by Jenny Colgan
“So, wounds, huh?” he found himself saying as Yazzie picked unhappily at the delicious food.
“Did you always want to be a nurse?” she asked him.
Cormac half smiled to himself. “Ach, not quite,” he said. “Everyone in my family joined the army, so I joined up too. Became a medic.”
“Ooh,” said Yazzie. “That’s interesting.”
Cormac shrugged. “A bit too interesting at times,” he said.
“Did you get shot at?”
Cormac blinked. He almost answered the question and then reined it back. But why . . . why? Why did he suddenly feel almost ready to tell someone . . . but then had held back? This was ridiculous.
It was the newness, he decided. Everything being new. He could see, for the first time, the benefits of the big city: shaking off who you were, where you were from, what you came with, the baggage. That you were free to start over, to ditch everything, to feel lighter. He nearly told Yazzie, but something stopped him. He shrugged. The people in the queue were doing exactly what they had done, stared ferociously at people who had already managed to sit and get fed, and he felt the weight of their hungry eyes on him.
“Nah, it was fine,” he said briefly. “Shall we head out?”
That was the problem with the food: it had come served in little wicker baskets, each a perfect box of steaming heaven—but the buns had come quickly, and they’d eaten them even faster, and now the waitress was eyeing them up and making it very clear that if they were sitting and not actually stuffing their faces, they were costing her money, and would they mind terribly moving straightaway?
Cormac paid the eye-watering bill, and they hadn’t even gotten up from their seats before the next couple of hipsters were on top of them, photographing and uploading selfies to Instagram before they’d even sat down.
It was still light when they hit the noisy streets.
“We could go somewhere else?” said Yazzie, but neither of them knew where to go and all the bars and pubs were stuffed to the gills, spilling all their clients out onto the pavement. A warm Saturday evening in central London was not in any way conducive to quiet chatting, even if he could think of anything he wanted to say to her.
Yazzie was growing increasingly irritated and very ready to go back and complain to all her friends about how that Scottish boy might be hot, but oh my God, he was the most boring man in the universe and a total waste of time.
She wouldn’t sleep with him again, she vowed to herself. This was going nowhere, and she wanted a boyfriend, not someone who lived on the next floor with benefits.
On the other hand, the sleeping with bit had been pretty good. Better than pretty good.
No. Definitely not.
“Um, I’m not sure where . . .” said Cormac, looking at a street crowded with young Londoners on a night out.
“Actually,” said Yazzie, “I’m working tomorrow, I’d better get an early night.”
It was irritatingly insulting how quickly he agreed with her.
Chapter 55
Jake came out of the bushes looking slightly greenish but more or less recovered.
“Gum?” he offered her, and Lissa smiled and politely refused. They walked on in silence. Lissa wanted another shot on the rides, but she felt under the circumstances it wouldn’t be very tactful.
Instead Jake insisted on going to a ridiculous shooting arcade and attempting to hit enough traveling ducks with a toy rifle to win her a huge tiger, despite her protesting she really didn’t want a huge tiger and probably wouldn’t have anywhere to put it.
They couldn’t agree on that, but also hitting the ducks proved—particularly if you were feeling a little wobbly to begin with—rather more difficult than Jake had anticipated, and he kept missing. Unfortunately, once he’d started, he was not the type of man who, like Cormac, would simply have raised his hands and laughed about it; instead he gave the carny more and more money, while Lissa stood at the side faintly embarrassed, and Jake’s ears got redder and redder, and the anger made him even shakier on the trigger and the entire thing went from fun to awkward rather quickly, particularly when a small group of boys appeared from nowhere to laugh at him.
“Aye, gies it another one, mister! You’re a really good protector of ducks, aye!” shouted one.
“Aye, he’s one of those environmentalists,” said another. “Protecting species everywhere.”
Jake cursed at them and looked ready to lose his cool altogether, until at last, after paying out far more than the cheap nylon toy could possibly have cost in the first place, he retrieved the white tiger and handed it over, looking bashful.
“Well,” said Lissa, trying not to smile too much in case it looked as if she were laughing at him. “Thank you, I suppose.”
“S-so listen,” said Jake, stuttering slightly. “There’s a wee barbecue happening down by the loch. You fancy it? There’s a nice bonfire and that . . . um . . . music, I think . . .”
Just then Ginty and her friends appeared out of nowhere. Lissa still had only a vague idea of who she was. She was looking absolutely impressive, that much was clearly true, in a pair of skintight black leggings, enormous wedge heels, an off-the-shoulder cropped pink top that showed off her nice round shoulders and vast bosoms, and more hair than Lissa had ever seen on a human person. It tumbled down her back in great blond waves, all the way to her bottom. There seemed to be no end to it; it looked like at least four people’s hair. Coupled with the breasts (natural) and lips (much less so), in the normally dressed-down life of the village and the beginning chill of even the sunniest of Highland evenings, she stood out like a rare orchid. It wasn’t a look Lissa could have ever worn herself, but she couldn’t help but be impressed at the commitment it took. Ginty’s huge pneumatic lips were polished to a high sheen, and her eyebrows were perfectly shaded brown geometric shapes that looked carved into her forehead.
“Hi, Jake,” she said seductively, tossing her hair over her shoulders.
Lissa smiled. She clearly expected Jake’s tongue to unravel like a cartoon fox’s.
Jake, meanwhile, had been having a profoundly disappointing evening. By now, in his personal schedule, Lissa would have been incredibly impressed by how he knew everyone, she’d have been terrified on the very high ride and he’d have had to comfort her with an arm around her, and she’d have thrown her arms around his neck when he’d easily won her the biggest toy in the fair, and well, it was a pretty short trip from there back home, he reckoned. But it was worse than that. His entire gift of the gab had deserted him. He’d always found it easy to chat with women; they always liked him. He had treated it like a game, and it had worked.
Lissa hadn’t felt like a game, and that had made it absolutely impossible. He couldn’t think straight. And now Ginty MacGuire was throwing another wrench in the works.
“Hi, Ginty,” he said, in a resigned tone of voice.
“Who’s this?” said Ginty, as if she didn’t know.
“Oh, you know . . . this is Lissa? She’s doing Cormac’s job?”
“Where are you from?” said Ginty.
“London,” said Lissa, putting her hand out. The other girls looked at that and sniggered.
“No, I mean, where are you really from?” said Ginty.
“London,” said Lissa shortly, bristling. The evening, which had started so promisingly, had taken a sour turn. The brightly painted machines and stalls of the fair suddenly looked tawdry, chipped under the bright lights, grubby and cheap.
“Mm-hmm,” said Ginty, undaunted. She liked to think of herself as someone who was straight with others and told them what she thought of them to their faces. Not everyone saw this as quite as much of a virtue as she did.
“So, Jakes, are you coming down to the bonfire? Everyone’s going.”
Too late, Jake remembered that the previous year he had spent the evening of the fair—several evenings, in fact (it wasn’t as if there was so much entertainment that came to Kirrinfief that anyone went only once)�
��down in the sand dunes, rather close to Ginty. Extremely close, in fact.
“Um . . .”
“What’s the matter, didn’t have a good time last year? Don’t you remember?” Ginty was pouting now. She turned to Lissa. “Jake and I have always been . . . friends . . .”
The other girls sniggered on.
“They’ve lit the bonfire,” Ginty went on. She bit her lip seductively. “It’s pretty hot down there.”
Jake was absolutely scarlet.
“Do you know,” said Lissa, “I’m feeling pretty tired.”
“I’ll take you home?” said Jake desperately.
“But you’ll miss it!” said Ginty.
Lissa looked up. “You know what?” she said. “It’s okay. You go.”
Chapter 56
The music of the fair faded away as Lissa made her way along the still-light road, stopping to watch a baby rabbit make a desperate plunge across it in front of her. She smiled, then pulled out her phone, then put it away again. He was on a date. With Yazzie. She shouldn’t be even thinking about him. It was just that she didn’t know him, that was all. And she was in a strange place and dealing with a lot of crap in her life, and of course she’d glommed on to the nearest person who seemed okay and not a terrible loser. She knew nothing about him, not really, didn’t have a clue even what he looked like. It was a fantasy in her head, that was all, and starting talking to him at ten P.M. on a Saturday night was . . . well, it was ridiculous. A conversation that had started about someone else’s snake.
She had pulled out her phone again and was looking at the screen when, to her amazement, a text popped up.
Hey?
She replied with fumbling fingers. Hey.
Cormac had been staring out over the lights of London. He was amazed how electrified he was to hear from her. He’d texted Lennox too—they’d picked up Robbie, who had apparently gone to work with a will. Fingers crossed it would last. The news had made him feel happy and anxious all at once, and he wanted to talk to someone about it.
Someone specific, he realized.
You still out?
Nearly home. You?
Cormac felt a huge gush of relief. This was ridiculous. He didn’t even know this girl. But somehow, he’d found, she was the one he wanted to talk to.
I’m back too. It’s hot out there.
But what about the delicious meat buns?
It turns out I’m quite quick at eating meat buns.
Lissa felt her heart beating faster as she reached the little cottage. She went into the back garden to try to take a picture of Neddie Needles, but he hadn’t appeared.
So what’s on your mind? she found herself typing.
A bit of her, the tiniest bit, thought she should call him. But somehow, in the absolute stillness and quiet of the night, it seemed strange, such a boundary crosser. She was too nervous. This was safe, and she needed to feel safe.
You know when you were at that accident?
Yeah.
How did you feel?
You sound like my therapist! SHIT I need to skype my therapist!
Had you forgotten?
Yes!
I wonder if that’s a sign.
Of me being a coward, probably.
Of you getting better, maybe.
Lissa looked around the garden, the evening scents of the cooling grass hanging heavy in the still air. It was lovely, even if it was getting horribly overgrown. The stream tinkled prettily.
This place is quite special.
It is. So is London.
Is this about meat buns again?
Yeah probably.
Anyway, why are you asking?
I just . . . I think it might be a bit the same as the army.
Lissa didn’t say anything, just sat and waited, the little glowing phone in her hand, the center of her world right then. And Cormac poured it all out, typing as if his life depended on it, his spelling all over the place. Telling her about the hideous injuries, the pointless pain, the children caught in the cross fire; the waste of all of it. How he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop worrying about it. How he had come home, and his mother was ashamed of him, and he felt like a coward for leaving his comrades. She read it all, patiently and carefully. And at the end of it, she typed just two words.
I know.
And she signed it off with a kiss. And Cormac held his phone to his chest, close, just as, five hundred miles away, Lissa was doing exactly the same thing, as if they were holding each other’s hearts in their hands.
Chapter 57
Oh, the luxury, the rare luxury, of waking on a sunny Sunday morning with nothing to do and someone else to think about.
Once upon a time this would have made Lissa panic. She would have felt lonely and worried that she was living in the center of the greatest city in the world and not making the most of it. She would have been entirely concerned that she was wasting time, desperately checking her Insta to see if her friends had been up to something fun that she would have wanted to go to; pinging her mates immediately to see if anyone was up to anything, while trying not to look too needy; worrying if her mother was coming into town, who would want to complain about her hair or her living conditions, or why she didn’t just look at these brochures for research chemistry—she’d been so good at chemistry at school, and there were all sorts of interesting careers that could spin off it now, it wasn’t just in labs you know, you could travel all over the world . . .
But there was something about living in Kirrinfief that had changed all that, she could tell. Something about being perfectly content with your own company—you had to be in a region the size of London but with eight thousand people living in it instead of eight million. If you wanted company you could simply wander into the village and someone you knew would come along immediately; you could head down to the fair or the pub and find yourself caught up in whatever came along. If there was anything to do—a fiddle band playing, a community play, Nina running a book reading—everybody went automatically. And if there wasn’t, you stayed in and suited yourself. In the middle of nowhere, she found, she didn’t feel lonely at all. She was so far removed from everything she couldn’t possibly be worried about missing anything. And what was she missing anyway?
Nonetheless, she thought, stretching luxuriously, the sun making panes on the duvet. She would putter into town, buy something nice, and actually cook for herself; pick up some of the Lennox farm eggs, which were fine, fine things indeed; buy a book from Nina and sit in the sun; maybe see what Zoe was up to. Zoe always seemed happy to have her around, even if there was never a moment when Zoe didn’t have about five people climbing all over her. She didn’t seem to mind a bit. Lissa occasionally wondered if she didn’t actually bother counting up however many people were in her kitchen at any one time. Then tonight she’d open a bottle of wine and call Kim-Ange and see how her date had gone and they could laugh about hers being a bit of a disaster, which would help, and maybe—maybe—she would tell her about her and Cormac. But tell her what, truly? That they emailed and texted a lot? Kim-Ange had met plenty of men who were happy to chat online, but when it came to meeting, everything changed.
She walked across the quiet kitchen, which she had grown to love in its understated way, and boiled the kettle and was briefly startled by the rattle of the postman at the letter box. Little arrived for Cormac except bills and circulars. She needed to send him his statements, actually. She smiled to herself. The post office was open until lunchtime, so she would go and do that. She liked the women who worked there, and they also sold incredible cheese and local bacon on the side (nobody in the Highlands had only one job really), so that would give her a little purpose to her morning, which would somehow allow her to spend the entire afternoon lazing around, having completed her errand. And maybe, she thought. Maybe talking to Cormac.
She picked up the letters. Two political leaflets for parties she’d never heard of, one in a language she couldn’t read, and then, to her great sur
prise, a letter to her. It was in a white envelope, her name and address typed, with a redirect stuck over it in Kim-Ange’s flamboyant handwriting. She frowned. There was a crown printed on the envelope, and suddenly she realized what it was.
She put it down on the table incredibly quickly, as if it were hot, and stared at it.
The Crown Prosecution Service.
Instantly she could feel her every muscle tighten; her fingers curled. Her throat felt like it was closing over. She was suddenly gasping for breath. Every ridiculous claim she’d made the night before, about feeling better, about getting over things: it was all nonsense.
No, no, she kept telling herself. No. She stumbled toward the door, opened it wide, and drew in as many deep breaths as she could. The fresh, bright air stung her lungs as she told herself, Calm down. Calm down. The road was empty, and she walked across it to the copse on the opposite side.
Oddly—and she felt faintly ridiculous—holding on to one of the trees seemed to sooth her. The deep heavy scent of the bark and the sap, the bright overwhelming neon greenness of the new leaves, filled her senses; the shade and the height of the great oak made her feel strangely safe. She leaned against it, hands on her knees, and took great deep breaths; gradually, her back against the trunk, she felt her heart rate steadily return to normal. She had known this was coming, of course she had. She always did. Anita had told her about it, over and over again, but she had been too resistant. Classic health professional: terrible patient.
But she had been stupid, and arrogant, and frustrated at having to pay attention, to think about the thing she didn’t want to think about—and now she couldn’t cope with this, not at all. And she had thought she was getting better, had genuinely truly believed it. And now she felt back at square one.
Cormac?
Yes?
I got the letter from court. I have to testify.
Cormac couldn’t help it; his heart started to beat a little faster.