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He sits back on his stool, rubs his chin. ‘Your ma’s a pal of Karen’s, you say?’
‘Yes, they were, like, together when I was little.’
‘Hmm, she was a quality lassie, that Karen. You owe your existence to her, son, because no fucker else would have persuaded me to part with my spunk.’ He eyeballs me as he says this.
I pull back, gob-smacked by his bluntness, that he called me ‘son’. Weirdest ever to think that he is my flesh and blood.
‘Aye, Karen.’ He goes back to musing. ‘Maybe it helped that she was a dyke, but she was one of the few pals I’ve ever had.’
‘You met her at work, is it?’ I’m trying to imagine this unlikely happening.
‘She was a receptionist where I worked in Sheffield.’ He pauses, like his brain shifting a gear. ‘I was no more one for people then than I am now. Always on the wrong side of folk. Or they on the wrong side of me.’ He glares, as if I’m about to disagree.
I shift on the bench. ‘A bit different to Karen, then. She’s, like, totally friendly with anyone. It used to embarrass me, as a kid.’
He laughs. ‘About as opposite as you could imagine. But she took no crap, and I liked that. The lads would make some lesbo joke and she’d laugh along with them, then chuck the joke back at them with interest. Make them seem small.’ He scratches his chin again. ‘She took me as I was, stood up for me when I wasn’t popular. Rare thing, that.’ He falls into silence, staring blank at the kettle.
I look out of the window above the bed. It faces right onto the sea and the charcoal outline of the distant mountains.
‘Awesome view!’ God, I sound like an idiot.
‘Aye, I’ve no need of a TV.’
‘What are those mountains on the horizon?’
‘That, my laddie, is the Isle of Skye.’
I feel a tremor at him calling me ‘my laddie’. It’s what guys like him call young men. But he’s also my dad, whatever he says.
Don takes a bottle of whisky, a glass tumbler and a china teacup out of a cupboard.
‘You can tell I’m no’ used to visitors.’ He pours the golden liquid. ‘One whisky glass to my name.’ He smiles at me, with a dimple just like mine.
I swear I can feel my cheek twitch as I beam back at him while he sets the teacup in front of me. Can you believe it? He has my dimple!
I take a sip and run my tongue around the whisky. It’s all caramel smoky, sending a delicious warmth to my guts.
‘Like it?’ He shows me the bottle, ‘Caol Ila forty-year-old. I didnae come to the top end of Scotland to drink Bells.’ He laughs.
‘What made you move here? Apart from the whisky.’
Don pulls his frown lines in. ‘I ran out of room for motorbikes.’ He looks deadpan at me.
‘But you’re from Lochgillan, originally, isn’t it?’
He takes a jolt back, like I’ve said something offensive.
‘It’s just, you said on this…?’ I pull his letter out again.
‘Then you’ll know all about me already.’ He waves the letter away.
‘Oh please. I’m just curious.’ My voice wavers and I’m stupidly close to tears.
He takes a sip of his dram, closes his eyes for a minute while he savours it. I take some breaths, try to keep calm.
Don opens his eyes and nods at me. ‘We moved to Glasgow, where my mother was from, when I was a wean.’ He talks like it’s almost too much effort to explain. ‘My father ran the petrol station up here, but he had grand ideas of making his fortune as a second-hand car dealer in the Big City.’
‘Is that like how you got into motorbikes?’
