Where Have All the Boys Gone?

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘That’s not sounding so good,’ said Katie.

  ‘But it’s all we’ve got,’ finished Louise. ‘Don’t you see? We don’t have a huge amount of choice. It’s this, or having people discuss everything you buy in the Spar.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Spar,’ Louise pouted. ‘If you have no shop, you’re a hamlet. If you have a Spar, you’re a village. If you have a Fairfields, you’re a town. Anyway, that’s not the point…’

  ‘And if you have a cathedral, you’re a city! So that’s how it works,’ said Katie. ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Well,’ Louise pouted again.

  ‘There’s always the suburbs,’ offered Katie.

  ‘Do I look like I enjoy having my hair done and committing adultery?’ sniffed Louise.

  ‘Yes,’ said Katie.

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is, that the city is cool.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s urban, and hip, and…there’s hip things going on, and…’

  Katie sipped her coffee carefully. ‘When’s the last time you bought Time Out?’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  ‘When’s the last time I bought Time Out?’ Louise looked as if she were trying to remember.

  ‘You’re scared of Time Out,’ said Katie.

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You are. You’re scared of it. I remember. You moved here, read it for six months, never ever did any of the cool things it suggested that you do. Now you’re scared of it because it reminds you that there’s lots of things happening and all we ever do is go to work, go to the wine bar, and look for men.’

  ‘So, what do you want? A pair of flashy wellies? Some chickens?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Katie. ‘But I do know I want a change.’

  A week later, they were at a new, trendier, cocktail bar. Olivia and Louise were staring grumpily into their espresso martinis. Katie’s head was hidden behind a paper.

  ‘Press officer required for a children’s hospital,’ she read. ‘See! I could do some good in the world.’

  ‘Are you thinking about hot doctors?’ asked Louise.

  ‘With cool caring hands and a lovely bedside manner? No,’ said Katie quickly.

  ‘Make sure you ask them about the cool caring hands bit at the interview – there’s a lot of girl doctors these days.’

  Katie turned the page and sighed.

  ‘Put the paper down,’ said Olivia. ‘You’re not leaving, and that’s the end of it. I need you. We’ve got the carbohydrate-free chip coming up. It tastes like shit, but the magic is, it looks like a chip.’

  ‘Plus, we’ve got lots to do. You know, there’s that new dating thing on at Vinopolis,’ Louise said. ‘We could go to that. You eat your dinner in the dark, and get to know people without seeing them.’

  ‘You can tell if people are fat just from the way they sound,’ said Olivia.

  ‘No you can’t!’

  ‘Yes you can! And if they’re drippy and wet.’

  ‘You are an evil, prejudiced woman.’

  ‘Hey, look at this,’ said Katie.

  She showed them the advert.

  Can you see the wood for the trees? Fairlish Forestry Commission is looking for a press officer with at least three years’ experience in a related field. Knowledge of local wildlife/degree in zoology preferred. Contact: 1 Buhvain Grove, Fairlish IV74 9PB. Salary £24k

  They gathered around to take a look at it. There was a long silence.

  ‘Katie,’ said Olivia gently. ‘Put the paper down. You know your degree is in history of art and theatre studies.’

  ‘It says “preferred”,’ said Katie.

  Olivia sighed and jumped down inelegantly from the ridiculously high stools to join the queue for the ladies.

  ‘Think, open spaces, fresh air…’

  ‘You hate fresh air,’ said Louise.

  ‘Maybe I just don’t know what it is…’

  ‘Forestry Commission?’ said Louise. ‘Katie, all you know about is lipgloss and low-fat fudge.’

  ‘That’s related,’ said Katie. ‘We do lots of not-tested-on-animals stuff.’

  ‘OK, question one,’ said Louise. ‘What is the local wildlife?’

  ‘Badgers?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know,’ said Louise, ‘because I haven’t the faintest clue where Fairlish is. Do you?’

  ‘You’re being very negative,’ said Katie. ‘Is it so bad to want a change?’

  ‘It is if they’re only paying you 24k.’

  ‘I think I’ll head for home,’ said Katie, folding up the paper in a suspiciously noisy flurry.

  ‘Why?’ Olivia, returned, sounded suspicious.

  ‘Bit tired…no reason.’

  ‘Are you going home to make up an imaginary CV?’ whispered Louise as she got up to walk Katie to the Tube – she was still a little nervous late at night.

  Katie didn’t answer.

  ‘You realise you’d put the lives of hundreds of innocent animals at risk?’

  ‘What if Fairlish is actually in Liberia?’ said Olivia. ‘Lots of people read this paper, all over the world. You’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Well, I’m in PR,’ said Katie. ‘I’d put a brave face on it.’

  Chapter Two

  There were only three other people on the train. The rolling stock seemed to be pre-war, and big clouds of dust had risen from the seats when she put her bag down. One couple of old men were talking a language she didn’t understand, didn’t recognise from anywhere, despite her year travelling. It seemed to consist mostly of Bs and Vs and sounded as though they were singing.

  It wasn’t them that captured Katie’s attention however; further down the carriage was a woman stroking the nose of what Katie had assumed to be a poodle. She had had to check herself to see if she was sleeping (it had been a very long journey) when she heard the poodle baa.

  Katie turned her head and stared out of the window. She couldn’t believe she had travelled so far and was still in the same country – well, on the same island. Instead of small mean houses and grey buildings filling her window, there were dramatic hills soaring steeply up on either side of the track. The hills were dark colours, greens and purples and blues. It looked cold and austere, with occasional shafts of sunlight breaking through and the occasional flash of something bouncing through the undergrowth – rabbits, probably.

  Katie shifted uncomfortably. She still couldn’t believe she’d applied for this job. It may as well be the rainforest out here. Olivia had thrown her hands in the air when she realised Katie had never even visited Scotland before.

  ‘Not even once? To take some crappy show to the Edinburgh Festival? School trip to the Burrell Collection? Horrible school holiday where it rained all the time and you lost your Pacamac, your sandwich lunch and your virginity all on the same day?’

  Katie looked at her curiously.

  ‘Not that that ever happened to me. Or anyone I know,’ continued Olivia quickly. ‘But that’s not the point. How can you have been to India and not to Scotland?’

  ‘Have you been to Northern Ireland?’

  ‘That’s not the point either. And I’m not the one who’s got an interview in a country I know nothing about. Which, by the way, you’re not taking, as I need you on the margarita toothpaste account. Where are you going to change your money? Are these interview people going to sort out your working visa?’

  Katie’s eyes widened. ‘I need a…?’

  Olivia put up her hands. ‘Oh God. This is going to go horribly, horribly wrong and we, your faithful, lonely, overworked, underpaid London spinster friends are going to have to find time in our packed schedules to pick up the pieces when it’s over. In about a month.’

  She’d been right about the money though, Katie thought, feeling for her coat pocket. She didn’t even know pound notes still existed.

  The letter had been brief.

  Dear Ms Watson,

  You ar
e invited to an interview at Fairlish Forestry Commission at 4.30 p.m. Tuesday April 20th. You will be picked up at the railway station. Travelling expenses may be claimed.

  Yours faithfully,

  Harry Barr

  Katie had pored over this letter a hundred times, trying to read between the lines, of which there weren’t many, admittedly. Was she expected to stay overnight (given the length of the journey, she couldn’t really see any other way, barring a helicopter airlift)? Was she expected to find out lots of information on the commission by herself? She’d done as much crash-course research on national parks as she could manage, but she was very nervous that her obvious lack of experience would tumble out as soon as she opened her mouth. Then there was her Southern accent, which had made her few friends the four times she’d had to buy herself a connecting ticket on the journey so far.

  She smoothed out her wrinkled Tara Jarmon interview suit. This was probably an enormous mistake too. She should have probably worn rubber overalls and a Barbour. No, forget probably – there was no place here for anything but wellingtons. Where was she anyway? The train had already stopped at lots of stations that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere – Dundonnell, Gairloch – which seemed to be nothing more than platforms, with miles of scenery around them.

  The few people that were left on the train got off, including the woman with the sheep, until it was just Katie, her briefcase, a headful of terms like ‘judicious pruning’ and ‘sustainable development’ that she didn’t understand, and a slowly mounting sense of panic.

  The tiny train cut through a huge oversized valley and gradually slowed to a halt. There was one weather-beaten sign that said ‘Fairlish – Fhearlis’. Shocked out of her reverie, Katie jumped to her feet and stumbled about, as if the train were going to carry on without her.

  The station confirmed her worst fears. She did a 360-degree turn. Above the purple mountains, a black cloud was ominously moving across the sky, and there was no building at the station at all; it was simply a halt, a platform in the air.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Katie out loud – there was no one to hear her, just some enormous birds circling silently in the air above.

  There was a torn old timetable on the side of the platform, but she didn’t have the energy to look at it. She felt tired, grubby from the journey, starving hungry, and as far away from London as she’d ever been in her life – certainly a lot further away than she had felt on her year off in Goa, which had been full of Brits, Kiwis, Aussies and South Africans. This place was full of nothing at all, and she didn’t know what to do. For a second she let herself remember the wide-open spaces and hot colours of India. She’d felt so free there.

  There was a rumbling noise above her. Katie looked up. The birds had fled. Instead, the cloud had hit the side of the mountain. A few spits turned into a deluge. Katie’s blue peacoat, of which she’d been rather proud, was no match for it at all. Within thirty seconds it was soaked through.

  ‘Shit!’ she yelled, staring straight at the sky. This was the stupidest waste of a day’s annual leave she’d ever had in her life, applying for this stupid job on a whim, just because she had been upset.

  The rain showed no signs of letting up, as she stared into the horizon, but she thought she saw something else move; a white dot, far in the distance. She stared at it hard, blinking away the water from her eyelashes. The white dot got bigger. Hugging her arms around herself, she stepped forward and squinted. The white dot resolved itself into a moving shape, then a car, then a Land-Rover. She kept her eyes on it as it bumped over the undergrowth towards her, windscreen wipers going furiously. After what seemed like ages, it finally drew up in front of the platform, and she slowly went down the wooden staircase to meet it.

  The engine stopped and a man leaned over, opened the passenger door and beckoned her over. Katie wasn’t sure what to do. This person could be anyone. On the other hand, he could be the person coming to pick her up. After all, how many murderous rapists would pass by a deserted local station in the rain on the off chance that there might be a nervous young city girl hanging around? On the other hand, maybe the whole advertisement had been a trick to get someone here. On the other hand, that was a lot of trouble to go to if you were an unhinged murderous rapist, down to the headed notepaper and everything. And that was a whole lot of hands anyway. This stupid mugging had upset everything.

  Katie dropped her head and peered into the front of the car doubtfully.

  ‘Get in,’ said a voice crossly.

  ‘Umm, who are you?’

  ‘I’m the Duke of Buccleuch, who the hell do you think I am? I’m Harry Barr.’

  He had a weird accent; he sounded a bit like Scottish people on the telly, but a bit Scandinavian too. She’d never met a Highlander before. He also sounded impatient and a bit pissed off.

  ‘I’m Katie Watson,’ she said, and, taking a deep breath, she slipped into the car.

  ‘Is this all there is?’ said Harry irritably. Tall and broad, he was dressed as if on his way to a Highland landwork fancy-dress party; checked shirt, cords, wellies and a Barbour jacket. A thick mane of unruly black hair was flopping over one eye. He reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  ‘Well, I may not have a lot of experience in the field, but I’m very quick to learn,’ said Katie, unhappily aware that the interview appeared to have begun.

  ‘No, I mean – are you the only person?’

  Katie glanced around. She didn’t appreciate being spoken to like a naughty dog.

  ‘Let me just check – yes.’

  Harry Barr eyed her suspiciously. ‘I invited ten people.’

  ‘I killed and ate them,’ said Katie, and regretted it immediately.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, maybe they’re just behind me. When’s the next train?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  Perhaps this was some sort of psychological chill-out interview, thought Katie. Oh God, what was he doing now? He was bent over to his feet and seemed to be searching for something. He was getting out his knife! Or his gun! They all had guns in the countryside!

  ‘Here,’ he said. He opened a tartan flask and poured her out a cup of what looked like extremely strong tea.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Katie, taken aback. They sat in silence for a moment, while she gratefully gulped the hot sweet tea.

  ‘So you’re the only one,’ said Harry again.

  ‘Guess I’ve got the job then,’ said Katie cheerfully, trying to get the conversation going.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Harry. He didn’t sound overjoyed about it.

  Katie stared out into the pouring rain in disbelief. He couldn’t be serious. Here she was, sitting in a stranger’s car (a dirty car, that smelled of dog), after a crumpled, filthy, ten-hour journey, staring at the pissing rain in the middle of a godforsaken hellhole in the outer reaches of absolutely bloody nowhere, and he wasn’t even going to ask her the equal opportunities question.

  ‘I’ll have to think it over,’ she said.

  Harry sighed. ‘So I have to do this again.’

  ‘Do what? You haven’t done anything so far. I’m the one who travelled ten hours up here for a cup of tea.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You know the train back is in another five minutes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’d better get it then.’

  Katie wondered if he would ask her to stay longer, find out a bit about her. After all she had travelled all this way…

  ‘You should.’

  Well! That was the last straw. She hadn’t travelled all this way to be insulted by some Scotsman with a radish up his arse and the dress sense of Father Dougal MacGuire on a bank holiday.

  ‘Nice meeting you,’ she said, trying to make her voice drip with sarcasm.

  She unlocked the door of the car. After all, she was already soaked through, so a bit more rain wasn’t going to make any difference. Maybe she could spend the night in
Inverness…she pictured herself wrapped up in a blanket in some cosy b. & b. after a long hot bath, sipping hot chocolate and watching EastEnders.

  ‘You probably wouldn’t have fitted in here anyway,’ said Harry suddenly. Oddly, his voice sounded kind, and when she looked at him he was giving her an apologetic half-smile.

  ‘Yes, I would have,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d have been great.’

  Then she stepped out of the Land-Rover, misjudged the height of the car and landed with her new Russell and Bromley boots up to her shins in mud. For several seconds she and Harry regarded each other.

  ‘I’ve got a tow rope in the back,’ said Harry, finally.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Katie, pulling her feet up with clumsy distaste. ‘Goodb…’ As she was speaking, she felt the rain stop suddenly, as if someone had pulled a switch. Without warning, a shaft of brilliant sunshine struck the car. Turning around, she saw a vast, full doublebowed rainbow leap from hill to hill. It was utterly aweinspiring; completely different from the washed-out colours peeping behind grey buildings one rarely even glimpsed in London. She gaped.

  ‘Wow,’ she said.

  Harry watched her for a moment. These daft city lassies really had no idea what they were doing. Still, at least she’d stopped acting all superior for ten seconds.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ she said.

  ‘There’s your train,’ he indicated the little red rolling carriages making their way down the glen. ‘You don’t want to miss it. There isn’t another one until…’

  ‘Tuesday. Yes. You told me.’

  Still keeping her eye on the light show, she made a bedraggled figure limping towards the buffers, her damp cheap briefcase in her hand. Harry gunned the Land-Rover into reverse. Another wee media girl with bucolic fantasies. Best to nip it in the bud. But he was never going to get anyone to sort out this bloody mess. He looked at the business card she’d left him. LiWebber PR. God, he’d have to be desperate.

  Chapter Three

  ‘So you hated it and everything about it in every conceivable way. Well, glad that’s over,’ said Louise. Katie hadn’t yet mentioned to Olivia she’d actually gone for an interview for the job.