Authors: Rachael Lucas
Isla made a vague noise of acknowledgement, shifting from foot to foot in her running shoes. She was starting to get cold, standing here like this after running up the hill so fast, and if he
was OK, she was just going to . . .
‘Yeah . . . you’re the recycling criminal. Didn’t recognize you for a second, without your six-inch heels on. We take that stuff very seriously around here,
y’know.’ His teasing tone belied his words. He gave a groan, rubbing his side. ‘Ow. I think I might’ve bust a rib.’
Isla looked at the bike. It was unrideable, even if he had been up to cycling home.
‘Do you want me to call a –’ She began untangling her phone from the armband and headphone wires.
‘No reception this part of the island. Well, at a push you might get one bar with a following wind.’ He moved in slightly closer, looking down at the screen. ‘Nope, as I
thought.’
Isla tried to disguise the irritation in her voice. ‘Would you like me to push the bike back for you? Can you walk?’
He shook one muddy leg, then the other. He was obviously pretty fit – beneath a down of fair hair, muscles stood out tautly. ‘Yeah, they’re both working well enough. If you
wouldn’t mind, I’d really appreciate it.’
‘It’s fine.’
He gave a half-smile. ‘You do a pretty good impression of not fine, for someone who’s OK with it.’ He reached out his hand again. ‘Finn MacArthur.’
‘Hello,’ said Isla, unnecessarily. She shook his hand awkwardly and reached for the bicycle, pulling it into an upright position. At least it was still capable of being wheeled, even
if it was a bit wonky. ‘You ready?’
Finn nodded, and together, slowly, they headed down the hill.
‘So, Jessie’s place.’
Finn was holding his arm across his torso now, clearly in some discomfort. Chatting would at least take his mind off it for now.
‘Yes.’ Isla could make polite conversation with anyone who walked through the door of a salon. As soon as she stepped over the doorstep and into the room, she was on duty. It was a
perfect performance. Elderly women were charmed by her interest in their pets, young girls by her impressive knowledge of the latest music and YouTube videos. But outside, she wasn’t ready
for conversation. She fished around, trying to think of something to say. There was something about the way this Finn looked at her, his blue eyes penetrating, that was slightly unnerving.
‘It’s a bit – different to my last salon.’
‘That doesn’t come as a huge surprise.’ Finn laughed. ‘Jessie’s lovely, but that place is like something from 1967. Mind you, you’ll have noticed half this
place is preserved in aspic. Have you seen the shop with the yellow plastic in the windows?’
Isla laughed. ‘I think that place was here when I last visited fourteen years ago.’
‘It’s been there since I was at school, and I’m pushing thirty-five.’
He looked sideways at Isla again as they walked. ‘So, you can’t be planning on hanging around here for long?’
‘Six weeks and three days.’ Isla said aloud the words she’d been chanting in her head all day.
‘Not that you’re counting.’ Finn was amused.
‘Well, this place isn’t really my sort of thing. I’m not exactly an island person. Too much countryside, not enough – well, not enough anything.’
Finn gave a scoffing noise, laughing. ‘Not enough anything?’
‘I was at the little corner shop after I finished work this evening and two American tourists came in, asking where the nearest shopping mall was. I felt as sorry for myself as for them
when the woman behind the counter said “one hour and a boat ride” in response.’
‘Oh come on,’ Finn looked at her, disbelieving. ‘You’re not serious.’
Isla raised an eyebrow. ‘Deadly.’
He shook his head, laughing again. ‘Well, I reckon we’re going to have to do a bit of work to persuade you this place isn’t all bad, then, eh?’
Isla snorted. ‘You’ll have a hard job. I like to be within striking distance of a Pret a Manger at all times. The nearest thing I’ve found to that is a bacon roll from the
bakery.’
They were passing through the little fishing village Isla had run through earlier. The journey back seemed much further when walking slowly with a squeaking bike.
‘Give it a chance. It’s not for everyone, but I reckon it might grow on you.’
‘Mmm.’ Isla nodded non-committally.
‘This is me, here.’ Finn lifted an arm to point, wincing again as he did so.
On the opposite side of the road, looking out across the water to the distant hills of the peninsula that reached out from the mainland, was a stone-built villa with a neatly kept garden
outside, the gate flanked by two pots full of pansies.
‘You’re a bit of a gardener?’
Finn followed her gaze, realizing with a laugh what she was seeing. ‘God, no, that’s Ethel, my downstairs neighbour. I live in the flat upstairs. I can’t keep weeds
alive.’
Isla checked both ways (thinking, as she did so, that she hadn’t seen a single car pass by in the whole time she’d been out running) and wheeled the bike across the road.
‘Just stick it in the close there, I’ll give it a look tomorrow when I’m feeling better.’
Isla looked at him dubiously. If his rib was broken, he’d be in no state to fix anything for a good long while, and definitely not tomorrow.
‘I’ll wheel it round out of sight, shall I? You don’t want it getting stolen.’
‘Round here?’ Finn called after her as she propped it against the side wall of a wooden shed in the garden. ‘Who’d nick a bike? They wouldn’t get it off the boat,
and if they started riding it round the place, word would be back to me in five minutes flat. This place is like that.’
‘Fair enough.’ Isla, who’d spent the morning listening to her customers gossiping over the latest goings-on ‘up at the big house’, could believe it.
‘Thanks for helping me back with it.’ Finn gave her another smile, looking directly into her eyes. His looked tight with pain, she noticed, but he hadn’t lost his manners.
‘You’re welcome.’ Isla turned to leave.
‘One thing.’
She spun round, looking at him standing on the path, filthy.
‘You didn’t tell me your name.’
‘I thought you island people knew everything about everyone.’ Surprising herself, Isla turned on her heel and walked away. Once she was out of sight, she found herself grinning at
her comeback.
Ruth had woken – as seemed to be routine, these days – at half past four in the morning. She’d shrugged her cosy pink quilted dressing gown around her
shoulders, slipped her feet into furry slippers, and made herself a cup of tea. Hamish, after a quick pop outside, was more than happy to make his way back inside and join her in bed, where
she’d sat listening to the early-morning radio.
Sitting, propped up by pillows, she thought back to her appointment with Doctor Lewis yesterday morning.
‘Now, Ruth, you can’t argue with technology.’ He’d turned the screen around, showing her what he could see.
It wasn’t anything she didn’t already suspect. Sometimes, doctors just took the mystery out of life. She sighed.
‘Right, well, we can have a chat about lifestyle adjustments, and what we can do to make things easier. There’s medication, and –’ he paused.
Ruth leaned forward, placing a hand carefully on his desk as if for emphasis. Everything on there seemed to be sponsored by some drug manufacturer or another. No wonder they were so keen to
shove as many pills down your throat as they could.
‘I’m not rattling around with a pillbox like some hypochondriac.’
Doctor Lewis shook his head slowly. ‘Nobody is suggesting you should.’
‘Right, well, that’s a start.’ Ruth gave a nod of satisfaction. She inhaled slowly, taking a moment to think. This place smelt like hospitals and cleaning fluid and plastic and
– she didn’t want to end up stuck in a bed in some geriatric ward.
‘I don’t want you saying a
word
to anyone about this.’ A finger lifted in warning.
‘Of course not.’ Doctor Lewis widened his eyes. ‘I can’t discuss your condition with anyone unless you give me explicit permission.’ He paused for a moment, raising
his glance skyward, rubbing his temples. ‘However, it might help if we could perhaps share the care plan with a family member, let them know what medication you’re supposed to be
taking, that sort of thing. We find it often helps if you’re—’
Ruth pursed her lips, and fixed him with the same steely glare that her late husband had always referred to as her no-messing-about look.
‘It’s my heart that’s failing, not my mind,’ she’d said, crisply. Taking her walking stick and the prescription slip he’d printed, she’d made her way
out of the consulting room with her head held high.
Later that afternoon, Ruth balanced her new iPad on the mantelpiece, wedging it in place with the doorstop in case it fell off. She’d been given it as a present, but it
was still a bit of a mystery to her. She could watch the news on television, and she far preferred to read from a newspaper than from an ever-scrolling, lights flashing, high-tech thing, no matter
what the rest of the world thought. There was something quite comforting in deciding that she was too old for this nonsense.
But it was lovely to be able to chat to Shona, and see her face. She still couldn’t understand how video calls worked, but it was such a change from the years when calling her daughter in
Melbourne had meant sky-high phone bills and conversations peppered with delays. Instead she just arranged a time (she was fairly impressed with herself for getting the hang of this Skype messaging
lark, proving there was life in the old dog yet) and waited for the familiar ringing tone to begin – and there would be the face she loved, and hadn’t seen in real life for just over
ten years.
‘Mum. How are you?’
Och. The only trouble with this Skype business was seeing her own wrinkly old face looking back at her from the screen.
‘Hang on a wee second, my dear.’ Ruth pulled her chair a bit closer to the mantelpiece, then took a left-over birthday card and stuck it in front of the corner of the screen where
the little box with her face in it sat.
‘That’s better. I can’t concentrate on talking to you when I can see my own face rabbiting away nonsense in one corner.’
‘Fair enough,’ Shona laughed, eyes crinkling up at the sides in suntanned, well-worn laughter lines. It was hard to believe her little girl was fifty-three this year – but the
evidence stood before her. Shona had a fair few wrinkles of her own, but she was just as beautiful as ever, her high cheekbones and fair hair highlighted by the morning winter sun that shone in
through the kitchen of her suburban house.
‘How are you keeping, Mum? Taking those supplements I ordered you?’ There was a distinct Aussie twang to Shona’s accent now, not that she’d admit it.
‘Och, yes,’ lied Ruth. Shona, a health-food nut, had made an online order for some kind of wheatgrass and vitamin concoction that Ruth was supposed to take twice a day. The
supplements arrived in the post, the size of horse tablets and probably far less palatable.
‘Great. And you’re getting out and about? I see you’ve been to the hairdresser?’
‘Aye. In fact I had it done by a top stylist, nonetheless.’ She gave her hair a pat. ‘Jessie Main’s daughter broke her arm, and her niece is watching the place whilst
she’s away looking after the bairns.’
‘She’s done a good job. You’re looking gorgeous.’
‘It was very swish. I got a head massage, too. She’s a lovely girl – quiet, nothing like her Aunty Jessie – not that you’ll know her, do you? Anyway, you’ll
need to give her a try if she’s still here when you come over.’
Shona’s face was wreathed in smiles. ‘I can’t wait. I can’t wait to give you a great big cuddle and soak up the island and –’ she paused for a second, her
expression clouding – ‘and – how’s the boy?’
Ruth gave a slow nod. ‘He’s doing fine. Looking forward to seeing you when you come over.’
If Shona knew Ruth was lying, Ruth reflected later, she did a good job of hiding it. They’d chatted about Shona’s plans to fly over to Scotland that summer, about the Australian
grandchildren who were off out playing tennis and riding their bikes, and who had no time to talk to a grandma who was not much more than a name on a birthday card and a half-remembered face on a
Skype screen to them. They had an Aussie life – their own Aussie granny, who was there every weekend and looked after them whilst their mum worked hard running her business. And now, at last,
after a tough time when the business she’d set up had gone under in the recession, and things had been hard, Shona had enough money to fly home and visit for the first time in years. Ruth
couldn’t wait to see her, hold her, and – she closed her eyes, thinking about it and sending out a silent wish – maybe, just maybe, mend some fences.
‘Lucien, darling, could you get down from the window ledge, please?’
Isla could feel her shoulders seizing up more tightly with every passing second. After two days off work during which she’d found the tiny flat both lonely and claustrophobia-inducing, she
was in desperate need of an aromatherapy massage, a hot bath, and some time alone with a book. The bad news was, she was only dealing with the first client of the day. Lily had arrived this morning
in a whirl of expensive essential oil scent, drifting along in a pair of wide-legged, clearly extremely expensive linen trousers. Her toenails were painted aquamarine and she wore Birkenstock
sandals. Jinny had wrapped her in a gown, protecting the long, gauzy white shirt that trailed almost to her knees.
‘Cup of tea?’ Shannon called from the back room, where she was waiting for the kettle – now filled from the recently repaired tap, and not from the hair-washing sink – to
boil.
Isla shot her a warning glance. She’d tried – thinking it was best to start as she meant to go on – to instil a sense of decorum in the salon, pointing out that it would be
lovely if clients could feel that their visit was a little oasis of calm in their day. Shannon, pulling out her gum and tossing it in the bin (her concession to sophistication), had raised a
sardonic eyebrow.