I was staring.
“Nothing.”Nothing at all. Just wondering how the hell you’re so calm while I feel like I’ve been sucked into an eighties porn movie.“How’d you fall in love with baking?”
She removed her hands from the bowl, leaving me to continue solo. “My gran, actually. Granny Pat. I spent a lot of time with her as a kid when things at home were . . .” She broke off, and I twirled a flour-covered finger to encourage her to continue with the story, to skip over the painful details. “She always said there wasn’t any problem in the world that couldn’t be made better with sugar. It hasn’t proven her wrong yet.” Her entire face softened at the memory, and I wished I had a photo of that moment. Something to keep in my wallet and unfold every time the world felt shit. “I’d sit on her kitchen counter like Teddy does sometimes, legs swinging as she worked.”
“Was she a professional?”
She laughed. “Not at all, just a tiny Scottish woman with a rolling pin and a hatred for ‘store-bought shite’. A lot like Jessica Brown, now I think about it.”
“So you’re not a true Sassenach after all?”
“The saltire tattooed on my arse usually gives it away.”
I froze.
With one sentence, I realised, Isla had the power to make me blush. I saw the exact moment she realised it too. She stared at me, eyes all over my face. For a split second, indecision warred in her expression, and the urge rose to ask what she was thinking. Then she looked away, and continued speaking as if the moment never happened. “When I was a teenager, I used to dream about opening a bakery – that’s how I ended up in Edinburgh. But then I got pregnant and life got in the way.” She shrugged, in athe rest is historyway. “How about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?”
“Always,” I answered quickly, keeping my eyes firmly on my sticky hands. “Even if I had wanted something else, I don’t think my dad would have allowed it.”
“Why not?”
“He always had high expectations for his kids.”
“No running away to join the circus then?”
It was a joke but my answering laugh was bitter. “He would have found me and dragged me home by my ear.”
“What if you’d wanted to be an astronaut?”
I thought about it for a second while she tugged the bowl away and added a little water. “That would have been worse than the circus.”
“Why?”
I answered without thinking. “Growing up with Jim Macabe was like walking a tightrope. The balance between being impressive enough to make him proud, but not so impressive you overshone him. He circumvented this by trying to map out our lives for us. Callum joined the army straight out of school, just like my dad wanted,” I explained. “Hated every damn second of it too. And medical school was always on the cards for me, whether I wanted it or not.”
“What about Mal and Heather?”
“Mal’s always had a stubborn streak a mile long, no one could make him do anything. He and my dad stopped speaking for a while after he refused to go to university and started full time at the distillery. Which is actually kind of funny, when you think about it.” I cracked a smile in her direction. “All my dad’s bluster about the distillery being a ‘dead-end job’, now he’s probably the most successful one out of all of us.”
“And Heather?” she prodded again.
“My dad pretty much ignored her.” I winced, shoving my hands harder into the dough. “I don’t know if it’s because she was the youngest . . . or because she was the only girl. But that probably explains why she was such a roughhouser as a kid, always trying to beat up her big brothers.”
“That sounds like Heather.” She laughed. Then turned to me, and I could practically see the indecision on her face before she asked, “If you could go back . . . would you do anything differently?”
“Honestly . . .” I blew out a long breath, staring at the flour crusted beneath my short nails. “I don’t know. My whole life, my whole career . . . it’s always been tied up in him. I don’t think I’ll ever know if I wanted it for me . . . or just to make him proud.”
I regretted it almost immediately.
Isla only blinked, like a blindfold had been removed and she could see all the way into my brain. Like she’d found the dusty corner hiding insecure teenage Alistair, who I’d striven so hard to scrub away. “Alistair, I—”
I pushed the bowl toward her. “What’s next?”
20
Isla
“Mummy, can we have hot chocolate before I go to bed?” Teddy asked from her spot on the rug. Alistair was helping her add some particularly fiddly bits to a Lego pirate ship while I cleaned the kitchen. My task had taken twice as long as it usually would because my eyes kept straying to them. Rib cage expanding with every laugh they shared until I almost felt high from the overload of oxygen.
