“Um, yes. Sort of,” Anderson admitted. He plastered on a nervous smile and gestured to the empty chairs beside Shona and Logan. “Should we take a seat? People are staring.”
“Let them bloody stare!” Maddie snapped, but then she sighed, pulled out the chair next to Shona, and placed it at the end of the table as far from Logan as it was possible to be.
“Drinks!” Shona exclaimed, rocketing up onto her feet. She met Anderson’s eye and they both nodded enthusiastically. “We should get drinks!”
“Good idea,” Anderson said. “I’ll just… We’ll just…” Hesitantly, he bent and placed a kiss on Maddie’s cheek, then went scurrying into the cafe, hot on Shona’s heels.
The double doors swung closed. Logan regarded them in silence for a few moments, before finally giving his verdict.
“What a pair of conniving bastards.”
His daughter scowled. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t,” Logan insisted. “First I heard about coming to Largs was last night. First I knew you were going to be here was when you came up the steps.”
Along the table, Maddie folded her arms and gave the briefest roll of her eyes. She didn’t believe him. She didn’t trust him.
And who could blame her, after everything he’d done?
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see you,” he ventured. “You’re looking well.”
“You’ve got fatter,” Maddie replied, and there was a real sting to it, like the words had been meant to hurt.
“Aye. Well. You should’ve seen me a year ago.” He picked up his spoon, swirled his ice cream around in the bowl for a few moments, then set it back down again with a clink. “Congratulations, by the way. On the wedding. I sent texts, but I don’t know if you got them.”
“I got them fine.”
“Right. Right, aye. Good.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Anderson Crawford.”
“What about it?”
“Nothing. Just, you know, that last name as a first name thing. Never been a fan of that.”
“Jack can be a surname, and Logan can be a first name, too,” Maddie pointed out.
“Aye, fair enough,” Logan conceded, but he couldn’t just leave it there. “It’s no’ the same though, is it? I mean, Anderson Crawford. Anderson. Who calls their child ‘Anderson’?”
“His parents. And you know what else they did?” Maddie asked, spitting the words out like they were poisonous. “Supported him. Were there for him. Didn’t let him down.”
“Right…”
“And not once—not once—did they use him as bait to lure out a serial killer. Nice of them, eh?”
“You weren’t bait,” Logan said, though there was no conviction to it. “I mean, not exactly.”
She shimmied her chair back even further from the table. “You’re unbelievable,” she muttered.
“Look, last name for a first name or not, he seems…” Logan gestured at the door that Anderson and Shona had gone through, grasping for the perfect descriptor.
“What?” Maddie asked. “He seems what?”
“Nice enough,” was what Logan settled on, which didn’t impress his daughter one bit.
“He’s not ‘nice enough.’ He’s lovely. He’s kind. He’s thoughtful. He’s there when he says he’ll be there. He doesn’t lie, or keep secrets—”
“Apart from this one,” Logan pointed out, and he looked pleased with his little victory. “He kept this one from you.”
Maddie crossed her arms and sat back so hard the chair gave a little squeal of complaint. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“This wasn’t me,” Logan insisted. “I had no idea. About this. Any of it. I thought you were in London. Your, eh, your mum says that’s where you’re living now.”
Maddie gave a sulky shrug of her shoulders, neither confirming nor denying this.
“What’s that like?” Logan asked. “Is it no’ full of, you know, Londoners?”
“We’re outside London,” Maddie said. She shifted in her seat. “But yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“It’s full of twats.”
“I didn’t say ‘twats.’ I said ‘Londoners.’”
Maddie shrugged again. “Same thing.”
Logan chuckled. Down on the ground, Taggart raised a paw and put it on his knee, reminding him he was under there, and that the ice cream appeared to be going spare.
“You got a dog,” Maddie stated.
“Aye. I mean, no. I mean, sort of,” Logan said. “Not by choice.”
“You never let me get a dog,” his daughter reminded him. “No matter how much I asked. Too much hassle, you always said.”
“And I was right. He’s a bloody nightmare.” An idea struck him and he perked up in his seat. “You want him? You can take him home with you, if you like. All his stuff’s in the car.”
“No. You’re alright.”
“When I say he’s a nightmare, that’s an exaggeration, he’s actually very easy to care for. He’d fit right in. You’d get on like a house on fire,” Logan said, really trying to close the deal. “He’s very low maintenance.”
“We live in a flat, and we’re both out all day,” Maddie said. “It wouldn’t be fair.” She glanced under the table. “Anyway, he looks a bit daft.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” Logan said, leaning back so he could get a better look at the animal. “I just think he looks like a dug. They all look daft.”
“Lassie didn’t look daft,” Maddie pointed out.
“True,” Logan conceded. He looked down at the dog’s lolling tongue and uneven ears. “Not sure I’d trust this bugger to get me out of a well, right enough.”
“What’s his name?” Maddie asked.
“Taggart.”
She laughed at that—a dry noise at the back of the throat. “Aye,” she said. “Of course it is.”
“One of the guys I work with—Ben, you remember Ben?”
“Of course.”
“He reckons he’s gay.”
Maddie frowned. “Ben reckons he’s gay?”
“Aye.”
The lines on Maddie’s brow deepened as she thought this through. “But he was married to Alice for years.”
“What? No, not… Ben’s no’ gay. He thinks the dug’s gay.”
“Ben thinks the dog’s gay?” Maddie said, incredulously.
“Aye.”
“And is it?”
“That’s no’ really any of my business,” Logan reasoned.
“I suppose not,” Maddie agreed. She reached under the table and patted Taggart on the back of his head. He turned immediately, tail wagging, and scrambled gracelessly up into her lap, making a meal of trying to lick her face.
“He likes you,” Logan said.
“I’m not bloody taking him. You can get that idea right out of your head,” Maddie replied.
Logan watched her with the dog for a while, then voiced the thought that had been in his head since he’d found out she was married.
“I would have come.”
Maddie looked up from Taggart. “Sorry?”
“To the wedding. I wouldn’t have let you down. If you’d invited me, I would’ve been there.”
“You think I didn’t invite you because I thought you might not turn up?”
Logan nodded. “Aye. Because I know that in the past I’ve—”
“That’s not why I didn’t invite you,” Maddie said.
Logan blinked. “Oh. Isn’t it?”
“No!”