by Jenny Colgan
“Black Watch,” said Robbie in return. Then, falteringly: “I’ll try.”
“They’re good people,” said Cormac. “Go well.”
Chapter 48
Nina called Lissa, and they went together.
“If you could just check him over,” Nina said. “He’s going to live out in the barn . . .”
“If he’s an alcoholic, he shouldn’t be coming off drink right away,” said Lissa. “That could be worse. I’ll check him over, sure.”
She tried to make her voice sound neutral.
“So, this is a friend of Cormac’s?”
“I think so . . .”
The coach steamed up to the little stand at Inverness bus station, and a few road-crumpled people got off. The girls were both a little nervous; Nina had left little John behind at the farm.
Nina smiled. “The last time I was here, I was picking up Zoe and Hari.”
“Really? What was she like?”
“Very, very dirty,” said Nina, grinning. “Gosh, I thought it was going to be a disaster. She was just so miserable.”
Privately Lissa thought Zoe was one of the happiest-looking people she’d ever met. But even she had turned up battered and bruised by life.
“Maybe Kirrinfief is magic,” said Lissa, which was precisely the wrong thing to say to a dreamy bookworm like Nina, who immediately got a distant expression and started talking about Brigadoon.
Robbie was the last passenger to disembark, everyone else swallowed up in a mass of happy families welcoming home students or grannies who’d been on a trip to the Big Smoke. Robbie emerged barely looking up, as if he never expected to be greeted anywhere, his few belongings in an army-issue canvas bag.
“Uh, hello,” said Nina.
Lissa looked at him curiously. Was this what Cormac was like? Shaggy around the edges, covered in homemade tattoos—an old soldier by any measure? Robbie didn’t look frightening, though, or violent. His eyes were haunted; he looked very, very tired.
“Did you sleep on the coach?” asked Nina gently, and he shook his head.
They led him to the book bus out front. He looked at it inquiringly but didn’t say anything.
“Things been tough?” said Lissa, and he nodded sadly, and she looked at him and suddenly, piercingly, felt simultaneously ashamed of her own trauma and more determined to push through it. Because when you couldn’t, it could consume you. She was lucky; she had a loving family, friends, and a job that had given her an amazing opportunity to start over. Robbie had been unlucky. But maybe Scotland gave everyone a second chance. “Let’s get you back and checked over.”
ROBBIE WAS QUIET as a lamb as she examined him in the room next to the barn after he’d washed up. He had scabies, but that would clear up with permethrin. He’d shaved his head, which would probably help with lice, and his skin wasn’t as yellow as she’d feared; hopefully he wouldn’t present with liver complaints, but it was too early to tell. Then they discussed withdrawal and alcohol management.
She had done this many, many times working in A&E. Sometimes, though, she felt that it might work. Robbie might be one of the lucky ones. She directed him to the nearest group, gave him every leaflet Joan had, and added him to be checked up on by her twice a week.
“And now,” she said with a slight smile, “I think they probably have work for you to do.”
Lennox had already arrived at the doorway, little John in his carrier on his back as usual, carrying two trowels in his pockets and two cups of tea in his hands.
“Three sugars,” he grunted. “We’ve got a few poison berries on the upper field to get rid of. The buggers eat ’em, then we’re really in trouble. You up for it?”
Robbie’s face, however, had completely changed when he saw the baby.
“Aye, look at yon bairn,” he said, a half smile revealing his rotten teeth, and Lissa made a mental note to get him on a dentist’s list. Little John beamed and waved in response. “Oh, he is bonny,” said Robbie, moving closer.
He put out a yellowing finger, and John grabbed it tightly, grinning at the game. Then Robbie nodded.
“Aye,” he said, and followed Lennox out into the sunny farmyard, scattering chickens as they went, and Lissa watched them both go and crossed her fingers.
STILL VERY THOUGHTFUL, Lissa went back to the cottage. She had an hour before her next appointment. Looking for something to listen to while she made lunch, she pulled out Cormac’s CDs and, smiling when she remembered how cross he’d been, slid in the Proclaimers.
She had been expecting the bouncy song she half remembered. Instead a piano was starting a slow waltz. A soft, lamenting voice started to sing, joined by another.
“My heart was broken . . . my heart was broken.”
Then it simply repeated,
“Sorrow. Sorrow. Sorrow. Sorrow.”
Lissa turned around, frozen. It sounded . . . it sounded exactly like someone voicing what she’d been feeling for so long.
“My tears are drying . . . my tears are drying.”
By the time she got to the bursting, heartfelt, hopeful chorus, she was an absolute wreck. It felt as if, in some odd way, the song was a tiny key, unlocking something very important.
Lunch forgotten, she listened to it over and over again. Then she texted Cormac.
I might have been wrong about that band you like, she wrote.
Aye you were, came the response, quick as a wink.
Chapter 49
“You won’t believe this!”
Kim-Ange was gasping down the phone to Lissa, who had woken up to a cool, foggy morning and was warming herself in front of the smoldering peat fire. She couldn’t believe Kim-Ange was actually boiling hot when they inhabited the same landmass. They were busy being jealous of each other’s weather; Kim-Ange did not take to the heat well. It played havoc with her makeup regimen, which was prolonged and highly technical.
“You’d know if you were still on Instagram and Facebook.”
“I explained,” said Lissa patiently. It was true. She had felt more at peace since she’d closed her social media, was amazed at how pleasurable a novel and hot bath could be. Plus, she could always rely on Kim-Ange to let her know what was really happening. Like now, in fact.
“Well, Yazzie’s been all over it. Him. It! After he had a man in too!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your Scottish boy!”
“He’s not ‘my Scottish boy,’” said Lissa, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “I’ve never even met him. I don’t even know what he looks like.”
“You can see half his arse on Yazzie’s Instagram. I think she took the picture while he was asleep,” said Kim-Ange musingly.
“Well, that doesn’t sound very nice . . . What, they’re going out together?”
“Well, she hasn’t changed her Facebook status . . . and he doesn’t really use his, so . . .”
“Not even to ‘it’s complicated’?”
“Nope.”
Lissa was annoyed at the fact that she felt slightly relieved. “Maybe it’s just a casual thing.”
She was still disappointed in him. She hadn’t thought of him as a player like that. Mind you, wasn’t that the point about players? They were really sweet and fun—that’s why they reeled you in every time. But she’d definitely thought he was different.
Kim-Ange was still talking. “Yazzie is a filthy mare. Of course, I approve of that.”
“And gorgeous,” said Lissa.
“What do you care?” said Kim-Ange. “Haven’t you got a date?”
Lissa thought of cute Jake. “I do,” she said, smiling wryly.
“Well then.”
“What about you?”
“Yes!” said Kim-Ange. “See, this is a lot of news. I like catching up like this.”
“It’s almost as good as having you here,” said Lissa. “Not quite, though.”
“Well, spray a shitload of Jo Malone perfume around and it will almost be the same.”
; “Almost too much.”
“What?”
“Not at all too much! Who is your date with?!”
“Piotr.”
Lissa had to think for a minute. It wasn’t just nurses in the home; it was more a general backup housing facility for anyone who had to work at the hospital and couldn’t quite manage on the wages the hospital paid.
“Piotr the porter? Amazing!”
It was indeed the diminutive porter Kim-Ange had spent the evening dancing with at the ceilidh, who was completely overwhelmed.
“Is he nice?”
“I don’t care,” said Kim-Ange. “There are no men in this town and I haven’t had a proper date in eight months. As long as he doesn’t eat weasels, I’m probably going to let him get to second base.”
“What if he licks weasels?”
“First base.”
Lissa smiled. “I just can’t believe we’ve all got dates!”
“I know,” said Kim-Ange. “Skype me later and I’ll tell you why you’re dressed all wrong.”
CORMAC SENT OVER the last of the week’s notes to Lissa and couldn’t stop himself from adding at the bottom, seemingly innocently, Going to Fordell Fair?
Lissa saw the line and smiled, then frowned. Word got around. She took another bite of her russet apple.
Maybe. What about you? Busy I believe?
Cormac squinted at the message. Oh, obviously she’d heard. Kim-Ange would have been all over it. It felt very odd—were they . . . were they friends now?
Oi! he typed, throwing the core of the russet he was eating into the bin.
There you go, all Eastenders again. Where are you going?
Some hot new restaurant.
You’ll be queueing for an hour and it’ll be full of snotty types and all anyone does is take photographs of the food, and the plates will be too small and you won’t get enough to eat and it will be filthy expensive.
Well YOU might throw up on the big dipper.
Shan’t! AND Kim-Ange has a date! It must be almost summer.
So we all have dates.
Cormac grabbed another apple from the bag.
Good!
Good!
Lissa decided on another apple and bit into it, trying not to betray how cross she was, and went out to feed Neddie Needles.
Chapter 50
The fog rose on the little town of Kirrinfief that Saturday and they had, by noon, one of those days in the Highlands also known as “you should have been here last week.”
It is a fact—sad but true—but please, don’t ever let it put you off visiting our beautiful country; we would be so happy to see you, I promise. Nonetheless, it remains a fairly hardwired truth that if you want to plan a visit to Scotland, or a wedding, or a barbecue, even simply planning it is an act of hubris that upsets the weather gods of Scotland. Lugh, he of the one eye and the ability to summon storms, will be displeased, and at the very least there will be light drizzle and ominous gray skies, and if you are in a place that has a beautiful view, you will have to put up with people telling you there is a beautiful view, because you will not be able to see it.
But take Scotland by surprise and you might just get a day like this, in early June, when the sun warms every nook and cranny, and the breeze gently pootling over a loch as calm as glass will keep you from getting too hot; when the stillness of the air means the cries of the many birds can be heard more loudly than ever, as well as the lightly tapping hooves of the deer in the forest. The sky is a freshly washed blue, the green of the meadows far greener than anything you would expect to find without a heavy filter on it; fat bees buzz merrily among the meadowsweet and long grass, and the evenings last forever.
IN LONDON, YAZZIE had persuaded Cormac to come out with her to a new restaurant and he had said yes, because he didn’t know what else to do and Kim-Ange was mysteriously unavailable.
Kim-Ange was going for a walk with Piotr, who was both excited and slightly concerned about it.
And Lissa Westcott was going to the fair. She was in a blue dress that, for once, she was wearing without a coat or a cardigan. It was a plain dress, but it suited her, and she had left off the makeup apart from a little pink lipstick, and her hair was bouncing down her back, and she felt . . . not fine exactly. But, as Kim-Ange gave her the thumbs-up from the laptop in the corner of the room, she reminded herself again and again, It’s only Jake, it’s only Jake, then she couldn’t feel worse.
They were all of them out, in the warm of a British evening as beautiful as she makes them; hundreds of miles apart, but each with the same combination of butterflies and cheerfulness and a slight aura of dread and considering just canceling the entire thing and never mentioning it again and running away to the sea to be a sailor, which characterizes the process of dating. But they were all youngish, and it was a beautiful evening, and there was potential magic in the air, so you couldn’t be too worried for them, not really. Tonight, even for Lissa, the bad things felt a little further away, warded off by the magical sweetness of the air, a late spring’s caress, a new pair of boots; by expectation, possibilities, aftershave, and checking wristwatches and best earrings and chewing gum.
Chapter 51
The fair was easy to smell, coming in on the old farm track. The normal scents of pine and bracken in the air—with an undertone of cow that at first Lissa had been averse to but now rather liked—had been overtaken by smells that were familiar and strange all at once: the fairground mix of candy floss, popcorn, diesel, and dirty old engines.
Lissa remembered her mother hurrying her past it, refusing to let her go, completely uninterested in the entire affair. She recalled not wanting to catch the eye of the rougher girls in case they teased her later (which they did anyway, calling her stuck up, which was hard to disagree with because her mother was so very insistent that that’s exactly what she was).
And then another time, when she was a little older, she did exactly what her mother was so scared she would: pretended she was going around to Majabeen’s house to study, whereupon the two of them slipped out to “the library” and rushed down to the common, pooling their money, which was just enough to share candy floss and have one ride. The scrawny boy on the waltzers had a tooth missing, but to them he just looked even more exotic, like a pirate. He came and hung off the back of their car as they screamed their heads off. The evening was dark and the music was incredibly loud, and as she spun around and around, her neck hurting from the pressure, she couldn’t remember feeling more alive, more naughty.
Of course one of the girls from school saw them, and even though she was friendly enough, word got around and someone’s mum ran into her mum at Sainsbury’s and the worst came to the worst and she was grounded for a solid month.
It had been so worth it.
JAKE WAS STANDING there, wearing an open-necked blue shirt that suited his hair. He’d had it trimmed, Lissa noticed, for the occasion. It looked ridiculously sharp and contoured and gelled and she wasn’t crazy about it (fearing retributive ear cutting, Jake had gone into the nearest town, forty miles away, and gotten it done by somebody who hadn’t known him his entire life).
He grinned at her nervously. She looked lovely, her curls bouncing behind her and the smile he never normally saw in the daytime.
They awkwardly attempted a social kiss, which went a little wrong, and Jake would normally have taken her hand but, suddenly shy, he didn’t. Instead, he gallantly offered her his arm, and she took it rather tentatively.
“Okay,” he said. “So what do you want to do first? What’s your favorite thing?”
“I don’t know,” said Lissa. “I’ve never been to a fair before. Except the waltzers. I like the waltzers.”
“You’ve never been?!” He was incredulous. “Were you brought up in a cupboard under the stairs?”
“No,” said Lissa.
He stopped himself suddenly. “Sorry, is it . . . like, a culture thing?”
Lissa gave him a sideways glance. “How would that work
, then?”
“I don’t know!” said Jake, lifting his hands in horror in case he’d said the wrong thing.
“No,” said Lissa slowly. “We have fairs in London. My mum just didn’t really approve.”
“Because . . . ?”
Lissa thought about it. “Oh . . . I suppose she was a bit of a snob.”
This was such an out-of-character thing to say that Lissa lifted her hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I can’t believe I just said that about my mum. She’s amazing, a really inspirational character, very . . . all of that.”
Jake smiled. “She sounds . . . terrifying. And amazing, obviously,” he added hastily, horrified at how he was doing.
Lissa smiled again. “Oh God,” she said, and swallowed. “Okay. She is both of those things.”
She wondered, suddenly, why she hadn’t confided more in her mum. Would she even have needed to come here? Would her mum have been disappointed?
She thought of Cormac too, and his mother, fussing about him. It was odd, sometimes, just a little, the strange things they had in common.
“Well then,” said Jake after a long pause, trying to get her attention. “Where shall we start? I really need to win you a large soft toy.”
“I don’t need one of those.”
“You don’t need one,” said Jake, who had, truth be told, been practicing, “but I think you should have one. To make up for all the ones you missed when you were a child.”
And he bought her a large candy floss, which immediately got stuck in her hair and was just as sticky and ridiculous a concept of foodstuff as Lissa remembered from nearly half a lifetime ago and was messing up her lipstick, but she found she didn’t care and they both laughed. She wondered briefly if she didn’t care because she was so relaxed or because she genuinely wasn’t that into the guy she was with, but soon she told herself to stop bothering and just enjoy herself. And she did.
They passed Ramsay and Zoe with their clutch of children, the two little boys wearing identical Spider-Man costumes, holding hands, and looking absolutely terrified.