Outside, the clouds had cleared away. It looked as if was going to be a nice afternoon and evening. Kelly and Nate walked back to Buchanan Street, its shops not quite so busy now that the lunch hour was over and workers had returned to their offices.
"Have you got clients to see this afternoon?" Kelly asked and he shook his head. "Nah – nice wee freebie. I'm done for the day."
"Oh? Me too," Kelly said and then cursed herself. It made her sound... as if she was angling for something.
She began to babble. "I'll need to get some lunch. Woman can't live on chocolate cake alone. Then I'll make a start on your report and I've got a press release for another client I could send off for approval, and then I'll –"
"I need to get some new gear," Nate interrupted. "Would you mind helping me? A female opinion would be good." He sighed. "Mind you, the last time I asked for a female opinion, I ended up looking like a twat."
She burst out laughing. "Oh, you mean the pink hoodie and chino shorts? You're about the only guy in Glasgow who could pull that look off. It kind of suited you."
He had stopped, looking at her in appalled disbelief. "Seriously? Maybe I shouldn't take you shopping with me after all..." He let the sentence tail off, his eyebrows raised playfully.
"Oh no! Please, please, please take me shopping with you Nate. It's what I've always wanted to do. My life has lacked meaning until now." She hammed it up furiously. His last sentence had sounded a bit conceited. Once upon a time, Kelly found arrogance attractive. Her new-found self-help book knowledge convinced her it was not.
Nate burst out laughing. "Okay, okay. I didnae mean like that, I promise. I just need to get some kegs and whenever I ask my teenage daughter what she thinks, she rolls her eyes at whatever I pick out."
"Well, that's teenage girls for you," Kelly said lightly, and then wondered if she sounded presumptive. She wasn't a mother after all.
"Aye, that's another thing," Nate stopped walking. They had reached Fraser's, the department store at the bottom of Buchanan Street. "Teenage girls. Bringing them up – as in, how do you?"
She assumed it was a rhetorical question. Kelly had no idea. Her oldest sister had teenage boys and, from what she could see of them, parenthood involved feeding them copious amounts of food, setting some light rules and sticking to them, and making sure their internet access was always, always monitored.
She hadn't yet agreed to the shopping expedition, but when he pulled open one of the doors to Fraser's she entered the shop anyway.
"She's on Instagram – my daughter." Nate said. They were in the beauty department, one of Kelly's favourite retail spaces in Glasgow. Several of the women at the counters nodded or waved to her as the two of them walked past.
"Aren't most teenagers?" Kelly said. She was on Instagram herself, but only so she could figure it out and advise clients accordingly. Yes, you need this social media account. No, you don't need to bother with this platform, it's waste of time for you.
"She's doing this, though." He thrust his phone at her, the Instagram app open. Kelly stopped walking.
"Ah." Thumbing through the newsfeed on the account, she saw that Erin mainly posted up selfies. And in most of those pictures she wasn't wearing a great deal of clothes. Even those pictures where she was wearing clothes featured overtly sexual poses, sexuality as young girls thought it should be – pouts, breasts thrust forward, head back and hands on hips. Yet again, Kelly thanked the stars social media hadn't been around when she was a teenager. It had been complicated enough then. Imagine adding the pressures of social media to that hormonal mess.
"What I really want to do is close her account, confiscate her phone and lock her in a room for the next ten years. But that's no' a good idea, is it?"
Kelly returned his phone to him. "Not really." She wished she had wise advice she could offer him. Apart from a sudden desire to please him, at the same time she could imagine the pressure Erin felt. As a teenager, how did you validate yourself these days? Through having lots of friends on social media. How did you get those friends? Well, you did what you did, right?
"I don't know what you do," she began tentatively. "Maybe there's a book about it – how to raise teenage girls, I mean. Raising them in the modern world. There's bound to be some expert who has come up with sensible solutions. I'm sure you're not the only father who has been in this position."
In the menswear department, Nate picked through tee shirts in a desultory fashion. "Probably. Anyway, enough of my problems. What about –"
Whatever he was going to say was rudely interrupted. A saleswoman had zoned in on them, her eyes hungrily taking in Nate's body.
"Can I help you? We've got the autumn and winter clothes in if you'd like to see what's in stock."
Without waiting for an answer, she took Nate's arm and guided him over to rails at the other side of the third floor. Nate threw a "Help!" look over his shoulder, and Kelly hastened after the two of them.
The woman held up a Jack Wills fleeced hoodie and cable crew jumper, cooing that the tones exactly matched Nate's colouring.
"No, no, no, no." Kelly said, surprising both the saleswoman and herself with her assertiveness. "Jack Wills isn't for our boy here. He needs something a bit more...funky, I feel. Something a little less cautious."
The woman narrowed her eyes, and then her brow cleared. "Actually, you're right. The Diesel stuff is just in. Want to look at that?"
Refusing to catch Nate's eye – he was shooting her further "help!" looks, she knew it – Kelly agreed, and she and the sales assistant frog-marched Nate to the Diesel section.
"Is this no' a bit young for me?" Nate said, fingering the shirts and trousers dubiously. Diesel didn't believe in conventional shapes. Kelly and the saleswoman – "Call me Lorna!" – had bonded, their mission to make the most of the young man in front of them, and dress him beautifully.
"Most of the guys I get who want advice," Lorna confided, leaning forward as she did so. "Well, they present a challenge..."
She pulled out several shirts, grabbing pairs of jeans, some chinos and jumpers, and then cast her eye back at the suits hanging on the racks nearby longingly.
"I don't suppose you're in the market for a wee tuxedo, are you?"
Kelly loved that about Glasgow. You put "wee" in front of anything to make it sound friendlier and less intimidating. Years ago, she'd lived in a flat in a not so salubrious part of Glasgow and she woke one morning to a commotion. When she opened her front door, she noticed a cop stood outside her neighbour's flat as medics went in and out. Alarmed, she asked her what was going on. The woman responded, "There's been a wee death," tipping her head to the side as she indicated the neighbouring flat.
Was there such a thing as a wee death? Weren't all deaths big, grief-creating and extreme in the changes they wrought? The "wee" word got used in the weirdest of places.
Nate shook his head apologetically, adopting a hangdog expression to show that he was truly sorry to have disappointed the saleswomen. "I cannae see me needing to wearing one ever."
The woman sighed. Tuxedo sales opportunities were probably few and far between, and Nate was someone who would look amazing in a Tuxedo.
Keely and Nate escaped half an hour later, pink House of Frasers bags a plenty dangling on black strings. Back outside on Buchanan Street, Nate looked shell-shocked. "I've never spent that much money on clothes." He blew out air several times as they made their way out of the shop, past the beauty counters where the staff members all nodded or said hello again to Kelly.
"Well, you're not going to need new kegs for a while." Did using the same slang word as his daughter used for clothes make her cool, or just sycophantic?
"No, not for another 50 years if God spares me." Nate clasped his hands together and looked upwards.
He noticed her start at the mention of God. "Kelly, have ye no' yet found the love of Jesus? I want to tell you what he will bring to your life and how wonderful it will be."
He used the same tone Kelly had employed earlier when she begged to be allowed to shop with him. His voice had risen considerably at the end of his exhortation, and Kelly glanced around her, alarmed. Could anyone hear them?
The gesture seemed to amuse him greatly as he burst out laughing. "Your face! Did you think I wasnae joking?"
"Of course I knew it!" Kelly snapped, irritated with herself. Nate had sounded horribly sincere. She marched upwards, heading towards Royal Exchange Square and home. Honestly, this guy. He would do something; she would like him. He would do something else, she would remember her original opinion of him.
Nate caught hold of her arm as she swung it back, all the better to propel her power walk home.
"Sorry, Kelly. I didnae mean to take the piss."
She didn't falter. This was part of the him doing something to make her like him. Give him a minute or so and the volte face would happen.
"Still hungry?" Nate looked upwards at the sun. Sunny days weren't common in Glasgow, especially in late September. "Can I buy you a late lunch?"
Kelly didn't stop. "Only if it's very, very good."
Nate pulled at her arm again. "It will be. I promise."
They were now standing facing each other at the Buchanan Street entrance to Royal Exchange Square. Crowds moved about them., parting as they approached and then coming together as if the two of them were an immoveable object, or a moment in time as portrayed by films and advertising.
I promise.
Why will it be good? What is happening here? Why am I so excited? Will this work out? Will it not?
Too much to gamble, too much to lose...
"No thanks. I need to get home." Kelly jerked her arm free. Her Wilson Street flat beckoned, she could update her blog, write that press release and even prepare the initial report for Nate. Any other activity was foolish, time-wasting and... oh, Kelly had years and years of experience of dating and men. Taking things any further was a mistake.
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