Where Have All the Boys Gone?

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘I just think,’ said Harry, ‘that they ought to leave just some of the country as it is. Just a tiny wee bit. Leave us alone. Give the damn country a little space to breathe.’

  ‘So, why’s it a secret?’

  ‘Well,’ said Harry, ‘I was kind of hoping that we could fend them off and nobody in the town would find out. And that’s your job.’

  He drew the Land-Rover to a halt some way further on. They’d been sitting in silence for ages.

  ‘There’s one last place I want to show you,’ he said, clambering down and disappearing into the trees. Katie could hear a whooshing noise as she headed after him.

  ‘What?’ she yelled. God, it was dark in here. She could just see a flash of Harry’s coat ahead.

  ‘Are you going to leave me out on the hillside for wolves?’

  Harry turned around to face her. ‘What kind of boss do you think I am…Actually, don’t answer that.’

  Behind her, Katie noticed Francis hopping down from his seat and following them into the woods. She threw Harry a dirty look, which he ignored and continued thrashing on.

  After ten minutes of this, during which Katie was really beginning to regret the afternoon’s rapprochement, the thick black coils of the trees suddenly beamed a canopy and she emerged blinking into the golden late-afternoon light. Ahead was a huge tumbling waterfall, crashing through shiny, moss-covered rocks, ending in a deep pool that meandered off into a river through the trees at the far side. This was obviously the source of the crashing noise Katie had heard coming through the woods.

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ she smiled.

  Harry nodded. ‘I know. Come here – drink some of the water.’

  Francis had already run up to the side of the pool and was lapping enthusiastically.

  ‘It’s got a dog’s tongue in it,’ complained Katie.

  ‘Don’t be a woose. You can drink from above it if you like.’

  ‘Don’t birds pee in it?’

  ‘Do you pee in your sink?’

  ‘No, although I’ve known some fellows that did.’

  The water was the coldest, clearest, most refreshing Katie had ever tasted. It chilled her body right through to her stomach and was sweet and clean. She scooped it up with both hands and felt like throwing it over her face.

  ‘Good?’ asked Harry, watching her closely.

  ‘They should bottle this stuff,’ said Katie.

  Harry rolled his eyes. ‘They do. But this is nearer the source. It’s best here.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said Katie, sitting on a rock and letting her fingers trail in the bubbling water. On the other side of the water were four large white birds sipping delicately. They seemed completely unafraid of them, and even Francis ignored them, preferring to drink his fill, then settling back for a quick nap.

  ‘So,’ said Katie finally, ‘what is it you want me to do exactly?’

  ‘Stop the golf course.’

  ‘Oh, no, that much I’ve got. I mean, do you have a plan of action you want me to follow, or do you want me to take the initiative and handle it from scratch?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Harry. He didn’t look as though he was quite sure.

  ‘OK,’ said Katie. ‘Well, there’s a few ways we could go about it. We could confront them directly. Or we could chum up with the local MP and the planning board and try to stop them that way. Or we could aim for more direct action. It’s going to need money for advertising, banners, campaign slogans – the more money we can get together, the louder the fuss can be. And if we can kick and shout and scream and get enough publicity together, well, that would probably be enough to make it not worth their while continuing.’

  ‘OK,’ nodded Harry seriously.

  ‘OK what? What do you want me to do?’

  Harry threw a small pebble into the water. ‘You’re absolutely sure you can’t just have a quiet word with them and make them all go away?’

  ‘Do I look like Mike Tyson?’

  Harry shrugged.

  ‘Shut up!’

  Smiling, Harry expertly skimmed a stone across the water. Then his face grew serious again.

  ‘A secret for now, OK?’

  Chapter Seven

  It was a difficult dilemma, but Katie had given it much thought and, fifteen minutes after she’d reached the boarding house, had decided to spill Harry’s secret to Louise. Because she truly didn’t know quite what to think, and Louise would give her some much needed impartiality. Plus, Louise really wouldn’t care that much so she wouldn’t be prejudiced one way or another. They were huddled in the teashop, which was open until seven, thus meaning if they were quick they had half a chance of getting something to eat for dinner that wasn’t from the Spar and thus entirely composed of nuts, refined sugar, E129, FL98 and glucose extract. No Kelpie today: they’d checked. The steam rose from the tea urns and fogged up the small windows that faced the port. The lights from the boats gleamed in the darkening twilight. From the headland, a lighthouse glowed every few seconds, illuminating the bobbing boats, creaking and chattering to themselves up and down on the waves.

  ‘God, he’s quite right,’ said Louise, tucking gratefully into a hearty helping of shepherd’s pie. ‘You don’t want to change things around here. I walked six miles today, and only got rained on twice. I got asked out four times when I passed the research institute. Don’t you think they’re good statistics?’

  Katie toyed with her shepherd’s pie. She really wasn’t feeling that hungry. ‘But, I mean, just not telling anyone and keeping quiet about something that might completely change the community…that’s not right, is it?’

  ‘I thought it was part of your job to cover things up?’

  ‘You’re confusing us with Exxon Valdez. No, our job is to tell people things.’

  ‘Or to sit on harmful information. Anyway, it hardly matters. It would be awful if this place got infested with tourists. It would change completely. Everyone would want Sky Digital and complain about not being able to get a mobile signal. Then they’d start putting masts up and, before you know it, Las Vegas.’

  Katie stared at her. ‘You know, Louise, I think you really are a country girl at heart.’

  ‘Bollocks I am. I wouldn’t know a cow if it pissed on my boots. Which, incidentally, one nearly did today.’

  Katie noticed, however, that Louise hadn’t said a single thing about going back to London. In fact, her cheeks were flushed pink from the unaccustomed exercise of walking everywhere. In London, she could barely make it as far as the corner shop without whining.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Louise, scooping the last of the carrots into her mouth. ‘Gotta go. Got plans.’

  ‘Under what circumstances do you have plans? You do not,’ said Katie, outraged.

  ‘Yes I do. I told Craig the Vet I might see him in the Mermaid. And Fergus. He’s the tree surgeon.’

  ‘He’s not a real doctor you know,’ said Katie, dismayed.

  Louise tutted. ‘I know that, stupid. Have you ever met a doctor with biceps the size of a melon?’

  ‘No, and I’m not sure I’d trust one if I did.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s all very casual. Katie,’ Louise leaned forwards, as if imparting some knowledge of great import. ‘Did you know there are LOADS of guys here?’

  ‘As far as I can tell, there are only guys here, Louise.’

  Louise’s eyes shone with the fervency of the true believer. ‘I’ve just realised that this is where they’ve all been hiding! All the decent ones, I mean, not the slimeball magnets I run into. All the hunky single men – they’re here! Out making themselves even more hunky in the open air! It’s so obvious when you think about it. This place has a disproportionate amount of men. I can’t believe we missed it for so long!’

  ‘We’ve been blind,’ nodded Katie.

  ‘Don’t you just want to bring up everyone we know? Maybe we should start a travel company for single women.’

  ‘I think Turkish waiters have already cornered that market, but g
o right ahead.’

  Louise smiled and looked out of the window.

  ‘We are rubbish feminists you and me, aren’t we?’ said Katie, playing with the saltcellar.

  Louise sighed. ‘Why can’t I be a feminist and want a boyfriend at the same time?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Katie. ‘Honestly, I really don’t.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Louise. ‘Are you coming with me or not?’

  Katie looked down at her untouched dinner. ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Oh well – less competition for me,’ said Louise. ‘Hang on – that means no competition at all. Yippee!’

  As Louise bounced out of the shop into the twilight, Katie smiled ruefully. So much for help over a delicate issue. She was still convinced Harry was wrong. Surely if they could rally the local people against any schemes to change their environment, that would work best. She recalled the anti-road protesters from a few years ago – all those filthy-looking chaps who lived in trees for months on end. But hadn’t they failed and the roads had been built anyway? Oh, it was so…

  ‘Now, what great thoughts are going on in that head?’ came a friendly-sounding voice. ‘You can’t be puzzling out Mr MacKenzie’s recipe for mince and tatties, that’s for sure, because your dinner looks rum.’

  Startled, Katie’s head reared up, and she found herself staring straight into the green eyes of Iain Kinross.

  ‘Huh…hi,’ she stuttered. ‘Imagine running into you again.’

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Sorry – you’re from London, right?’

  She nodded, taking a gulp of water.

  ‘Yeah, well, you should know you bump into absolutely everyone you know in a village every day.’

  She nodded.

  ‘So it’s not really that much of a coincidence.’

  ‘OK. Doesn’t that get a bit annoying, seeing everyone all the time?’

  ‘It depends on who you see. Listen, are you hungry?’

  Katie glanced meaningfully at her plate, and grinned at him. ‘I’m actually eating right now. What do you think I’m doing here, in a restaurant, with a plate of food in front of me, and a knife and fork in my hands and, you know, a napkin and stuff?’

  ‘Och, you haven’t touched it!’

  Katie realised that, having skipped lunch out in the Land-Rover with Harry, she was in fact hungry – just not hungry for badly mashed potatoes and stringy, cold mince.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘It’s just…a friend of mine runs this little restaurant up country. And usually they’re booked for months in advance, but they’ve just had a late cancellation. So Shuggie called me as man about town and asked if I’d like to go and eat there…They’ve been paid, but he doesn’t want to see the food go to waste…’

  ‘What kind of restaurant?’ asked Katie, slightly suspicious.

  ‘Its specialties are cold mince and tatties,’ said Iain, a bit peevishly. ‘Look, it’s a nice place. Do you want to come or not? Craig says he’s busy and on some kind of a promise.’

  Katie weighed up the potential excitements of a night at Mrs McClockerty’s, looked once more at her greasy plate and made a decision.

  ‘Yes please,’ she said.

  For some reason (probably because she was influenced by Harry’s evil mind control), she’d subconsciously expected Iain to have a sports car, but he didn’t, of course. He had a nice little new Golf, tidy, like men’s cars tend to be. Katie could have started a landfill in the Punto. She thought of his desk. Why were men’s cars tidy and the rest of their lives such disasters?

  Owls twittered in the woods as they headed out of town. Iain didn’t talk, but concentrated on driving fast, and rather well in fact, around the sharp country corners of the roads, the hedgerows reaching out to featherbrush the windows. Katie felt strangely excited. Going out to a mysterious dinner in the middle of the country with a mysterious young gentleman…OK, Iain wasn’t mysterious in the slightest, but somehow he looked different in the dying light, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. She glanced down at his left hand on the gear stick, dark hairs prickling out from under his leather watchstrap. Her own neck hair prickled in response and she found it hard to contain a grin.

  ‘Where’s this place then?’

  Iain didn’t look at her, but also grinned. ‘How likely are you to have heard of it?’

  ‘Is it Edinburgh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK then, not at all.’

  ‘It’s on Mars,’ said Iain.

  Outside, a cloud of birds rose from the hedgerow and raced the car across the fields.

  ‘I really have to stop getting into cars with strange men,’ said Katie.

  ‘God yeah – one of them might feed you for free,’ replied Iain. ‘I thought you PRs were meant to see the best side of everything.’

  ‘That’s a very common misconception,’ said Katie, settling back in her seat. ‘Are we there yet?’

  Iain ignored her, leaned forwards and turned on the CD player. Instantly, a plaintive violin struck up, and a beautiful voice started singing about two lovers who were getting on great then suddenly both got drowned in a big river on a stormy night. It was unexpectedly involving, and Katie found herself sniffing as the car tore down a tiny twisting lane leading to the sea. The car came to a gentle halt on a gravel driveway in front of a small grey turreted house that looked austere, outlined against a darkening grey sea.

  ‘Is this Skibo?’ asked Katie curiously.

  Iain rolled his eyes. ‘No.’

  Her feet crunched on the gravel. There was only one other car – and they had been a good half hour driving there, and hadn’t passed one town. She felt sorry for Iain’s friend, probably putting all his life savings into this chilly house so he could run a stupid restaurant in the middle of nowhere. She shivered; it was absolutely freezing too.

  ‘Quite a view, huh?’ said Iain. A small vegetable garden ran down to a cliff then stopped abruptly. Beyond was nothing but sea and sky. It was sublime, like falling off the end of the world.

  Katie nodded to stop her teeth from chattering. The wind was going right through her.

  Iain noticed and smiled. ‘God, you really are a softy southerner, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s nearly APRIL,’ she said. ‘Spring!’

  ‘Och, you get snow up here until June.’

  ‘June?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Can I borrow your car? I just have to quickly drive to Spain.’

  ‘Well, you’d better have some dinner first – it’s a long way.’

  Inside, the walls were painted a dark, rich red and there was a blue tartan carpet. It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did. There wasn’t a reception, just an anteroom with a huge blazing fire that Katie stepped up to gratefully. A friendly-looking woman was standing there waiting for them, and she came up and kissed Iain on the cheek.

  ‘Your lucky night, eh?’

  ‘You can say that again, Margaret,’ he said, smiling. ‘But we’ll pay for the wine, noo, OK?’

  ‘Ah, you’ll pay cost. He paid us already. We can’t do it any other way.’

  Katie didn’t understand any of this, but liked the usage of the word ‘wine’.

  ‘Welcome to Auchterbeachdabhn,’ said Margaret to Katie. ‘Tonight we’re having hot smoked salmon with leeks and hollandaise, Angus beef fillet with smoked garlic broth, and iced raspberry cranachan with white chocolate sorbet and pistachio. All the vegetables from the garden of course. And today’s bread is pumpkin.’

  ‘My favourite,’ Iain was saying hungrily, but Katie was staring past him into the dining room beyond. It was at the back – or, possibly, the front – of the house, a circular room that overlooked the water. It had windows looking out in five different directions that were currently showing a panoramic view of a quite spectacularly self-important sunset, shading itself down from deepest purple through fuchsia and on to a fiery yellow.

  What was really catching Katie’s eye though was the table, beautifull
y laid with crisp cream linen, gleaming silver and sparkling crystal. It was the only table in the room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, interrupting Margaret and Iain, who were discussing the merits of spring versus summer vegetables.

  Margaret looked at Iain. ‘Did you no explain? The lassie will think you’re abducting her.’

  ‘I wanted it to be a surprise!’

  And, as Margaret fetched them the best vodka tonic Katie had ever tasted, Iain explained. Margaret (and her husband, Shuggie, who was busy in the kitchen) ran a single-tabled restaurant. All the food was local, there was no choice in the catch of the day, they were famous the world over, earth-shatteringly expensive and booked up eighteen months in advance.

  ‘Metropolitan enough for you?’ he said at last.

  Katie’s eyes were round as saucers and she could hardly speak.

  ‘Thank you!’ she managed finally, as Margaret forced tiny, exquisite salmony hors d’oeuvres on them. ‘Oh my God, what a treat. What would you have done if I’d stuck to my mince and tatties?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Iain. ‘I’ve got the Hilton sisters on the speed dial.’

  The food was exquisite. The salmon was by far the best Katie had ever tasted, and the meat soft as silk. Katie wished she looked smarter, that she’d had some time to get ready, had even just put some more lippy on. Soft fiddle music was playing in the background, candles had been brought in to light the room as the sun went down. In fact, it was so unbelievably romantic, it was embarrassing. Both of them were quiet and slightly awkward, a million miles away from the easy banter they’d shared the night before. Katie knew exactly what Iain was thinking because she was thinking exactly the same herself. He was thinking this was a far too romantic place he’d brought her to, completely over the top, given it was only the third time they’d met. He might as well have covered his car in rose petals and started singing Lionel Ritchie songs.

  This was in fact exactly what Iain was thinking. He was feeling, frankly, a bit of a dickhead, and was desperately hoping Katie didn’t find out there was a bedroom upstairs. Not that he expected her to…oh Christ, this had seemed such a good idea when Shuggie had called him up. If she only knew how few women they saw up here…no, best not tell her that, that would sound even worse, like he was a sex pest waiting to pounce.