Chapter Two
Seven months later. The middle of nowhere.
‘You may well think you’ve booked in for Gaelic lessons, but that’s no’ whit the computer’s telling me.’
Beatrice let her shoulders slump and forced out a long breath through her nose, crumpling her lips to stop herself telling this flustering Scotsman exactly what she thought of his customer service.
‘Warm Highland welcome guaranteed,’ the online brochure had read. ‘Sweet summer escape,’ it said. So far, Beatrice’s first and only experience of Scotland in her thirty-nine years on the planet had been disappointing, to say the least.
‘But my nameison your booking system? Beatrice Halliday?’
‘Aye. Nine nights, checking out on Monday the thirty-first of August, dinner, bed and breakfast, single room. Willow-weaving lessons included.’
The man was staring at the screen, his glasses reflecting its harsh blue light. The computer looked as old as the hills surrounding Port Willow, but it was still by far the most modern thing in the reception of The Princess and the Pea Inn.
‘Willow-weaving?’
Beatrice pinched the bridge of her nose. It had been a long day, and now this. She found herself glaring down at the threadbare tartan carpet, sandy from the beach just across the road from the inn’s heavy oak doors.
At least the website was accurate when it boasted that the inn was, ‘Perfectly situated with idyllic sea views’, not that Beatrice had paid much attention to the scenery as she dragged her wonky-wheeled suitcase down the narrow pavement from the train station in the spitting rain, passing by the gently curving row of squat sea-facing buildings that made up the entirety of Port Willow. She’d barely registered the little stone-walled primary school, the various holiday cottages in soft pastel colours, the post office-come-souvenir-shop, or the closed-up chippy, but at the back of her mind she’d thought the place was not at all promising.
All the while she’d been focusing instead on the bars on her phone and wishing she’d thrown an umbrella into her handbag before her hurried departure from Warwick at bleary-eyed far-too-early-o’clock this morning.
The road was lined on the pavement side with end to end parked cars and on the other side by a low sea wall with small gardens built into it here and there which jutted out over the beach, but the gathering grey clouds and increasingly heavy rain had meant Beatrice wasn’t stopping to gaze at the blustery beach view. Plus, she’d had to have her wits about her. She’d nearly been swiped off her feet twice by cars’ passenger doors springing suddenly open across her path as she finally gave up her GPS as a lost cause and upped her speed, head down, muttering all the while increasingly desperate, sweary threats to nobody in particular that The Princess and the Pea Inn had better be easy to find.
It was, as it happened, being the only pub in the village, slap bang in the middle of the little weather-beaten seaside strip. If she’d carried on walking past the inn door’s stone pillars and covered porch she’d soon have come to the village hall, Patrick’s fishmongers, the art gallery (Mr Garstang the watercolourist’s front room which opened to visitors on Saturdays and every second Tuesday during the season), the little church of Magnus the Martyr, and the rambling, miraculously well stocked Port Willow general store where she could have had her pick of umbrellas, from beach parasol, to golfing, to Peppa Pig. But Beatrice felt she had seen enough. To her relief, she’d stumbled into the inn’s reception just as the real downpour started and St Magnus’ was tolling that it was three o’clock.
The inn doors had been propped open this morning to let the August sunlight in, and were now allowing heavy plashes of cold water to patter onto the doormat.
Beatrice had read that this inlet was warmed by the Gulf Stream and, as such, unseasonably temperate for Scotland, and it was, after all, August so she’d expected a bit of sunshine – or at least some blue in the sky.
Glancing past the flustering receptionist and around the dark interior she concluded that nothing about Scotland was as she’d hoped or expected.
Dry, cracked oak-panelled walls led off to a bar and dining room beyond the reception desk and to a creaking staircase leading up to the bedrooms, while a pair of cobwebbed antlers jutted out from the wall over the dour innkeeper’s head, their points dangerously close to his scalp. The man was exceedingly tall, Beatrice noticed, even when hunched over his computer. If she could just get her hands on a hammer and a nail, she’d have those antlers raised and straightened in no time. And that panelling needed a good polish too. Things like that really bugged her.
‘I dinnae ken what to tell ye. Perhaps a computer error’s tae blame?’ The man nervously bit his lower lip, betraying that he knew exactly what was to blame – himself – but he wasn’t admitting it, not even for the sake of this poor bedraggled English woman, no matter how pale and short-tempered she looked.
As she let her suitcase drop to the floor, Beatrice’s handbag slid down onto her forearm, its magnetic fastener pulling open. The corner of a soft blanket patterned with tiny clouds and embroidered with rainbows flopped out. She hastily stuffed it back out of view, securing the clip once more.
Taking a measured breath, she tucked a strand of her wavy brown hair, now windswept and threatening to frizz up, behind her ear. ‘It doesn’t really matter. Just… just let me into my room and we can sort out the lessons later. I just want my key.’ Horrified, she realised she was close to tears and found herself angrily swallowing away the temptation to just let rip and sob in front of the stranger who was now rummaging painfully slowly in a Tupperware tub full of keys, inspecting each one in turn with slender, nervous fingers and every now and then looking up at Beatrice with cautious bewilderment.
Gene Fergusson had seen his fair share of single women arriving at the inn since his younger brother had set up the activity and crafting holidays part of the website back in the spring – in fact now it was the height of the summer season they were arriving in a steady stream, but none of them had turned up tearful, clenched-fisted and furious, like this one.
He’d checked in the new arrivals without (much) incident this morning, including the party of four wool spinners and dyers from Lancashire looking forward to a fortnight’s B&B with tartan-making lessons at the mill nearby. They hadn’t been pleased with the parking situation and demanded he set out traffic cones for them for the duration of their stay to ensure a reserved spot by the inn door. He’d pointed out he didn’t possess any cones but thinking on his feet – and proud of it – he’d offered to put out the inn’s hat stand and a fire extinguisher, and had received four frosty looks and bitter silence as a reward.
Then there had been those two brassy Geordies who’d made ‘remarks’ and been overly familiar with him, smirking as he found their keys. They were here for painting lessons with Mr Garstang in his little art gallery-slash-living room along the front.
And there had been a formidable band of posh ladies from Sussex in brand new matching lilac cagoules and blonde bobs, all set up for a week of silversmithing and stained glass workshopping in the next village. They had been quiet and observant as he checked them in. Too quiet for his liking. Their steady exchange of tuts, raised eyebrows and one or two busy dust-sweeping fingertips had told him exactly what they thought of The Princess and the Pea Inn. He’d let them carry their own bags upstairs, too afraid of what they might do when they saw their rooms to accompany them.
Beatrice could see the innkeeper’s mind at work as he rummaged in the pot and she braced herself for more of his confused chatter.
‘Kit… I meanDoctorWake, the Gaelic teacher, hasn’t arrived yet. The Gaelic lessons are new, you see? She’s on her way, but isn’t expecting to teach anything this week. She’s planning on taking a week’s holiday first, and eh…’ The man gulped at the sight of Beatrice’s stony expression. ‘She, eh… she might no’ mind starting work early, though. But I know your willow-weaving teacher’ll be disappointed you’re no’ glad aboot taking their class…’
Beatrice’s glassy stare was making his fumbling even worse and he couldn’t seem to focus on the room numbers on the key fobs. All the while, she was wondering why the keys weren’t hanging on the little numbered key board with the brass hooks. Fighting hard, she resisted the urge to snatch the box from his hands and hang each one neatly in its place.
The sound of the entire tub clattering onto the floor by the man’s anxiously shuffling feet made Beatrice flinch, her nerves already tested by the long journey from Warwick to Port Willow, a journey she wasn’t adequately prepared for, to say the least.
Had it really only been yesterday she’d made the booking? It seemed like days ago, but she still had the white wine hangover as evidence of the teary, alcohol-soaked afternoon that had led to the sudden rash decision to just get away, to be anywhere other than her silent, empty house.
