If she was still paying her half of the rent, then Deb felt that she was within her rights to keep her stuff there until she was ready to move it out.
‘I guess so. I’ll just move it all into the spare room.’ He sounded mulish. Deb resisted the temptation to ask him whether he was going to move all of her furniture into the spare room too – considering that she’d bought most of it.
‘Okay. I’ll be in touch, then.’ She wrapped her arms around herself; the temperature had dropped, and clouds were threatening rain again. Despite the inhospitable weather, she still felt that the village and the loch were supporting her somehow. Being here, in Loch Cameron, did make her feel connected to the land in a way that she hadn’t before, and it gave her strength. Clarity, from the cleanliness of the air and the light, and strength from the dark, rich, fertile earth under her feet.
‘I’m going to head off,’ Dan muttered. ‘Take care, Deb.’
‘And you.’ She wondered whether she should have kissed him on the cheek or something, but he was holding back, standing away from her, and she picked up the non-verbal cues that he didn’t want to make physical contact. That was okay with her.
He turned and walked back the way they’d come, around the loch back to the high street.
Deb didn’t want to have to walk with him back to the car park at the Loch Cameron Inn and watch him drive away – that was almost too sad, in some ways. Thankfully, there was another route back to the cottage from where she stood.
Goodbye, Dan, she thought, as she watched him go. She was glad that he’d come over, in fact; now, she knew for absolute sure that there was no future with him. What she had felt had just been loneliness, but that was no reason to jump back into a relationship that hadn’t worked for a long time. During their conversation, she’d had the opportunity to reflect, and compare the way she had felt in her relationship with Dan with the way that Kyle Abernethy made her feel. It was a case of apples and oranges. With Dan, she’d never known anything like the excitement she got from a touch of Kyle’s hand.
It started to rain again and Deb pulled up her hood. As she walked along the muddy track, the rain got heavier, but she was enjoying being cosy inside her coat: it was quite waterproof, and she was warm from marching along.
Despite the difficulty of her meeting with Dan, Deb felt surprisingly upbeat. The rain smelt good – of heather and grass and spring – and it felt as though it was cleansing her. She felt fresh and alive.
I’m grateful for this moment, she thought, as she walked along, listening to the curlew’s song that she had heard earlier.I’m grateful that I’m not Dan’s girlfriend anymore. And I’m even grateful that I have to find a new place to live. Because then I can really start my new life.
Being able to start again struck Deb as a blessing rather than a curse as she walked back to the cottage. She was aware that she wouldn’t always have seen things this way, but so much had changed over the past few months.
She’d been so focused on what had changed in her body – and, now, in her work and personal life – that she hadn’t necessarily realised that something had shifted in her heart, too. But it had. And the thing that had changed was that, now, she felt full of hope.
TWENTY-ONE
The Post Office sat at the far end of Loch Cameron’s cobbled high street, and it was possibly the smallest that Deb had ever been in.
She was there to collect some packages that hadn’t been able to be delivered to the castle: there had been some issue with a delivery truck that had broken down, and so Deb had arranged for four large boxes of floral wrist corsages to be delivered to the Post Office. She’d brought the car down, and was hoping that the boxes weren’t too bulky, otherwise she’d need a hand carrying them out.
It was just a week until the party, and Deb was feeling the burn of what she liked to call the “Event Horizon”. It was the same for every event she’d ever worked on: invariably, as the event got closer, she found that, no matter how organised she’d been, and how many eventualities she had anticipated, there would be last-minute crises that had to be sorted out. Mostly, she thrived on the pressure of getting everything done in time, but, this time around, she was feeling more exhausted than usual.
Hal had replied to her email about her grandmother’s diary and her discovery that Elise was one of the children who hadbeen evicted from Gyle Head, all those years ago. But it had been a short, somewhat terse email.
Deb – thank you for this. I will read in more detail soon and respond. In the meantime, please accept my thoughts and best wishes. Hal.
The brevity of Hal’s email annoyed Deb deeply, and made her even more emotional about the diary than she had been before. The entries had been playing on her mind. She kept thinking about her poor grandmother, wishing she could talk to her. Wishing she could hug her.
Plus, she was worried about Janice. Beatrice had been popping in casually to check in on her most days, which Deb was deeply grateful for, but it sounded as though Janice was struggling. She had certainly been struggling when Deb had visited, the week before. Deb had ended up staying overnight, sleeping on the sofa, and made Janice eat a good breakfast when she’d woken up, bleary and weak, the morning after. But Deb couldn’t be there all the time to make sure her mum ate and looked after herself.
Beatrice had reported that on more than one day in the past week, she’d gone in to find Janice exhausted, in bed, not having eaten or drunk anything since her last visit. Deb had called her mum’s doctor, but she hadn’t been a huge help. She’d asked if a carer could go around to look after Janice, and the doctor had said she would look into it, but Deb worried that while that wasbeing looked into, Janice might starve or have an accident or be too weak to get out of bed, and she wouldn’t know until it was too late.
She was glad that the party was almost here, because that meant she could go home soon. Being closer to Janice would set her mind at ease.
‘Oh. Excuse me,’ Deb said, automatically, as she squeezed past the man in the small walkway in front of the counter, between two revolving greetings card displays and the wall, which was adorned with a local noticeboard.Dog walker, reasonable rates. Spick and Span Local Cleaner, call for availability.
There was more than one advert for holiday homes, lettered in careful block capitals: Deb wondered who would enquire about a holiday home nowadays without seeing any pictures – but, then, she supposed that she’d ended up at the cottage she was staying in, sight unseen. All taken care of by the Laird.
‘No problem.’ The voice was familiar: Deb looked up to find herself staring into Kyle Abernethy’s dark, soft lashed eyes.
‘Oh!’ she didn’t have anything more sophisticated to say. ‘Hi.’
They were still standing almost nose to nose, because the queue space for the counter was so narrow. Deb stepped to one side, so that her body wasn’t aligned as intimately with Kyle’s.
‘Hi.’ He looked guarded.
‘Fancy seeing you here.’ She attempted flirtation and was immediately mortified.Ugh, Deb, she thought.Come on.
