The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks Page A

dimple between her top lip and the base of her nose, as though making sure her brace was still in there. She shrugged. ‘Well, June - my real mother; you know, biologically - she was a bit wild. That’s the family line, anyway. Apparently she ran off with another man. Spanish guy. Madrid. Not Tajo, the one she’s with now; another one. Actually Tajo’s quite nice. Very good-looking, very Spanish. He’s an artist. Very hairy though. He’s quite a bit younger than her. She calls him “dishy”. Honestly.’ Sophie tutted and shook her head at such a lack of sophistication. ‘Actually they’re thinking about getting married.’
    ‘So you’ve got two mothers as well.’
    ‘Hah?’
    ‘Same as me. I’ve got my real mother, the one that died, and Leah, Mum.’
    Sophie looked thoughtful. ‘Hmm. Yah. I suppose.’
    They went on with the preparations.
     
‘Young lady, you are not sitting down to dinner dressed like that,’ Uncle James told his daughter. ‘Not in my house.’
    Sophie was wearing white heels, sparkly leggings and another T-shirt with a print of Michelangelo’s David on the front. She looked down at it. Alban, who’d been out doing a bit of edging round one of the terraces and not realised how late it was getting, was stuck behind Uncle James, who was filling the bottom of the staircase as he looked up at his daughter. Alban really needed to get washed and changed - the house was full of the smell of food and he could hear conversations and smell cigarette smoke coming from the lounge - but he didn’t feel he could just brush past Uncle James.
    ‘Oh, sorry, Pops,’ Sophie said as she looked back up from the black and white image. She snapped her fingers. ‘You wouldn’t recognise this. It’s called art.’
    ‘It’s a full-frontal male nude and I for one refuse to sit looking at that at the dinner table,’ her father told her. ‘Now get changed. That is not suitable, and you know it.’
    Sophie looked down at her father, seeming not to see Alban standing behind. ‘James,’ she said, ‘I really hope right now you’re secretly thinking, “Oh my God, I’m sounding like my father.”’
    ‘Don’t tell me what to think, young lady.’
    ‘Oh, that’s just one-way traffic, is it?’
    ‘And stop trying to be clever.’
    She went, ‘Ah!’ and bent forwards as though hit in the solar plexus. ‘Well, so much for that expensive education you’re always—’
    ‘Go up to your room and change at once,’ he told her.
    Sophie looked over his shoulder and smiled. ‘Hey, Alban.’ She turned on her heel. ‘Whatever you say, Father dear.’
    Uncle James turned and saw Alban. Uncle James wore a suit and an expression of some frustration. He looked quite red in the face. He smelled of smoke. ‘Alban,’ he said, standing aside. ‘My God, you’re filthy! Well, come on, come on. Get a move on. We haven’t got all night.’
    Alban bounded up the stairs two and then three at a time.
     
Later, he knew the precise moment when he fell in love with her. It was the day his parents would be departing for Richmond and leaving him behind at Lydcombe for the rest of the summer. A bunch of them - some of Sophie’s friends plus Alban - had been down to Lynton, a few miles along the coast in Devon. One of the boys’ dads had a speedboat there and took them out a handful at a time for a buzz around the bay, up to Foreland Point or out west to Woody Bay and Highveer Point. He’d been doing this the last few years and always flung the boat about and tried to get everybody soaked and the girls screaming.
    Alban had gone out on one of the runs but hadn’t really enjoyed it as much as he’d hoped. The guy at the controls was a git, he thought, just showing off in his wraparound sunglasses and his ridiculous stripy T-shirt, trying too hard to get everybody drenched (the sea was calm save for a long, lazy swell and he had to circle and seek out his own wake to find any suitable waves) and not even a very good