Salad. Dentistry. Forgiveness.Until the night Small Change MacFarlane died, I had no idea just how unforgiving Glasgow could be. My education in vindictiveness was about to be completed.It was mid-heat wave hot and sticky and I had an even hotter and stickier date with Lorna MacFarlane the night her father was murdered. I had parked my Austin Atlantic up above the city on Glennifer Braes, from where you could see Glasgow stretched out below, dark and sullen in the muggy night; but, to be honest, we didn’t take in much of the view. Looking back, it’s ironic to think that two members of the MacFarlane family had been on the business end of a blunt instrument at roughly the same time.Lorna was quite a bit above the usual Glasgow standard: she was pretty, with strawberry blonde hair and a knockout figure. Like most lowlifes made good, her bookie father was always striving for a touch of respectability and had sent Lorna to a fancy boarding school in Edinburgh. The aim had probably been to turn her into a proper little lady, but whatever languages were taught there, I had found out in the back of my Atlantic that when it came to French, Lorna was a natural linguist.If I had to describe my relationship with Lorna at that time, the word shallow would fit best.
