Chapter Eleven
Forty-five minutes would normally be more than enough time for me to get ready for anything.
Years spent on call at the hospital meant I could function on very little sleep and had my ready-to-go routine down to a five-minute art but, somehow, I’d lost more than half an hour in the hot, steamy shower, luxuriating in the fancy shampoos and shower gels in a way I never allowed myself at home.
When Callum knocked on my bedroom door, I was still running around in my underwear, trying to choose between two of my more reliable outfits: jeans and a jumper or a skirt and a shirt.
One of the benefits of wearing scrubs was not having to care too much about your day-to-day clothes.
Without my professional camouflage, I felt exposed.
‘I can’t believe I’m going down with wet hair,’ I seethed, furious with myself as I followed Callum down the corridor in my mismatched skirt and jumper combo ‘Your mother is going to think I’m a monster.’
‘Good. They’re not supposed to like you, remember?’
‘Not going to be a problem,’ I replied. ‘I thought you might be wearing a kilt. Jeans and T-shirt doesn’t feel very Scotsman.’
He looked back at me over his shoulder. ‘Say more things like that and you’ll have no problem offending them.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m fully armed with offensive stereotypes,’ I assured him. ‘Worst comes to the worst, I’ll pull out my Braveheart impression and we’ll have this whole plot wrapped up and put to bed before Christmas Eve.’
‘I was thinking,’ Callum began as we passed through the grand foyer, the tree still sparkling beautifully. ‘We should have a code word. In case you need an out.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Such as?’
‘It needs to be something specific,’ he went on as we walked down a long hallway lined with windows, ‘that you wouldn’t normally use in everyday conversation so I’ll know what you mean when you use it.’
Not a code word, a safe word. He was suggesting we needed a safe word.
‘OK, you pick one,’ I told him, absolutely not flashing back to every single spicy novel I’d ever read. Callum bobbed his head in time with his steps.
‘Mackerel?’ he offered.
‘Mackerel?’ I was outraged. ‘What about me makes you think about mackerel?’
‘Nothing! It was the first thing that came into my head! You choose one.’
‘How about anastomosis?’ I said. ‘That’s a fun word.’
‘For you maybe,’ he replied. ‘What does it even mean?’
‘In layman’s terms, joining together two previously unconnected structures. Like, nerves or blood vessels.’
Callum considered then shook his head. ‘Thank you for breaking it down to a layman. Oddly sweet but no. If you can’t say it after two drinks, it’s too complicated.’
The end of the corridor was only a few steps away, a grand pair of double doors concealing what sounded like an awful lot of activity.
‘Tamagotchi,’ I suggested.
‘Claymore,’ Callum returned.
‘Bombadil.’
‘épassir.’
‘Justin Bieber.’
‘Bungalow.’
‘Smorgasbord.’
‘Batholith.’
‘Ooh, that’s a good one,’ I replied. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I can’t remember,’ Callum admitted. ‘But I learned it for my Geography A level.’
‘Did you pass?’
‘Not well.’
‘Then let’s go with something else,’ I said. ‘Narwhal.’
‘Narwhal?’ Callum repeated.
‘Narwhal,’ I confirmed. ‘Unicorn of the sea. Who doesn’t love a narwhal?’
‘Narwhal it is,’ he agreed. ‘If you feel like you want to get out of a situation, a conversation, whatever, just narwhal me.’
‘Possibly should’ve suggested a word that worked itself into conversation more easily,’ I said with a frown.
‘Hey, it’s your safe word, not mine.’
Callum opened the door to the dining room before I could reply, took my hand and pulled me inside, two pink spots high on my cheeks.
The dining room was formal and elegant, fancy wallpaper on the walls, more antique furniture, and another Christmas tree, a little bit smaller than the one in the foyer but still impressive, tucked away in a corner.
Sitting at the head of the kind of dining table you’d expect to be covered in piles of fruit and an entire roasted pig, was a beaming Derek McClay, and beside him, Lizzie stared at me in a rather pinched way.
‘I thought you’d got lost,’ Derek declared without moving to stand. ‘Can you bloody sit down so your mother will let me eat? I’m dying of starvation over here.’
Judging by the neat little pot belly that tested the strength of his shirt buttons, this was factually untrue.
‘Did you not find the hairdryer, Caroline?’ Lizzie asked, half-rising out of her chair. ‘I’m sure there’s one in the wardrobe.’
‘There is, I saw it, please don’t get up,’ I insisted, immediately anxious to have caused distress.
The only thing stopping me from running back to my room was Callum pulling out my chair and gently pressing on my shoulder until I sat.
I was not Laura. I was Caroline. Caroline didn’t give two shits about Lizzie’s concerns.
‘Because, um, I don’t use a hairdryer. I hate them.’
I glanced at Callum who inclined his chin in approval as he took the seat across from me.
‘They’re bad for the environment?’ I added. ‘And climate change? And sea levels?’
‘Is that so?’ Derek stood as his wife sat and reached over to pour me a glass of water. ‘See, there Elizabeth, you learn something new every day.’
‘I’ll make sure it’s gone before you get back to your room,’ Callum said, giving my hand a pat. ‘Don’t give it another thought.’
‘If you’d told me ahead of time I would’ve taken care of it,’ a humbled Lizzie admonished her son. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
Nodding, I shook a starched linen napkin onto my lap. ‘If I could get the WiFi password, that would be amazing. There’s literally no reception up here, I don’t know how you survive. My phone must think I’ve had my hands chopped off.’
Both of his parents stared at me, bewildered.
‘Your phone?’ Lizzie gave a terse smile. ‘But Callum said you didn’t have one.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ I replied, staring daggers across the table. ‘Because that would be completely insane. Everybody has a phone.’
‘She has a flip phone for emergencies,’ Callum explained to his mother, barely missing a beat. ‘She doesn’t have a smartphone. Caroline doesn’t believe in social media.’
I nodded slowly. He had told me that, the social media bit at least. I quietly praised past me for leaving my iPhone back in the room.
‘It’s destroying society,’ I confirmed, trying to recall exactly what Joel had said the last time he deleted TikTok from his phone before putting it back three minutes later when he couldn’t find his crush on Instagram. ‘Turns people into mindless zombies with no opinions of their own.’
‘Lizzie loves a good dig around Facebook, don’t you? Likes to keep an eye on what everyone else is up to.’ Derek reached across the table for a bottle of wine, corkscrew in the other hand. At eleven forty-five in the morning. A man after my own Christmas holiday heart.
‘He says it like he hasn’t got his phone attached to his hand around the clock,’ she tutted. ‘I’m in full agreement with Caroline. We should have a phone-free Christmas starting now, how about that?’
Derek looked horrified.
‘But what about Nimbus?! They’re taking him up to his grandmum’s for the holidays, they’ve made him a wee Christmas jumper and everything. You know he’s never been on a plane before.’
‘You’ll survive one week without watching a stranger halfway around the world torture their cat for views,’ Lizzie said in a clipped voice. ‘What do you think, Callum? No phones while you’re home, concentrate on some quality family time. Especially since we’ve seen so little of you this year.’
The corner of his left eye twitched. ‘Sounds good to me, Mum.’
My eyes slid from Derek to Lizzie to Callum. It was impossible to say which of them looked the most annoyed. Five minutes in and Mission: Cock Up Christmas was going pretty well.
A door at the far end of the dining room opened and a bright-eyed older woman in a well-loved white apron backed in, an enormous platter of food in her arms.
‘Would you look at that, ye havenae starved,’ she trilled, placing it in the centre of the table with a flourish.
Roast beef, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and Yorkshire puddings.
I’d been expecting a sandwich and a cup of tea.
My mouth began to water to the point I wondered whether it would be out of order to ask for a bib.
‘Callum, son, good to see you at bloody last.’ She squished his head against her body, muffling his response and roughing up his hair into the bargain. ‘Mal got you back in one piece?’
‘Just about.’ He grinned up at her when she released him, his hair fluffed up in a staticky halo. ‘Fi, this is Caroline. Caroline, this is Fiona, Mal’s wife.’
‘If that’s the only thing I’ve got going for me after all these years, I should ask you to take me out the back and shoot me like a lame horse.
’ She wiped her hand on her apron then thrust it in my direction.
‘Pleased to meet you, hen. Glad to see someone has taken up with this numpty despite his being such an ugly wee shite.’
I replied with the saddest, slipperiest handshake known to man.
‘Technically, Fi’s the housekeeper,’ Lizzie said as Fiona pulled her hand away in horror. ‘But she’s really part of the family.’
‘But they still have to pay me so, really, I’m doing better than the rest of them,’ she replied. ‘If you need anything while you’re here, you can always come to me. Derek and Cal are about as much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. Excuse me while I go and get your lunch.’
‘Mine?’ I leaned across to Callum when she scuttled back into the kitchen. ‘Is this supposed to be all yours?’
‘We’ve done our best to accommodate your dietary restrictions.’ Lizzie’s mouth twisted into an uncertain line. ‘Maybe now the family chef is home, he’ll be able to help Fiona with some recipes.’