by Jane Renshaw
‘Give it a rest, Dad,’ said Kirsty. ‘If Bram’s confident enough in his masculinity to take on the traditionally female role, why should it bother you?’
‘It doesn’t bother me. As you say, if Bram’s happy to be the little woman keeping house, spending your money on chai lattes and pointy shoes, and if you’re happy to keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed, who am I to object?’
Kirsty opened and closed her mouth.
The problem was that David was a lot cleverer than he looked, and thrived, of course, on conflict, so it was rare that either of them got the better of him in these exchanges. He smiled, and leant back in the armchair he had selected, and closed his eyes.
He was soon snoring away, thank God, and Fraser followed suit, big booted feet stuck out in front of him on the rug. Max offered to take Linda and Bertie round the house so they could familiarise themselves with the layout of the furniture, and Phoebe went with them, chattering to her beloved Bertie and stroking his back, equanimity seemingly restored.
In the kitchen, Kirsty tugged at the front of Bram’s apron, pulling him towards her for a kiss. ‘All together again in our new house.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you for today.’
Oh God, he loved her so much! He took her hand and led her through the Room with a View to the terrace, where he put his arms around her, holding her close as they looked across the field to the hills. How had he got to be so lucky? Little did nineteen-year-old Bram imagine, all those years ago, that the Weird Girl was going to turn out to be his whole world, that they would have this wonderful life together. That they would have two wonderful kids. Live happily ever after.
She had, he reflected with satisfaction, made much more of a success of her life than Gary or Jake or Steph who, last he heard, was attempting to raise cash to save her scuzzy beach bar in Goa. When he’d shown Kirsty the crowd-funding page, complete with photo of a leathery-skinned Steph standing in front of what was basically a falling-down shack, looking about ten years older than she was thanks to excessive sun exposure, Kirsty had just raised her eyebrows, her lips lifted in a little smile, and turned away.
Bram had kind of been hoping that Kirsty, a high-flying freelance forensic auditor, might suggest getting in touch with Steph and working on a rescue plan, but that had been unrealistic. Steph had been horrendous to Kirsty at uni – why should Kirsty help her now? It was nothing less than karma, although Kirsty, of course, wouldn’t see it that way. In Kirsty’s world view, if it couldn’t be proved scientifically, it didn’t exist.
‘What did you do with the crow?’ she asked him.
‘Buried it. Over in the grass near the stream. I hope Bertie doesn’t try to dig it up. Hopefully he’s too much of a lazy sod to make the effort.’
Kirsty nodded. He could feel that she’d stiffened a little in his arms. ‘Do you think Dad’s right, and it was just a farmer? The whirly was maybe a convenient place to put it, like a makeshift fence? Maybe he thought he was doing us a favour, like Dad said.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
Why would a farmer leave a dead crow there? Even if he thought he was doing them a favour, why wouldn’t he just take the corpse away with him? But Bram wasn’t about to voice his doubts to Kirsty. It wasn’t as if he had a better explanation.
He kissed her hair. Maybe now was an appropriate time to broach the subject he’d been trying to talk to her about ever since they’d moved up here. ‘It can’t be easy. Being back home. Must be bringing back – memories?’
Kirsty turned in his arms and broke away, on the pretext of kicking a twig off the flagstones of the terrace. ‘It’s fine, Bram.’ She looked at him, and grinned suddenly. ‘But for God’s sake take off that bloody apron.’
3
The sunlight was dancing on the shallow water of the stream where it widened and looped around a miniature sandy crescent Phoebe called The Beach. The water seemed to coat the pebbles and stones it ran over. They were all different colours, browns and yellows and whites and greys and pinks and blues. Some of them were clean as a whistle and some of them were covered in algae and weedy stuff that swayed and waved in the current.
It was incredibly soothing, watching the play of sun and water on the stones – right up until the moment Bertie launched himself into the middle of it, pushing his head into the stream to hoover up a stone before dropping it again, humphing, spluttering, as if indignant to find that the delicious-looking biscuit-sized object wasn’t in fact edible.
‘Mad dog.’ Max laughed, picking up a stick. ‘Bertie! Go get it!’ He threw the stick across to the far bank.
Bertie ignored it.
This was their own stream.
Well, this stretch of it, through their wood and along the edge of the rough grass that Bram and Max intended turning into a wildflower meadow. Downstream, it dog-legged away through Andrew and Sylvia Taylor’s land to the bridge that carried the track leading to Woodside. The chimneys of the Taylors’ house were just visible over the tops of the trees – Benlervie, it was called, a grand Georgian place that Bram found slightly intimidating. On the couple of occasions he’d been inside, he’d felt like a prole who should be using the back entrance.
This had once been Benlervie land, but the Taylors had decided to sell it as a plot because the whole kit and caboodle had been too much maintenance. The track and bridge still belonged to the Taylors, but the Woodside residents had right of access over them.
It was a perfect set-up – totally private and secluded, at the end of a track, but with neighbours near enough that you didn’t feel isolated. When they’d been thinking of a name for the house, they had toyed with Àite Brèagha, meaning ‘beautiful place’ in Scottish Gaelic, but there had been pronunciation and spelling issues, and delivery drivers were going to have a hard enough time finding them as it was. When Linda had suggested simply Woodside, everyone had agreed it was perfect.
So Woodside it was.
Bertie splashed back through the stream and headed off across the grass towards the wood, probably reasoning that he was more likely to find something edible in there. Bram sat down on the grassy bank and let the sound of the stream and the dancing sunlight on the little ripples and eddies fill his senses.
It was three o’clock. Fraser had gone off back to McKechnie and Son’s current building project, but David and Linda had decided to stay on for a bit and get Bram to run them home later. Surely they would only stay another hour at the most? He and Max could probably spin this ‘walk’ out for what, another forty minutes? Which would leave only twenty minutes more he’d have to spend in David’s company, not counting the drive into Grantown.
Max flopped down next to Bram on the grass.
‘Grandad’s doing my head in,’ he said, in that way he had sometimes of divining Bram’s thoughts. ‘I’d forgotten how full on he can be.’
‘Mm,’ said Bram. He tried not to bad-mouth David to the kids.
Max lay back to look at the sky. ‘How do you stand it, Dad? It makes me hopping mad when he goes on about how you’re living off Mum. You let her have her career at the expense of your own because I came along and–’
‘No no no. I never wanted a “career”, Max. Can you imagine me trotting into an office every day in a suit and tie, filling in spreadsheets and trying to talk corporate?’
Max grinned. ‘But you could have done maybe social work, or something environment-focused.’ Max had a conditional offer to study Ecology and Environmental Biology at Imperial College London. ‘I’m not saying voluntary stuff isn’t really worthwhile, but didn’t you ever want more than that?’
In Islington, Bram had been a volunteer for various charities, primarily involved in befriending isolated pensioners and teaching disadvantaged children to swim in the local pool. It still gave him a warm glow to think of the weekend he’d taken some of the better swimmers to Wales for a wild swimming course. Watching their faces as they’d frolicked in that river had been one of the highlights of his life.
‘No
pe. Your mum loves her job, the cut and thrust of it, the challenge, but that’s not me, is it?’ They’d had Max while they were still at uni, and Bram had taken a break to look after him while Kirsty completed her education and started work as a forensic auditor for a top accountancy firm. Bram’s intention had been to complete his history degree and pursue his own career when Max started school – but somehow that had never happened. Bram had loved being a parent too much, if that were possible.
And he really didn’t envy Kirsty her career. In fact, during their last year in London, he’d become increasingly concerned about her. The job had been so pressured. One week, Bram had calculated that she’d spent less than four waking hours, total, with him and the kids.
He had suggested a radical change – why didn’t she go freelance? They could move to the country, give the kids a better quality of life…
‘We could live near Grannie and Grandad and Bertie!’ Phoebe had enthused, and next time she’d Skyped them she’d come out with this suggestion. Bram had winced inwardly. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but the idea had gained momentum. Both kids were really keen – once Max started university, he would have the perfect combo of London life during term time, when he could see his friends, and a country idyll in the holidays. And Phoebe had been desperate to leave her school and join Rhona at hers in Grantown. Bram had felt that the fly in the ointment – having to live near David – was an acceptable price to pay for a better life for all of them. Kirsty had been the one dragging her heels at first, but she’d come round to the idea. She missed home, particularly her mum, and felt guilty that she hadn’t been around much.
He smiled. ‘You know what, Max? It doesn’t get much better than this.’
‘It’s so quiet here, isn’t it?’
As if on cue, there was a sudden crack from off in the wood, like a branch of a tree had just whacked off another branch.
‘What was that?’ Max sat up.
Crack!
That wasn’t a branch – it was a gunshot! And this time it was followed by a yelp. A howl.
‘Bertie!’ they both said at once.
Max was off and running before Bram had got to his feet.
‘No! Max, no! Get back here!’
But Max kept going. Bram pounded after him, but before Max had reached the wood there was Bertie, limping out of the trees towards them, his yellow coat streaming blood.
‘Okay, boy, okay.’ Max dropped to his knees and took Bertie’s head in his arms as Bram examined the wound. His shoulder was covered in blood.
There was a nasty gash where the bullet must have struck him and he was whimpering, whining, flinching away from Bram’s fingers.
‘Inside, now!’ Bram gathered Bertie up in his arms, and the dog yelped again in pain. ‘Go, Max. Go!’
‘I’ll help you carry–’
‘No. I can manage. Run inside and call 999! Don’t argue with me, Max. Go!’
4
‘What the…?’ David barrelled into the house, hammer in hand, as Bram and Kirsty were trying to get everyone out to the car – not an easy task with Bertie whining away in Bram’s arms, bleeding all over the towel Kirsty was holding to his shoulder, while Linda insisted on keeping her hand on the dog’s head at all times while simultaneously rubbing Kirsty’s arm comfortingly, and Phoebe clung to Kirsty.
‘Bertie’s been shot!’ Linda gasped.
‘What?’
‘Someone in the wood shot him,’ Kirsty elaborated, her voice oddly flat. ‘Can you get out of the way, Dad?’
The police had told them to stay inside, but they had to take Bertie to the vet, and Bram’s instinct was to get everyone out. If there was a maniac running around with a gun, he didn’t want to leave anyone behind in the house. The police said it might be half an hour at least until someone could ‘attend the scene’. He’d got the Discovery and driven it right up to the bottom of the verandah steps and left it there with the engine running. It wasn’t likely that the shooter would actually take aim at people, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
David bent over Bertie. ‘Okay, boy. You’re going to be okay.’ Bertie’s tail slapped weakly against Bram’s leg. ‘Looks like he’s been grazed by an airgun pellet.’ Then David was fixing Bram with steely blue eyes. ‘Why aren’t you out there going after the bastard?’
‘Let me past, David – we have to get Bertie to the vet.’
David stood aside to let Bram out onto the verandah, and Bram heard him rap out: ‘Where in the wood?’
‘In our bit of it,’ said Max. ‘Near the stream.’
‘Right.’ David pushed past Bram, hefting the hammer in his hand – Bram recognised it now as his own red-handled one from the shed, presumably fetched for some snagging issue with the house – and barrelled off down the verandah steps.
‘No! Dad!’
‘David, don’t be stupid!’ Linda cried out.
But David had gone.
That journey to the vet was a nightmare. ‘He’s going to be all right,’ Phoebe kept repeating between sobs. She, Max and Linda were on the back seat with Bertie lying across their laps, while Kirsty sat next to Bram in the passenger seat, dabbing a damp tissue at the blood on her top. Her expression had gone completely blank, in the way he remembered from uni, turning in on herself, turning away from the world.
‘I’m texting Grandad,’ said Max.
‘He shouldn’t have gone out there!’ Phoebe wailed.
‘No,’ said Linda tightly. ‘He shouldn’t.’
It felt weird to be driving through this gorgeous scenery, the sun dappling the tarmac in front of them, canopies of big old beech trees stretching over the road to the right, and to the left a view over fields to the enticing wilderness of the Grampian Mountains, as if the beautiful summer’s day was going on out there in another world in which nothing had happened, nothing was wrong, everything was fine.
‘He’ll be okay.’ Bram made his voice firm and confident, and reached over to squeeze Kirsty’s hand. ‘No one messes with your grandad. And the police will be there by now.’ Would they?
‘But the psychopath’s got a guuuuun!’ Phoebe’s wail filled the car.
‘Grandad thinks it’s just an airgun. And there isn’t any psychopath.’ Bram had to shout to make himself heard. Bloody Nora. Phoebe was meant to watch Linda and David’s Netflix only under supervision, but he knew she sneaked a look at all kinds of inappropriate stuff that David and Max watched, the latest one featuring a serial killer who dismembered his victims and left various body parts in children’s play areas. Phoebe hadn’t been near a park since.
‘There’s Grandad texting back,’ Max shouted. ‘He’s fine, Phoebs. For God’s sake shut up – getting hysterical isn’t helping Bertie, is it? We need to keep him calm.’
Phoebe’s noise immediately stopped, like Max had flicked a switch. ‘Sorry, Bertie,’ she gulped. And then, in a small voice: ‘That’s good that Grandad’s okay.’
‘What does he say?’ said Linda.
‘Uh, he uses a pretty bad swear word. “No sign of the blank.”’
‘Thank God,’ said Linda. ‘You text him right back, Max, and tell him he’s to get in the house and stay there. Tell him it’s a message from me.’
Bloody Nora. This went to show just how rattled Linda was. She was usually as easy-going as Max, and rarely laid down the law to David or, indeed, anyone else. She let David get away with far too much, in Bram’s opinion, although this was probably unfair of him. The only person responsible for David’s actions was David himself.
Georgia the vet, reasonably enough, wasn’t keen on all five of them accompanying Bertie into the treatment room, so Bram and the kids stayed in the waiting room while Linda and Kirsty went in with him.
When Phoebe wandered off to the shop area to choose a treat for Bertie, Max looked up from his phone. ‘Grandad says he’s searched the whole wood and there’s no one there now. That was pretty foolhardy of him, wasn’t it, going after them like that?’
Bram nodded. It was a source of secret delight to him and Kirsty, the way Max occasionally used old-fashioned words like foolhardy, but they never remarked on it in case he became self-conscious about it and stopped. Max was addicted to classic literature, particularly Dickens and George Elliot, as well as 1930s stuff like P. G. Wodehouse.
‘They could have been really dangerous.’ Max shook his head. ‘What is Grandad like? It’s as if he isn’t scared of anything.’
Bram wanted to say that only an idiot wasn’t scared of anything, but contented himself with, ‘He’s certainly not exactly risk-averse.’
Ten minutes later, a sorry-for-himself Bertie appeared sporting a large Perspex cone around his head.
‘The vet thinks Dad was right and it was only an airgun pellet.’ Kirsty caught Phoebe into a hug. ‘It only grazed him. He was unlucky because it hit a couple of blood vessels.’
Thank God, Kirsty seemed to have come out of her fugue.
Bram put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Well, big relief all round, eh?’
He gave Linda a hug for good measure, and Linda smiled at him and nodded, reaching out a hand to touch first Phoebe’s head and then Bertie’s flank.
They decided that it would be better, given the unwieldy nature of the cone, if Bertie travelled where he normally did, in the Discovery’s boot, where he had a dog’s-eye view out of the rear windscreen. Kirsty closed the boot on him gently. ‘It was probably kids. Kids messing about.’ She nodded, as if to reassure herself. ‘Just kids with an airgun.’
Those were five words which, in Bram’s opinion, did not belong together in the same sentence. He knew that people in rural communities had different social mores from those he was used to – Kirsty had told him so often enough – but Just kids with an airgun?
Really?
He didn’t want to make a big thing of it, though, so ‘Probably,’ was all he said, as he looked through the tinted glass at Bertie, who had settled himself on the blankets with a huff.