Chapter Five
Ten minutes after Ezz returned to the hall and was working peaceably in her office, Mats, Astrid and Alvin half-fell into the lobby, unwinding scarves and dragging off hats. The children gambolled up to her office door and chorused, ‘Hello!’ as if they hadn’t seen her with Thea only minutes ago.
She smiled at their cute rosy faces. ‘Did you have fun?’
Two heads nodded emphatically. Alvin bounced in his red boots. ‘Ja.Now we have hotchoklad.’
‘Want some?’ Astrid asked hospitably, licking her lips, as if anticipating a hot-chocolate moustache to savour.
Ezz assumed an expression of mock sorrow. ‘I’m afraid I’m working.’
‘C’mon, children.’ Mats’ voice floated from just out of sight.
The two little poppets spun around and scurried off and Ezz returned to the staff rosters, wanting them laid out until mid-January so she could pass further updatingover to Orla, who’d be back at work tomorrow after her days off.
She went on clicking on headshots of the staff to allocate them to shifts. The wind rattled the window. The sound of a door opening reached her and this time when she glanced up, she found Josefin advancing into the room, a steaming red mug in her hand.
‘Astrid worries that you are missing out on hot chocolate,’ she said, smiling, and placed the mug on the coaster on Ezz’s desk.
‘Oh!’ Ezz was charmed. ‘How lovely of her. And how kind of you. Thanks to you both.’ Appreciatively, she sniffed the sugary-scented steam.
‘You’re welcome.’ Josefin smoothed her caramel-coloured top. It almost matched the pale brown of her eyes. ‘I come also for information. The children wish to visit the beach in the village tomorrow. As Alvin is so small, I think I should drive them. Do you think yes?’
Ezz considered Alvin’s short legs. ‘I do. The roads are narrow, but it won’t take you long in the Volvo. Let me show you.’
She opened an online map on her computer and chose satellite view, and then swivelled the monitor so Josefin could see. ‘Here’s Rothach Hall, look. This line—’ she traced it with her finger ‘—is the main drive. You can take that or the service drive at the back. They both lead to Manor Road. The first turning right is into Low Road, which becomes Chapel Road, where the Jolly Abbot is. Then take Creag an Lolaire into Harbour View, where you’ll be able to park at the side of the road.’
Josefin straightened up from viewing the screen. ‘Perfect. Thank you.’ She sent Ezz an appraising look. ‘I enjoyedvisiting your pub. I have the evening off. Would you join me there again?’
Ezz’s first reaction was to gracefully decline, just because it was the pub. But then she remembered her last visit to the Jolly Abbot with Josefin, when she’d fleetingly reflected that avoiding the pub meant missing opportunities to socialise. And there was only another solitary long winter evening on her horizon as Thea would be with Dev. No amount of being glad for Thea’s happiness made Ezz feel any less alone. Josefin was a kind, ordinary, friendly woman. When Mats had instructed Ezz to escort her to the Jolly Abbot it had felt like an imposition, but to be invited by Josefin herself felt like a hand of friendship. To accept would be achoice, not an obligation forced on her. It was always easier to deal with a choice and pubs sold drinks completely free of alcohol, didn’t they? ‘Thanks. I think I’d like that,’ she said.
That evening, Ezz didn’t take a great deal of trouble over her appearance, just to cross the road to the village pub: jeans, a sweatshirt and her blue hiking boots, which she liked particularly with tartan laces.
Josefin arrived at eight. ‘Hej, hej,’ she cried, huddled in a green Puffa coat that, in the light from the outside lamp, made her look like a cheerful chrysalis.
Ezz pulled her ski jacket around her and they hurried across the road to the Jolly Abbot. Its Christmas finery of white, red and green twinkle lights were a beacon of bling, a reminder that Christmas was just over six weeks away. ‘Whoo,’ Ezz cried, as the wind stood her hair on end.
Josefin laughed as her own mousy crop tossed wildly. ‘At the hall, it is worse. The wind whines around the building like a ghost.’
‘It’s usually more sheltered in the bay.’ Ezz glanced around, trying to spot the Rothach Hall Volvo or even the pick-up. ‘You didn’t walk?’
‘I did,’ Josefin maintained. ‘I have a torch on my phone.’
‘Blimey. It must have been dark and steep beneath the trees.’ Ezz opened the heavy wooden door. They were hit with a wave of beery warmth and the lights from the indoor Christmas tree in its dress of shiny baubles and glittering tinsel. Four thirty-something men at a table looked up and smiled. In her mind, Ezz called them the Regular Drinkers as on the rare occasions when she visited the pub – such as Maisie or Fraser’s birthdays – she always saw them at the same table and Rosamund and Brodie behind the bar seemed to know them.
Josefin reached the bar first. ‘What would you like? We could share a bottle of wine.’
‘I’ll have Irn-Bru, please,’ Ezz answered easily. After a decade without alcohol, it was easier than it used to be to turn down wine. ‘Hi, Brodie,’ she added to the dark young man. She might not be a pub regular but, in the years they’d all lived in Chapel Road, she’d watched him growing from a gangly teen to a bearded, confident man in his mid-twenties.
‘Iron brew?’ Josefin queried, brow creasing, while Brodie clinked ice into a tall glass and reached for an orange can.
‘I suppose it’s just a weird spelling of that – it’s I-r-n B-r-u,’ Ezz agreed. ‘A popular drink in Scotland.’
‘I would like to try, I think.’ Josefin picked up Ezz’s fizzing glass and sniffed it. ‘Is it alcohol?’
‘No.’ Ezz breathed in its barley-sugar sweetness.
From behind the bar, Brodie said helpfully, ‘You can have a whisky in it. We call that a Girder.’
