Christmas on the Island Read online

  On the other hand, would she be accused of patronising and favouring the little refugee boy, handing him the starring role, when his English could still be a little patchy? On the other hand, what could be better for his English than being made to speak up loudly and clearly . . . ?

  Lorna slammed her notebook shut. This could wait until tomorrow. She’d ask Mrs Cook; her counsel was worth having. She glanced at her phone. It just said, ‘Harbour’s Rest?’ which was Flora code for ‘A crisis is happening!’ It was after 5.30. Okay. Joel would be up to some nonsense again, but it might be fun to shut off her own stupid brain for five seconds, enjoy a G&T (the wine in the Harbour’s Rest was utterly unspeakable) and maybe Flora could even come up with a solution. She popped into her car and trundled down the hill, windscreen wipers batting furiously through the storm.

  Chapter Seven

  The Harbour’s Rest had its usual little line of old chaps who came in after a hard day out in the fields or on the sea for a whisky and a chat or, just as often, the chance to not chat, to just sit by the fire and read the paper or pat their dogs or simply take a little comfort and cheer out of the storm.

  Lorna had grabbed their usual seats at the bar so Inge-Britt could chime in with any useful ideas of her own to their conversations, but Flora indicated the corner booth, the furthest in the room, even though it was right beside the door and every time someone came in, a wind blew right in and down your neck. Lorna frowned. Then Flora went to the bar and came back with a G&T for Lorna and a Diet Coke for herself.

  It was very strange. Lorna generally thought of herself as quite a balanced person. She’d had her ups and downs in life: both her parents had died and her brother worked the rigs so she could often be lonely without her family around her, even as close as the community was. She had been – okay, was – extremely fond of a man who couldn’t love her back.

  But she loved her job; she loved her cosy little flat on the high street, where you were close to everything and could see the comings and goings; she loved Milou, and knew everyone on the island and could honestly say she didn’t have an enemy in the world. She had a little money put away, and also had her health and her friends. Lorna was a cheerful soul on the whole, not inclined to bemoaning her lot.

  So she was surprised by how much this caught her in the gullet. How outstandingly and instantly jealous she was. All at once; like she’d been punched, winded with purest envy.

  ‘You’re not,’ she said, aghast.

  Flora looked furious.

  ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘You think I’m that much of a pisshead I can’t . . .’

  But she couldn’t keep it up for long.

  ‘Fuck a duck,’ she said. ‘Yes. I am.’

  There was an agonising pause before Lorna remembered what she was meant to be doing at this point: jumping up and flinging her arms around her friend, delighted.

  And she was, she told herself ferociously. She was delighted. She was.

  ‘OMG, are you crying?’ said Flora. ‘Don’t start to cry – I mean it. I’ll cry too.’

  ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘Why are you crying?’ remarked Inge-Britt on the way past to make a very lacklustre attempt at cleaning the loos. ‘Is one of you up the duff?’

  ‘Good,’ said Lorna. ‘Can we move back to the bar now? I’m freezing here.’

  Lorna looked at her friend as they moved their stuff. She looked pale, but Flora was always pale, her skin so white it was practically translucent. Her mother had been the same; it’s why they’d got their reputations for being selkies, seal spirits that came to land in mortal form. Flora laughed it off, but Lorna always thought there might be something to it. Flora’s niece, Agot, was even fairer, her hair an almost pure white. She looked like – and indeed was – a tiny witch.

  But yes, she was possibly a little paler than usual, with tiny blooms of pale blue shadow under her eyes. And . . .

  ‘Jings, have you got tits?’ asked Lorna. ‘You have! You have never had tits. Joel is going to be delighted. Even more delighted, I mean.’

  Flora grimaced.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Ah. Well . . .’

  There was a long expectant pause.

  Lorna looked up. That was the thing about being very old friends with someone: they didn’t have to say anything for you to know exactly what they meant.

  She took another sip of her drink and felt awful for her jealousy. Flora didn’t have life easy either. Lorna liked Joel – or she thought she probably did; he was quite hard to get to know. And he didn’t half put her friend through it. She knew he was difficult and had had a difficult childhood, but even so she didn’t think it always excused how often Joel didn’t exactly put Flora first.

  Lorna looked for a way to say, ‘You haven’t told him?’ that wouldn’t sound sarcastic or oddly triumphant or pitying or anything else that she didn’t want to convey, and finally gave up and went back to the old speech they’d heard at their grandparents’ knee.

  ‘Doch dhu naw telt?’ she said as gently as she was able.

  Flora sighed and suddenly looked close to tears.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘I suddenly appear to do this all the time.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Cry. Leak. Literally all the time. I cried the other day when I saw Bramble.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘Eating the gas bill. Seriously, nothing!’

  Lorna nodded and put her hand on Flora’s arm.

  ‘Och, sweetie. But he’s going to be all right! He’ll be thrilled! Surely! I mean, you’re a couple and everything . . .’

  Flora blinked and rubbed the tears away from the corner of her eyes.

  ‘For five minutes we’ve been a couple! I barely know him! Except I know that he comes from somewhere where family is basically a dirty word.’

  Lorna tilted her head.

  ‘Well, maybe he’s been looking for a family all along. And you’re it.’

  ‘Yeah, me plus an extra person? Lorna, where are we going to live?’

  Lorna looked up suddenly as if a lightbulb had gone on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I was just thinking . . . I mean. I’ve been thinking since last year what to do with the farmhouse. It’s getting really neglected and rundown, and I don’t have nine hundred brothers to run the place like you do. It needs selling, Flora.’

  ‘If I need a desperately falling down farmhouse I can just stay at home, thanks,’ said Flora.

  Lorna shook her head.

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I mean. I mean, if you guys paid me rent, you could move into the flat. Then I would have enough money to do up the farmhouse and sell it.’

  Flora blinked at this. Lorna’s flat was her haven. Any entertaining that went on, Flora normally did it at the farmhouse as everyone knew to come there anyway. Otherwise they’d meet in the pub or the Seaside Kitchen. Lorna hadn’t had a boyfriend for three years since Gregor, a nice twinkly fisherman from Eigg, whose genial good nature, fisherman’s hours and easy-going manner had meant they had all completely failed to notice that he had another girl in Rhum. And probably in Eigg too.

  But that was off the point: the flat was really lovely. It was just by the side of the seafront, which meant it had the views but was mostly protected from the very harshest of the weather in that it looked out on the cobbled streets leading back from the harbour, and was completely unobtrusive unless you were looking for it. It was in a curved sandstone building, with little carvings along the outside. Downstairs housed the tiny Museum of Mure, home to ancient artefacts, beautiful, intricate Celtic jewellery and international flotsam washed up from shipping routes over the centuries as well as the tiny library which was so fervently overheated that Lorna barely needed to turn hers on.

  There were two high-ceilinged reception rooms. The first was a soft lounge with a large fireplace, where Milou stretched out on the old Persian rug and an oversized sofa took up the entire back wall. Lorna had painted it i
n dark reds and greens, so that it was like being inside a cosy jewellery box.

  The back room, with a gorgeous brand-new kitchen that had cost an utterly terrifying amount of money to get shipped over from the mainland, faced south, and got every single ounce of sun there was to be had, if there was any at all. It had a sliding glass door at the back which led out onto what was technically a fire escape landing, but Lorna had filled it with beautiful plants and had great big waterproof cushions that she scattered out there in fine weather, so in fact it was more like a tiny oasis, and she and Flora had spent many happy evenings sitting out there with a bottle of wine, looking over the little shambling rooftops and setting the world to rights.

  Then there were two bedrooms; one vast, and two bathrooms. It was a perfect little TARDIS of an apartment. Flora blinked.

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘It’s up two flights of stairs,’ shrugged Lorna.

  ‘Yes, but there’s nobody else in the building,’ said Flora. ‘I could just dump the buggy in the stairwell. Oh God. Oh God. I’m going to have to buy a buggy. Oh God. Oh God.’

  ‘Stop panicking,’ said Lorna. ‘Or at least panic about one thing at a time.’

  Flora nodded.

  ‘Oh God. I’m going to have to go to Aberdeen.’

  ‘Uh . . . ?’

  ‘Buggies. They have buggies in Aberdeen. They’ve got a John Lewis. I read on the internet you can’t have a baby without John Lewis.’

  ‘Seriously, Flora,’ said Lorna, almost cross with her. ‘This isn’t about John Lewis.’

  She thought about it.

  ‘On the other hand, there’s one good thing about this so far.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Flora

  ‘You know for a fact Joel doesn’t stalk your internet use.’

  Flora gave Lorna a very hard stare.

  Lorna ignored it, swigged more of her gin and tonic, then lowered her voice and took her friend’s hand.

  ‘Do you want this baby?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora fervently. Then she looked up.

  ‘But I want Joel to want it. And I don’t know if he can.’

  Chapter Eight

  Oddly enough, Flora was staring at the phone the next day, trying to will herself to pick it up, when it rang anyway. She blinked, but it wasn’t Joel.

  Instead it was an international number and she assumed it was what it generally was – American tourists coming for a visit who wanted to know if the Seaside Kitchen was gluten-free. She would kindly and patiently explain that no, they weren’t, but everything was locally sourced, and for a surprising amount of people this amounted to more or less the same thing and they came anyway.

  ‘Hello? Seaside Kitchen?’ she said cheerfully. There was some crackling on the end of the line, as if someone had dropped the phone.

  ‘HELLO?’ came a voice. Then another voice behind it. ‘Don’t be nuts – you don’t need to yell like that. It’s only Scotland. She’s not deaf.’

  Flora felt herself relax as she recognised the tone.

  ‘Mark?’ she said. ‘Marsha? Is that you?’

  ‘See?’ said Marsha’s voice. ‘She can hear you perfectly fine.’

  Hearing their voices brought back the memory of the summer when Mark had been utterly instrumental in helping Joel back from the brink of a nervous breakdown and had shown him how to find himself again in the fresh air of the islands – and by walking, helping, looking after himself Joel had had the time to mend and be able to come back to Flora, to gather the strength to carry on. Flora owed Mark an awful lot.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Are you there?’

  Flora came back to the present.

  ‘I’m on Mure, Mark, not the moon.’

  ‘Okay. Right. Okay. Well now. Look. Say no if you want to.’

  Flora’s attention perked up. Usually if people said ‘Say no if you want to’ they meant ‘If you say no, our relationship is over for all time’.

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking . . . I found your island just so, so beautiful when I came and, well, Marsha really wants to see it now, and we were thinking that maybe we might come for Christmas?’

  Flora blinked.

  ‘Mark. I have to tell you. You were here in July. When it was sunny and warm and light all the time.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Flora glanced outside at the snow flurries dancing around the harbour lamppost. Although it was nearly nine in the morning, it was as black as pitch outside.

  ‘Okay, it’s really not like that now . . .’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Well. Pitch-dark all day really. And windy. Very, very, very windy.’

  There was silence.

  ‘I mean,’ said Flora, ‘obviously we’d love you to come.’

  ‘I thought we’d ask you,’ said Marsha, ‘because we haven’t seen Joel since he got here and then it was only for five minutes. And he said call you . . .’

  ‘I’m not sure where you’d stay . . .’

  ‘Colton invited us to the Rock,’ said Mark. ‘Of course, that was a while ago. Back in the summer. But he always said it was at our disposal . . .’

  ‘Oh no, the Rock would work,’ said Flora, perking up. It was lovely there. If Colton had plans in place to keep it open, that would work very well. ‘And you could spend Christmas Day with us?’

  ‘Would that be okay?’

  Flora thought about it. She’d only met Marsha once, but had found her wise, direct and sympathetic. And discreet. And she knew Joel as well as anyone in the world. Surely she would be the best person to confide in? Mark and Marsha didn’t have children. In a funny way that almost helped; Marsha was as direct and non-judgemental a person as Flora had ever met.

  ‘I’d love that,’ she said, the warmth in her voice overspilling down the phone. ‘I’d love to see you both. But you’re not allowed to complain about the weather.’

  ‘We won’t complain about anything,’ said Mark. ‘It’s just . . .’

  Marsha took over. They had to be on speakerphone.

  ‘It’s just so wonderful to see you two settled,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t be more delighted.’

  Ah, thought Flora. But she didn’t elaborate.

  Chapter Nine

  The one good thing, Flora realised, was that being pregnant didn’t give you much in the way of sleepless nights. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she was out like a light. A combination of being pregnant and not drinking Inge-Britt’s gin and tonics out of dirty glasses, she assumed.

  She sighed as she padded through to the kitchen in her thick socks. She thought enviously of Lorna’s flat. She had underfloor heating in the kitchen and every time Flora went around there she immediately took off her shoes. It was such a luxury.

  She poured out the tea. Joel was coming home the next day. They could talk about it then. One more day. One more day to get through.

  Flora turned up at the Seaside Kitchen to find Isla and Iona, giggling and looking quite unlike themselves.

  ‘What’s up with you two?’ she asked suspiciously. They were boy-mad, the pair of them, and always up to mischief, so it could be almost anything. But probably boy-related.

  Iona blushed.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all – everything’s fine; we had a good take yesterday.’

  Flora checked the safe. They had indeed; unusual for the time of year.

  ‘Did Charlie’s lawyers have a walkout?’ she asked warily. It was not entirely unheard of for a lone soul to peel off from the main group, digging and hacking their way through great storms inland back to the coastal high street to cower with a bowl of hot soup and a toasted sandwich in the corner until their hands had stopped shaking. Flora took pity on them enough to serve them, but not enough not to dob them in when Charlie called looking for them.

  Isla shook her head. ‘No. Not them. It was—’

  ‘Ssssh!’ said Iona.

  ‘Okay,’ said Isla. ‘Yeah. Okay. Sssh.’

  Flora ignored
whatever they were up to and looked at the calendar.

  ‘Oh lord,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to plan the nativity party. It’s incredibly soon.’

  Her mother had started a tradition when she’d had four children at school that after the nativity play, everyone went to their house for a party, and it had become one of the fixed points of the December calendar.

  ‘Are you going to be dancing?’ said Isla. Flora shook her head. She had a very real sense that her highland dancing days were over.

  ‘God no,’ she said. ‘You can, though.’

  ‘I’ve got no choice,’ said Isla sadly. ‘Mrs Kennedy corralled me already.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ said Flora, noting that her martinet of a dancing teacher hadn’t asked her this year. Was she already showing? No, that couldn’t be remotely possible. Surely not.

  ‘Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters to us is that we have a contract to provide three hundred mince pies.’

  The girls groaned.

  ‘Everyone loves a homemade mince pie!’

  ‘Yes, but they’re . . .’

  Flora knew what they meant. The mincemeat was sticky and gloopy by the time they’d left it to marinate properly for a few days; the little bits of suet tended to creep up the side and keeping that much pastry flaky and light in so many tiny packages was not difficult exactly – but it did get very, very repetitive.

  ‘Come on,’ said Flora, trying to jolly them on as she inspected the great slabs of cake being pulled out of the oven for the hungry visitors to come, and deeming herself satisfied. ‘We’ll do a hundred each. Oh God, no. That sounds just as bad. Okay. Production line.’

  She looked at the accounts for yesterday for a second.

  ‘Actually, call it time and a half if you stay on one evening and do it.’

  This cheered the girls up sufficiently and she went out to turn the sign on the door to OPEN.