Highland Fling

by Emma Baird

  “I’m going to find another balloon,” Katya said. “We should try singing on the stuff.”

  She let herself out, and I helped myself to more champagne. My head had started to spin, and I slid down the wall. Behind me, I heard the music change from Bon Jovi to Guns N’ Roses and the sound of too many middle-aged men risking their backs as they strutted their air guitars. But I also caught voices close by, a conversation just outside the office. Katya and I hadn’t put on the main light when we came in. Reluctant to talk to anyone, I dived under the big desk and pulled the waste-paper basket in front of me. With any luck, it was just Louise looking for paperwork so she could sell a vintage car to one of the old men out there. I forced back a hiccough and lay as still and quietly as possible.

  The door opened slowly, and I spotted an expensive pair of black Chelsea boots. Ryan. About to wriggle out and come up with a good explanation for why I was hiding under a desk in the middle of my own engagement party, I realised he was on the phone. I kept still. Maybe this was a crucial car conversation, and if I jumped out and frightened him, he’d lose the sale of the century.

  There were lots of umm-hmms, and yes’s and no’s at his end.

  “I know, mate. But what else was I supposed to do?”

  Oh, not the car sales conversation then, the detective in me decided. And that he was on the phone to Josh, his best friend and someone I wouldn’t pee on if he was on fire as the saying goes. When Ryan said Josh couldn’t make tonight’s party, I faked disappointment.

  “I know you don’t like her.”

  Yup. Josh.

  “And I’m not too young,” Ryan added, echoing my own concerns. “My mum and dad got married when they were twenty!”

  More umm-hmms and yes and no’s.

  Then the killer. “Course I’m not 100 percent sure. You know the whole Kayleigh story. I never meant for it to...”

  Josh interrupted, and the rest of what might have been very revealing was cut off. The Kayleigh story? I racked my brains. What, that receptionist who worked in the garage a year ago? The lady with the ‘lively charms’ as my nanna might put it, and who was always super friendly to me.

  Evidence of hiding a guilty—

  “Kayleigh got in touch with you?”

  Wow. Happy voice Ryan. When I said ‘yes’ to that engagement, he nodded, slid the ring on my finger and wondered aloud about what Sunday breakfast tomorrow might include. The delight in his voice when he asked about Kayleigh stung, but then wasn’t I the one running through a pros and cons list earlier where the balance tipped decidedly in favour of cons?

  Time I revealed myself.

  I shoved the waste-basket to one side and shuffled out.

  “Ryan.”

  My voice was still Minnie Mouse squeaky, but Ryan was too dismayed to notice. His hand went to his mouth, and he thrust the phone to the desk. “Gaby! I was looking for you everywhere. I was just talking to Josh about this woman he met on Tinder. Head over heels, he is.”

  Hmm.

  “Ryan,” I said. “Do you want to get married? Now? Shouldn’t we wait a while?”

  We faced each other in the garage office, surrounded by posters, desks and windows looking out on a back-lit forecourt with its polished cars, prices prominently displayed. On the floor lay two helium balloons deflated and sad, and a phone that kept calling out, ‘what’s happening?’, Josh’s voice tinny and echo-y. Ryan was the guy who rescued me as a sixteen-year-old from teenage hell, where you think you’re the ugliest, fattest, weirdest (tick your particular box) girl in the class. A boyfriend proves that is not the case.

  Ten years later, I didn’t know if that was enough any more.

  Ryan closed his eyes. “I don’t know. You are the love of...”

  “For God’s sake!” The phone again. I battled the urge to throw it to the ground and stamp on it.

  “Let’s just go back to living together,” I said, “and worrying about what’s for breakfast instead of all the fuss of a stupid wedding.” Knowing Louise, we’d be dragged kicking and screaming to Norwich Cathedral and then a reception in the county’s stuffiest hotel just so she could invite all her ghastly friends. Canapés, a sit-down meal, a reception line, boring speeches and too many tiny, unruly bridesmaids running riot... bleurgh. The thought of it turned my stomach.

  Ryan nodded, relieved, and I burst into tears. Oh, thank heavens!

  He moved away, rummaging around in the drawers in the desk closest to him trying to find tissues when the door opened and there was an outraged squawk. “What have you done to Gaby, you git?” Katya yelled. Unfortunately, she still had helium in her system. It’s difficult, no impossible, to sound serious when you are doing your best Donald Duck impression.

  “That does it!” she yelled, as Ryan blustered an explanation, and I said, “No, it’s okay, Katya, we’re not...” Not engaged now but okay about it, I meant to add.

  She held her phone up. “Shall I post this?”

  I squinted at the screen, cursing the champagne and helium for the lack of focus. She’d taken a photo of Ryan and me, I guessed, and I nodded. So, yes, Ryan and I weren’t engaged but wasn’t it a nice, positive message to send out to the universe love and friendship was still possible even if you broke off an engagement, and all the cosy, comfortable things that entailed such as liking the same box sets on Netflix, not having to worry about him seeing you in your pyjamas when you decide to wear them at five pm or apologising for being too wimpy to opt for a Brazilian wax...

  “You’ve seen the light, at last, Gaby!” Katya said, the squeakiness still there, “I’m so glad you’ve had the sense to ditch this loser—”

  Oh God, I had to stop her. Ryan growled beside me, and I squeaked back, “No, no, it’s not like that.”

  “What’s going on!” Louise joined our happy party seconds later, stomping into the room and glaring at me.

  She held her phone to my face. There was the Twitter feed for the garage and in it a picture, the snap Katya had taken earlier of my list of reasons for not wanting to be engaged to Ryan, instead of a picture of the two of us as I’d thought. So far, the picture had fifty likes and thirty-four re-tweets, and it had only gone up a minute ago.

  Ryan took the phone from her, his expression pinched and his face flushed. “You fantasise I’m Jamie Fraser?”

  “And she doesn’t think you’re her soul mate, mate!” Blasted Josh, still at the other end of Ryan’s mobile, added his tuppence-worth. He must have seen the Twitter feed too.

  Behind Louise, Katya held her hands to her face and widened her eyes in mock horror. “I’m so sorry,” she mouthed, but she crossed her eyes and, the gesture gave her away. Sorry, not sorry.

  Helium, champagne, Louise’s outraged face—all of it welled up inside me. The giggles started up, all the more hysterical.

  “Sorry Ryan, sorry Louise,” I spluttered as her mouth tightened in fury. “I can’t m-m-marry you.”

  “And I never want to see you again. How could you?” He threw back.

  The mobile phone cheered. Oh well, at least someone was happy.

  Katya began a slow hand clap. “Hooray! Come on, Gaby. Let’s get out of here. This party’s lame.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “...so we left the party, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea because everyone, and I mean everyone, saw that post on Twitter. I swear I heard boos and hisses when I walked by. I felt like a panto villain.”

  I finish the story and Mhari nods. The pharmacy assistant and I are now friends. She’s not a chemist herself, but thanks to years of detailed questioning of everyone who comes in, there’s nothing she doesn’t know about every medication known to (wo)man. I’m in for the second batch of super-strong anti-histamines. Dr McLatchie tells me I might find my system has built up an immunity to Mena by now so that I no longer need the anti-histamines, particularly if I take lots of Vitamin C to support my immune function. (Can’t wait to tell Katya she’s right about the magic powers of Vitamin C). I’m not chancing
it for the moment, and I hand over the script to Mhari who whips out the packet, telling me they ordered some in advance knowing there was a possibility I’d need it.

  There are advantages to living in the world’s nosiest village. At least you don’t have to wait for anything as the residents anticipate your every need.

  “Well, it was drastic,” Mhari says. “Though, wish I’d been there tae see it.”

  The thing is, at the time I didn’t mind my panto villain status. Whatever I felt about getting married, Ryan hadn’t deserved that humiliation. Katya apologised repeatedly, saying she should have double, triple, quadruple checked it with me. But at the same time, the relief was overwhelming.

  We left the party, having rescued my mum from the clutches of an air-guitar playing 50-something dressed unwisely in leather jeans, we decided going back to my flat was a no-no, seeing as I’d just finished with the place’s other occupant. Katya’s flat was too crowded, and Mum’s house two miles away. Katya hit on the idea of treating ourselves to some cakes and biscuits from the supermarket and taking them down to the beach. I fired off a text to Ryan, apologising profusely, telling him how much he meant to me and I was sorry it had ended this way. His two-word reply told me forgiveness wasn’t coming soon. Not surprising, really.

  We found ourselves a peaceful spot away from the late night dog walkers and sat down on our coats. The water lapped the shore, and Katya dished out equal shares of millionaire’s shortbread, doughnuts and chocolate truffles.

  She picked one up between thumb and forefinger and tapped it gently on the bit of shortbread I was holding. “To you! Sorry again.”

  “I’m newly single and ready to mingle,” I replied, trying the words out for size. They were okay, ‘single’ wasn’t a word I’d used for myself for years and now it emerged from my mouth without too much difficulty.

  My mum nudged my shortbread with her doughnut. “Am I allowed to say ‘ow relieved I am? Sorry love. I thought you were too young to marry.” We’d told her the whole sorry tale as we left the party and she’d gone from concern (oh dear, love, that was naughty) to fury (Kayleigh?! Who’s she?) to giddy delight.

  Once Katya stopped apologising for her mistake, she threw in her opinion too. It must have killed her to hold back all those years on what she really thought about Ryan and my relationship with him. She made up for it. After fifteen minutes or so, Mum and I were stiffening up with the cold, and she showed no sign of letting up. (And then there was the time that douche-bag did...)

  I got to my feet and gave Mum a hand up. “But I do have a lot to deal with. Seeing as my whole life has just fallen apart.” Remarkable that even though this was true, all I felt was lightness. Perhaps the helium still floated around my system, making me feel as if I might lift off at any second.

  Katya flapped a hand and said she’d think of something and my mum promised I could come back and live with her “if the worst comes to the very, very worst”. AlI right Mum, subtle hint received and understood. As she was still trying to get rid of my older brother who’d decided home-cooked meals, laundered clothes and year-round central heating were worth the lack of privacy, I didn’t blame her.

  And my mind flickered with all kinds of exciting possibilities—the overwhelming joy of finally doing what I’d wanted to do as a teenager. Get out of Dodge, aka Great Yarmouth.

  “And yet you ended up here,” Mhari says now, her eyes flicking over the ancient toiletries in the chemist shop. Granted, it doesn’t look its best today. But the BBC weather forecaster’s promise of sunshine and warmth has come true at last. Unfortunately, the sunlight streaming into the shop, highlights the thick layer of dust over all the products no-one ever buys. The same sunshine, however, turns the waters of the loch closer to blue than grey, and I’ve even been able to risk coming out sans coat. A first.

  “Well, it’s a start,” I say. “Kirsty promised me she’d give me a top-notch review and my next cat-sitting gig might be somewhere like Las Vegas.”

  “Oh. Her.” There’s a top-class sneer if I ever heard one and I lean closer, elbows balanced on the counter in a ‘tell me more’ posture. So far, I have learned little about the woman whose house I’m living in. I sense one hundred percent quality gossip about to come my way.

  “Mmm?” I say. I’m desperate to find out about her and Jack’s relationship, but if I ask outright I know it will be all around the village in the next ten minutes. Mhari’s part of the Lochalshie WhatsApp group, and blimey they’ve turned information spreading into an art form. And whoever lets truth get in the way of a good story? I’m glad Kirsty’s house is trapped in a signal-free bubble, otherwise, my phone would go mad every night with beeps as the local WhatsApp group updates.

  “Weeellll,” Mhari begins, leaning in too and lowering her voice even though we are the only ones in the shop. “I shouldnae speak ill o’ the departed.”

  “Whaatt?” I squeal. Is she dead? And does that mean I’m stuck here forever, picking up prescriptions every week and bankrupting myself so I can buy enough smoked salmon stroke organic chicken breast for Little Ms Mean, Mena of course?

  “Aye,” Mhari says, scowling at me for interrupting. “She doesnae live here any more, does she? As I said, you should be respectful of outsiders. But I think all the website fame went to her heid. Thought she was too fancy/schmancy for this place. She changed a lot after she bought that house. Paid for it all upfront too,” she sniffs.

  I step back from the counter, my mouth open in surprise. How could someone my age afford to buy a place as palatial as that one without a mortgage? I know house prices in Scotland, and the rural parts especially are much cheaper than they are down south, but still. Plus, everything in that house is top of the range. Kirsty didn’t go to Ikea, spend hours wandering around trying to get to the bit of the shop she wanted and then picking the first bit of flat-pack tat she saw. No, no. She’s got sleigh beds upstairs, hung her Le Creuset pots and coppers pans all over her kitchen, and draped her cream leather sofas and armchairs with cashmere throws.

  I rewind. Website fame? “Is she a YouTube celeb or something?” I ask, imagining her as one of those lifestyle people—the ones who are always promoting freebies they get while pretending to review them. Nine out of ten times, the reviews are positive. Nobody wants companies to be too scared to send you free stuff, do they? Or perhaps she’s got a website like Gwyneth Paltrow’s ghastly Goop, and she promotes... I close my eyes and shake my head. Gwyneth is famous for telling women they should steam places that are best kept a million miles away from boiling water.

  Mhari stirs herself and starts bagging up labelled tablets and medications. When I asked about Kirsty, she gave me one of her incredulous stares—the one all the villages use when I admit to not knowing every single detail about a person because, you know, they haven’t told me. Or I’m not a mind reader.

  “She’s Christina!” Mhari exclaims, and then when I still look blank. “The dating guru!”

  Clink, clink—the sound of pennies dropping, like they do when you hit the jackpot on one of those old-fashioned slot machines. A lot of things begin to make sense. A) why Jack McAllan has a portrait of the dating guru in his house. B) why someone my age can afford a house like that. She must rake money in from advertising and affiliate links on her website, YouTube channel, blog and podcast. C) the lovey-dovey way she speaks on the phone. But, but, but... my mind protests. Why would Jack still have that picture hanging up, beautiful as it is and a great credit to whoever painted it?

  “That’s why, Gaby,” a little voice in my head pipes up. Katya’s this time, I think. “Because it’s such an amazing picture. Not because it has anything to do with residual feelings he might have towards Kirsty.”

  Mhari wears an expression that can only be described as the air of one who has imparted knowledge that has just blown another person’s mind.

  I go for stating the obvious. “But she can’t be much of a dating guru, can she? Her relationship ended, so how can she bill herself
as an expert when all that’s going on in the background.”

  Mhari suddenly straightens up, her eyes widening in alarm.

  “...and if her subscribers knew she’d split from someone, they wouldn’t take her advice seriously would they?”

  I’m about to add ‘and follow her online slavishly’ when there’s the slam of a door behind us, and I whirl around. Oh, this couldn’t be worse. Jack McAllan, who today looks even more Jamie Fraser-like than ever. He’s in a kilt, for goodness’ sake—one of those sexy modern ones, plain black plaid and worn with a black open-necked shirt and black socks that cling to muscular calves, and all of it highlighting a light tan, the freckles on his face and that copper hair I know any woman would kill for. His expression is thunderous. The eyebrows knit together under a screwed up forehead and he purses his lips.

  As the ground ignores my second request in only a week for it to swallow me up, I resort to bluster. “Loretta!” I say, turning my gaze from Jack back to Mhari and signalling with my eyes that she go along with this. “That woman who runs the find a husband service. No-one would want to listen to someone whose husband had left her for her best mate, would they?”

  Mhari wrinkles up her eyes and then nods. “No, Gaby. You’re quite right.”

  I cringe. If Mhari ever decides to go into acting, I’ll be first in line to say, “Don’t give up the day job, love.”

  “Loretta split from her man and ye cannae blame her,” Mhari continues, over-emphasising every word and making it worse by looking at me and then Jack after she utters every syllable. I’m not in Jack’s direct line of sight, but still I sense disapproval, annoyance and irritation. “I mean, unreasonable of him tae get all het up about a stupid pros and cons list that went viral on Twitter when she said sorry and sent him—”