Last Night: The best romcom of 2021: romantic, heart-breaking and laugh-out-loud funny by Mhairi McFarlane

Author:Mhairi McFarlane [McFarlane, Mhairi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008169534
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-03-31T18:30:00+00:00

22

I’m not fully sure if Iain Hart wants or needs my calling round, but I absolutely can’t not do it, so I’m glad he seems to receive my visits with pleasure, albeit with a slight air of courteous bafflement. I make a peculiar busybody, but so far he’s not busy enough himself to mind.

Once a week I turn up on his doorstep, usually with biscuits – having usefully discovered Mr Hart is a biscuit fiend – announce I was ‘in the area’ and ask if he ‘needs anything’. We have a cup of tea, a chat about this and that, and I reassure myself he seems safe and well enough to keep buggering on.

Today he seems edgier than usual, forgetting to eat his plain chocolate Digestives, wanting to tell me about the professional hierarchies at his long-since-sold company. I get the feeling he has a nagging sense of leaving things unattended, but isn’t able to articulate what or how. Up until now, his dementia has seemed quite benign, if sad. Because he’s outwardly so cheerful and functioning, it wasn’t too startling. Now I see more clearly that it’s a living prison.

‘Anyway, I mustn’t run on and bore you,’ he says. ‘You young people have got more exciting things to be doing. I was young once too, haha! Look, here …’

He picks up a picture on the mantelpiece, a 1980s wedding, full of leg-of-mutton sleeves, artificial flower crowns and estate agent suits, and points to himself, more luxuriant in moustache. He has his hand on the head of a small, sombre-faced dark-haired boy, who must be Finlay.

‘That’s my brother Don’s wedding. He lives in Edinburgh. A beautiful city, it’s where I grew up. Have you been?’

‘Once as a kid, but not for ages,’ I say.

‘Oh you should, you should! I should visit Don actually, it’s been too long.’

‘I’m sure he’d like to see you,’ I say, wondering if Don was at the funeral. My only point of introduction would be Finlay, and he was hardly likely to bother. Had Susie told her uncle of her dad’s infirmity? She never spoke about her wider family, even when we were kids, really. If only we’d known we’d need handover notes. If only we’d known lots of things.

I get home with only half an hour to spare before Ed arrives, and find that I can’t eat for nerves. Wine for dinner it is then.

He arrives right on eight, and Roger’s at the door wailing his excitement as Ed steps into the room, the stripy traitor.

I hate that even now, at the sight of him in his cagoule and rain-damp hair, I want him to hug me. You cannot reason with what your senses crave, it seems. Everyone’s a fool for somebody, as my mum says.

‘Alright, Rog, she not been feeding you again? Guess what Uncle Edward brought you!’

He produces Roger’s favourite beef-flavour chew sticks in front of him, and flaps the packet, at which point Roger’s vocal pitch moves from ‘girl at a Bay City Rollers concert’ to ‘actual seizure’.

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