‘Well… distracted? Distant?’
He pulled a face. ‘Not especially, but I haven’t been around the shed much recently. Or the house for that matter.’ His face fell. ‘Sorry.’
Roz didn’t want her son to know how much she missed him, almost as much as she’d been missing her husband, so she swatted away his guilt with a wave of her hand.
‘Don’t apologise. You’re busy with your job, and setting up your new home, and then there’s Nell to look after…’
Behind them, Finlay was getting into an argument with a long coil of garden hose that wouldn’t retract into its reel housing which was attached to the side of the repair shed. ‘Danged thing!’ he was shouting.
‘…and of course, Finlay keeps you busy,’ added Roz with a smile to show she was teasing.
Murray turned to watch Finlay opting to reel in the hose the old-fashioned way, by cranking the turn-handle. Roz didn’t miss the fact that her son’s eyes were doing that same doting thing they always did whenever Finlay was being crabby in spite of his best efforts to be cheerfully disposed around the townsfolk. Murray had assured his mum time and again that Finlay was as soft as crème brûlée once you cracked his tough exterior. And cracked, by love, Finlay most definitely was.
Having realised he was being watched, Finlay shouted, ‘Uh, sorry aboot that!’ across the expanse of freshly compost-topped raised beds and the creeping carpet of leafy young wildflowers.
Murray turned back to his mother. ‘You don’t think Dad’s turning into a shed hermit again, do you?’
Roz started at this. She’d had no idea Murray had even been aware of the way McIntyre had sunk into himself when he was made redundant from the tractor machinery factory during the first lockdown. She’d assumed her son was too busy with his own life back then to have noticed, and if Murray, who had a tendency towards being a wee bit self-absorbed in those days, had noticed, then his twin sister, Ally, would definitely have known about it too.
Roz didn’t like how this realisation felt. She’d been lonely back then as well, and worried that her husband, in his mid-fifties at the time, had taken redundancy so hard he’d turned to tinkering away the long days alone in his shed, replacing the pride he’d earned from breadwinning with the satisfaction of repairing things for his pals. His reputation as a fix-it man had spread until people were bringing things to his shed door from all across the valley.
Charlie McIntyre was a man who needed to feel needed, Roz knew. That’s why he’d turned his one-man fixing hobby into what was now their flourishing community repair shop and café, a welcoming space for anyone who needed advice, repairs, or just a well-made Highland cream tea (for the curious, in Cairn Dhu that’s Scottish raspberry jam with fresh whipped cream instead of the traditional strawberry jam and clotted cream favoured by folks down south, and, if Senga was feeling especially industrious, she’d been known to bake rhubarb and stem ginger into her scones as well).
‘No,’ Roz said instinctively, wanting to protect her son, or maybe to save herself from his pity. ‘I’m sure he’s just… caught up in a busy spell.’
It was true that things felt different this time around. McIntyre had been depressed and dour back then; now he was chipper. She’d heard him whistling this morning as he bounced his way down the path with his van keys. No, it wasn’t shame and sadness that was keeping him away from home this time.
‘Where is he now? Is he coming to help with the gardening?’ Murray asked innocently.
‘He’s out running errands for me,’ she lied. She couldn’t very well let him know his father had slipped out this morning with his phone switched off. If she told him that, she’d have to admit this wasn’t the first time he’d extracted himself from the mill house to do God knew what, who knew where. Asking him where he was sneaking off to didn’t work either. He’d always reply, ‘Oh, you know me. Busy, busy.’
‘Come on,’ she said, faking enthusiasm for Murray’s sake. ‘Let’s get those leeks planted before your dad gets back and thinks we haven’t got anything done.’
Alice, the young doctor, continued welcoming her patients, and Cary wordlessly handed out gardening gloves and trowels. Clyde Forte, who’d had a lift to the repair shop from another garden project regular, Kellie Timmony, was drawing deep on a cigarette and looking up at the smoke against the high fluffy clouds in the blue sky, remarking how at least it was a nice day for gardening, and Kellie reintroduced her rescue pup, Poppet, to Nell (Poppet’s mother) and Wayward (her sister) and the three immediately got mixed up in a happy tail-wagging skirmish on the lawns.
Livvie, the shed’s events manager and admin, was here too, very much taking a back seat when it came to the actual ‘getting mucky’ aspect of the garden project, but nevertheless making sure everyone signed in and out of the site and that they were up to date with their project participant paperwork. Livvie was walking around with her iPad, greeting everyone now, while her little girl, Shell, a long-time member of the garden project team, played. Shell was stripping off her winter coat, dumping it on the grass, and running to get stuck in to earthing up the early potato plants just the way Finlay had taught her to.
‘That’s the way,’ he told her. ‘Cover them with more compost to prevent the tubers near the soil’s surface turning green from exposure to the light.’
Always the last to arrive were Mhairi Sears and Jolyon. Roz watched them cross the car park. Jolyon in his stroller had grown taller since last week, she was sure of it. He had his favourite scrap of comfort blanket in his hand, the exact same one as his best friend, Shell, carried around with her, their symbol of being very best friends forever.
‘Hey-up, here comes trouble,’ Clyde Forte announced in an exaggeratedly loud way as they approached, and Mhairi’s expression stiffened at this.
Roz had come to learn the mum didn’t react well to any comment that could be read as patronising, or as a dig at her little boy. She was sensitive to it after years of fighting for Jolyon’s fair inclusion in spaces like this.
‘I mean’ – Clyde changed his tone to the same one he used for everyone else – ‘morning, Jolly, Mhairi. Nice to see you both.’ Clearly he’d noticed the frosty look too.
Jolyon never really paid much attention to Mr Forte and today was no different. He slid from the buggy and skirted around him to hug Roz’s legs before running off giggling towards the bed where Shell was working. Within seconds the two of them were laughing their heads off.
‘They’re still inseparable, I see,’ Roz observed to Mhairi.
‘They’ve been messaging each other,’ Mhairi said proudly. ‘Silly gifs and memes and things. He loves it. Last week he signed one with his name.’
‘He’s typing his name?’ Roz said, knowing what a huge step this was.
‘With support, and he’s typed Shell’s name as well.’
Roz smiled, watching the little boy and his friend flinging mud and setting the dogs off barking and running in circuits around them while Finlay tried to convince the kids to keep the earth in the potato beds.
