500 Miles from You Read online

  You’re coming to London?

  I have to go to court.

  When?

  Next week.

  What’s going to happen?

  I have to stand up and . . . go through it again.

  That will be okay, won’t it? Help put it to rest? Isn’t that what we’re meant to be doing?

  I’ll have to see his mother. I’ll have to see the boy who did it.

  He’s not going to get off. He’s not going to come after you.

  His friends might.

  She felt her heartbeat rise again, felt the panic rise.

  I think you’ll feel sorry for him more than anything else.

  I don’t know what I’ll feel.

  There’ll be a lawyer with you.

  Oh God.

  Honestly, don’t panic. I promise. You got this.

  How do you know? You haven’t met me. I might be completely useless.

  Not according to my sources.

  She half smiled at that.

  Have *you* been in a court case?

  There was a long pause.

  Yes.

  What was it?

  Friendly fire.

  Lissa blinked.

  Did you shoot someone??

  No. It was a friend of mine. A translator, working with us. Out with his friends. Some of the squaddies got a little . . . well.

  He got shot.

  Everyone got shot.

  He deleted that last message, but it was somehow worse now that he’d deleted it; it made it clear that it had had a big impact on him. Which it had.

  Lissa looked at it for a long time.

  What are we like? she typed finally, adding a row of screwy-face emojis.

  Cormac looked up at the gray river and smiled to himself. Suddenly in the midst of eight million people he felt incredibly close to someone very, very far away.

  Eejits, he typed.

  Lissa smiled to herself.

  Eediats, she typed back.

  And that was the moment Cormac nearly called her. He almost pressed the button. But what if he called her and she didn’t pick up? What would he do then? What if he broke the connection, ruined everything. He thought of Jake telling him he didn’t behave well with women. He thought too of Jake, who, he thought, was dating her. Oh Lord. Well. He put his phone back in his pocket so he wasn’t tempted.

  He was so tempted.

  Lissa stared at the screen. Maybe he would just call? Throw caution to the wind? Call and talk and tell her everything? She wondered if he sounded like Jake, with that melodious Highland accent. Maybe deeper; Jake said he was taller than him. She sighed. This was ridiculous. She was building it into something it absolutely wasn’t. The wind rustled through the trees.

  But just connecting had worked somehow. He had calmed her down, made her feel better. She straightened up again, looked around her. The birds were calling, high up in the fresh bright air. Their days, she supposed, were all the same. The world was awake around her.

  And it wasn’t going anywhere. The trees had been here for hundreds of years. The wood had stood through wars and great changes, but had never been uprooted. The foxes and rabbits lived their lives; the deer ran; the trout still jumped in the stream; the seals still flapped along the lochside.

  For the first time Lissa started to wonder: Could she build a life here? Not with Cormac of course, that was ridiculous, they hadn’t even met, she didn’t even know what he looked like. Of course he wasn’t going to like her—how could he? It was a silly crush, that was all, a good distraction from the anxiety and the pain. Plus, she had his job.

  But even without that . . . might this be a place for her? She thought of Nina’s friendly face behind the piles of books she organized so beautifully. She had found a home here. And Zoe too, even if she was trailed by what looked like six or seven children at all times and, if Lissa’s professional opinion was not mistaken, what looked like another one on the way.

  They had found a place here. Could she?

  She would read the letter. She would read it, and she would face up to it, and then, when the secondment was over—then she would see.

  She glanced, sadly, once more at the phone. She missed him already.

  Just as she crossed the threshold, it pinged. She grabbed it delightedly. Was it him?

  It was.

  So, it said.

  Cormac had thought about things. He’d heard from Jake about Ginty MacGuire, which was patently terrible news for Jake, who was stuck somewhere with a terrible headache and deep regrets.

  And he’d thought about everything. About everything he’d learned in London, where people were bold and not shy, where people came to get what they wanted, to try everything out there. He knew he’d been lazy in relationships, had always preferred to think of humanity in the abstract, rather than people in particular. He wanted to change that. Starting now.

  So. Wanna meet in London then?

  Chapter 58

  The letter had been short and straightforward, with a date a week hence and a time she was due at Southwark Crown Court. It warned her that the timings might be off and she may have to wait, and there was a form for expenses.

  The lawyer had rung her just as Lissa was trying to pluck up the courage to ring her, and she, Roisin, talked her through what would happen. Lissa would be given the opportunity to read the statement she’d given at the police station the first time around to refresh her memory for the small details, then Roisin would walk her through it on the stand. Then the defense lawyer would ask her a few questions.

  “But honestly,” said Roisin, “you’re a noble, trustworthy health care worker who happened to be walking past and did her absolute best to save the life of a child. They’d have a devil of a job making you look bad in front of a jury, and I would be very, very surprised if they bothered to try. They’ll probably get you off the stand as soon as possible. All you’re doing is confirming the perpetrator. The person you’ve already picked out of the lineup.”

  “What if I can’t remember his face?”

  “I’ll ask you if you recognize the person driving the car. If you do, say yes.”

  “But what if I don’t . . .”

  “Alyssa,” said Roisin, “don’t panic. It’s okay to be nervous. He’ll be in a suit, but it’s the same person. The police had to pull him out of his car, remember? When it was surrounded by the lads from the estate?”

  “Okay . . .” said Lissa, swallowing hard.

  “Who is also on the CCTV that is going to be played to the jury.”

  “Can I watch that?”

  “Nope. I’m just saying. Don’t worry about it.”

  Lissa sighed.

  “It’s all right,” said the lawyer. “You’re going to be fine. Honest. And you’ll be back in London. Enjoy that, surely!”

  Lissa bit her lip. She couldn’t help it; something about a tiny thing to look forward to. A tiny green shoot. And she’d teased Cormac about it: he’d suggested going to Borough Market, which made him such a Londoner—it was an incredibly expensive, very chichi food market just on the south bank by London Bridge station that sold all manner of exotic and organic foods at incredible prices.

  But it was still a lovely place to roam around, smelling the cheeses and the coffee beans and seeing the beautiful cakes that were practically works of art and the unidentifiable (certainly to Cormac) spiky fruits. It was an oasis of beauty in the big granite city, and Cormac had liked it straightaway; it was so different from the very solid, decent farmers’ market in Kirrinfief, where you could buy the freshest local brown hen’s eggs with great big melting yolks, half a dozen for a pound. Here you could buy a single ostrich egg for £7. At the Kirrinfief farmers’ market you could buy basket after basket of fresh strawberries, huge, some a little battered, falling over, from the fields all around them for miles and miles. Here you could buy six perfectly curated strawberries in an artisanal basket and they would cost almost a pound each.

  But Cormac liked it anyw
ay. It reminded him a little of home and people who took their food seriously, even if he had been slightly taken aback when asked to pay £8 for a toasted cheese sandwich.

  And it was a ten-minute walk away from the courthouse. Her stomach fizzed.

  SHE HAD TOLD herself not to get carried away, not to build it up too much. She had failed miserably.

  “You look very distracted,” said old Joe Cahill the previous Thursday.

  Seeing as she was checking his foot operation post-wound care, and seeing as, distractingly, he had a set of the most gnarled and twisted hobbit-feet toenails she’d ever encountered, it wasn’t, Lissa thought, as she came back to herself, the worst place to lose her concentration. She straightened up.

  “Your wound is fine, Mr. Cahill,” she said. “But did they not tell you to cut those nails?”

  “Aye, they did, aye,” he said mournfully. Then he looked down at his expansive stomach. “Och, it’s not that easy, no,” he added with a sigh.

  “Could they not get someone to do it there?”

  “Aye, they tried, but they couldnae work it with the scissors, eh.”

  It was true, they looked like sheep’s horns.

  “Let me have a shot,” said Lissa. “You’ll never get walking with those on.”

  But Joe had been quite right; there was absolutely no shifting them. Outside, a brief shower had made everything sparkle and bounce in the light. She could see the sheep nudging their way around the luminous green field. Suddenly she had an idea.

  “I’m just going to see if Joan’s about,” she said.

  Joan did, in fact, happen to be in the general area (which she gauged as being within fifteen miles) and came over immediately.

  “I wondered,” said Lissa, “if you knew if there was a technique that they used on, like, boy sheep and stuff.”

  “Boy sheep,” said Joan, her lip curling.

  “Um, yes,” said Lissa.

  “I’m not sure we’re going to make a country girl out of you. But your thinking isn’t bad. Joe!”

  “Whit?”

  “Stop eating pies, this is ridiculous.” She prodded at his round stomach.

  “Actually I was taught not to fat-shame patients,” said Lissa quietly, feeling Joan had been unkind.

  “More’s the pity!” boomed Joan. “Come on, Joe.”

  “I do like a pie,” said Joe.

  “You can have a pie! Just don’t have all the pies!”

  “Um,” said Lissa.

  “Okay,” said Joan. “Where’s your hacksaw?”

  “His what?”

  “It’s a small saw people use for cutting things,” said Joan.

  “No, but I thought you would have some animal thing . . . some technique they use on animals’ horns.”

  “I do! It’s called a hacksaw.”

  “There’s one in the lean-to,” said Joe.

  The lean-to was a ramshackle space utterly filled with junk and tomato plants.

  “If he can get around he can tidy up,” muttered Joan. “You did the right thing to call me in.”

  She peered at Lissa over her spectacles.

  “Just as you’re getting the hang of it, you’ll be heading back, eh?”

  Lissa shrugged. “The court case is soon.”

  “Yes, I saw on the roster.”

  There was a pause as they rummaged through a large pile of seed catalogs, a lot of ancient Farmers Weeklys, and a medium-sized stuffed owl.

  “I never thought you’d manage up here,” said Joan finally, “with your London ways, but I think you’ve done rather well. I think people are finally taking to you.”

  Lissa blinked. “Except Ginty.”

  “Yes, except Ginty. She hates you. I heard all about it last time I was in.”

  “Oh good.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. Everyone feels sorry for whoever is in Ginty’s firing line. That poor Jake . . . Aha!”

  Triumphantly she pulled a small hacksaw from the bottom of a teetering mass of unpleasant soil samples.

  Lissa followed her back into the bedroom.

  “I feel like I’m taking off someone’s fingers for frostbite! Again!”

  Lissa checked to see if she was kidding, but she didn’t appear to be.

  “Right, Joe. Feet up. Lissa, you hold him.”

  Lissa took one ankle at a time. It was a ridiculous business, but Joan worked quickly and carefully, sawing through the long, twirly nails, then Lissa neatly clipped what was left over and swept it up with a brush and pan.

  Joe couldn’t stop staring at his toes.

  “Well,” he said. Then he walked a few paces and a few more. “Well,” he said again, scratching his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “That is quite something. That is really quite something.”

  His eyes lit up.

  “I feel like I could . . .”

  “Do not dance,” said Joan quickly. “You still have a foot injury.”

  “Och, just a jig . . .”

  “No dancing. For a week. Then dance a lot. It’ll help. And no more pies!”

  “Aye,” said Joe. “But noo I can dance I dinnae need pies.”

  He did an experimental twiddle.

  “I am warning you!” said Joan. “No dancing. Some mild tidying up I would absolutely suggest to you.”

  “I need to find my dancing shoes,” agreed Joe.

  “Fine.”

  “Thanks, lass,” he said, looking at Lissa. “This was your idea. You know, for a Sassenach, you’re not that bad.”

  THE SUN WAS still high in the sky as they left, and the sheep pootled around, completely disinterested in them, as they headed toward their respective cars. It was a glorious evening, though, the breeze ruffling Lissa’s hair. Joan marched straight to her high car, the dogs as usual going bananas in the back.

  “Um,” said Lissa just as she was about to get in. “Just . . . just . . . When Cormac comes back . . . just . . . Do you think—do you think there might be another opening here? For another person? I mean, I’m qualified for community nursing too.”

  Joan frowned. “Oh, I don’t think so, dear. We’re a shrinking region, there just aren’t enough people here to support two NPLs. But there’s absolutely loads of places in the Highlands that would snap you up . . . and I’d write you a good reference.”

  “Okay. Right. Thanks,” said Lissa. But she didn’t want anywhere in the Highlands. She wanted here.

  Well, it was worth asking. Maybe getting back to London would make her feel more homesick; she’d always assumed that she would be. Once she saw all her friends and got back into her commute and with her life there . . . feeling lonely among crowds, making herself busy because somehow not being busy was associated with failure, cramming her calendar full of events she didn’t really want to do, because she lived in London and how else was she supposed to manage?

  No more wandering down into the village on a morning when she could see the changes from the day before: the new colors and flowers pouring out of the sides of the roads, the trees getting thicker every day, the loch mist burning off before she’d had her second cup of coffee. The noisy quiet of the countryside—the birds and the occasional growl in the woods, the sound of the wind in the fireplace—and the sweet smell of burning whisky wood. Pigeons eating old McDonald’s leftovers didn’t have quite the appeal of the herons that took off from the very tip of the loch like ballerinas.

  Well. There was a lot happening. A lot coming up. She should just get through it a bit at a time.

  Chapter 59

  Lissa looked around the little cottage. It was as if she’d never lived there at all, now that she’d neatly packed her black carry-on case and emptied out the jam jar full of wildflowers.

  Why, she found herself wondering now, had she not put up a picture? Set the books up on shelves rather than scattering them underneath her bed? She must have been in such a bad state when she arrived. The cottage was beautiful, and she could have made it even lovelier. Especially now that she k
new Cormac wouldn’t have minded.

  She thought about him briefly, imagined him walking in. In her head, he was alternately very tall and very short and stocky; sometimes he had a beard and then he absolutely didn’t—nurses never had beards anyway, in case they had to do mouth to mouth. Also, if he’d been in the army . . .

  He hadn’t mentioned Yazzie again, might even still be seeing her anyway. And she hoped he hadn’t discussed her with Jake . . . They wouldn’t, surely? They were Highland blokes—surely they’d just be discussing who’d won at the shinty.

  She realized she’d actually had the conscious thought Who’d won at the shinty. God, she had changed.

  When she got back from London, she vowed. She would make it beautiful, for the time she had left of June, when it never got dark and the air softened, and she was so looking forward to it, although she reminded herself to bring superstrength midge spray back with her. They must sell something in London for people going to the tropics. Something must kill those pesky mites.

  She couldn’t help it, though. Imagining. What it would be like if he walked through the door and grabbed her and . . .

  She was being ridiculous, she realized. But also it was good: good that she was thinking about a chap again. It had been so very long since her mind hadn’t felt closed, confused, frightened all the time. Even her ability to daydream, to fantasize, seemed to have been turned off by the anxiety; the luxury of even believing in a brighter future for herself. That had been lost; now it seemed to have been found. Even if, of course, it was nonsense.

  Still. They were meeting. After the trial. Better than that: he had promised to take her out to lunch and she had (and she felt guilty about it) not even told her mum or Kim-Ange, even though she knew they were both longing to see her. This was bad, but it was going to be such an awful day, and only the thought of Cormac was keeping her hanging on.

  Her Skype bonged, and she groaned.

  ANITA WAS FULLY dressed and had two suitcases by the side of her kitchen table.

  “Is this a bad time?” said Lissa, not wanting to point out that Anita had called her.

  “Pfft,” said Anita, glancing nervously at a pile of paperwork on the kitchen table. “Apparently I’m passport monitor and it’s making me very nervous.”