Page 5 of Hex House
He’s barely changed in the years since she’s last seen him, though he’s perhaps a little greyer at the temples. He’s wearing a shabby but well-fitted black blazer over aJawsT-shirt, suggestions of tattoos poking out at the wrists, dark jeans and beat-up leather ankle boots. Behind his heavy-rimmed glasses, his pale eyes glitter. He must be in his fifties now but still manages to appear boyish. Helooks eager, she thinks. There’s something hungry about him. She’s always thought that.
“Hi,” she says stiffly, then hesitates, unsure what to call him. She settles on, “Professor Jameson,” although she never even called him that during her degree.
“Oh god,” he says, laughing too loudly and brushing the back of his neck with his palm. “No need for any of that nonsense. Besides, you graduated, what – five years ago now? Just call me Owen.”
“Four.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I graduated four years ago.”
“Oh! Okay, right.” His laugh contains many notes, like a radio jingle.
From inside the cinema comes a shrill scream. The audience cheers. She pictures them as a single mouth, wide open and laughing.
Owen looks at the door as though he can see through it, and then says, “You weren’t enjoying the film?” Siobhan shakes her head, and he nods in agreement. “It was a bit derivative, I have to say. I expected a bit more subtlety.” When she doesn’t answer, he changes the subject. “So, you’re working here now?” He inclines his head to her burgundy polo, the wordShowroomscrawled in gold font over the right breast pocket. It’s impossible to miss the quirk in his eyebrow.
Siobhan wonders for the first time what she must look like to him, her eyes still blinking from the dark, old eyeliner smudged, a half-empty bottle of cheap wine clutched in her hand. She thinks about putting it back in her bag but doesn’t. Owen looks down at the bottle, then backat her face. He’s still smiling. “Yeah,” she says. She could add that she’s only part-time, but there’s no need to justify herself to this man. He has no personal stake in her; he isn’t someone she needs to impress. She doesn’t really need to impress anyone anymore. That’s a freeing thought. He’s still looking at her and Siobhan hasn’t felt this studied in a while – it makes her feel raw, plucked clean. She maintains eye contact as she brings the wine to her lips and finishes it. She means it as a sort of challenge.Judge away.
Owen shifts a little, boots squeaking, but he keeps his eyes on her. His nostril twitches, like it used to when someone said something he didn’t agree with in class. His idiosyncrasies are returning to her like the lyrics to a song she’d half-forgotten, but they’re out of order and out of context. His throat sounds dry as he says, “Youarestill making films though? Directing?”
“Not really.”
“No?”
Siobhan swallows. Everything suddenly feels too big to say, so she says nothing, hoping he’ll sense her discomfort and drop it. He doesn’t. The silence simmers, stretches, starts to strain.
“I’ve moved on, I guess.” Siobhan pushes herself off the wall and begins to wander down the corridor. After a second, she senses Owen follow her, as she’d suspected he would. In the foyer, Keith is emptying the popcorn machine with his usual focused precision, and the air smells like grease and stale butter. There are a few drinkers at the cinema bar, the word ‘Showroom’ blinking in red neon behind the bottles of spirits, reflecting off their glasses. The cinema styles itself as vintage, which really only meansthe tickets are a bit more expensive than the local chain, and it shows black-and-white films on Sundays. Siobhan’s eyes snag on a smear on the glass of the box office. She’ll have to clean it first thing tomorrow. If she goes home now, the only thing waiting for her between this moment and that one is the hollowness the flat seems to adopt in the dark hours, the way the silence swallows everything. There’s been too much of that, recently. How long before those feelings start to consume a life, how long before they become the axis on which the whole thing turns?
“Do you want to go for a drink?” she asks, turning to Owen.
He blinks then clears his throat, trying to hide his surprise. “A drink?”
She nods. His eyes crease a little and she can see him weighing it up – how inappropriate would it be? How much does he really want to go for a drink with this dishevelled, unpredictable creature in front of him?
“Just one?” Her voice goes instinctively higher as she says it. She shrugs in a way that softens the defensiveness of her crossed arms.
“One drink.” Owen smiles. His hand smooths his hair. “It would be good to hear how you’re getting on.”
He holds the door open for her so that she has to step under his arm, vaguely embarrassed. He smells of aftershave, the clean, simple kind that’s usually expensive. They step out into Edinburgh’s Friday night as it’s flickering into life, the bars beginning to fill and ooze their glow onto the pavement. The city smells faintly of smoke, of petrol, of yeasty malt breezing over from the distilleries. It’s only October, but cold enough already that visiblebreath curls from Siobhan’s mouth as she pulls her hoodie up to her chin.
They walk side by side, a new awkwardness taking shape in the space between their bodies. Siobhan has the acute sensation of being alone with him despite the busyness of the pavement. Her skin prickles in response. They meander along Princes Street and up the Mound, speaking only in stilted snatches, before descending Victoria Street and into the Grassmarket. There’s a more direct route to get where she’s going, but it feels good to walk. Walking gives her a distraction from the images that had sent her running from the cinema screen. Black feathers. Sharp beaks.
Owen gestures to a pub on their right – The Last Drop. “I guess you know why it’s called that?”
Siobhan does. The Grassmarket was where the city did most of its hangings until the late eighteenth century, its flat central square providing a prime viewing location. She’s always had a soft spot for Edinburgh’s filthy history – the body snatchers Burke and Hare, the plague of 1645 that wiped out half the population – so she suspects she probably knows more about The Last Drop than Owen does, but she lets him explain anyway. He veers towards the pub, but she keeps walking, and again, he follows. She wants to choose where they go. She wants to drink where she always drinks. Owen struggles to keep up with her, making polite interjections every few minutes that she doesn’t quite hear. After passing through the Cowgate, the traffic on George IV Bridge rumbling above their heads, they reach Holyrood 9a: an upmarket bar and gastropub that’s far too expensive for Siobhan to frequent as muchas she does. But it’s where she and Theo had come to celebrate her graduation, sitting at a window table and gorging themselves on gourmet burgers and pint after pint of craft beer with racehorse-like names. And so, she finds herself continually drawn back here, to sit at the crowded bar and stare at the window table. It’s always taken.
Without protest, Owen follows her inside. She’s aware of his body behind her – not exactly broad but broader than hers – and remembers the girl from the film, running barefoot through the streets of the Spanish capital, losing her tormentor’s face in a crowd of thousands.
Inside, Holyrood 9a is busy and warm, all dark wood panelling and low light. They manage to grab a spot in a tucked-away nook, opposite a fireplace topped with fat candles, melted wax dripping from the mantel.
“I’ll get this,” Owen says, leaning in close to her. He gives her a conspiratorial smile. “Bottle of wine?”
“Sure.” Siobhan takes her seat in the chocolate-leather booth, watching Owen at the bar. He’s turned to the side so she can see him in profile – the long nose with a bump where his glasses rest, the brow that overhangs his eyes slightly, like cliffs brooding over the sea. He’s still wearing a faint smile, though no one is looking at him. He exudes a self-conscious kind of affability, as if everything about him has been purposefully designed to be non-threatening. He’d taught her Critical Debates module in third year, and she remembers now how he’d never quite been able to control the dynamic of the room. It was just too easy to talk over him.
A few minutes later, Owen returns with the wine – red, French, expensive-looking – and two glasses. He poursthem both a generous measure, the liquid tarry and viscous.
“Are you still teaching?” she asks. It’s disconcerting, somehow, to hear the question come out of her mouth. To remember that she is an adult capable of polite conversation.
