Page 132 of Forever, Maybe
“Fine. What do you want?”
“Just wondered if ye fancied a drink? It’s, eh… my birthday.”
Daniel clenched his teeth, mouthingshit.Splitting up with his wife had meant losing the one person who handled the social admin—remembering birthdays, sending cards, making sure he didn’t come across as an arse. He and his siblings didn’t do gifts, but they usually managed a card or text.
“Aye.” He glanced at the clock. Five o’clock. “If you’re near the office, we could go now.”
Mark was, as it turned out.
Daniel grabbed his jacket, telling a startled Holly he was done for the day. Outside, Mark leaned against the St Vincent Street shop wall, one foot up, head down, scrolling his phone. From this angle, it was easy to see why Nell had initially mistaken Ryan for her soon-to-be ex-husband’s son. The brothers shared the same jutting forehead, Roman nose and the dark hair shorn around their ears and at the back.
Like Daniel, Mark’s teenage skin had been ruined by acne—so much so he’d once used a peroxide gel so strong it turned his face beetroot and made his skin peel. Now, his complexion was smooth, lightly tanned, as if none of it had ever happened.
Daniel tapped his arm. Mark looked up, scowling.
“Tricia’s no’ speaking to me.”
“Did she no’ get you a present then?”
“No! She didnae. And she didnae even phone me this morning to say happy birthday!”
Daniel shot him a sidelong glance. The plaintive tone made him sound like a seven-year-old.
He hadn’t daubed Mark in. When he’d eventually reached Nell, he had explained that while Ryan wasn’t his son (and looked like him because he was his nephew), he could have been because he’d ended up in bed with another woman whilst in Amsterdam.
She had listened without a word, then hung up on him the second he finished.
Then, when his mother called her—trying to convince her that marriage counselling with Father Reilly was the answer, and that, really, poor, sweet Nell was perfectly entitled to feel aggrieved about what happened in Amsterdam—she dropped Mark right in it.
Daniel had only heard the story from his brother’s side, but apparently, all hell broke loose the minute Nell spilled the beans.
The favourite son was summoned. Their mother was waiting, a Silk Cut in one hand despite the doctor’s warnings, and words pouring out of her mouth that she would never use in polite company.
You little shit! I remember wee Mhari Colquhoun. You have not paid a penny towards that child! My eldest grandchild! Get out of my sight, you wicked, wicked boy!
Mark scowled. “Nell should’ve kept her big gob shut,” he muttered. “Bet you’re glad you ditched the stupid cow.”
Daniel’s fingers curled into a fist before he could stop them. Mark deserved little, if any, sympathy. But he swallowed his irritation and nudged him in the ribs.
“Happy birthday. What are you now—thirty-eight? Thirty-nine? The big four-o?”
Mark gave a grudging smirk. “Fuck off. Thirty-five. And you’re buying.”
He nodded towards Murdo’s, an Irish bar just down the street.
At five o’clock on a Wednesday, it wasn’t busy—just the usual crowd of middle-aged and old men who had nowhere else to be. Some after-work drinkers, most just drinkers, their maroon faces betraying a lifetime of bad habits and bad decisions. They sat hunched at the bar, nursing pints with whisky chasers or rum and coke. A pre-six-o’clock-news game show droned from the TV, half the men watching, the other half staring blankly into space or at the racing pages of crumpled newspapers. None of them wore wedding rings.
“Jesus, can we go somewhere else?” Daniel asked.
Mark nodded quickly, perhaps seeing the same bleak future. Without a word, they pivoted and walked out, unnoticed by the clientele, whose eyes remained glued toThe Chase.
“The Counting House?” Mark suggested, naming the nearest big chain pub.
Daniel bared his teeth, ready to argue. Chain pubs—behemoths that steamrolled into towns, undercutting local businesses with bulk-buying power and dirt-cheap prices—didn’t deserve the custom of small, independent business owners.
But it was Mark’s birthday. And unlike Murdo’s, The Counting House attracted office workers—the kind who drank in large, boisterous groups. Mark, no doubt, was already scanning for boozed-up women to help ease the sting of maternal rejection.
Unlike Murdo’s, this place was packed. Another converted bank, its grandeur betrayed by Greco-Roman statues straining to hold up the ceiling, it swarmed with suits. A dense crowd pressed against the central bar under the vast atrium, twenty-pound notes brandished in the air like offerings to overworked bar staff.
