Highland Games: sparkling, sexy and utterly unputdownable - the romantic comedy of the year! (The Kinloch Series)

by Evie Alexander

  She’d never slept in a car before and now she knew why. All five foot ten of her was never going to be able to stretch out in comfort. Her feet kept hitting the pedals, the headrest was hard, and her arms were too cold outside the sleeping bag and too constricted inside.

  She considered going to Morag’s again but dismissed it. She wouldn’t admit defeat and wanted to face her in the softer light of day, not showing up in the middle of the night, a ghost from the past.

  It was going to be a long and miserable night.

  2

  Zoe’s eye mask had dislodged in the night and she woke with the sunrise hitting her face like a golden mallet. She’d been lost in a looping dream of racing great-uncle Willie from the cabin to the loch. Twin flames; one tall, one small. Wild red hair, overflowing with life, whooping and screaming as they tumbled into the cold water. It was Zoe’s stuck record of happiness. The dream that had brought her back to Scotland after so many years.

  She tentatively moved her limbs. She felt as if her body had been taken apart, then put back together again by someone who had thrown the instruction manual out with the box. Her feet were backwards, her knees sideways, her left shoulder swapped with the right, her bottom so numb it had disappeared. Her mouth had been stuffed with cotton wool dipped in sour milk and her head had been used as a pincushion. Everything just hurt.

  Slowly, she pulled out her earplugs and unzipped the sleeping bag, extricating herself and pushing open the car door. She gingerly swivelled her legs around and, like a newborn foal, stood up, swaying slightly. She stretched her arms as if to touch the morning sky, then lowered them and looked around.

  In the half light of yesterday and after the exhaustion of the drive up, she hadn’t had a chance to take in her surroundings. The track was only wide enough for one car and was dwarfed by the tall trees either side of it. The air was still and the branches were almost completely bare. It was November now and autumn was at its end. A solitary beech leaf floated down and she instinctively caught it, rubbing its softness between her fingers and thumb. She reached into her pocket and brought out her phone to photograph the leaf. Close up, with the sun turning the browns into gold, held up to the sky with the sunlight behind it, in her palm, and with the dark backdrop of the trees beyond. Her professional-style SLR camera nestled in the boot, but her phone was more than adequate this morning. Two weeks ago she’d opened an Instagram account, ostensibly for the friends she was leaving behind to share her journey, but also as a place to explore a different side of her. A side not associated with spreadsheets, cities and work. A side locked in this landscape and her memories.

  She walked around the car, holding her phone in the air to find a signal. Nothing. She grabbed her bag and walked back down the track to see the cabin in the daytime.

  Rounding the corner and seeing it in the amber morning light brought memories flooding back. For a few precious months of her childhood, this house and this land had been her home, almost her entire world. A new wave of emotion coursed through her. She swallowed it back down. This wasn’t the time. She needed to make an objective assessment of the cabin and work out how to make it habitable once more.

  It was situated at the top of a couple of acres of open grassy ground, which gently sloped to the edge of the loch. The cabin was one room, rectangular, made from thick pine logs. No kitchen, no bathroom, no bedroom, but four single-paned windows, dirty and cracked, and a porch running along the front. The roof was tiled in wooden shingles and had grown a head of mossy hair. Zoe shuddered. It was most likely a breeding ground for all sorts of creepy crawlies, and she’d need a ladder and a lot of courage before she could take a proper look.

  Walking up the steps onto the front porch, she heaved the solid door to one side so it was no longer blocking the entrance, and walked in. Last night, lit only by her phone, the interior had been a place of shadows and unknowns. But now, with the sunrise sending streaks of gold across the wooden floor, she could see everything. And it was worse than she could have possibly imagined.

  Willie had lived a simple life but she remembered a bed, a chest of drawers, cupboards, and a large dresser. Where had they gone? The only things left were a solid oak table that had seen everything from Coco Pops to animal butchery, and a couple of chairs, probably only good for firewood now. Against the right-hand wall was a wood-fired Rayburn stove that looked like it was out of the Ark. Her parents had come for Willie three years ago, when he became unable to take care of himself. Had they cleared everything else out?

  The cabin didn’t have running water or a sink. Whenever her great-uncle chose to wash, which was pretty infrequently, he used the loch or the small stream that ran down the hillside next to the cabin. When Zoe had come to stay as a child, he’d rigged up a gutter and drainpipe which he used to fill an old cattle drinking trough outside for her to wash in. He also constructed the outhouse for her; no more than a tiny hut with a wooden box and toilet seat inside set over a big pit. To make it more appealing to a ten year old, he’d painted it gold and daubed ‘Princess Zoe’s Throne’ in purple over the door. She hadn’t wanted to ask where he’d gone to the toilet before…

  As a girl, the cabin had seemed like a mansion, but now it felt shrunk in the wash. She was used to living in small spaces, her London flat had been tiny, but at least it had separate rooms and a bathroom. She sat on a wobbly chair at the oak table, and dropped her head into her hands. What had she done?

  Willie had left her the lease for the cabin in his will less than a month ago and now she was here; using her holiday allowance to leave her job early, not even staying in her flat until the lease ran out. She hadn’t told anyone her plans, not even her parents until the day she left. She didn’t want them, or anyone else, to talk her out of it. Her best friend, Sam, told her she was having a midlife crisis because she was nearly thirty, and Zoe could see how it looked. She should have done a recce before moving up; made plans based on what the cabin was like in reality, not in her childhood memories from decades ago. At least waited until spring before she changed her life. She sighed, and brought out the remains of the loaf of bread to eat with the last of the jam. She knew she’d made a rash decision, but she’d wanted an out for a long time, and the cabin was it. Willie told her to follow her heart and she had. Now the decision had been made, nothing was going to sway her from it. She just needed a plan.

  The Rayburn stove was her first priority. She needed to get it going for warmth and cooking. Water she could drink from bottles or take from the stream. She’d paid a removal company to take her furniture and belongings to a storage unit an hour and a half’s drive away. She’d keep everything there until she was sure the cabin was watertight. The cabin walls may have been sturdy but it was missing a front door, the windows needed replacing and the roof was alive. There was also the sad but inevitable task of trading in Siena for a more appropriate vehicle.

  There was so much to do but she was up to the challenge. She took her laptop out of her bag, flipped it open and made a list.

  * * *

  Zoe’s first port of call was to be Inverness, about forty minutes south of Kinloch by car. But before she could get there, she needed to phone home. With no signal at the cabin, she hadn’t been able to ring her parents last night when she arrived and knew her mother would be having kittens. She crept along the narrow winding roads until her phone beeped with notifications. She pulled over into a lay-by and called home.

  It picked up after the first ring.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘Hi, Mum, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, darling, we’ve been worried sick! ARNOLD! IT’S ZOE! SHE’S ALIVE! Your dad said there wasn’t much signal, but I couldn’t remember, so of course have been imagining the worst.’

  ‘Mum, I’m fine! It’s all good!’

  ‘Is it? Hang on, love, your dad’s here, let me put the phone on loudspeaker so he can listen in. Just a minute. Arnold love, I can’t see which button to press. Why do they make them so small? Have you got yo
ur glasses? Here, you take a look.’

  Zoe grinned as she heard her dad take the receiver.

  ‘Which button is it, Mary? There’s one that looks a bit like a rainbow, shall I try it?’

  Zoe could hear the beep of a button being pressed, then her mother was back, speaking slowly and loudly.

  ‘Zoe, it’s Mum! Can you hear me?’

  ‘And I’m here too! It’s your dad! Can you hear me?’ said her father, as if reading the shipping forecast.

  Zoe was so full of love for her parents, her eyes began to sting. She couldn’t cry or she’d never stop, then her mum would be set off and her father would feel torn apart, with the two most special people in his life upset and in different countries.

  ‘I can hear you both loud and clear!’

  ‘Wonderful, darling, now tell us all about it. How is the cabin holding up? Your father told me, when we left, the front door was hanging off by its hinges.’

  ‘How’s the roof, love? Any leaks? Got the Rayburn going yet?’ interjected her father.

  ‘The front door is great,’ Zoe lied. ‘And the Rayburn is running perfectly. The roof only has one small leak from a couple of detached shingles, but I’m getting them replaced later today.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure, love?’ replied her mum. ‘You know we can come up, we just need to book the time off work.’

  ‘No bother, love, no bother at all. Just say the word,’ agreed her father.

  She felt so loved, so safe and protected by their unconditional kindness, but the last thing she wanted was for them to come up and discover their darling girl was heading into a Scottish winter, camping in a wooden colander with no front door. They were freaked out enough already by her decision, plus the fact she’d kept them in the dark about it.

  Her parents had always wanted her to have a career, something that would never go obsolete, or be outsourced to another country. They had learned this lesson the hard way when her father had been made redundant from his manufacturing job on the wrong side of forty. They had lost their house, then Zoe’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer. It had been the worst time of their lives. When it was over, and they had a new roof over their heads, they wanted to know Zoe would be able to provide for herself. Music, history, languages, all had to take a back seat to maths and science.

  They were helicopter parents; hovering, helping, pushing Zoe down paths she may have never chosen for herself, never quite trusting her to chart her own course through life. Zoe loved them, understood their motives, wanted to please them, but now she needed to make her own decisions, no matter how crazy they seemed. The pressure had been building for the last few years, to the point where life was feeling unbearable. Willie’s death and legacy was her release.

  She reassured them whilst gently putting them off, got off the phone, took a few more photos for Instagram and set off for Inverness, for possibly the last drive she would have in Siena.

  After the wilds of the cabin, it seemed as busy as London. Within a few hours she had traded in her beloved sports car for a fairly shabby navy Toyota pickup truck, with bull bars and an extended three-year warranty for reassurance. It felt enormous and she crept along the roads convinced she was about to take out anything that came near her. After trips to a hardware store, builders’ merchants, camping shop and a large supermarket, she managed to park it and treated herself to a roast dinner in a pub she remembered coming to decades before with her parents. At least that hadn’t changed. The pictures on the wall, depicting hunting scenes, were still the same, as were the faded burgundy velour chairs. She sat at a table by the window, filling her belly, and watched the world go by.

  In some ways, it wasn’t much different from what she had left behind. The same shops on the high street, the same grey sky, but just in an unfamiliar setting. She got out her phone and flicked through the photos she’d taken that morning by the cabin. The brightness, the colour, the openness of the landscape. She uploaded them to Instagram with the ironic hashtag #braveheart2 then opened her messages.

  She smiled as she read through them. They were from Sam, the best friend she’d met in university halls and who she’d spent three years sharing a house with. Sam had studied theatre studies and was an actress, finally getting her big break with a small part on Elm Tree Lane, a popular soap.

  Sam: Yo! Babe! You alive? Wearing a kilt yet? xxx

  Sam: Do they really eat deep-fried Mars Bars? Lol

  Sam: Have you had any salty porridge?

  Sam: What’s the hovel like? Met Rumpelstiltskin?!

  Sam: Any hot Scots? XXXXXXX

  Sam: When are you coming home?!!

  Zoe messaged back.

  Zoe: Had Sam Heughan round for shortbread and whisky last night, and deep-fried Mars Bars count as one of your five a day – everyone knows that lol. Not coming home till I’ve found you a Scottie hottie xxx

  It was only three days since they’d had goodbye drinks but it could have been a lifetime ago.

  Only one other friendship had come close to the one she shared with Sam, the one with Fiona and Jamie, the children of her mother’s childhood friend, Morag, who ran the post office in Kinloch. Fiona was the same age as her, Jamie two years younger, and during the summer she had spent with Willie, the three of them had slotted together perfectly like pieces of a puzzle.

  It had been nearly twenty years since she had seen them but the memories were as fresh as yesterday. Would they remember her? Even though her mum still kept in touch with her old friend, it was very sporadic, and Zoe hadn’t wanted Morag to know her plans to move to the cabin. The last thing she wanted was her checking it out before Zoe’s arrival and informing her mum it was uninhabitable. She put her phone back in her bag, paid for her food and drove back to Kinloch to find her.

  Kinloch was what Willie called ‘a one-horse town’. A village built around the castle with one main street running through it. Small shops lined each side for less than a hundred yards, including a butcher, an ironmonger, uninspiring takeaways, generic charity shops, a bookies and the post office. Zoe parked ‘The Beast’, as she’d named it, and stood at one end of the high street; memories swirling around her like snowflakes before settling on the tarmac to melt away.

  Everything was so small, so changed. She paused at the post office door, suddenly shy and nervous. Morag had always been so warm and loving, easing the pain of being far from home. But what if she didn’t recognise her? What if she wasn’t as pleased to see her as Zoe had hoped? She hadn’t been back since that summer, hadn’t written. She was only a child but should she have done more than a signature on the bottom of an occasional Christmas card from her parents?

  The little bell above the door tinkled as she opened it, setting off sparklers in her tummy. She stood awkwardly as she heard a familiar voice from the back room calling out.

  ‘Coming!’

  There she was: greyer hair, smaller than Zoe remembered, but still, unmistakably Morag. A lump formed in her throat and she opened her mouth but no words came out.

  ‘As I live and breathe!’ Morag crossed the distance between them and crushed Zoe to her. ‘Zoe, my love! My dear wee girl!’ she cried as Zoe felt the weight of the last weeks and months tumble out in tears.

  Morag smelled exactly the same, a combination of corn-silk powder, home cooking and love. She was just as soft and warm; a walking, talking comfort blanket.

  ‘Fi! Get out here, love, it’s our Zoe!’ Morag yelled over her shoulder.

  A woman with dark wavy hair ran out holding a baby, and the three of them held each other tightly; as if they dared to let go, the spell would be broken and Zoe would vanish in a puff of smoke.

  A confused wail from the baby broke them apart.

  ‘Oh, Zoe, you haven’t changed a bit! How long are you here for? Where are you staying? Can you stay here?’ Fiona rattled out, bouncing the baby, whilst Morag herded Zoe to the back of the shop.

  ‘Come out the back, love, I’ve got a date, apple and walnut cake cooling
, I must have known you were coming!’

  Morag steered Zoe into the comfiest chair by the fire, grabbed a couple of tissues and gave the box to her. ‘What are we like? Now all we need is Jamie. Let me ring him.’

  Morag blew her nose loudly, lifted up a cordless phone and speed-dialled whilst Fiona continued her barrage of questions and statements. ‘Look at you! Do you do Pilates? There’s a class on in the hall but I haven’t been yet, or Zumba? Oh, and this is Liam, say hello Liam! He’s seven months old now. His dad is Duncan, did you ever meet him? I was sweet on him for forever.’

  Fiona smiled at private memories, then Zoe was back between two conversations.

  ‘Jamie! Jamie! Come home, love, you’ll never guess who’s just walked through the door!’

  ‘So, he works out on the rigs,’ said Fiona. ‘Two weeks on, two weeks off and it’s awful, and I worry and think about what happened to Dad, but the money’s good and so for the two weeks he’s away I come back and stay at Mum’s.’

  ‘No, not the Queen, you big lump, better! Guess again!’ encouraged Morag in the background.

  ‘So, what are you doing back? I’m so sorry about Willie,’ said Fiona, her forehead creasing. ‘Are your mum and dad okay? Are they here with you?’

  ‘No, no and no! It’s our Zoe!’ Morag proclaimed. ‘Yes! Zoe! Come back now and see her!’

  ‘You’re so gorgeous, and I’m a frump, covered in food and baby sick,’ Fiona moaned. ‘Oh, we have to go out! How long are you here for, please stay a few days, it’s been so long. Wasn’t that the best summer ever?’