It takes little under half an hour to get there, passing finally through the blue-collar suburb of Oxgangs before turning into the warren of detached villas and bungalows that is Hainburn Park, with its view out beyond the bypass to the green rise of the Pentland Hills. Today they are almost lost in mist.
I have been watching the numbers, and spot the house on our right as we pass it. ‘What number, mate?’ the driver asks.
‘This is it,’ I tell him. ‘Go to the end of the road and turn, then pull in about three houses down.’ I see his eyes flicker towards me in the mirror, but he does as I ask.
When we have pulled in at the side of the road and he cuts his motor, he says, ‘What now?’
‘We wait.’
I sense the driver’s unease, but ignore him and sit gazing out of the window at my house. It is a modern, detached villa with its own drive and what looks like a double garage. Tall wooden gates lead through to the back garden beyond, and I can see trees behind that.
A white Nissan X-Trail is parked in the drive next to a short flight of steps that leads up to a front porch. There are net curtains on the windows of the front room, so it is impossible to see inside. All I want to do is walk up and knock on the front door, but something makes me hesitate. A need, perhaps, for some hint of familiarity, some memory, no matter how distant, as confirmation that this really is where I live. That I really am Neal Maclean.
The driver has opened his window and is smoking, and reading a copy of the Scottish Sun. The windows in the back are starting to steam up, and I lower the one on the pavement side to get a clearer view of the house. Still nothing comes back to me. It all feels like nowhere I have ever been. And yet, why else would I have an extract of birth for Neal David Maclean, with this address written on the back of it?
Even as I am watching, the front door opens, and I tense as a woman steps out. I strain to look at her through the fine drizzle as she skips down the steps and climbs up into the Nissan. I am almost disappointed by her ordinariness. Brown hair streaked blond, not excessively tall. A woman in early middle age. Forty, perhaps, and inclining to plumpness. She wears jeans and a sweater beneath a light summer raincoat which flaps open, and block-heeled sandals. A black bag on a short strap hangs from her left shoulder. She throws it into the car ahead of her as she gets in, then starts to back out into the street.
I rap on the driver’s window. ‘We need to follow her.’
He looks up, taking in the X-Trail, then glances back at me. ‘I hope this is kosher, mate, and you’re not some bloody perv. Cos I don’t want any part of stalking a woman that you’ve got a fancy for.’
‘She’s my wife,’ I tell him emphatically, and an unpleasant smile spreads itself across his face.
‘Oh, I get it. Been a bad girl, has she?’
‘Just follow the car, please.’
His lip curls in annoyance, and for a moment I think he is going to tell me to get out of his cab. But if he was, he reconsiders, and turns to start the motor and accelerate away in pursuit of the white Nissan. It is clear that he does not like me, or this hire, but he’s taken the money, and I am happy that at least he does not try to engage me in meaningless small talk.
She drives to a large shopping centre at Cameron Toll and takes a shopping trolley into Sainsbury’s. We park two rows behind her in the car park and wait.
It is hot and stuffy in the back of the cab and I roll down the window part of the way and lean my head back against the rest, closing my eyes. I am not sure if it is a memory or a dream, or perhaps a mix of both, but I see a woman in blue who looks very familiar to me. If I breathe deeply I can smell her scent, and it takes me tumbling back through time to childhood. Patchouli. I know, without being told, that she is my mother. She has many rings on her fingers, long dark hair held in place by braided lengths from the front of it tied back. Her jeans flare over brown leather boots, and she wears a loose, tie-dyed top. A child of her age, caught in a time-warp from the era of her youth, when the world was still full of hope. She is leaning over me, kissing my forehead, smiling. And just beyond her a man is speaking her name. But somehow I can’t quite catch it.
‘What do you want me to do now?’
I am startled by the driver’s voice, annoyed that the interruption has prevented me from hearing my mother’s name. It had been so close, so tantalisingly just out of reach. I blink and see the woman we have been following, loading bags of shopping into the back of her Nissan. ‘Just keep on her tail.’
We follow her through a maze of streets before finally she pulls up in a parking space outside a row of single-storey suburban shops. My driver draws in on the opposite side of the street and the taxi’s diesel engine sits idling noisily as the woman goes into a hairdressing salon called Coif’n’Cut. Through the window we can see her being greeted by what looks like the owner. There is a kiss on each cheek, laughter, and then the coat and bag are dispensed with before she is led away, beyond our field of vision.
‘Knowing women, she could be in there for a while,’ the driver says. ‘And I canny sit parked here.’
We end up parked in a fifteen-minute meter bay a hundred yards up the road, and I am in and out of the cab feeding it for the next hour and a half. My frustration is growing by the minute, and I can feel my driver’s impatience keeping pace with it.
When eventually she emerges from the hairdresser’s, I can see no difference at all in her hair.
‘Hah,’ the driver grunts, looking in the mirror. ‘Either she snuck out the back to keep some secret rendezvous, or she’s paid a bloody fortune for fuck all.’
Her next stop is at a Costa Coffee, but mercifully she emerges again after a few minutes, sipping a large takeaway cup and slipping back into her Nissan. We follow her to the house, then, and park further down the street to watch her carry her shopping into the house and shut the door.
By now I have had enough. It’s time to confront her. I am about to step out of the cab, when I see a group of schoolgirls approaching from the direction of Oxgangs Road. Three of them. And some instinct makes me stop to watch. They are in school uniform. Teenagers from fifth or sixth year, swinging bags and taking their time as they make their way towards us in animated conversation beneath two umbrellas. At the drive to my house they stop briefly, then one of them detaches herself from the others and runs up the path to open the front door with her own key. She is too far away to see clearly in the rain, and is obscured by her umbrella. Sixteen or seventeen years old, I would have said. Quite a tall girl, but it’s impossible to make out her features.
‘Your kid?’ the driver says.
I nod. ‘Yes.’ And it gives me the strangest feeling to realise that I have a daughter. I check the time and see that it is nearly one o’clock. She must have come home from school for lunch, and will probably leave again in half an hour or so. I decide to wait, to get a better look at her.
‘So we wait again?’
‘Yes.’
The driver sighs extravagantly, then reaches down to his left to retrieve a bag from which he takes a flask and a bag of sandwiches. And I realise how hungry I am myself. I ate very little yesterday, and had no breakfast this morning. So I lay my head back once more against the rest and close my eyes.
Almost immediately, I see myself running alongside a child’s bicycle. A little girl is clutching the grips on the handlebars with whitened knuckles, wobbling as her short legs stretch fully to turn the pedals. ‘Don’t let go, Daddy, don’t let go,’ she shouts, and I realise that I am not holding the bike at all. I open my eyes again, blinking furiously. Karen. I don’t know where it comes from, but that is the name on my lips. I say it out loud. ‘Karen.’ And see the driver looking at me again in his mirror.