Free Rise by Karen Campbell

good.’
    ‘No, they arny.’
    ‘Oh.’ She’d put the paper down. Noticed another, then another, awaiting their conflagration. ‘Where is this?’
    ‘ Na màthraichean a’gal .’
    ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
    ‘You’ll no have the Gaelic then?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Weeping Women, I think. But most folk call it Crychapel Wood. Anyroad,’ she’d flung another canvas on the fire. ‘These . . .’re a loada shite.’
    Full and prickly she is, like an overripe gooseberry. Look at her, scowling at Michael. Raging, so I am . Mhairi is always raging. There are times she can be magnificent. Hannah likes this about her friend, the way she sweeps you up in her convictions. Gives you a little buzz. Hannah Anderson, forty-four. Seeker of cheap thrills. She coughs on a bit of scone. At least she can still make herself laugh.
    ‘You all right?’ Mhairi whispers.
    ‘Went down the wrong way.’
    ‘You dissing ma scones again?’
    Two press officers stand at the back of the room. They were distributing information leaflets when Hannah arrived – and doing lots of smiling. Still recently enough that it’s not forgotten, the council PR unit was the subject of some unpleasantness involving social media and allegations of spying. Even in the remotest spots, Big Brother, it appears, is watching. The backlash to this was a suspension, some resignations (which provided the by-election backdoor to her and Michael moving here) – and lashings of transparency. This is a council with nothing to hide. An advert in the local paper. Free buses to ferry people from the remotest crofts. Public dissent is being welcomed, nay, encouraged. It is being bored into submission before her eyes.
    The hecklers are fading as Michael explains the planning process in tedious detail. Hannah breathes on Ross’s hair. The coppery whorls shiver. Ross fidgets some more. Did she really think being a local councillor’s wife would be any different to being a minister’s? They have multi-member wards here; it doesn’t need to be Michael that’s taking the lead. She thinks he may be doing it to test her.
    I am a good wife .
    Their MSP has sent careful apologies, despite Mhairi inviting him to attend. Good old SNP. We are all in this together! A concept that works, nicely, when you’re down in the trenches. She remembers the last elections at Holyrood, Michael’s thrill as the results came tumbling in, as the contours of the map of Scotland changed. A nationalist landslide. All that rhetoric, the unalloyed lust for freedom and justice that was gaining greater momentum as they rolled towards referendum. A vote for optimism. Change. Hannah even did a barbecue for the local branch. It was beginning to feel exciting. But power brings puffed-up men and disappointing choices. Not for a second had she thought the fuzzy green mantle they planned to wrap Scotia in would mean her glen being trashed. You should have read the small print , Michael quipped.
    Yes. Same as when I married you .
    But she hadn’t said that. She didn’t mean it.
    This windfarm is one more thing for them to snipe about. Oh, they rarely fight, not any more. It’s all careful sidesteps, tight smiles. Silences. Calm and bland as milk. Some days she wonders if Michael is simply in opposition to her. Her pals at uni teased her for going out with a Divinity student. But they didn’t know. Under the quietness of him, how, when he did speak, she could see the words coming out, all lit and dancing, how they were so important to him, that he thought and weighed them first. How he dazzled her eighteen-year-old self with talk of sacrifice and glory. How his skin was slippery-slick. How he split the darkness in her, the blue-white veins of him, how her gold hair lay on his white shoulders, how she spoils the things she loves because she is greedy, greedy. Stupid. How he wore his white slash at his throat and you think these awful truths and folk ask you both for help, for ever asking you