Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
ELLIE
The photo looks good.
Better than good, actually. It looks like the kind of shot you’d find on a postcard in the corner shop: Ardmara from the water, the harbour in the foreground, the buildings stepping up the hillside behind it, the hills rising sharp and green beyond.
Yesterday’s light did half the work for me.
The colours are vivid without being oversaturated.
If you didn’t know the photographer got stranded on rocks ten minutes after taking it, you’d think she knew what she was doing.
I pin it up as part of my display, just to the right of the harbour then-and-now pair. It doesn’t technically belong there—there’s no archive image to match it with—but it’s Ardmara, it’s beautiful, and I’m not above bending my own rules.
Next to it, I pin the seal pic. The good one, the one I got right before disaster struck. Every detail is sharp: the gleam of wet fur, the spray of water hitting the rocks. Looking at it now, I feel a small stubborn flare of pride. Whatever else happened out there, I got this.
I step back and check the arrangement. The seal pic needs to come up a little. I adjust it then step back again.
There. That’ll do.
The bell above the library door jingles, and I turn to see Jennifer Beattie coming in, a canvas bag over one shoulder, her glasses slipping down her nose.
She’s one of the library’s most reliable regulars.
She must be around Mum’s age of seventy-two—Mum had me a little later in life—though she moves with an ease Mum hasn’t had for years.
“Morning, Jennifer. I’ve got something for you.” I head back to the desk and reach under it. “It came in on Monday.”
I pull out the book I set aside for her: a new collection of Highland folk tales, beautifully illustrated and published by a small press in Inverness. “I had a wee flick through when it arrived. It’s gorgeous. I’ll have to check it out myself once you’re finished with it.”
“Wonderful. Thanks, Ellie.” She adjusts her glasses then gives me a look. “So, I heard you had a bit of excitement yesterday.”
And there it is. Heat rises up my neck. “Oh. You heard about that.”
“Ellie, I think most of Ardmara had heard about it by teatime.”
Of course they had. That’s just how it is here. I could have been rescued by a passing submarine in the dead of night and Jennifer would still have known about it by the time she’d had her morning toast.
“I’m fine,” I say brightly. “Completely fine. Just a silly wee mishap.”
“Well, I’m glad Douglas Fraser was passing and able to help.” She pops the book in her bag. “Right, I might have a wee browse of the shelves to see what other gems you have. Oh, and I’ve got a few books to return first.”
Ten minutes later she heads off, but almost no sooner has the bell stopped ringing than it rings again.
“Okay, Ellie, I need details.”
Blair. She’s already halfway to the desk, blonde hair swinging, wearing a striped top and that particular expression she gets when she has things to discuss. It’s a look I’ve come to know well over the past year—bright-eyed, slightly conspiratorial, and entirely impossible to deflect.
Blair Turner arrived in Ardmara last summer from New York, originally to lick her wounds after a very public firing from her job in children’s publishing, then to work as a nanny for Lachlan Munro’s son, Finn.
She ended up falling in love with Lachlan—who, until Blair appeared, had been one of the grumpiest men on the west coast—and never left.
She also, somewhere along the way, became my best friend, which still surprises me a little because Blair is confident and emotionally articulate and says things out loud that I would normally lock in a vault and bury at sea.
She knows about my crush on Douglas. She’s one of the only people who does.
“I’ve heard the headlines,” she says, planting both hands on the counter, “but I want the full story, from the source.”
“Blair—”
“The whole town is talking about it, Ellie. You got rescued by Douglas. Douglas. This is not the kind of thing I can let pass without a full debrief.”
“Fine.” So I tell her everything, or at least most of it. The hire boat, the seals, the horrible scraping sound, the moment I realised whose boat was coming towards me. Blair listens with wide eyes. Sympathy, amusement, then glee chase each other across her features.
When I get to the part where I told Douglas that if he’d invited me onto his boat, I wouldn’t have had to hire one, Blair lets out a delighted laugh.
“You said that?”
“I said that.”
“To his face?”
“To his face, while standing on his boat soaking wet.” I drop my forehead onto the desk. The wood is cool against my skin, which helps, considering the heat pouring off me. “Blair, I am mortified.”
“But that’s—Ellie, that’s amazing.”
I lift my head to glare at her. “It is not amazing. It’s the opposite of amazing.”
She presses her lips together, fighting a smile.
“It’s about time you said something to him.
And I seriously doubt it was as revealing as you seem to think.
You said he should have invited you out to take photos.
That’s it. You didn’t declare your undying love.
You didn’t propose. You made a comment that could just as easily be read as a joke, or a little sass, or whatever.
Anyway.” Blair leans forwards. “The rescue. When he was in the water with you, his arm around your waist. What was that like?”
“Blair!”
“I’m asking as your friend. And as someone who has a healthy appreciation for broad-shouldered men in wet clothing.”
My cheeks, which were beginning to return to a normal temperature, reignite.
“It was . . .” I search for the right word, one that’s honest but not incriminating.
A word that doesn’t betray the fact I can still feel the pressure of his large hand on my waist if I close my eyes.
Or the way he lifted me up onto the Mary Beth, even though I’m hardly light . . .
“It was nice.”
“Nice?”
“I mean—mortifying. It was mortifying. The whole thing was mortifying. I was freezing, and my trainers were soaking wet, and I nearly pulled us both over at least twice, and—it was mortifying. That’s the word. Mortifying.”
“But also nice.”
“Blair.”
She grins.
“Right,” I say. “I think the best thing I can do is keep my distance from Douglas for a wee while. Let things settle. Give it a week or two, and then maybe I’ll be able to look at him again without wanting the ground to swallow me.”
“Yeah,” she says, “about that.” Her grin has become a grimace, but with a slightly mischievous edge.
“What?”
“So, you know how Douglas is in a group chat with Lachlan and Struan? The ‘Dadventurers’, they call themselves.”
“Yes,” I say cautiously.
“Well, Lachlan and Struan decided that the ‘hero of the hour’ deserved a night out to celebrate, so Struan invited Douglas to the Ferryman’s Rest tonight.”
The blood drains from my face.
The Ferryman’s Rest. Where my band, the Celtic Kicks, will be playing tonight, as we do every Thursday.
“But—”
“Douglas turned them down, of course,” Blair adds. “Said he couldn’t. The twins, early start tomorrow, the usual.”
Relief floods through me so fast it’s almost dizzying. “Oh, thank God.”
“Which is why Struan contacted Douglas’s parents before he messaged Douglas.”
The relief evaporates.
“And . . . they agreed to babysit.”
“No.”
“So Douglas had no excuse.”
“No, no, no.”
“He’s coming tonight, Ellie.”
I stare at her. Blair returns my gaze with shameless satisfaction. She thinks this is good for me. I can see it in her face—the genuine belief that proximity to Douglas Fraser is somehow going to be beneficial rather than catastrophic.
“Oh God,” I say.
The Ferryman’s Rest is already half full when I arrive, the hum of conversation building towards the cheerful roar it’ll become by nine o’clock.
I head for the small stage area, if you can call it that. It’s really just a corner near the fireplace where three chairs and a microphone stand have been set up.
Rab is already there, settled in his chair with his accordion across his knee, working through a few quiet phrases. He looks up as I approach.
“Ah, there she is. Ardmara’s answer to Captain Ahab.”
“Evening, Rab. A literary reference. You’re full of surprises.”
“Oi! I got my boat back in one piece, by the way. No thanks to you.”
“I’m so sorry about that. Honestly, Rab, I feel terrible—”
He waves a hand. “Ach, don’t worry yourself.
You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Donnie MacLeod went aground on the same spot back in, what, ninety-seven?
Ninety-eight? And Donnie had been fishing those waters for forty years.
” He shakes his head, smiling at the memory. “You’re in good company.”
The knot in my chest loosens a little. “Thanks. That does actually make me feel better.”
He plays a quick jaunty phrase on the accordion—something that sounds suspiciously like a sea shanty—and winks at me.
I take my fiddle from its case and settle it under my chin, running through a few scales to warm up. I rosin my bow, check my tuning, adjust a peg. This is fine. Just another Thursday night.
The pub door swings open and Struan walks in with Ainsley at his side. Until last year, Struan was Ardmara’s undisputed champion of casual dating, but he fell for the woman who moved in next door, and who now runs the Lily Room hair salon.
He’s got his guitar case slung over one shoulder and is wearing his usual uniform of jeans, boots, and a shirt with the sleeves shoved up past his elbows.
His tawny curls are pulled into a low, messy ponytail.
Ainsley, as always, looks like she’s stepped off a magazine cover: immaculate dark hair, her thick fringe sitting perfectly, a fitted top, heeled boots.
Together, they look so good it’s borderline show-offy.