“I’ll tell Brian on you!”
“He hasn’t even asked me yet!”
“Then he’d better hurry up so I can take my rightful place. Lucy!” I scoff. “She doesn’t even know how you like your hot chocolate.”
“Nor do you.”
“I’ve seen Brian make it at least a dozen times.”
“And you’ve made it how many?”
I hold up my hands. “I plead the fifth, your honour.”
Marnie laughs and slowly stands up, making low sounds of pain as she does. “Fuck me that hurts. And you say it gets worse?”
“Much, much worse.”
“All this hiking has changed you.” She looks past me to where the warm pub lights are shining in the distance. “I’ll tell you what will help.”
“Pint?”
“Pint.”
Marnie helps me up and together we stagger in the direction of the pub, grabbing Lila, Priya, Joan and Bolly on the way, as well as half of our ramshackle, mismatched group. I feel another pang as we step over the threshold and I find myself searching the room for that dark head of hair, disappointed that he’s not sitting in the corner, lost in a book.
Stupid, to hope that he’d be here. That he’s changed his mind. That he might see us as something more than the nothing he claimed.
But then Marnie calls me towards the bar, and Priya wraps both of her arms around my side, and Lila holds up the beer she ordered for me, and Bolly buys us all tequila shots, and Joan accidentally snorts hers out of her nose, and even if a sliver of sadness remains, most of all there’s love.
Maybe at the end of the walk.
Once we reach Fort William, his farm won’t be very far away.
Maybe it is time to be brave…
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Angus
“You have to turn the hot tap all the way before anything will come out – not halfway, or some of the way, all the way. And the downstairs toilet blocks easy, so make sure you don’t let anyone put anything except toilet paper in it. There’s a plunger under the kitchen sink, and another one in the barn if you need them, and I left some extra bottles of bleach in there too—”
“Angus—”
“Oh, and Doug is coming next Thursday to look at the barn door. I’ve fixed it so many bloody times, but for some reason it’s still listing, so hopefully he’ll have better luck with it than I have. And that reminds me, the electric bill is due on the second of each month, but you can save a shit ton if you lay a fire in the kitchen when it starts getting cold. I’ve chopped enough wood to get you through most of this year, but call me if you start getting low, and I can chop some more, no trouble. And—”
“Angus!” Stuart puts both of his hands on my shoulders and shakes me. “Stop.”
“Sorry.”
I look at the farm buildings around me, breathing in their familiarity, and then down at the bunch of keys I’m still graspingin my hands. I’ve been holding on so tightly, some of my fingers have indents where I’ve pressed the metal into my flesh.
“We don’t have to do this,” Stuart says. “It’s not too late to back out.”
“The paperwork is signed. The farm and the business, they’re yours.”
“We can call the lawyers. God knows they’ll be happy to take more of our bloody money.”
I force my fist to relax. “No. It’s okay,” I say, holding out the keys. “I don’t want to back out.”
