Wildflower Bay

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘So, about your little night out last night, Isla.’ Her dad was ambling along like an amiable bear beside her. It mightn’t be power walking, but it was a damn sight better than sitting in front of the television, can of beer in hand, watching the football results as they ticked along the bottom of the screen.

  ‘It was a one-off.’ Her voice was firm.

  ‘I’m sure it was. But you’ve no job, hen.’

  ‘I’m going to take some time off. Have a hiatus. A breather. Whatever it is people call it.’

  ‘That’ll no’ look good on your CV. You cannae just stop working.’ Isla’s dad was old fashioned, and had no truck with gap years. You left school, you got a job, you worked hard, then you retired. It was simple.

  ‘I’m not stopping,’ Isla began, ‘I’m just – having a break.’

  He made a scoffing noise. ‘That sounds like a nonsense. You need to get on to the other salons in town, hen. Let them know you’re on the lookout for something.’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Dad. I didn’t just lose my job . . .’

  She hadn’t expected him to laugh at her predicament.

  ‘You’re more like your mother than you realize, young Isla. She’d a temper like a firecracker too. I tell you, I steered clear when she was in one of her moods. I mind her giving my sister Jessie whit for after she’d messed up a booking for a caravan holiday to Wales. They never got on after that, y’know.’

  Isla smiled. It wasn’t often they talked about her mum. ‘Anyway, no matter. Something will turn up. It always does.’

  ‘Aye, sure enough it will. And you’ve been working far too hard for long enough now. The world isn’t going to end when you hit thirty, you know.’

  Isla halted in her tracks for a second, looking at her dad as he carried on walking.

  ‘You OK, sweetie?’ He turned back, concerned.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ She slipped her hand in his arm, and they moved along the canal bank together.

  The world wasn’t going to end when she hit thirty – but for her mum, it had done just that. Somehow, Isla realized, she’d hung everything she had on getting as far up the ladder as she could, determined that if she could just make it there, the rest of her life would sort itself out somehow.

  They returned to the house.

  ‘That’s Jock on the phone, asking if I’ll take Margaret up to the shopping centre.’

  Isla shook her head, smiling. He was supposed to be off duty, but she knew he wasn’t going to say no to a mate. She had half an hour or so to get the place sorted whilst her dad did one last run for the night as a favour to Jock. Filling the sink with soapy water, she snapped on a pair of rubber gloves she’d brought round last time she’d visited.

  She whizzed round with a duster first, wiping down the surfaces and spraying them with polish. The house hadn’t changed in forever. She plumped up the sagging sofa cushions, shook out the rug and left it by the front step whilst she ran the hoover around the sitting room.

  She gave her mum a quick shine, thinking as she did so how young she looked in the picture, something she’d never noticed before. She was probably only about twenty-four there – five years younger than Isla was now, and with only another six years left.

  Isla took the picture down for a moment, studying it afresh. She’d focused for so long on hitting what everyone at work called the big 3-0, and everything she wanted to achieve by then – it hadn’t occurred to her that there was a reason behind it. Now the reason was smiling back out at her, hazel eyes shining in the sunlight, hair clipped back from the side of her face with a gold clasp.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Isla spoke aloud. ‘It’ll all work out in the end. That’s what Dad says.’

  Her mum smiled back at her, silently. Isla liked to imagine she was giving out love.

  ‘That’s me done, Isla.’

  She heard the front door slam shut and her dad’s heavy, solid footsteps in the hall.

  When she came back down the stairs, bottle of bleach in hand, her dad was on the phone.

  ‘That’s a stroke of luck, then, isn’t it?’ she heard him saying. ‘Well, no, not for Pamela, obviously, but – well, they say the Lord moves in mysterious ways, do they not?’

  Isla paused on the last step, listening. What on earth was going on?

  ‘Aye, she’ll love that, I’ll tell her the now. She can come over this week. No, she’s got nothing else on. I can’t see it being a problem. Aye, right up her street. Eight weeks.’

  ‘Dad?’

  She walked into the sitting room as he replaced the old-fashioned receiver with a beaming smile on his face.

  ‘I tell you what, you wouldn’t believe this.’

  ‘Try me.’ Isla felt a lurch of panic in her stomach. There was something in his tone that made her quite sure he hadn’t just won the lottery.

  ‘That was Jessie on the phone.’ Formidable Aunty Jessie, who’d had a run-in with Isla’s mum. She was a tiny, no-nonsense woman who lived on an island off the West Coast, not far from Glasgow.

  Isla stood and waited for her dad to continue.

  ‘Well, luckily for you, your cousin Pamela’s broken her arm.’

  Pamela. A solid lump of West Coast lassie who’d always had a packet of sweeties in one hand, and a finger up her nose. She’d had four children by the time she was twenty-four. Isla hadn’t seen her in years, and didn’t regret it one bit.

  ‘Lucky for me?’

  ‘Aye. She needs to go and look after her. Pamela’s just had another bairn – that’s six now she’s got. Anyway. Jessie’s needing someone to look after her shop, and I’ve said to her you’d be perfect for the job. Eight weeks, she said. That’s your time off sorted out. Get away from it all.’

  ‘A shop?’

  ‘Aye, a hairdresser’s shop.’

  Isla blanched, but didn’t say a word. Her brain started working quickly. There was no way she could do this. A million and one reasons why not.

  ‘When I told her what had happened,’ her dad began – Isla swallowed back a gasp of horror, looking at him wide-eyed – ‘well, no, I didn’t mention you’d got hammered on champagne and given your ex-boss what for on the telephone, obviously. I just said you were taking a break, and looking for something to do to keep your hand in.’

  It got worse. Isla visualized the kind of hairdresser’s ‘shop’ that her sturdy, no-nonsense Aunty Jessie would own. She hadn’t even known Jessie was a qualified hair-dresser, let alone that she owned a salon.

  ‘What kind of –’ Isla thought for a moment, choosing her words cautiously – ‘what kind of shop is it, exactly?’

  ‘Well, you’ll remember they always had a summer place across the water when you were a wee girl? Do you no’ remember visiting there in the summer?’

  Isla remembered perfectly well. When everyone else in her class was off on the bus to Blackpool for a summer break of sunshine and funfair rides, ice cream and flirting on the pier – or flying off from the airport to the Costa del Sol for two weeks in a hotel, coming home with boastful tales of kissing Spanish boys at midnight on the deserted beaches – she had spent most of her summer holidays in a caravan in the Highlands. One exotic summer, the year she turned fifteen, she and her dad had spent a thoroughly miserable wet week on the island of Auchenmor, where there was nothing to do but feed twopence pieces disconsolately into a rigged slot machine and eat ice cream in a shabby seafront cafe. It had been hideous, she’d run out of books to read, and she’d sworn she was never setting foot in the place again.

  ‘I can remember it a bit, yes,’ Isla fibbed. ‘But I honestly don’t think—’

  ‘Your Aunty Jessie was so pleased, you know. She’s always felt bad that you and she don’t have a closer relationship. I think she feels bad that she’d fallen out with your mum when she got sick. I shouldn’t have let that get in the way. She could have helped out more when you were growing up, maybe had you stay over there for the summer holidays when I was working.’

  Thank God you di
dn’t, thought Isla, trying to keep her expression neutral. The thought of an extended stay in the world’s most boring holiday resort was appalling.

  ‘Anyway, you’d be doing her a favour, and I think it’d do you the world of good. Get a bit of colour in your cheeks, a bit of sea air . . . What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Isla shook her head, stalling. ‘But really, I don’t think I can just up sticks and go off for eight weeks to the middle of nowhere.’

  Her dad’s face fell.

  ‘It was just an idea,’ he said, covering his tracks. ‘I’m sure we can sort something out with Jessie. She’ll have someone else who could take over. I’ll just ring her and—’ He made to reach for the phone.

  ‘Dad, no.’ Isla put a hand out to stop him. ‘Just – it’s just a surprise, that’s all. I tell you what, I’ve used all that furniture polish sorting out the hall and stairs. I’ll nip out to the corner shop and get some more, shall I?’

  ‘Give yourself time to think of an excuse, more like,’ her dad replied, half-teasing. But his expression wasn’t hard to read. She’d disappointed him, and if there was one thing she didn’t want, it was to make her lovely dad feel bad. He was the only thing that actually mattered to her. And after all – Isla slipped through the back door, along the narrow garden path, and out the gate – he wasn’t asking for much. He was trying to help.

  The path between the two rows of gardens was narrow, the houses divided by the same thickly slatted wooden fences that had been there since she was a young girl. She ran a hand along the roughly hewn wood, inhaling the scent of creosote that lingered, always, in the passageway. And then she was out, stepping underneath the strange bridge bedroom that always looked so exotic, joining one white-harling covered house to another. She’d always wondered how those bedrooms stayed upright.

  ‘All right, hen?’

  Mrs Glennison had owned the corner shop since time immemorial. She stood, queen of all she surveyed, chief gossip, judge and jury. If a child was caught nicking sweeties, she didn’t bother sorting it with the parents. She gave the offender a skelp round the lugs and sent them on their way. Being banned from the sweetie shop was the most effective punishment there could be – and after a suitable sentence, being allowed back in was heaven on earth. Isla watched as two scruffy boys left, hands already dipping into paper bags full of gummy snakes and bubble gum. Back when Isla was a little girl, they’d cost twenty pence for a mixture. Nowadays, she noticed, it was 50p.

  ‘Hiya.’ She could be ten years old again. It didn’t matter that the badly cut brown hair was now a sleek chestnut bob, and that the ill-fitting, badly washed clothes had been replaced with expensive designer outfits. Mrs Glennison had watched Isla growing up a motherless bairn, and that’s what she would always be.

  ‘I hear there’s one of they school reunions going on for your year soon. Will you be going?’

  ‘Me?’ Isla feigned disinterest. ‘Not sure. I doubt I’ll be here.’

  The old lady crossed fat, freckled arms across her blue overall, a knowing expression on her face. ‘That’s a shame. I think the rest of your gang will all be going. I saw Allison Graves the other day when she was back visiting her mum. She’s got two bairns now – a wee lassie and a baby boy. No plans yourself?’

  Isla shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Aye, well, people seem to be leaving it later these days, right enough. You’ll need to be keeping an eye out. You don’t want to leave it past thirty-five, mind. My niece Sandra left it too late; she had an awful time trying to catch pregnant.’

  ‘Sorry, can I just squeeze past?’ said a voice. Isla looked up briefly from the magazine shelf where she was studying the front covers, trying to decide which to buy.

  ‘Sorry, of course.’

  There was something vaguely familiar about the woman who handed over a ten-pound note, shoving the contents of her shopping basket into a fabric bag before she slipped through the door, hair knotted up in a loose ponytail, a faded T-shirt over leggings that had seen better days. Isla busied herself with trying to find the furniture polish.

  ‘Isla?’

  She looked up as the woman came back in and pulled the shop door closed behind her.

  ‘I thought it was you.’ The woman smiled at her shyly, and Isla was thrown back in time to the school dinner hall.

  ‘Helen?’

  Helen smiled back at her, suddenly familiar. ‘You’re braving the school reunion then? I saw you signed up on the Facebook page last night. I wasn’t sure about it, but . . .’ she looked down at her scruffy leggings and baggy T-shirt.

  Isla felt another wave of the night before washing over her. Oh God, of course. She’d signed up for the reunion in a fit of bravery – or madness. Now there was no going back.

  ‘Well, how bad can it be?’ Isla tried to brazen it out.

  Helen looked dubious. ‘Pretty awful, if school was anything to go by.’

  ‘Are you coming?’ Isla tried to look casual. But God, if someone she knew was there, at least she wouldn’t have to stand on her own for the whole night.

  ‘You’re definitely going to be there?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Isla’s mouth formed the word, to her surprise. ‘Oh, come, it’ll be OK if we’re together. Plus, maybe time will have mellowed everyone.’

  Helen took a deep breath. ‘Or they’ll be even more vicious, and we’ll be balancing our buffet food on our knees whilst they take the piss out of us for having the wrong clothes and looking like shit.’

  Isla looked down at her dusty jeans and the old shirt of her dad’s that she’d put on whilst she was doing the housework. She looked as scruffy and shapeless as she’d ever been. Thank God it was Helen she’d bumped into, and not one of the others.

  ‘We can stick together. Safety in numbers, and all that stuff. I’d better get back, my dad’s going to be wondering where I’ve got to. See you there?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ Helen gave another shy smile.

  Oh God. So now there was no getting out of the reunion. And what the hell was she going to say to her dad? There was no way she could go and spend eight weeks – what about Hattie? The flat? What would she do for money? She supposed maybe she’d get paid for looking after Jessie’s place, but – eight weeks doing shampoo and sets for old ladies, and making polite conversation whilst trimming old men’s ear hair? She shuddered at the thought. No, there was no way she could put herself through it.

  ‘Is that you, hen?’

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ Isla pulled the back door closed behind her. It stuck, as always, and took two hands to wrench it shut.

  ‘That was your Aunty Jessie on the phone again. She’s – och, no. Don’t worry.’

  ‘She’s what?’ Isla could feel the weight of inevitability settling on her shoulders like a thick, suffocating blanket.

  ‘Well,’ her dad began, carefully. ‘She’s so relieved you’ve offered to step in.’

  Isla’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

  ‘Well, not so much offered, maybe – anyway, she’s over the moon. Apparently the girl she had helping her isn’t much use, so she was loath to leave her in charge. I’ve told her you know your stuff, and she’s delighted to have you take the reins.’

  Isla closed her eyes.

  ‘Eight weeks. Maybe seven, if your cousin Pamela gets the cast off early. But it’s a bad break, I think, and she needs the help. Imagine trying to look after all those weans with one arm.’

  This was unbearable. Her dad had given up all attempts at subtlety now, and was layering on the guilt in spades. She heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Fine.’

  His face was one huge, beaming smile. He jumped out of his armchair faster than Isla had seen him move in years, throwing his arms around her.

  ‘Darling, I’m so glad. I have a feeling this is just what you need. A break from all this pressure. Get a bit of sunshine, enjoy a different pace of life.’

  ‘For eight weeks,’ Isla reminded him. ‘And then I’m coming back here and getting on
with it.’

  Eight weeks. By then the reunion would have taken place. She felt her stomach contract with fear. What if Kat Black wasn’t going to give her a decent reference? No, she’d have to give her something – employment law saw to that, surely? And Isla was certain she’d be able to find something else. Maybe in Glasgow, where the rumour mill wouldn’t be quite so active. In fact, she could keep an eye out whilst she was working over on the West Coast. Maybe make a few exploratory visits, scout the place out a bit. That was it. She sighed.

  ‘When does she want me?’

  ‘An actual island?’ Hattie’s face was wreathed in smiles. Life was so uncomplicated for her. She just blithely floated through, expecting everything to go well – and invariably it did. ‘Oh what fun, darling, you’ll have an absolute ball – just imagine all those gorgeous handsome islanders with their woolly sweaters, chopping logs. Dreamy . . .’

  Isla looked at her blankly. Hattie had breezed in from her weekend in the country with bags overflowing with mountains of washing, hair knotted loosely in a ponytail, her striped Joules shirt half-untucked from a pair of battered old Jack Wills tracksuit bottoms. She slid down over the back of the huge sofa and swung her legs down, sprawling in a heap, her beautiful face looking up at Isla. Despite two very late nights (‘up all night, darling, you know what it’s like, Milly made us play hide and seek at midnight and then sardines of all things – her place is vast – and then her ma made everyone crumpets for breakfast . . .’) her smooth tanned face was untroubled by black shadows or lines. Hattie was living proof that a life without worries created a perfect complexion. She slept the sleep of the just each night, and positively glowed with health. Isla, in comparison, had realized that morning that she was looking seriously grey and in need of a facial. With no time to spare, she’d have to sort something out when she got over to Aunt Jessie’s place.