Nearly midnight. A hush has fallen. We stand on the edge, wrapped up against the bitter wind that comes off the sea twinkling in the distance, a thin dark line between the land and the sky. In the distance, you can just make out the curve of the road south, bending sharply at Muchalls, before it enters the Mearns. To the north, there is the distant twinkle of orange lights that marks the city. But tonight, it seemed very far away. The only sound was the occasional cackle of the birds roosting in the cliff and the hushed conversation of our little group. Out to sea, we could see the shadows of the long tankers against the navy sky, returning to harbour. And we waited.
Two thousand years seemed a significant moment somehow. For months, the newspapers had spoken in breathless tones about how all the gains our society had made would be wiped out by four digits. We had spent the evening in comfort, first in the warmth of the whisky bar of the Lairhillock, then surrounded by music and laughter at our host’s farmhouse. But we were unsure of what we were going back to tomorrow. And the thornier questions remained. Almost two years out of university now. My friends were assuming responsibilities, buying houses. And me? Well, I was still playing with the idea of following a path of a study that was highly competitive, that no one was certain I had the discipline for and which slightly frightened me in its apparent austerity. The time it would consume. The uncertainty of where it would take me. Then again, I’d already been surprised. Two years ago I had come home, expecting to resume life where I had left it four years before when I’d left for university. But it hadn’t. I no longer bumped into friends in Union Street or went on nights out. Everybody had discovered their own lives. I’d went down to Edinburgh for a weekend to visit friends. Had got a job. In the mailroom of a bank but a job. And a friend’s kindness had got me a room with a wonderful landlady who shared my love of the absurd. I hadn’t meant to stay. But the warm cafes and the beauty of the place persuaded me. I was settled there, loved the way that my walk to work in the morning took me past the elegant drawing rooms of the New Town, the bubbling waters of Leith and the pretty parks of Ravelston. But I felt that I was always looking in, that I would have to do something if I wanted to stay. It seemed impossible to figure out. Though obviously lots of people had. I was clearly just slow.
I could have stayed there for New Year, I supposed. The Millennium in Edinburgh, with fireworks against the dark silhouette of the castle. But I wanted to be with family. And that meant being here. In the quiet, the smirr cooling our faces. The fireworks from the city mark midnight. We see their reds, golds and pinks light up the sky. The seagulls rise in fright. Scolding. We hug and kiss, and my dad tells me how they remind him of being a boy and watching the bombs explode over the Forth. Except he was too small to know they were bombs - thought they were fireworks - a display for him, a little boy far from home.
My dad rarely talked about his childhood. I didn’t like to ask. But I’ve always kept that little picture close. Of how we protect ourselves from horror by telling ourselves another story. I would have asked him more after that night. I wasn’t to know that there wasn’t much time left. That the quiet evening on the hill would mark the last time we would be together as a family. That changes were coming in that first year of the new Millennium that would alter the course of the journey I was tentatively planning in my head. I had accepted a place to study at Durham in the autumn. Was trying to figure out what I would do, how I would live. There were no signs then that my dad’s heart was worn out, that a single phone call would summon me back and make me decide to return to the city. That the decision to return would cause me to switch paths, would introduce me to the man who became my husband, would lead me back to Edinburgh and to places totally unexpected, but much more wonderful than I’d ever dreamed of. And a sadness that my dad, who had fretted so much over what I was going to do with my life and how I would support myself, would never see it.
The fireworks were distant flashes of colour that night. In the morning, we would return to the city, its granite buildings unaltered, its inhabitants sleepy from the celebrations, its cash machines still working. Later, I would catch the train. Gaze out on the North Sea, trace my progress south in the name of the stations, lug my rucksack up the steep stairs of Haymarket. A new year. Tomorrow I would be back at my desk. Answering phones and inputting data. Sitting in the canteen at lunchtime with its tired carpets. Wondering with the others what the latest changes in management meant. Hearing the rumours of jobs being offshored. Putting money aside to fund those carefully crafted plans formed in the quiet of evenings and walks to work. I gazed up at them, high above the sea. Nothing would change in that moment. Yet, even as we stood quietly on that line, the ground was beginning to shift and nothing would ever be the same again.