‘… and I can’t fill the great, gaping hole in my heart for my baby.’
Clasping her chest, she howled her heartache out. The wild flowers she’d gathered earlier, and which Atholl had been holding for her as they made ready to leave the picnic and which he’d carried during his sprint across the hill in pursuit of her, tumbled to the ground at their feet.
In an instant Atholl’s arms were tight around her again as he sat on the rough ground, pulling her onto his lap. Letting her weight sink onto him, Atholl rocked her as she screamed into the crook of his arm, bent double with pain until eventually it passed and her tears stopped and the sky turned pink in the sun’s slow descent towards the horizon. All the while Atholl stroked her hair, cradling her like his own child, letting his silent tears fall and dry upon his face.
Without speaking he supported her all the way back to the car where she sat stupefied into silence even as they passed back down the steep winding roads in the fading light.
He handed her into the boat and she sat shivering under his jacket in the prow as Atholl rowed her back into the calm haven of Port Willow. On her lap she clasped the posy of wild flowers that Atholl had once again gathered up and returned to her.
As they rounded the rocky promontory of the harbour and saw the semi-circle of gleaming lights of Port Willow along the bay she found herself speaking quietly over the soft dip of the oars in the water. Atholl strained to pick up her words.
‘I didn’t get any documentation or anything. You know you should get something to keep… sometimes I wonder if it’s even recorded in my medical notes, but someone was alive and then they died, so their life should have been marked somehow.’
The moonlight glittered in the gentle waves as they cut through the water and Atholl listened intently. Beatrice’s eyes glazed as she thought back to the spring and saw herself. The memory made her wince.
‘I was just sitting for days on end in a pastel-coloured spare bedroom with a baby blanket and a few scraps of unworn baby clothes and nothing else to show for their little life.’
‘I understand. You wish there was something special you could do to remember your child,’ Atholl said at last, making her eyes snap to his.
‘That’s it exactly. But what? What are you supposed to do?’
‘There must be something.’
‘There’s nothing.’ Beatrice let her eyes fall from his face. She knew what she’d see there; pity and sadness, yes, but awkwardness and discomfort too. Nobody likes talking about these things, she’d learned, and so she hadn’t talked about them.
‘I’d better get you home. You’re exhausted.’ Atholl fell into silence.
Beatrice shifted her gaze to the lapping waves over the boat’s low hull, hugging her arms around her body to stave off the evening chill. She didn’t speak again.
At the door of the inn, Atholl took her hand. ‘Gene will be back by now if Kitty took him by the Skye Bridge in her car. Tell him to make you a hot toddy.’
‘You’re not coming in?’
‘Not yet.’ Atholl shook his head, his skin pale as ice in the moonlight and he left her to find her own way inside.
Chapter Sixteen
Atholl’s Gift
‘Angela? You there? Pick up? I know it’s late. You must be putting Clara to bed. Listen, I’ve had a hot toddy or two – God, whisky’s disgusting, isn’t it? – I thought you’d want to know that I told someone about the baby. Not just someone. Atholl.
‘He’s the landlord here, well, he isn’t really the landlord as such; his brother is. Anyway. I said it all out loud. Mum. The house. My job. Everything. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I mentioned Rich? It’s all a bit blurry to be honest. At any rate, it hurt. And now I feel like it’s all happened all over again, except I’m in a B&B in the Scottish Highlands and I can’t stop crying and I’ve nothing but a Drambuie coffee for comfort. God, I miss you and Clara, and Vic too.
‘Gene looked at me like I was a ghost haunting his inn when I walked back in tonight. Oh, Gene’s Atholl’s brother. He barely said a word, other than offering to get his girlfriend up and send her in to see me, but I couldn’t do that, not after the show I made of myself with his family today. Without doubt they’ll all think I’m crazy too.Ugh! Angela, I was out of control. I talked about it, though. But it didn’t help, and this feeling, this empty ache, isn’t going anywhere, and I’m all out of options now.
‘Run? Don’t run? Go home? Find a new home? They’re all the same. It hurts regardless.
‘And now Atholl’s run off into the night. I saw him sprinting along the seafront, going God knows where, desperate to get away from the lunatic English woman who was rude to his poor mother, cried all over his shirt and frightened the living daylights out of little baby Archibald.
‘I know none of this makes sense. I’ll have to fill you in on the embarrassing details when I get back, butugh, clan Fergusson think I’m a baby-crazed lunatic, just like Rich did.
‘Oh, whatever! I’m annoying myself now. What does it all matter? I’m downing this dreadful drink and climbing up to bed… but I can’t see myself getting to sleep. I’ve got the old restlessness creeping in again.
‘I knew talking about it wouldn’t help. I could kick myself!
‘Angela? Angela, are you there? Is this thing even recording? Look, don’t worry about me. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m sorry I’m venting at you. I’m fine. Honestly. I’m fine.’
‘Beatrice, are you asleep?’ Atholl whispered at the door.
