Page 14

“You do that,” Davie says.

“Ryan, I know Kovac isn’t who you were hoping for, but a Glasgow fight isn’t the worst, is it? No flights, no time zones, no ten days in a hotel eating chicken and rice out of Tupperware.”

He’s not wrong there.

“Anyway,” James says. “I’ll be back in touch soon.”

“See you.” I hang up.

“Braehead, eh?” Davie grips my shoulder, the one that isn’t sore. “Good. Means I’ll be able to get the whole gym down there in matching hoodies to cheer you on.”

That gets a grin out of me.

“I still remember the skinny fourteen-year-old lad that came through that door, you know.” He nods to the entrance. “Angry wee thing, you were. Scrappy. Full of fight and nowhere to put it. Now look at you.”

He looks me over, top to bottom. “I’m proud of you, son.”

“Jesus. You getting soft in your old age?”

He clips the back of my head. “That mouth of yours hasnae changed, mind.”

I get parked on Rowanbank Street just after four and open the passenger door on more food than a normal man eats in a fortnight. It’ll do me till Thursday. It’s piled over the passenger seat and the two wee seats behind it because the one thing they don’t mention in the showroom when you’re buying a sports car is that the boot struggles with anything bigger than a gym bag.

There’s a stupid amount of chicken. Rice. Two dozen eggs. Salmon. Bags of frozen veg, sweet potatoes, oats, bananas, the big tubs of yoghurt. The lassie on the checkout looked from the conveyor belt to me and decided against asking.

Fight camp starts now. Eight weeks of clean food, training twice a day, and sleeping like it’s a job. I need to pull the booze right back, then cut it altogether for the last stretch.

From here on, routine is everything. It’ll be like I’m living the same day over and over until fight night. It’s not complicated, just relentless, but I’m good at relentless.

I hook four bags onto one hand and three onto the other. The three bags pull at the shoulder Liam caught this morning, but it’s a good sore, the kind that means the work happened. I shove the door shut with my hip, take a couple of steps, then clock her.

A little further along the pavement, outside the flower shop, my neighbour is crouched down beside a line of potted plants.

“—there you go. Much better. And you lot”—she moves along the line—“don’t think I’ve not noticed all that sulking. It’s May, so I’d like to see a bit of effort. Plenty of photosynthesising, please.”

She’s talking to plants. Out loud. On a public street.

Is this woman for real?

Her strawberry-blonde hair is stuffed into a bun on the back of her head, although several curls have sprung loose around her face. The sunlight catches them, turning them gold. She’s got freckles across her nose and over both cheeks, and she’s small—properly small.

She says something else to one of the plants then laughs quietly, a dimple appearing in her right cheek.

She’s cute, I’ll give her that. Not that cute has ever been what I go for. Nah, for me, she’s too sweet, too soft, too middle class by half.

She turns, and her blue eyes find mine. A flicker of surprise, then she straightens, brushes off her knees, and gives me a small, polite smile.

“Ryan.” She takes a step closer. “I’m glad I’ve caught you.”

The bags are cutting into my fingers, but I hang about to hear what she’s got to say.

“I wanted to apologise for the other evening. You know, the basket incident. I don’t think either of us handled it particularly well, so I thought perhaps we could start again. We are neighbours, after all, and I don’t see any reason we can’t be civil.”

It comes out neat and careful, like she’s rehearsed it, and her delivery grates on me. It sounds less like an apology and more like she’s decided to be the bigger person and rise above me. And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who think they’re better than me.

Her eyes shift a fraction, to the left side of my face. “Oh, what happened there?” She points.

I shrug. “Caught a hook.”