured at my sodden clothing. ‘Drookit.’

  She had turned back to her laptop monitor. ‘We have the first mediation meeting for the Henderson divorce settlement at nine-thirty. I can get a change of clothes for you if you need them.’ I hadn’t tried to introduce her to any more of my native vocabulary since then.

  I had an hour before I was due to meet Sir Peter Holmes and update him on the Shah case. I began to browse through the papers again and the unsettling emotions of the morning commute faded away. I had studied the documents the previous evening at home and knew all the information contained in them, but I liked to be well prepared and it helped to keep my mind off the face of the boy I had seen on the underground. Mr Shah had owned two residences, one a spacious apartment in Central London, the other a large family home in the Kent countryside. I had suggested the family home be left to the children from his second marriage who had largely grown up there. His London apartment could go to the older children from his first marriage. Neither party was happy with this solution and an impasse had been reached. The older siblings wanted to sell both properties and split the proceeds equally, the younger children wanted to remain in the family home and give nothing to their step-siblings. Mediation beckoned.

  After half an hour I leaned back in my chair and pushed my glasses up and pinched the bridge of my nose to release the pressure in the corners of my eyes. I closed my eyes and the unsettling vision from the underground train flashed before them. I felt the stirring of panic and sweat broke out on the back of my neck again. How long had it been since I had last thou
ght of him? How long since I had explored the memories of that summer? It was not the first time I had been reminded of him. It was not the first time I had thought about what had happened and what had become of him, but as the years had rolled by those questions and thoughts had faded. They belonged to a different time and a different life. They were a long-forgotten dream.

  I opened the laptop on my desk. At some point I would have to transfer the notes I had made on the Shah papers into the document on the computer. I opened up the web browser and logged into my Facebook account. In the search bar along the top I typed in ‘Laura Robertson’. A scroll of results appeared. In the social media world the easiest way to hide was to have a name so popular that the list of possible matches was endless. I had no idea if she had a social media presence on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of the newer sites where we all exist now. We came from the generation before the social media boom. There was every chance she had never signed up to any of these platforms. I had no idea if she still had the same surname. I had no idea what she looked like now. I had no idea where she lived or what job she had. I had no information that I could use to narrow the search parameters. I only knew she had lived on the Isle of Barra until she was at least fourteen years old, and that we had spent one summer together there as friends. And that the boy I had seen standing on an underground train platform in London that morning had been there with us.

  I scrolled down the list and looked at the thumbnail photographs of all the Laura Robertsons in the world. Old and young and middle-aged with black hair and blonde hair and brown hair and redheads. They lived in America and Canada and England and Scotland and Ireland and Australia and more. I closed the laptop and sat back in my chair.