by Karen Swan
‘You do not.’ She looked at Skye, prettily pink and potentially on the cusp of having everything she never could: him. Grabbing a tissue, she gently wiped away Skye’s mascara smudges.
‘You look so sad,’ Skye mumbled, watching her.
‘Me? No, I’m fine.’ The most common lie in the world.
‘Why do you never talk about your problems? We’re always talking about mine.’
Alex stalled, her brain suddenly numb. ‘My problems are just . . . they’re just very boring. And silly.’ She forced a smile. ‘Are you ready to go back through?’
‘I guess I have to. It’s now or never with Lochie, right? If we don’t say it now, we never will.’
Alex nodded, feeling the numbness spread to her heart. ‘I guess so.’
They walked back out into the corridor, but as Alex caught sight of the flinging bodies again, she stepped back. She couldn’t do this; she couldn’t watch it, she couldn’t pretend any more with Callum . . .
‘Actually, I’m think I’m going to go outside and try to cool down a bit first.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No, you go and do what you need to do. I won’t be long. I just need a bit of air. Try to sober up a bit.’
‘Okay. That’s the back door there,’ Skye said, the words a slur as she pointed down the short corridor to a fire exit. ‘But you just holler if you need me, okay? I’m here for you, Alex, just like you’ve been for me. Partners in crime, right?’
Alex tried to smile, to nod, but tears were threatening like a thunderclap and she stumbled her way outside, gasping as the freezing temperatures hit her. She had no coat on; stupid shoes for snow. The music dimmed as the door slammed shut and she turned her face to the night, too miserable even to marvel at the beauty of the diamond-studded sky.
She slumped against the bonnet of a Datsun, her head in her hands. What was she doing?
‘You’re not fooling anyone, you know.’
Her hands fell away as she looked back to find Lochie leaning against the wall, beside the back door. Had . . . had she just rushed straight past him?
‘With the young love scene you’ve got going on in there, I mean. I assume it’s for my benefit but I’m afraid I’m not buying it.’ He had a bottle in one hand and appeared to be swigging it neat. His head was tipped back against the wall, looking at her through lowered lids. He was really drunk now, dangerously so, at that point where all bets were off.
She didn’t dare deny it, knowing that every word that she used to engage in this conversation was a step off the path she needed him to stay on; she had to remain focused.
He sighed, pulling his gaze away from her, and they were silent for a long time.
‘It would appear everything is falling to shit, Hyde.’ He took a swig before looking back at her again. ‘I take it this wasn’t what you had planned as part of my rehabilitation either, getting me to fall for you?’
Her body physically tingled at the words but still she kept quiet.
‘Ah, well . . . there it is, anyway. Another problem for you to solve.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Not that it will matter either way. We could speak all the truths we want tonight but you’ll still wake up tomorrow and tell me it’s the alcohol. And I guess we’ll both pretend to believe that.’
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t dare to say anything. Every word that fell from his lips made her want to dance and leap and if she was free to follow her instincts, she’d be in his arms already. But she wasn’t. And she couldn’t.
He shook his head, looking at her again. ‘Did you seriously not know what was happening between us till Saturday?’
‘. . . No.’
He closed his eyes and smiled, giving a wry snort. ‘I remember exactly when I knew.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘It was the fire . . . Your voice. It was like you needed me to survive. Like you needed me. There was nothing and then suddenly there was you. You were like an explosion in my mind.’
Tears started flowing down her cheeks, silent in the darkness. Because she wanted to tell him back, to tell him it was the same for her, she felt it too.
From the other side of the building, a door opened and a cone of light spilled onto the ground. The music volume increased tenfold for a moment and she looked over, just in time to see a shining golden head peer round the corner.
‘Oh, you’re out here!’ Callum grinned, lighting up at the sight of her. ‘Skye said you were— Ah, Lochie!’ He faltered as he caught sight of his cousin in the shadows, leaning against the wall. ‘. . . Not interrupting anything, I hope?’
‘Of course not,’ Lochie replied, taking another swig from the bottle. ‘We were just having a State of the Nation, weren’t we, Hyde?’
‘Yes.’ She barely recognized the sound of her own voice.
‘I was coming out to check everything was okay. It’s freezing out here. Aren’t you cold?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, looking back at Lochie.
He blinked, the movement slow and heavy, lidding dark eyes that told her everything and nothing all at once.
‘You don’t mind do you, cuz?’ Callum asked.
‘Not at all. Take her away,’ Lochie murmured, never taking his eyes off her. ‘She’s all yours.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thompson Falls, Montana, 4 June 1918
The fox had found a mate. For the past few weeks now, she had watched them from her porch, rocking silently on the chair as they frolicked and chased, tumbled and hunted in the small woods at the edge of the clearing. She liked seeing their thick brush tails held aloft in the long grass, watching their pointed ears twitch as raccoons scrabbled up the trees behind them and squirrels dropped cob nuts.
In the distance, the snow was melting off the blue mountaintops and the forests were stirring themselves green. Woodpeckers knocked by day, owls glided on the nights; elks trod their slow path through the trees and the yowl of mountain cats pierced the muffling silence like a knife through silk. The world was coming alive again.
But in another country, across a faraway sea, it was not nature that made the landscape dance but guns – guns that made the earth quake and rivers run red, where the only flowers that grew sprang from trenches and not a bird dared cross the pale sky. And it was in that country that her son’s body lay – far from home and left behind by this dawning spring that blossomed without him.
He would never again hear the roar of the meltwater rushing through the rapids, or know the tenderness of daisies against his skin. He wouldn’t see the grey fox cubs first stagger into the sunlight, nor grow to be the man he had been born to become. He had been plucked from the face of the world so that no trace remained – no body to bury, no laughter to snatch, as though he had never been at all. Only the newly-hung gold star in the window told otherwise, that a brave soldier had given his life for his country, but there was none but the foxes to see it; they alone were witness to what she had lost.
Islay, Friday 22 December 2017
She had to wipe the snow off the seat with her arm, the sleeve pulled down tight over her reddened hands as she sank onto the bench and looked out to sea. It glistened white like a mirror. Her breathing returned to normal within a minute; her cheeks would take rather longer, but for all her apparent vision of health, her hangover lingered stubbornly in her body. She hadn’t been able to look at breakfast and the temptation to climb back into bed and hide under the covers was, for once, overwhelming. It wasn’t as though she was going into the distillery today. The boundaries between her and Lochie were too fragile at the moment and she had to keep things clean. Professional. She had to get him over the line.
Would the distillery even be open, anyway? The snow was coming down in thick plumes; the roads could well be closed. Perhaps it wouldn’t just be the local kids enjoying a ‘snow day’ today.
Her phone buzzed with a text and she saw Callum’s name on the screen. Again. She bit her lip as she pressed delete without opening it, looking out to
the horizon, out towards America. She wasn’t proud of herself; she didn’t even like herself right now, for she had used him: her weapon of choice for keeping Lochie back – Ha! Like that had worked! – and the ball in the game. She had used him to hurt Lochie and that made her no better than Torquil. Who had she been to stand in judgement of him? A punch on the jaw had been the very least he deserved, but what about her? If he only knew what she had done . . .
She wondered what he was doing right now, now that he was no longer a Farquhar by legal definition. What had happened – if anything – between him and Skye after she had left? Poor Skye. She didn’t think he was going to be including her in the calculations for his future.
The phone buzzed again and she looked at it with a sigh. The number was unidentified but as she read the text, it didn’t even need to be signed off. She knew perfectly well who it was from.
‘Wanted to let you know Lochlan tendered his resignation an hour ago and I happily accepted. Congratulations on a job well done.’
Their breath hung like clouds in the frozen cab. Mr Peggie hadn’t said much when Mrs Peggie had explained in brisk tones that if he didn’t drive her, Alex would walk across the moors herself; he had ‘jobs to do anyway’, he’d said, and within the half-hour Mrs Peggie had been packing them both off with a thermos flask and foil-wrapped lardy cake ‘just in case’.
The tractor’s snow shovel was clearing the single-track road with ruthless efficiency, sprays of snow flying out to the sides and building high banks as the attachment on the back spread salt on the ground behind them. Alex was content to look out of the window, her fingers worrying at the envelope on her lap.
The tractor turned in through the stone-capped gates, Mr Peggie knowing exactly where he was going as they drove through the tree-lined estate. Through the bushes she caught glimpses of the big house, the lights already on in some rooms, the day beginning to die even though it was only just gone two. But that wasn’t where they were headed and she gave a murmur of thanks that the old farmer was going along with this, for she would never have found it on her own.
They hooked a right down a narrow track, rolling through an almost alpine landscape, the branches of pine trees laden and drooping under the weight of snow. She knew that if they were to have stopped, utter silence would muffle them. They could as well have been at the very top of the world as on a snowy Scottish isle. There was no sign of any other vehicle tracks – the Aston certainly wasn’t an option in these conditions – suggesting he hadn’t left the house today.
‘Well, there it is,’ Mr Peggie said in his usual spare manner as they rounded a bend and the track opened out to a circular drive with a mulberry tree in the middle. The house would have been breathtakingly pretty enough on its own – brown stone in the Regency style, with tall windows and three steps to the front door – but with the snow piled deep on the sills, the roof and the bulbous topiaried-box balls in the flower beds, it was rendered even more enchanting. It might have been only a quarter of the size of the main house but it had three times the charm. ‘I’ll turn this whilst you knock.’
‘Oh, I won’t be knocking,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m just going to put this through the letterbox.’ On the far side of the drive, she saw a double garage, the nose of the Aston visible below half-lowered doors.
‘You don’t need to speak to him?’ Mr Peggie frowned.
‘Everything he needs to know is in there.’
‘Aye, well,’ Mr Peggie said after a pause. ‘It’s up to you. I can wait. Mrs P. has seen to it that I won’t starve.’
She jumped down from the cab, landing softly in the snow, and walked towards the front door, unable to resist looking in through the dark windows as she passed. An antique rocking horse stood motionless by one window; a piano was glimpsed through another and she could see lights further on, through the back of the house.
She climbed the steps, looking for the letterbox – but there was none. She looked around. Dammit – had they missed it? Was there a box up by the gates?
She checked again but there was nothing. She was going to have to leave it here. But could she do that? If she left it in the snow, it would get wet and so too would everything inside.
She ran back to the tractor which was now facing up the track. ‘Mr P., I’ll just be a moment. There’s no letterbox. I’ll have to find a back door or somewhere out of the snow where I can leave it.’
Mr Peggie toasted her with his flask cap of tea and slice of lardy cake, as though he’d expected as much. ‘Aye.’
She shut the door and jogged lightly across the drive again, going past the door this time and in front of the other windows. Inside one she saw weights and a running machine; in the other, a giant TV screen and sofa. It was clear which half of the house he occupied.
She rounded the corner, past a snow-topped hedge, and stopped. Light pooled on a lawned area and a door was open. She felt her heart catch as she looked around, trying to locate him. Had he heard the tractor? It was hardly a stealth missile, after all.
She heard a sound off to the right and saw a small shed, its door open too. He was in there!
She looked back at the open door to the house and without giving herself a chance to chicken out, ran towards it, tossing the letter onto the safety of a drystone floor. She turned just as she heard another noise coming from the shed and began to run back the way she had come, the snow squeaking beneath her boots.
She was almost there when—
‘Alex?’
Oh God. Her stomach dropped at the sound of his voice, flipped at the sight of his face. ‘Hi.’
He was holding a stack of logs in his arms, bafflement on his face. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I . . . I was just leaving.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I was dropping something off for you.’
He frowned as he looked over to the house and saw the envelope tossed on the floor. ‘Is it your bill?’
She snorted, trying to laugh. Failing. ‘No.’
‘Wait. What’s the rush? Come in.’
‘I have to get back. Mr Peggie’s waiting for me. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘That’s not like you. I thought disturbing me was your favourite thing to do,’ he quipped. But she wasn’t in the mood for jokes and clearly neither was he. He looked haggard: unshaven with dark circles under his eyes from a bottle of whisky and a night without sleep.
‘I was going to put it through your letterbox but . . . well, you don’t appear to have one and I couldn’t leave it in the snow.’
He stared at her, utterly oblivious to how good he looked standing there with an armful of logs and a deep frown. ‘Alex, what exactly is going on?’
‘Please, just read it and you’ll see.’ Her voice wavered. She didn’t want to be doing this. Talking to him, engaging . . .
He dropped the logs on the snow and walked over to her. Past her.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, watching as he turned the corner out of sight. She waited a moment before following him, finding him talking to Mr Peggie. ‘No, wait—!’
But the big wheels were already turning, the old farmer making for home as the snow closed in.
‘I’ve told him I’ll drop you back,’ Lochie said, walking over and looking down at her, an unspoken conversation coursing between them, and she felt that intensity – aliveness – in her body that she always felt whenever he was near. He took her arm suddenly and led her towards the house.
‘Lochie, no—’
‘Well, this is a novelty,’ he said wryly as he frogmarched her through the door. ‘Throwing you in for a change.’
The kitchen was large, with pale blue free-standing units, an enormous preparation unit in the centre with an old oak top and an opened bottle of Merlot on it. He picked up the envelope and dropped it on the unit, walking to a wall cupboard and bringing out another glass. He poured her some wine without asking if she wanted any and handed it to her.
She took a
grateful sip as he wandered over to the sink unit and retrieved his own glass. Several plates and a bowl were upended on the drying counter, a jumper strewn across the back of a chair; a copy of The Times was open at the sports pages, an iPad charging by the wall. Rona – clearly the world’s worst guard dog – pattered through from the hall, checking her bowl for food before becoming aware of Alex’s presence and coming over for a pat.
He leaned against the counter, legs crossed at the ankle, watching her. He was saying even less than Mr Peggie which was frankly . . . unnerving.
‘You look better than I thought you would,’ she said, trying to make small talk. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Hungover. Knackered. I haven’t slept.’
‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘What happened last night after I left?’
He paused, tilted his head to the side. ‘You mean, did anything happen between me and Skye?’
She looked away. It had been exactly what she’d meant, but the words had no sooner left her than she regretted them.
‘Nothing happened and nothing’s going to happen. We talked, that was all.’
‘About what?’
He shrugged. ‘Custody of the dog.’
‘Lochie!’
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What did you think we had to say to each other? That I was going to profess my undying love? That I wanted her back? I don’t. She’s happy with him and all you’re doing is confusing her. They’re a good match. I’m not going to get in the way of that.’
‘But in the meeting yesterday, you agreed—’
‘I agreed nothing.’
‘You understood, then, that this is your last chance to make it work. Letting her go again doesn’t make sense.’
‘No. What doesn’t make sense is why you are so desperate for me to be with her,’ he said in a low, slow voice. ‘Why are you pushing for it so hard?’
She blinked at him. ‘You know why.’
‘Do I? Enlighten me then. Because from where I’m standing, it’s pretty bloody obvious what I want.’ He held his arms out to the side in a gesture of openness. ‘I’m not hiding anything here.’