Page 84 of Scotlander

The collective roar of approval was deafening.

He scanned the group. They were charged with infectious enthusiasm for the challenge rather than cowed by it. Young, old, fit, not so fit. They were mostly city folk. An academic. A hippy baker. An entertainment reporter who knew how to call in cows ten acres away.

They were all so different, but at this moment they had one crucial passion in common: they all wanted to save Balcraigie.

And he had Willa Jenkins to thank for this. The girl behind the curtain.

He never in his wildest dreams would’ve come up with her idea – to ask fans to literally dig in to save the farm from penury. But that’s what they were hoping to do. Open their arms to the world and say what few Scots were willing to do in private let alone in public. We need help.

A few hours later, Finn was fully convinced that Willa could not only run an army, but that the world would be a nicer place for it. She knew how to break down complex situations into simple action plans without belittling anyone or their questions. She assigned the right person to the right job as naturally as he knew when a calf would be born. And she did it all with that low-key, good-humoured charm of hers.

After Orla had retrieved all the mobiles and iPads and laptops from the gun safe, everyone set to work in earnest.

So far, Gabe and Lachlan had set up a crowd-funding site. Gabe had also offered to reach out to his many, many ‘strategic communication’ contacts.

When Finn had asked what those were, Willa had translated: spin doctors.

Jeff, who turned out to be quite the Twitter geek, had whipped up some ‘assets’: banners and memes featuring the logo: Any Time’s a Good Time for Hot Tattie embossed over a picture of a shirtless, kilt-wearing Lachlan doing the yoga tree pose as he took a bite out of a hot, buttery, baked potato.

Blair had directed a hilarious set of TikTok videos featuring the lads in their kilts frolicking in the tattie fields, then fading to a scene of Jennifer sipping a glass of champagne in her claw-footed bath, covered up to her décolletage in beautiful, creamy potatoes.

ChiChi drew a pencil sketch of Balcraigie Castle that took Finn’s breath away. It was an outline of the castle, the loch, the sprawl of fields and the Highlands beyond. There were silhouettes of a man in a kilt and a woman in Jacobean dress standing in the gateway to the castle. It was detailed, suggestively atmospheric, and everything he’d known Balcraigie to be: pure magic.

At one point a couple of the lads jogged up and asked him where the tractor keys were.

They were in his pocket.

When he’d found out about the potato harvester parts not coming in and the college not being able to loan theirs, his brain had short-circuited. All he’d wanted was his mum and dad. He knew he couldn’t have either of them, but he did have the land they’d bought when they’d dreamt of a future together. The three of them. The last thing he wanted was to say goodbye to it, to them, or their dreams, so he’d decided he was going to drive the old tractor, the one his dad had bought at auction for thirty quid twenty-five years back, around the farm. Do a victory lap. Then call the auction house he’d spoken to in Inverness so that they could start selling everything that wasn’t nailed down. Then he’d load up the girls and head to Kirkcudbright. The decision had broken his heart, but he’d made it and that had been that, right up until Willa had raced up to him as he’d been walking to the barn.

Breathless, she’d panted out her plan. It was so utterly hare-brained it actually seemed possible. He’d gone all gawp, gawp, gawp to the point she’d thought he hated it.

‘The cows,’ he’d finally managed.

As if she’d known all along that selling the herd had been the one thing that would break him, she leant in, gave him a soft kiss and whispered, ‘If you can hang on for one more week, you might not have to sell them.’ In that moment she had felt more like a real spouse than a fake one. A woman who had vowed to the heavens and everyone who knew her that she would have his back no matter how bad things got.

If there was even a sliver of a chance they could save all of this – his family’s heritage – he had to do it. And doing it with Willa by his side was even better.

After some fact gathering and a dividing up of ‘territories’ – Finn, Duncan and Dougie were assigned to spearheading the hands-on farming elements, while Willa focused on ‘producing’ the event. Poor Orla was still suffering from a bit of shellshock, but, with the aid of some of Jules’s calming herbal tea and a kitchen takeover by Jennifer who had been restoring order as if she’d been born to it, she was feeling better.

‘Right,’ Willa said to the group when they’d all gathered together for some fresh boiled potatoes and salmon grilled on a salt-water soaked plank. ‘Let’s inventory our assets before we hit the green light on social media, okay?’

Everyone was sitting to attention on the smattering of logs around the firepit. They looked battle ready. Jeff had even smeared some blue paint on his cheeks.

‘I’m free to do whatever.’ Fenella gave a raunchy shimmy. ‘Make me your tattie beeyatch, people!’

‘The bread oven’s ready,’ Jules said. ‘Mhairi from the local bakery came over and gave it the thumbs-up. Blair’s seeing if she can get the local young farmers’ group over to help me knead.’

‘I’ve made about twenty “Claire” shawls,’ Jennifer said. ‘Over the week,’ she clarified. ‘Not just today.’

ChiChi raised her hand. ‘Errol’s trying to get the old potato harvester working.’

Fenella held her phone up. ‘Trevor’s just texted and he’s getting an olde worlde harvester from some guy down the village, the little love bug.’

All their heads swivelled towards Fenella.

‘Aw, c’mon. Don’t be like that. You lot have judged the little kilted tyke too harshly.’ She cackled, unable to hold her serious expression. ‘I’ve been giving him love advice and he’s already hooked up with a couple of girls on Tinder courtesy of moi tweaking his profile. He’ll do anything for me now, the adorable numpty.’

Gabe stood up and brushed some invisible dirt off his immaculate kilt. ‘Walled garden’s clear and the stretch down to the loch. It’d be safe for small campfires if people wanted to camp there.’