‘You’re,eh, no’ leaving are ye?’
‘I know I really should be leaving. There’s so much that needs to be done back home.’
‘Oh, of course.’ He took a step backwards that only Beatrice registered; it looked so unconscious for Atholl. His expression seemed to settle back into the unreadable formality of their first acquaintance.
‘Last night I thought I would go back, but then you appeared with the bassinette and… I feel differently today.’
There was softness in his voice when he spoke. ‘Well, do you just want to stay close to the village today and rest? You had a tough day yesterday. I can arrange a deckchair on the prom garden for you? Send over some tea?’
In spite of his thoughtful words, Beatrice felt she could see him shrinking by the second, somehow growing smaller, retreating into himself once more. And yet, here he was, still trying to fix her, thinking of what she might like and wanting to accommodate it.
‘You must be sick of me by now. Is she staying? Is she going? Why’s she crying?’
Both of them managed to laugh. She looked out the inn door towards the little strips of garden that interrupted the sea wall at intervals all along the front. She had wondered about who owned them. Nobody ever seemed to use them. Each was enclosed with a low fence and little painted gates. The one opposite the inn was populated with squat, weathered palm trees and, curiously, vegetable beds sparsely planted with onions, garlic and nasturtium flowers.
‘Is that Gene and Lana’s little garden out there?’ she asked.
‘Aye, it was.’ He turned his lips down at the sides and cocked his head as though impressed she’d made this connection. ‘It’s the inn’s kitchen garden and very muchnotmy territory. There’s not much in it now. But it’s a braw place to sit and watch a sunset. The gardens are the only place the villagers keep just for themselves, a place where visitors don’t go, and there’s not many spots like that around Port Willow, I can tell you. You’d be welcome to sit there all day, if you’d like?’
Beatrice imagined herself with a blanket and a book watching harbour life and the tourist boats going by. As much as it appealed to her, her mind was already ranging elsewhere.
‘Maybe this afternoon, thanks Atholl. Right now there’s something I really want to do, have to do, in fact.’
‘Can I ask what it is?’
‘Of course you can, Atholl.’ Why was he being so formal again, after everything that had happened yesterday? She found she couldn’t look at him when she spoke.
‘I’m going to stay another day at least… and I just need to be alone… to walk and to try to really think about some stuff. Something I’ve not let myself do for months. I’ll need a map if you have one?’
He produced the concertinaed booklet from behind the reception desk in an instant. ‘One map. And just in case, I’ll make you a packed lunch, aye?’
‘Aye,’ she echoed. ‘Thank you, Atholl.’
There wasn’t a sound up on the hills behind the village other than the occasional buzzing wasp and a soundtrack of bird song. Without looking at the map Beatrice had followed the main road that led out of Port Willow and after a short while there were no houses to be seen, just a wiggly up and downy pot-holed single lane road with boggy marshes and heathers on either side and, a little further off, the edges of sparse forests.
The walk was exhilarating. The air was fresher than any she had ever breathed, pine-scented, with a ghost of vanilla from the gorse scattered here and there amongst the grey rocks and flowering in big yellow clouds as far as her eye could see.
‘Well this beats walking up and down Warwick high street or round the Royal Priors, hands down,’ she told the blue sky.
After a while she left the road, following the arrow painted onto a roadside rock that saidWester Ross National Scenic Area. No fires.
She was wandering along a narrow path between the heathers when she heard a scurrying sound behind her. She’d read about adders, Scotland’s only poisonous snakes and how they basked in the sun, shedding their skins in the summertime. She froze to the spot, casting a wary eye around her trainers, looking for moving caramel and chocolate scales like the ones she’d seen on the information board way back at the beginning of her walk.
Nothing seemed to be slithering nearby so she walked on, placing her feet a little more gingerly than before and wishing she’d worn long trousers and not her black sundress and the baggy beige cardigan with the big pockets that Rich always said looked like knitted oatmeal but which she loved anyway. She had nothing on her face but sun lotion, and it had made her face shiny and her sunglasses slide down her nose.
Maybe Atholl had thought she’d looked odd this morning too, given that she had completed her outfit with her white trainers. She really hadn’t done her most coordinated packing for her Highland dash, there simply hadn’t been time.
But he hadn’t looked at her like he thought she looked scruffy. In fact, when she thought back to when she came down into the reception this morning, she wondered if she’d seen a little flash of wanting in Atholl’s eyes. Had she imagined it?
She looked down at the bag in her hand and the picnic he had packed for her. Something inside smelled wonderful, like freshly baked bread. Why was Atholl so nice to her? She reached inside one of the paper bags and found two rosy apples and as she polished one against her cardigan sleeve, she felt something that made her blood run cold, something wet and warm nudging her ankle.
Her scream sent a flock of tiny birds scattering from the heathers as she spun round, the white heat of panic making her momentarily dizzy. Could she take on an adder all by herself? Or was it a wild cat, or a boar, or a Lion Rampant?
‘Oh it’s you.’
Echo promptly sat on his bottom and wagged his tail wildly.
‘Have you been following me all this time?’
