The moon was high and bright tonight, illuminating vaporous clouds and the shimmering sea.
‘What a day,’ said JB as they turned for Luskentyre.
‘Yep,’ said Drew.
‘Unforgettable,’ said Taylor.
Back at Flora’s House, JB flicked on the TV, Drew stood and stared at something or other and Taylor placed peats in the grate.
Chapter 13
‘Did we really run Harris yesterday?’ Drew woke from a thick and dreamless sleep, yawned and stretched, turned on his side and regarded Taylor.
‘I have two toe nails that sure say we did,’ Taylor said. Even the weight of the sheet had been too much and he’d slept with one foot above the covers. He had woken in the early hours, cold, but no way was a sock going on. ‘It’s our last day – can you believe that?’
Drew sat up and opened the curtains. ‘And it is beautiful out there.’
JB was whistling while clattering around in the kitchen but he heard the creak of the floorboards upstairs.
‘Breakfast in T-minus…however long it takes to cook this black sausage and eggs!’ he called up.
They ate outside, squashed together along the garden bench and the grass felt so good under their bare feet. It was mild; half-hearted clouds grazed a blue sky, the breeze – and there was always a breeze – was gentle today. April was passing the baton to May. In the flower pots which higgled about to either side of the front door, grape hyacinths, tulips and late daffodils were flowering. Had they been in bloom earlier in the week? If theyhad, the boys wouldn’t have noticed. Those first days they’d been on Harris, not in Harris. But something had happened yesterday and Harris was under their skin now, whether they were aware of it or not. It can come out of nowhere, much like thesneachd nan uan, the lambs’ snow.
They sat and ate and felt happy; they felt grounded.
‘This is the life!’ JB declared, eyes closed and face lifted to the sun. ‘Let’s do a whole load of nothing all day. I mean – you guys go for a stretch-out walk – but leave me right here!’
‘How’s your ankle?’ said Drew.
‘Yeah – you know,’ JB said.
‘Did you phone your father back?’ Taylor asked him; JB had a missed call while they’d been in the bar last night.
‘Nope.’
‘I ought to call my mom later,’ said Drew.
And Taylor thought how he really should call home too. That meant two phone calls now. One to his dad, one to his mom.
‘Hey, if we want to buy anything then today’s the day because all the shops shut on Sundays here,’ Drew said.
‘You still thinking of that waistcoat you saw on our first day?’ Taylor asked.
Drew thought about it. ‘Maybe a couple of smaller things,’ he said. ‘JB – you up for a trip to the tweed place in Tarbert?’
‘Yep.’
‘You know what,’ said Taylor, ‘let’s go to the store in Leverburgh. There’s cool stuff in there too.’
‘Well, I suppose youcouldcall it fashion – but not as we know it.’
Shona Morrison took her time assessing the three of them, looking the boys up and down while they stood obediently, as ifon parade. JB was wearing an inside-out college tee-shirt over a long-sleeve top and his baseball cap. Drew looked like he might still be in pyjamas but actually they were what he liked to call hissitting-around-pants. And Taylor, whom Shona studied the longest, wore shorts and the Arladuke top and just the one sock and his slides.
‘Your hair ispink,’ Taylor remarked.
‘Well done Gel Boy,’ she said. Then she touched her hair quickly, awkwardly. ‘That’s what Friday nights are for.’
‘I thought you might have come to the hotel,’ Taylor said.
