Chapter Fifteen
‘Laura? Are you awake?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’m fast on.’
Callum slipped inside like a shadow, closing the door silently behind him.
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said, keeping a safe distance from where I sat in the chair by the window. ‘I thought I heard you moving around and wanted to make sure everything was all right and— are you eating a steak with your bare hands?’
‘I didn’t think popping downstairs and asking for a steak knife would be a good look for a vegan,’ I replied, slipping what was left of my dinner back into the double-layered doggy bag Graham had begrudgingly prepared and wiping my hands on the flannel I’d been using as a napkin.
When I got back inside after my chat with Graham, Elsie looked like she was having a great time while Callum and Shiv looked ready to launch themselves directly into the sun, and the moment I mentioned the return of my migraine, the two of them raced each other to call it a night.
It wasn’t even eight when Shiv offered to give us all a ride back to Balmaclay, forcing me to choose between the physical pain of walking home in my too-small boots or the emotional discomfort of spending even more time in her company.
As soon as we climbed into the battered old Land Rover, I knew I’d chosen badly.
I could put plasters on my heels to cover my blisters but medical science had yet to come up with a reliable way to erase ten minutes of memory.
Something for me to work on when I got back to the hospital.
Elsie kept up a constant stream of vaguely insulting chat but Callum could hardly keep his eyes off Shiv while she kept watch over me via the rearview mirror, radiating the kind of disdain I was only used to seeing from the woman who kept watch over the Nando’s soft serve machine.
They say it’s bottomless but after your third visit, they really like to let you know you’ve had enough.
The moment we pulled up to the house, before the car had even come to a complete standstill, I was out the back and running (limping) back up to my room where I’d been, on my own, ever since.
‘If you’ve come to apologise again, you don’t have to,’ I said as he settled against the windowsill, back to the glass, rather than committing to the second armchair that looked out onto the late-night loch. ‘And if you want me to share this steak, you’re dreaming.’
‘Understood,’ he replied, warm lamplight stretching his soft shadow across the room.
‘How was the rest of your evening?’
‘You’ll be thrilled to hear Dad isn’t sure if you’re “hardy enough stock” to survive a Scottish winter.’
‘He’s right, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Although, you can never tell him that, obviously.’
‘He didn’t see you take down Elsie in The Clach. I’ve never been more impressed with anyone in my entire life.’
‘Your sister has a gift,’ I said, Callum’s small smile graduating into a fully fledged grin.
‘It’s not nearly as easy as I thought it would be to act like a complete cow, except when it comes to your sister.
I’m very anti-violence but she really is begging for someone to punch her right in the tit. ’
When he laughed, smothering the sound with a hand over his mouth, I felt a shiver run through me and pulled my feet up onto the chair, tucking the blanket I’d found in the bottom of the wardrobe underneath them.
‘Callum?’
‘Laura.’
‘Why haven’t you told anyone you’re moving to Paris?’
A small sound huffed from the back of his throat.
‘How do you know I haven’t?’ he asked.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin, covering my red tartan shirt-and-short pyjamas.
‘Because I accidentally let it slip to Graham but he promised he would keep it a secret. Sorry.’
Callum waved away my apology, still smiling in my general direction. ‘It’s fine, I was going to tell him tonight if I’d had a chance.’
‘What about your mum and dad?’
‘I was planning to tell them when I was safely on another continent.’ His fingers curled around the windowsill and he ducked his head.
‘Me getting into this programme means they have to take my career seriously and accept I’m never coming home to run the farm.
Me and Shiv ruined last Christmas, I don’t want to ruin this one. ’
‘I should think not,’ I replied with a sniff. ‘That’s a job for Caroline.’
The lengths this man had gone to so he could avoid face-to-face confrontation with his family were absurd. But he hadn’t asked for my opinion on the matter so I didn’t comment. And ultimately he was trying to spare their feelings, hardly a bad thing.
He looked at odds with his surroundings again, the cosy antique aesthetic of Balmaclay clashing with his rumpled grey sweatpants and tissue-thin white T-shirt.
His hair was a mess, as though he’d been tossing and turning, and even in the low light of the room, I could see shadows underneath his eyes.
But he was still breathtakingly beautiful.
I saw dozens of different people at work every day, hundreds a week, thousands a year, but I couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone who made me stop and stare the way I was staring at Callum McClay.
‘Mum and Dad still think I’m going to give up and come home,’ he said, echoing Graham’s theory as I tore my eyes away, concentrating on the hem of my blanket.
‘They know I’m not earning much as a cook and they know the money Grandad left me is all gone.
As far as my parents are concerned, it’s a waiting game.
When I tell them I’m not coming home and am in fact moving to another country to train to be a pastry chef, there’s going to be hell to pay. You don’t want to be here for it.’
‘You mean you don’t want to be here for it.’
Our eyes met and I felt as though I’d been pinned to my chair.
‘Are you ever planning to tell them?’ I asked.
A half-smile tugged at one side of his mouth.
‘Eventually.’
‘If only you had an incredibly demanding and difficult girlfriend who takes up all your time meaning you can never come home to visit.’
I looped my arms around my shins and rested my chin on my knees and his half-smile tugged higher.
‘Shiv seems nice,’ I added, mostly to be polite. Nice was a stretch. Shiv seemed fine, as long as you weren’t me.
His smile disappeared without a trace.
‘She is.’ Callum turned to face the window, gazing out into the endless black. ‘Shiv is about the nicest girl in the world.’
Before he’d come into the room, I’d sat in the darkness, allowing my eyes to adjust until all the shades of the night had revealed themselves, from deep blue to dove grey, the still water of the loch acting as a mirror to an icy white crescent moon.
More stars than I’d ever seen in my life were scattered across the sky.
In my day-to-day life, I was always too exhausted to look up at the end of a busy day and I wasn’t sure how long I’d spent gazing at them in wonder.
But now the window revealed nothing but flat black, loosely sketched outlines of my room and rough reflections of us, staring blindly out into nothing.
‘Not to overstep the fake girlfriend line,’ I said, swallowing hard before I finished my sentence. ‘But do you think she might still have feelings for you?’
As if he’d read my mind, Callum reached over to the lamp and turned it off.
The reflected room disappeared in instant and, one by one, all the stars in the night sky flickered back into existence.
In the heavy silence, my pulse thudded loudly in my ears, my heart rate picking up, skipping faster and faster, and I did not care for it at all.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied honestly. ‘Either way, sometimes feelings aren’t enough. Doesn’t mean things will work out.’
He moved from the windowsill to the second armchair. It was positioned at an angle and his legs were so long that when he stretched them out in front of him, they crossed in front of my chair, brushing against the drape of my blanket. The fabric moved against my skin and I shivered.
‘Isn’t it a choice?’ I asked. ‘Nothing is easy, you always have to make an effort if you want something to work.’
‘Laura, why are you single?’
It was such an unexpected question, delivered so abruptly, I was lost for words. He didn’t turn to face me when he asked it and there was just enough moonlight to sketch out his profile but not show his expression. I had no idea what he was thinking.
‘I don’t have time for a relationship,’ I told him after a moment’s deliberation. ‘The career I’ve chosen, it’s a big commitment, more than a job. It’s a vocation. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for going on dates, getting to know someone.’
‘That’s the only reason?’
‘The main reason.’ I squeezed my hands together, trying to control the feelings that washed over me in waves, anxiety, anticipation, intrigue.
‘It’s a lot to ask someone to take on, a relationship with a surgeon.
You’re not dependable, always on call, always missing important occasions.
Most people don’t understand, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect them to. ’
‘Isn’t it a choice?’ Callum replied. ‘Nothing is easy. You always have to make an effort if you want something to work.’
I held my breath as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, oxygen-depleted blood thundering around my body. I wasn’t used to someone else’s presence having this kind of effect on me. I wasn’t used to anyone else’s presence having any kind of effect on me.
‘Another person can’t complete you,’ I said, no weight to my words whatsoever. ‘Not everyone has to have someone.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But everyone deserves someone. You deserve someone.’
We both turned, only by a fraction, but at the exact same time. Our eyes met for a moment then Callum looked away and I felt winded, like I’d fallen from a great height, and all the air had been knocked out my body.
‘How come you weren’t asleep?’ he asked, flexing his bare feet against the floor.
‘I was hungry.’
Not a lie but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I was always hungry. The thing that had me staring at the ceiling until I eventually climbed out of bed and started my midnight snack, was the thought of Callum and Shiv, childhood sweethearts, meant to be.
‘What about you?’
‘Same.’
In silence, he rose from his chair, and I felt a tug in my chest.
‘I’ll let you get back to …’
His gaze fell on the side table.
‘Eating a piece of steak with my bare hands?’
There it was, that smile again. I felt an unexpected throb in the pit of my stomach.
No, lower. It caught me off guard and I clenched my thighs together.
‘Goodnight, Laura.’
‘Goodnight, Callum.’
I didn’t move when he let himself out. Instead, I sat in silence and listened for him in the room next door.
Nothing. He said he’d heard me moving around.
Had he really? Perhaps. I couldn’t hear him but I could feel him, sense his presence on the other side of the wall, imagine him sitting in the chair still, watching the night alongside me.
‘This is not good,’ I whispered to myself, pulling the blanket back up to my chin as I stared out at the loch, legs pressed tightly together. ‘This is not good at all.’
And for the second night in a row, I failed to get even a wink of sleep, all because of Callum McClay.