— Keep it down, Euan shushes him, as he hears the toilet flush from a bathroom upstairs.
Simon nods and drops his voice. — So muggins here kept dutifully slamming it up her, with, I hasten to add, increasing reluctance. In her defence it has to be said that she’s a terrific ride, though I have to take some credit for that: she flourished under my selfless tutelage. Then, when she vanished over a decade ago, I thought: good riddance. But I genuinely hoped she had found happiness. He says the word in a French accent, making it sound like a penis. — But no, the dopey prick who took her on board, he’s seen the light. Voilà, she’s back in my face, hassling me by text, castigating me for chasing minge that is a) younger, and b) not her. He shrugs. — So what about you, did you give her the message?
— Don’t be ridiculous, Euan splutters. Whoever had used the upstairs bathroom seemed to go back to bed. — I went to her place to compose myself and let that MDMA you gave me wear off. Thankfully, Carlotta was fast asleep when I got in. She wasn’t charmed when she briefly stirred this morning, but she was, in her words, ‘glad we’d bonded’.
Suddenly there is activity. Ross comes down the stairs, with Ben following. — Here’s the gadges! Simon announces. – Merry Christmas, you handsome young bucks! A pair of heartbreakers, huh, Euan? That vintage Italian-Scots genetic and cultural combination: it devastates the girls. Leaves them senseless, heaving wreckages.
His son and nephew look at him, both deeply embarrassed by his proclamation, and each more than a little doubtful.
— Anyway, I’m going to check out some morning telly, Simon declares. — In fact I’m not going to move from that couch until it’s time for my Christmas dinner. This is breakfast, and he unwraps the gold foil and bites the ear off a Lindt chocolate teddy bear, pointing to the heart on its chest. – Take that, ya Jambo bastard, and he decants to the living room.
Carlotta comes downstairs and starts on the meal preparations. Euan wants to help but his wife insists she has it all planned and that he should sit down with Simon and the boys and watch TV. Ross and Ben are less than enthralled at the prospect and retreat upstairs, while Euan complies, to find Simon enjoying an Innis & Gunn lager with the chocolate teddy, watching a rerun of White Christmas.
— A little early, Euan says, looking at the tin of beer.
— It’s Christmas, for fuck sake. And this lager is amazing. Who would have thought that the Scots could produce the best lager in the world? It’s what I would imagine Sleeping Beauty’s sweet douched-out fanny to taste like!
This extreme sexualisation of everything, Euan ponders, does he ever stop? Then he considers that it might not be a bad idea to have a couple of beers. Still woozy from the MDMA, they might provide a covering excuse for his lassitude. Fortunately, Carlotta seems too caught up in the Christmas dinner preparations to notice. Euan can hear his wife singing, the Eurythmics ‘Thorn in My Side’, melodic and sweet. He feels his heart swelling in his chest.
His mother-in-law and sister-in-law arrive, with Louisa’s husband and three children, all between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four. The house is busy and presents are swapped and unwrapped. Ross and Ben receive identical PS4s, and immediately head upstairs to download a favoured game from the Internet.
The Innis & Gunn lager is settling nicely into Euan, producing a satisfying, mellow cheer. He vaguely thinks something is off-kilter about his son as Ross suddenly reappears in the hallway, cornering Carlotta as she goes into the kitchen, urging his busy mother to follow him upstairs.
He cranes his neck over the back of the settee to watch them and is about to speak, when Simon shakes his arm, and mother and son ascend the stairs behind them. — I love this bit when Crosby makes that speech to Rosemary Clooney about the knight falling off his silver charger… he says, tears welling in his eyes. — That’s the story of my life with women, and he chokes, as if something is breaking in his chest.
Euan observes this in mounting unease. Simon appears to be absolutely genuine in his sentiments. It dawns on him that his brother-in-law is so dangerous to women due to his ability to totally immerse in, and believe, those self-cast fantasy roles.
Eventually, they are shouted through to the dining area at the rear of the kitchen for the meal. Photographs are taken with an air of ceremony. Simon Williamson snaps the family, then, individually, his mother Evita, who looks vacant, Carlotta, Louisa, Gerry and kids, Ben, a sullen Ross, and even Euan. Throughout this process, both Simon and Euan feel a strange tension in the air, but they’re now hungry and looking through mild intoxication’s fug, as they take their seats. Carlotta is whispering urgently to her mother and sister. Mindful of the weight of the Christmas dinner, she has prepared a light starter; small prawn cocktails, with a minimal lemon-based dressing, sit on the table.
Euan sits back appreciatively, and is about to speak, when he sees the tears streaming down his wife’s cheeks. Clutching her mother’s hand, she doesn’t meet his concerned eyes. And Evita is looking daggers right at him. Instinctively, he and Simon glance at each other in puzzlement.
Before Euan can say anything, his son stands up and slaps him hard across the face. — You’re a fuckin dirty old bastard! Ross points at Carlotta. — That’s my mum!
Euan can’t react, or even open his mouth, as his eyes go to his wife. Carlotta is now sobbing in heavy despair, her shoulders shaking. — You should be ashamed of yourself, Louisa screeches at him, as Evita curses in Italian.
The overwhelming sense that the world is crumbling to dust sucks every piece of energy and, indeed, sentience out of Euan.
And then Ross turns on his iPad, holding it up to his shocked father’s face. There he is, yesterday, with that Marianne woman, and they are naked, on her bed, and he is pushing his cock into her lubed-up arsehole, as he strokes her clitoris. She is coaching him through her groans, telling him what to do. And then he looks, in trauma, at his brother-in-law, realising that the words coming out of her mouth are really Simon David Williamson’s.
It flashes through his mind in a storm, as the faces gape in shock and disgust at him: Marianne has emailed him the tape they made. It must have gone to the family iCloud. Ross has accessed it by accident when trying to download the video game for his PlayStation 4. Now they are all watching it, as a family, literally over their Christmas dinner; Euan’s first ever drug-induced infidelity. His sister-in-law and her husband glare in disgust. His mother-in-law is crossing herself. Simon, genuinely shocked, looks at him in a phantom admiration. But in his son and wife, Euan can sense nothing on their shattered and wrecked faces but a deep, uncomprehending betrayal.
Euan McCorkindale can find no words. But he is speaking them, obscenely and deliciously, on the screen, which Ross grips with outstretched arms, firmly, unbendingly, in front of him.
It is Carlotta who finds her voice. — You are fucking out of here. You are fuckin oot ay here right now, and she points to the door.
Euan rises, with his head bowed. He is mortified in the sense of almost turned to actual stone by his shock, beyond even embarrassment. His limbs are heavy and his ears ring, as a rock the size of a black hole fills his stomach and chest cavity. Looking to the door, which seems so far away, he feels himself move towards it. He doesn’t know where he is going and it is only instinct that makes him pick up his coat from its hook in the vestibule, as he leaves his family home, quite possibly forever.