The Steep Approach to Garbadale Read Online Free Page B

beard. He smiled at a passing waitress, let himself into the toilets, stood looking at the tall porcelain urinals for a moment and then went into a cubicle, closing the door behind him. He didn’t need to sit down; he didn’t really need to visit the toilet at all. He pulled the letter from his pocket and sat on the seat cover. He read both sides of the closely-written single sheet, squinting in the dim light. He read the letter once straight through, then re-read a couple of sections. After that he just sat there for a while, staring at nothing.
    A little later he shook his head as though pulling himself out of a daydream, stood, put the letter back in his pocket and left. For some reason he flushed the toilet as he did so, and then washed his hands.
    Fielding, just putting his mobile away, looked relieved and then slightly annoyed when he saw his cousin again, as though he’d been worrying that Al had run off. At least the pint of IPA was sitting there.
     
‘Right, there’s a few things,’ Fielding tells Al once he’s started on his new pint. ‘First of all, Gran is thinking of - well, she’s decided, it’s happening - to sell Garbadale.’
    ‘Uh-huh?’
    ‘Yes. Well, I mean, come on. She’s eighty soon and she had a couple of health scares over the last year or so and some of us have been trying to persuade her to move to somewhere near a decent hospital for a while now. It can take a couple of hours to get to, umm, the Inverness hospital—’
    ‘Raigmore.’
    ‘Yeah, that’s the place. Anyway, that’s far too long, and that’s just a one-way trip, somebody driving her there. An ambulance would take twice as long. I mean, they have an air ambulance, but you can’t rely on that always being available. I think that last heart thing she had—’
    ‘She had a heart thing?’ Al sounds almost interested.
    ‘Fibrillations or something. She kind of fainted. Of course, that was back in March, so you won’t have heard, will you?’
    ‘That’s right. Was it serious?’
    ‘Serious enough. Anyway, that seems to have convinced her to move out of the middle of nowhere at last. She’s only talking about Inverness or maybe Edinburgh or Glasgow, but I think we can convince her she’d be better off in London and near Harley Street.’
    ‘But they haven’t, say, given her only a couple of months to live or anything?’
    ‘Oh, God, no. Nothing that bad. She’ll live to be a hundred if she takes care of herself, or lets us take care of her.’
    ‘And you really don’t find that depressing?’ Al asks, looking at his cousin quizzically.
    ‘Al, stop it.’ Fielding sips his mineral water. ‘Anyway, there’s more. The thing - oh, yes. You’re invited to Gran’s eightieth birthday party next month.’ He digs in his other jacket pocket and produces the envelope with Al’s invitation in it and hands it to him. Al looks at it like it contains a bomb, or possibly anthrax. He puts it unopened in his grubby hiking jacket. ‘The place is going on the market this week,’ Fielding tells him, ‘though there’s no viewing for a couple of days either side of the party. But it will be the last chance for the family to see the place. Well, you know. To stay there.’
    ‘Think I’ll pass.’ Al drinks. ‘Thanks all the same. Pass on my apologies if I forget to RSVP.’
    ‘There’s more.’
    ‘Is there now?’
    ‘This is what it’s really all about. I didn’t track you down over half the UK just to give you a party invite. The point is, the party’s more than just a party. I mean, there’ll be the party, but there’s other stuff over those few days too. That’s what I really need to talk to you about.’
    ‘Will it take long? Should I nip to the loo again?’
    ‘Please don’t.’
    ‘Just kidding.’
    ‘It’s about Spraint Corp.’
    ‘Oh, really? What joy.’
    ‘Basically, they want to buy us out.’
    Al’s glass is halfway to his lips, but there it stops, for quite a few seconds. At last - some