Chapter 1 #2
“And honestly,” Ellie adds, glancing up at me, “you didn’t have to pop by. It came off very easily. No harm done.”
“Aye, well. They should know better. Sorry.”
She smiles again.
“Da, look!” Rosie says suddenly, pointing. “Logan and I spotted it earlier. It’s the Mary Beth!”
I follow her finger to a display on the wall.
It’s a collection of photographs: old black-and-white shots of Ardmara paired with new colour photographs of the same places.
In one of the modern photos, a view of the harbour, the Mary Beth is tied up at her berth.
Other boats fill out the scene, but the Mary Beth sits pride of place in the centre of the picture.
“So it is,” I say, walking over to take a closer look.
It’s a strange thing, seeing your own boat framed and mounted on a wall.
The Mary Beth isn’t anything special to look at—she’s a working boat, not a showpiece—but in the photograph, with the light catching her blue hull and white wheelhouse, she looks almost handsome, like the light is somehow hiding her scuff marks.
“That’s not a bad picture.” I glance back at Ellie. “Who took it?”
A flush of pink creeps across her cheeks. “Oh, I did, actually. The new ones are mine. It was a wee project for the library, matching the old archive photos with the same views today.”
“Really?” I take another look at the display. I’m no expert on this stuff, but the lighting of the new photos is good and the details are sharp. “Great job. You’ve got a good eye.”
“Thanks.” The flush deepens, and she tucks a strand of frizzy hair behind her ear. “It was just a bit of fun, really. I’ve been getting into photography lately.”
“Aye? Well, the best view of Ardmara is from the water. You’d get better shots of the town from a boat.”
It’s just a thought. The town looks different from the sea—you get the full sweep of it, the way the buildings step down to the harbour, the hills rising behind like a backdrop.
I’ve seen it thousands of times, and I know how pretty it is.
But Ellie’s eyes stay on me, her expression open and expectant, like I’ve started a sentence and she’s waiting for the second half.
I blink. Did I say something odd?
The moment stretches. I wonder if maybe she’s got a question about the tides or the best time of day for the light, but she doesn’t ask and I don’t know what to offer, so the silence drags on a few seconds too long.
“Anyway,” I say eventually. “The photos are great.”
“Thanks.” Ellie straightens in her chair then smiles—bright, easy, as if the awkward pause never happened. “So, any plans for tonight? Anything nice?”
“Plans? With these two?” I gesture at the twins, who have drifted over to the children’s section and are already pulling books from the low shelves and flipping through them with the restless energy of people who have been well-behaved for approximately ninety seconds and are now reaching their limit.
“I’ll be lucky if I get them fed, bathed, and in bed before I collapse.
Then it’s up at half-past four tomorrow and out on the water again. And the whole cycle repeats.”
“Sounds . . . full-on.”
“That’s one word for it.”
She laughs, and I find myself smiling back, but then Rosie and Logan start arguing about a book in increasingly loud whispers.
“I had it first.”
“You did not!”
“Right,” I say. “That’s our cue to go. Thanks for being so good about the mural. And sorry again.”
“Honestly, Douglas, it’s fine. Don’t give it another thought.”
“C’mon, you two. Let’s go.”
“Bye, Ellie!” Rosie calls, waving over her shoulder.
“Bye!” Logan says. “Thanks for not being angry about the kraken!”
I open the door, and the twins try to go through it at the same time, shoulder to shoulder, neither willing to give way. There’s a brief wordless scuffle—elbows, shuffling feet, a grunt of effort—before they pop through like a cork out of a bottle and stumble onto the pavement.
I stop in the doorway and look back at Ellie.
She’s watching us with an amused expression, her chin resting on her hand.
I give a small shrug—what can you do?—then lift a hand in goodbye and follow the twins out into the street.
They’re already several paces ahead of me, Rosie skipping, Logan kicking at a pebble.
I take a few longer strides and catch up with them.
“Da,” Logan says without looking up from the pebble. “What’s for dinner?”
“What do you think?”
His shoulders sag. “Prawns.”
Rosie sighs with the kind of theatrical despair usually reserved for soap opera heroines receiving devastating news. “Can’t we have something normal for once?”
“What could be more normal than eating food your own dad has caught fresh from the sea? Fresh langoustines”—I put on the voice, the kind you’d hear in a fancy restaurant—“hand-selected from the pristine waters of the Scottish Highlands.”
“I’d rather have chicken nuggets,” Logan says.
“You two are eating something that folk in fancy Paris restaurants pay a small fortune for.” In a mutter I add, “A lot more money than I ever see for them.”
Logan wrinkles his nose. “I’d rather eat at McDonald’s than some fancy Paris restaurant.”
“Aye, well.” I place a hand on each of their backs and steer them up the hill towards home. “Tough luck. You’re getting prawns.”