If she was surprised he’d turned up, she didn’t show it. ‘What have you got in there?’ she asked, nodding at his borrowed rucksack.
Cal hadn’t asked why he needed one, and Avril, who’d been manning the reception desk, hadn’t as much as blinked when he’d enquired about a flask yesterday evening. Cook, with a suspicious expression, had wordlessly provided him with two lots of cheese and pickle sandwiches, wrapped in some kind of beeswax cloth to keep them fresh. He’d stored them in the mini fridge in his room overnight, along with two slabs of moist sponge cake that he’d purloined from the kitchen. He hoped Giselle liked strong coffee, but if not, he had a bottle of water with him. And yes, he had been in the Scouts when he was a boy, although not for long.
‘Just a couple of things that might come in handy,’ he said in answer to her query, remembering how he’d ordered more food than he could have possibly eaten that day in Venice, when she’d knocked his table over.
Giselle had been (and still was) one of the most stunning women he’d ever met. With her floaty white dress, silver hair and waif-like figure, she’d reminded him of an elf or a fairy, and he’d remembered thinking that Tolkien would have had a field day. From her looks, Rocco had assumed she was Scandinavian, until she’d spoken, revealing a soft Scottish accent.
Giselle gave him a dubious look, her eyes more navy than blue in the morning light. Her hair was braided in a thick rope down her back, and her lips were shell pink.
Sod the sandwiches – Rocco wanted to eatherup. ‘Which way?’ he asked, his voice gruff.
She pointed north, towards the woodland.Hiswoodland. He’d seen some of it on the first day when Cal had shown him around the estate using a golf buggy.
They set off down the track, the scent of earth and growing things filling his nostrils, along with the occasional waft of Giselle’s perfume, light and flowery.
The trees soon gave way to more open heathland of tussocky grass dotted with butter-yellow gorse, as the track joined a narrow, tarmacked lane.
Rocco sniffed, inhaling deeply. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘If you’re referring to the coconut and vanilla smell, it’s the gorse.’
Coconut and vanilla, that was it! ‘A heavenly scent for such a spikey plant. Those thorns look lethal.’
‘They are,’ she confirmed. ‘But wildlife love it. Birds nest in the bushes, bees love the flowers and red deer and rabbits will graze on it.’
Cal had also mentioned deer, and Rocco glanced around hopefully. ‘You won’t see them down here,’ she told him, correctly guessing what he was looking for. ‘They’ll be up on higher ground at this time of year.’
‘Pity. I would have liked to see one.’ His tone was wistful.
‘If you weren’t going back tomorrow, you could have asked Cal to take you. He knows all the best places. And if you wanted to see orca or dolphins, there’s a guy who runs whale- and dolphin-spotting trips. Maybe next time?’
‘Maybe.’ His reply was non-committal, although he was fairly sure he wouldn’t be returning to Skye. It was a shame, though, so perhaps one day he would pay it another visit and see more of the island. Or perhaps not; cities and culture were more his thing if he wanted a holiday.
The lane continued to run parallel with the loch, and Rocco had to admit that the scenery was outstanding. If it wasn’t for the road they were walking along, he could believe he was in the wilderness, because there were few signs of human habitation, just sky, sea, mountains and gorse.
At one point he asked, purely out of curiosity, ‘How much further?’ and when he was met with, ‘We’re not quite halfway yet,’ he began to wonder whether he’d brought enough food.
He estimated it would take another fifty minutes to get to where they were going, wherever that was. Luckily (for him, at least), there weren’t any steep climbs. The road was mostly undulating and tarmacked, so was easy underfoot.
But eventually the road ran out.
Beyond a metal kissing gate lay a dirt track through the tussocky grass, stony and uneven. Shaggy cows gazed at them through their fringes of ginger, chestnut or black hair, their jaws working as they chewed. Rocco eyed their long horns and solid bodies warily.
‘Those are the iconic Highland coos,’ Giselle said. ‘They’re placid enough.’
‘Hmm.’ Rocco wasn’t convinced, and he was relieved when they went through another small gate, which meant there was thankfully a barrier between them. The track was now more of a grassy path, intersected by a small stream with stepping stones, and ahead lay a dry-stone wall with a gap in it.
Beyond the wall the ground rose, and when they reached the top of the incline he was rewarded with a spectacular view, and he halted to take it in. ‘Oh, wow!’
In the distance was a crescent of beach nestled in a small bay. Emerald grass, azure sky, pale sand, and the sea was a bright turquoise where it met the beach, darkening to cobalt as the water deepened.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ Giselle said.
The stunning view was definitely worth the trek.
‘And we’ve got it all to ourselves,’ she added happily. ‘It’s a bit off the beaten track, so it’s never heaving, but give it an hour and there’ll be more people about. This is why I come here so early, because there’s no one else around.’ She beamed at him. ‘Just wait until you see what it’s made of.’
The track led downhill to the shore, the water’s edge flanked by burgundy-coloured lines of seaweed along the high-tide mark, which lay on the dark volcanic rocks and pebbles. The sea was calm, its glassy surface broken only by the gentle lap of small waves, and overhead a skein of geese flew wingtip to wingtip, low enough for Rocco to hear the wind through their feathers as their haunting calls broke the silence. A hill rose behind the beach, a craggy backdrop, purple-hued with heather in the morning sun.
