by Jenny Colgan
Larissa hadn’t seen a picture of Cormac. He wasn’t on Tinder, not that she’d been looking at it or swiping at all and anyway Tinder was for absolute losers. It was kind of ridiculous, but they wouldn’t let her on Raya – a disgrace, all her friends agreed, which was also comforting. Anyway, Tabitha said Cormac had looked after her knee when she’d had it replaced and was quite the totty, but Tabitha still thought Peter Bowles was the height of totty, whoever he was, so she wasn’t going to take Tabitha’s word for it.
And it rather appealed to her to see someone from Kirrinfief. Let that get back to Ramsay, see how much she absolutely did not care and was not a snob or only after him for his title – as if. Who wanted that stupid crumbling house of his when here she was dating a nurse or something? So. Pleasing her aunt, of whom she was fond, annoying her ex, bringing a (hopefully) hot new man into her circle and initiating some Scottish rube into what proper London sophistication actually looked like sounded entirely up her street, so she booked a table at her swanky London club and brought lots of her girlfriends on board and got the fizz in and was in general in excellent spirits.
Cormac, meanwhile, by the time Friday night came round was absolutely exhausted from the driving and from the myriad of different cases he now had on. He’d never treated sickle cell disease in his life before, for example, and was studying up and fast as he could. However, he got ready in a pair of twill trousers he had bought by mistake online once and never worn out in the village because everyone would laugh at them (they were a little tight, particularly down on the ankle) and a green-grey shirt Emer had bought him that she said exactly matched his eyes, which made him feel a bit of a prick when he wore it in case anyone thought that he had bought it for himself because it matched his eyes because he thought he was terribly good-looking.
Kim-Ange found him ironing in the laundry. She narrowed her eyes.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know. Some house?’
‘Somebody’s house?’
‘No,’ said Cormac, wrinkling his face. ‘It’s called a house but it’s not a house. But I don’t know what it is. I have to give my name at the door.’
‘Soho House?’
‘No. But like that.’
‘Stockton House?’
‘Yes!’
‘Oh my God!’ said Kim-Ange. ‘That’s, like, a totally cool private members’ club. You can’t just walk in there.’
‘Why not?’ said Cormac. ‘Is everything free?’
Kim-Ange snorted. ‘No! Very expensive.’
‘So why?’
‘Exclusive, darling. For the glamorous people!’
They both looked down at the shirt he was ironing.
‘No,’ said Kim Ange. ‘You want to stand out.’
‘I really, really don’t,’ said Cormac.
‘This is London, not Buttington McFuckington! You’re not going to a sheepdog-shagger trial!’
Cormac gave her a look.
‘You’re being quite rude.’
‘Come with me,’ she ordered.
Kim-Ange’s room was as different from Lissa’s as could be, despite being the identical size and shape. Somehow, she’d squeezed a double mattress in there, which took over the entire corner of the room next to the window. Purple and red cloths with tiny mirrors were draped over the walls and the ceiling, and there were large red shaded lamps that gave the room a pink glow.
‘More flattering,’ said Kim-Ange. Purple scatter cushions were everywhere, and scented candles cluttered up the surfaces, their scent lingering even though they weren’t lit. Fairy lights lined the old faded curtain rails.
‘Welcome to my boudoir!’ she said, and Cormac had to admit, it was undeniably a boudoir.
‘Now . . .’ said Kim-Ange. She disappeared into the cupboard, rummaging among tightly stacked boxes as Cormac looked at a collection of fabulously high-heeled shoes.
Eventually, Kim-Ange brought out an old cardboard box. She smiled at it ruefully.
‘Sentimental reasons,’ she said.
She opened up the box. It was full of wrapped-in-tissue, carefully saved and beautifully folded men’s clothes. Designer labels, high-end stuff, all of it. Some was garish; bright colours and the occasional rhinestone. Plenty of it was just perfectly normal, but beautifully cut and made.
Cormac blinked as she pulled out a snowy white shirt made of heavy, billowing material, then shook her head and expertly folded it up again.
‘Was this . . . was this yours?’ he asked tentatively. Kim-Ange looked at him to check he wasn’t being facetious, but he was clearly just interested.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s like keeping an old photo album.’
She grabbed an exquisite cashmere black jumper.
‘Oof,’ she said. ‘Dries Van Noten. I bought it in Antwerp.’ She smiled to herself. ‘What a weekend that was.’
She offered it to him.
‘It would fit you,’ she said. ‘He cuts Dutch.’
Cormac didn’t know what that meant, but there was no denying it was a beautiful piece of clothing, even to him, he who had only stopped letting his mum buy his M&S undies when he joined the Army.
‘Wow!’ he said.
‘Have it,’ said Kim-Ange. ‘Seriously. It’s of no use to me.’
She was wearing a lemon-yellow half scarf, half top with a pink gilet fringed in fake fur over it. Her hair was festooned with pink clasps.
‘I’ll . . . I’ll bring it straight back.’
Kim-Ange waved her hand as Cormac pulled it over his head. It fitted in a way most people would have said was perfect, and Cormac found extremely tight.
‘Oh yes,’ said Kim-Ange. ‘Have you got a white T-shirt? Brand-new, nothing faded or grungy in the wash.’
He had a pack of three vests, in fact, and Kim-Ange announced that as absolutely fine. The trousers were still a horror story, but there wasn’t much to be done about that, and his black desert boots were passable, if disappointing.
She sent him off for a shower and shave, and demanded to see him afterwards.
‘I’m just going to do your eyebrows,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’
‘You’re going to do my what?’
‘Just remove the spare hairs. Tidy you up, nothing dramatic.’
‘My eyebrows? What’s wrong with my eyebrows?’
‘You just have to be . . . a little groomed, that’s all.’
Kim-Ange’s own eyebrows looked like they’d been painted on with Dulux. She caught him staring.
‘No, I promise. Just a quick shaping. Let me!’
She didn’t say ‘let me’ in a way that sounded like a choice, and he allowed himself to sit down at her chair.
It hurt like absolute buggery and it was all he could do to stop himself from swearing aloud. She smiled at this.
‘Oh, so much for the big tough farm boy!’
‘Ow!’
And then an indignant scream.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘If you don’t want that to hurt, don’t let hair grow out of your nose,’ was Kim-Ange’s pert response. She took out a pair of scissors and trimmed Cormac’s eyebrows slightly straighter and neater across the top.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that better?’
And as Cormac looked in the mirror at his reflection, in his expensive jumper, with his fresh shave and tidy, new-look eyebrows, he had to admit that, well, it was different. Jake would laugh at him, but it certainly wasn’t worse, and the jumper did set off the tinge of green in his eyes and his curly brown hair.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘That’s all right,’ Kim-Ange said, then added with a slight twinge of regret: ‘And if you meet any of those pretty boy actors . . . do bring one home for me.’
Larissa got slightly more nervous about the situation as she waited for Cormac to turn up. What if he was an absolute lout, who drank crisps straight from the packet and was monosyllabic and/or drunk? Perhaps she could writ
e it off as a joke. She told her friends Coco and Zafs et al that it was something she was doing as a favour to the old Scottish side of the family and he was some kind of village idiot so they’d forgive her if it all went tits up. But they saw Scottish as something slightly quaint and even exotic so they’d forgive him if he sounded like a country bumpkin cousin and was completely incomprehensible.
In fact, the large, open-faced man with brown curly hair and a few freckles sprinkled on his cheeks who she found lingering rather awkwardly in the lobby of the room after he’d been buzzed up was actually a pleasant surprise. She didn’t recognise him at all – you tended to see most people around Kirrinfief, at harvest services in the old church, or at the village fête, where her aunt was usually judging the pet show or drawing the tombola. But thank God he didn’t look too bad in just a plain black top. She’d worried temporarily if he might turn up in a checked shirt and fleece – pretty common uniform in the Highlands – or, heaven forbid, sportswear. If it had been sportswear, she thought, she could probably just have turned round and texted him that she couldn’t make it and pretended not to be there; he didn’t know what she looked like either.
‘Cormac?’
‘Hullo there,’ he said in his gentle Highlands accent, very different from the wideboy or posh boy London voices she was used to. It sounded nice. It sounded like home.
The girls were sitting round a high table when she got up there, and they all did such an obvious once-over when she arrived it was annoying. But Cormac didn’t seem to notice, apart from going slightly pink, but that might just have been the environment. It was loud in there and of course – of course – everyone found it very difficult to understand what he was saying whether by design or on purpose, because they found him quaint.
‘So you’re a nurse?’ said Portia emphatically, as if she’d never met someone who did such a pedestrian job in her entire life, which in fact was quite likely.
‘Aye,’ said Cormac. ‘I follow up – try and keep people out of hospital. Lot of post-op stuff, wound care, that kind of stuff.’
‘Oh, so you’re not in a hospital?’ said Portia, frowning her perfectly botoxed brow. ‘Do you ride around on a little bicycle? How adorable!’
Kalitha, a slender art dealer Larissa had met during a course at the Courtauld, simply glanced him up and down, then turned to Ithica sitting next to her and carried on with the conversation as if he wasn’t there, which made Larissa feel an anxious tremor of annoyance and shame. She had thought that this would be nice, or different, but instead they were all being rude and snotty and she was really annoyed that they were theoretically her friends.
Portia turned her attention to the cocktail menu.
‘What do you want to drink?’ Larissa asked him. Cormac was boggling at the prices, utterly astounded. Cocktails were fifteen pounds! Minimum! Fifteen pounds! He looked up. If he had to get a round in, that would be seventy-five pounds. Getting a round in at Wullie’s was twelve pounds. He had the money – he didn’t spend much at home and his cottage didn’t cost much to rent – and he wasn’t tight – he was always the first to put his hand in his pocket. It was just the very idea of it: spending so much on so little seemed to him not so much worrying as totally and utterly immoral. Seventy-five pounds could buy or do so much.
A worse thought stuck him. He was here with many women, which meant as a gentleman he’d normally insist on paying for all of their drinks. If everyone had four cocktails – and oh my God, he had just realised two of them were drinking from a bottle of champagne – he was going to spend as much as a small car.
It’s not Larissa’s fault, but it wouldn’t have occurred to her in a million years what was going through his mind. Money had simply never, ever been remotely an issue to worry about, and the mentality that had to add things up like that had never been a part of her. Plus she’d assumed she’d be getting it anyway; nurses were really super-poor, right? He must know it was her club and her card behind the bar.
‘What will you have?’
‘I’ll . . . I’ll just go to the bar,’ said Cormac unhappily, wondering if he could ask for tap water when he got there. Kalitha flicked her perfectly made-up eyes to him.
‘Uh, they’ll take your order here?’ she said as if explaining something to a child, just as an incredibly gorgeous young model-like person in a smart black outfit that patently cost more than anything Cormac himself had ever possessed came up to them, looking at Cormac expectantly.
‘Um, pint of 80 Shilling?’ said Cormac automatically. He could call his bank and make sure, transfer some money over, probably. Yeah. He’d do that. The crushing thought that these beautiful, groomed creatures might snigger to themselves that he fitted the stereotype of Scottish people being mean was so shaming he wanted to bury himself.
The beautiful model waitress smiled widely.
‘I’m so sorry but I don’t know what that is?’ she said, her voice going up at the end. ‘I can ask maybe at the bar?’
‘It’s a beer.’
‘All our beers are imported? We have . . .’
And she proceeded to reel off a number of names of things Cormac had never heard of before. Finally, Cormac stopped her just to stop things getting completely out of hand.
‘Aye. That one,’ he said randomly. The beautiful person smiled.
‘Wonderful choice?’
Cormac turned to Larissa but she was emptying the bottle of champagne into a glass, and waving the empty bottle about.
‘Keep them coming!’
‘Of course!’ said the server, and hurried off with another perfect smile.
By the time Cormac had turned back to the group, Kalitha was telling a story about a red carpet that he couldn’t really follow but involved lots of squealing, then every so often Larissa or Cags, who seemed slightly kinder than the others, would attempt to bring him in to the conversation by asking him something about Scotland, and he would turn pink and mutter something very unfunny and uninspiring, not feeling like himself at all, and the others would look at him for a second and he could hear Larissa’s audible disappointment in him not being a jolly lad or whatever it was she’d had in mind when she started all this.
It was even worse for the fact that Cormac was a perfectly sociable chap, if a little shy. Not the life and soul, maybe, but he was funny and easy-going and the girls usually liked him. Of course Jake would lead the way. Cormac thought how much Jake would be enjoying himself if he were here, telling outrageous stories about people who’d got things stuck up their bums, giving cheeky back-handed compliments to Kalitha and generally being at home everywhere, and he felt completely out of his depth and more and more tongue-tied and awkward than ever. His beer, when it came, was a horrible sweet lager that felt sticky on his teeth, but he drank it determinedly and glanced at his watch so he could work out how soon he could politely leave.
Chapter Eighteen
Jake caught up with Lissa as she left Joan’s surgery, exchanging one bundle of notes for another.
‘Hi!’ he said, and she stared at him as if she couldn’t remember who he was (this was not at all the case; she was just still getting used to people recognising her in the street, which never happened in London).
‘Oh hello,’ she said, flustered. She held her carrier bag closer to herself in case he wanted to see what kind of groceries she had. She’d never realised how exposing it was, living in a very small village. Mrs Murray had already remarked more than once on how many KitKats she seemed to buy at any one period so she was definitely contemplating getting her KitKats online, if she could resist the temptation to buy a box of eighty at a time, which she wasn’t sure she could, so that couldn’t end anywhere good.
‘Jake,’ said Jake.
‘Yeah . . . I know. Ambulance, right?’
He nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘Busy shift?’
‘In fact, no,’ he said. ‘Young boy fell out of a boat on Loch Ness, but he was fine by the time they picked him up.’
&n
bsp; ‘Does that happen a lot?’
‘More than you’d think. We nearly lost a couple o’ bairns last year.’
He shivered to think about it.
‘Do they get eaten by the monster?’
‘Yes,’ he said, totally deadpan. ‘Monster-related injuries make up about thirty to forty per cent of my job most days. It’s okay – we have a venom antidote.’
She smiled for the first time he’d seen, and he saw how it transformed her face beautifully.
‘So you know it’s the shows?’ he said nervously. He wasn’t asking her out, obviously. He wasn’t asking her out at all – he was just letting her know it was on, which wasn’t the same thing at all, nothing like.
He flashed back to the conversation he’d had the previous night with Cormac.
‘You should go see her,’ Cormac had said. Jake was still a little sore about being cold-shouldered the last time.
‘Mebbe,’ he’d said.
‘I think she’s a bit lonely,’ said Cormac.
‘Oh, do you?! And how do you know?’
‘I don’t. We exchange medical notes.’
‘You’re practically having a relationship. I’m surprised your mum hasn’t been over.’
‘I’m not,’ said Cormac.
‘Is Emer still in a mood with you?’
‘She is.’
‘Highland women,’ said Jake, not for the first time.
‘What . . . what does she look like?’ asked Cormac tentatively, not even entirely sure he was asking.
‘Oi oi!’ said Jake, and Cormac instantly cursed.
‘Not like that!’ he said quickly. ‘It’s just a bit weird not to know who’s living in your house.’
‘Well, get on Facebook then, like normals.’
Cormac screwed up his face. ‘I was on it, remember? It was just my mum sending me pictures of armadillos and my old Army pals sharing really, really dodgy stuff. Ugh.’
‘Well, then. You’ll never know if she’s a frog monster or not.’
‘Don’t say frog monster,’ said Cormac. ‘Also, is she a frog monster?’