Chapter Seventeen #2
I combed my hands through my hair, palms pressed against my skull. It was completely hopeless. Rory couldn’t get the door open on his own, my legs were turning a beautiful shade of corned beef mottled pink, and I couldn’t feel my feet at all. Completely and utterly hopeless.
‘I reckon it’s going to open any minute,’ Rory said. ‘Give it one more good shove.’
‘OK,’ I said, pulling the hem of my jumper down over my arse and sinking down on the bottom step of the staircase. ‘Try it now.’
‘Are you pushing?’
‘Yep,’ I lied, examining my nails while I tried not to cry.
‘It’s nearly there …’ he groaned with the effort. ‘It’s nearly there …’
To my extreme surprise, the door screeched open and a red-faced Scotsman collapsed through it, falling to the floor in front of me.
‘Rory!’ I jumped up, flung my arms around his neck and kissed his sweaty auburn head. ‘Oh my God, I love you!’
Without waiting for a reply, I raced out of the tower and back into the house proper, hurling myself at the first radiator I came to, stretching out my arms and pressing my whole body against it. Warmth. Magical, wonderful warmth. I would never take central heating for granted again.
‘Might help if you’d bothered to put on your trews this morning,’ Rory said, climbing back to his feet.
I yanked the hem down again, the jumper fully stretched out of shape, and it still only just covered my backside.
‘I’m not leaving my room again without a full set of thermals,’ I assured him. ‘But seriously, thank you. I really thought I was going to be stuck up there.’
I looked up to see him frowning down at me.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, yanking my jumper lower. ‘Apart from the obvious?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Only, I was sure Callum said you were blonde.’
‘After that I did molecular biosciences for a year but all the second-year lectures were in the morning and I’m not a morning person.
’ Rory poured two very strong cups of tea from his mother’s stoneware teapot.
‘I switched over to astronomy but I couldn’t see a future in it so I’m doing history of art instead. ’
‘Because there’s so many more careers in that field?’
‘Right,’ he agreed, missing my sarcasm completely. ‘Immunology was probably the most interesting subject I’ve done but who wants to get caught up in all that if there’s another pandemic?’
‘Immunologists?’ I suggested.
Heaping a very large teaspoon of sugar into my mug, I considered the youngest McClay sibling as he produced a jug of milk from the fridge.
He was tall like everyone else in the family and had the same shade of rusted brown hair but instead of blue eyes, his were grey, like his mum’s.
Rory was a knockout. There was a mischievous glow about him that was missing in his siblings but I recognised it as pure undiluted Derek McClay.
Third time lucky, they’d created a perfect blend of both parents.
He stuck out the tip of his tongue, concentrating as he added milk to his mug and still managing to spill it all over the table.
‘Who knows what I’ll do at the end of this year. Might be time to try something different.’
‘A job?’
‘Fuck no, I meant a different course.’
‘Right.’ I smiled when he went to pick up his tea, neither crying over or even bothering to clean up the spilled milk.
‘If you enjoyed immunology, I really think it’s worth giving it a second look.
There are tons of opportunities, you’d get to travel and the field has some funding right now, compared to most others, that is. No one ever has enough funding.’
Rory squinted at me.
‘How come you know so much about it? Aren’t you a massage therapist?’
‘A passing interest,’ I blustered, wrapping my still frozen hands around the roasting hot mug. ‘Sort of a hobby.’
‘Could you not spend your spare time doomscrolling on TikTok like normal people?’
We both laughed, me with nerves but Rory as carefree as I assumed he always was. After ten minutes in his company, I got the feeling Rory McClay didn’t worry himself too much about anything.
‘You’re an interesting one, aren’t you?’ He kicked his feet up onto the kitchen table, surveying me with a curious eye. ‘How did you and Callum meet again?’
Shit. I had no idea what he’d told them, if anything.
‘It’s such a boring story,’ I lied through a yawn. ‘If I tell it again I’ll put myself to sleep. Tell me about Glasgow, is it fun? I’ve never been.’
‘It’s the best, you should go.’ He took the bait happily, jumping on my offer to talk about himself. ‘Perfect place for the black sheep of the family.’
‘You?’ I grinned as he dug around in the open biscuit tin between us. ‘I thought Callum was the black sheep?’
‘Callum is the prodigal son,’ he corrected. ‘Dad’s waiting for him to come home and beg forgiveness, trust me. I also did a semester of ecumenical studies, I know what I’m talking about.’
I helped myself to a chocolate digestive and gave it a dunk.
‘I never did understand that saying. The black sheep can’t be that bad, everyone wants his wool in the nursery rhyme.’
‘That’s me all right. They all want a bit of me.’
Rory gave me a sly grin and I matched his expression with a smirk of my own.
‘Which only leaves one question. If Callum’s the prodigal son and you’re the black sheep, what does that make Elsie?’
‘All work and no play, makes Elsie a dull coo,’ he answered. ‘There’s no helping my sister. Chop off her arm and you’ll find the word “martyr” running through her like “Blackpool” through rock.’
‘And if I cut you open, we’d find the words “work-shy bastard”.’
Elsie stormed into the kitchen with perfect and terrible timing. Hair scraped back, clad in a well-worn wax jacket, her cheeks pink from the cold, she gave the both of us a look that would strike a lesser man dead.
‘Elsie, my dearest, darling sister,’ Rory said, utterly unmoved. ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Is it?’
I braced myself for impact when she turned her eyes to me.
‘Can you explain why Callum has been screaming at me down the phone, demanding I come up to the house to check on you when you’re sat here scranning biscuits with Rory?’
I shrugged.
‘Just a thoughtful person, I suppose.’
‘He’s an idiot,’ she snapped back. ‘He’s a selfish, inconsiderate, heedless idiot. You can call him back and tell him you’re alive, I’m not his bloody servant.’
I’d met a lot of disproportionately angry people in my time – Joel when Netflix recast Henry Cavill in The Witcher, Desi when faced with even the most minor inconvenience and even me when they changed the recipe of Percy Pigs – but I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone filled with quite so much irrational rage as Elsie McClay.
Before she could skewer me with another sharply worded attack, I heard a car door slam outside, footsteps dashing quickly over the gravel. A quick look out the window showed Derek letting himself out of one passenger side back door as Mal opened the other for Lizzie.
‘You’re OK!’
Callum burst into the kitchen, running straight past his sister and rushing towards the table as if to tackle me. Then he stopped short, slamming his hands onto the wooden surface instead.
‘Why did you hang up on me?’ he demanded. ‘Why didn’t you call me back? Why is your phone off? I thought you’d broken your neck.’
‘All right, drama queen.’ Rory spoke with perfectly executed side eye. ‘Calm down before you have a heart attack.’
‘I didn’t hang up on you, I dropped my phone,’ I replied, flushing from head to toe under the force of his panicked glare. ‘And my phone isn’t off, I couldn’t call you back because it’s broken. Why are you shouting at me? Shouldn’t you be at your aunt’s house?’
‘Aye, I should,’ he replied, voice still raised. ‘But apparently you broke your phone and Elsie couldn’t be bothered to let me know if you were dead or alive so I’m back here.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Elsie threw out her arms to confirm her place in the kitchen but he was too angry to listen. ‘I was just about to call you.’
‘I rang an hour ago! I know you saw my messages.’
‘I was busy,’ she replied coolly. ‘I didn’t realise it was an emergency. I was going to text you.’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ Rory corrected. ‘She just said so.’
‘What’s all the bother?’ Derek strolled into the kitchen, an anxious-looking Fiona behind him. Outside, I saw Mal resting against the car, face turned up to the sun with a happy smile on his face, unbothered, probably not moisturised but happy in his own lane. I was insanely jealous.
‘Caroline,’ Lizzie looked at me with alarm. ‘You’re all right?’
‘She’s fine,’ Rory jumped in to answer before I could, waving a half-eaten Jammy Dodger in the air. ‘Cal’s panicking over nothing.’
Both parents considered me as I bared my teeth in a grimace of a smile. Derek looked annoyed but relieved. Lizzie, on the other hand, looked ready to swing.
‘We thought something terrible had happened,’ she said. ‘With the food poisoning.’
‘The what?’
‘The food poisoning,’ Callum replied with wide eyes. ‘The food poisoning that kept you up all night.’
‘Oh, that.’ I shrank down in my seat, trying not to look at a bemused Rory. ‘No, I’m fine now. All good.’
‘You’re fine?’ she replied.
I nodded.
‘Then what you’re telling me,’ Lizzie said, turning her ire on Callum, ‘is that we left your Auntie Jean’s, so you could race back for no reason whatsoever?’
‘Not no reason,’ he protested. ‘How was I supposed to know Caroline was safe when she wasn’t answering her phone and Elsie didn’t bother to reply?’
‘Selfish, inconsiderate idiot,’ Elsie muttered under her breath. ‘Classic Cal.’
I’d heard enough. Shooting to my feet, I slapped both hands on the table and five heads swivelled in my direction.
‘Stop having a go at him, all of you!’ I yelled, silencing everyone else in the room.
‘I got stuck in the tower and dropped my phone and if Rory hadn’t come home when he did, I’d probably have hypothermia by now and would have to go to hospital because Elsie certainly didn’t rush to help me and I really don’t think you should be angry at Callum for being justifiably concerned about someone he loves! ’
I blinked, stunned by the torrent of words that rushed out my mouth, the last of them echoing through the room.
Loves, loves, loves. Directly across the table, Callum stared at me as though he’d never even seen me before, his pupils dilated, his jaw hanging slack and, as my heart pounded in my ears, I thought I heard him whisper:
‘Thank you.’
No one else said anything but as I recovered myself, I couldn’t help but notice they were all looking me up and down.
‘Caroline, what’s that you’re wearing, hen?’ Derek asked.
I looked down at my bare legs and the jumper that just barely covered my backside. In my freezing panic and the rush for tea, I’d forgotten all about what I was or rather wasn’t wearing.
‘This?’ I opened my mouth and hoped something believable would come out. ‘It’s a dress. They’re all the rage in London. Everyone’s wearing them.’
‘No wonder she almost caught her death,’ Lizzie muttered. ‘God help the southerners.’
‘Caroline, can you come with me, please?’ Callum cocked his head towards the door. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
‘Aye, his toorie,’ Rory muttered, earning a scolding slap around the back of his head from his mother.
Derek pressed one hand into his lower back. ‘I need a bloody drink. And don’t any of you tell me what time it is, I don’t bloody care, my back is killing me.’
‘What have I said about leaving the farmwork to Elsie,’ his wife said as she helped him into a hard-backed chair, his eyes closed, teeth clenched together. ‘He was up at the crack of dawn, chasing those bloody sheep around again. Now you’re going to be in agony all Christmas.’
‘Dad, I’ve told you, if I want help I’ll ask for it,’ Elsie snipped, something like embarrassment or guilt pulling at her features. Suddenly, her face smoothed out and she looked up, smiling right at me. ‘But I know what’ll sort you out. Caroline, why don’t you give my dad a massage?’
All the blood in my body drained down to my feet, fixing me to the spot.
‘Sorry?’
‘Why don’t you give my dad a massage?’ Elsie repeated, carefully enunciating each and every word. ‘The man is in pain. You’re not going to stand there and watch a man suffer when you could help, surely?’
‘Don’t be foolish, Elsie,’ Callum answered when I couldn’t. ‘She’s not here to work.’
Derek arched his back, eyes closed in anguish before he opened one to peep at me.
‘Don’t worry about me, hen,’ he said through a groan. ‘I’ll muddle through. Not that I’d complain if you twisted my arm, mind.’
‘I don’t have any of my things,’ I replied, scrambling for a decent excuse. ‘I don’t have any, um, oils or those little hot stone things.’
‘Little hot stone things?’ Rory chuckled as he sorted through the biscuit tin for chocolate digestive. ‘She’s a pro.’
‘Mum’s got oils,’ Elsie piped up. ‘Remember, Mum? I bought them for you last Christmas? I know you haven’t used them all, if you’ve even opened the bloody box.’
‘There might be a wee bit left,’ Lizzie hedged, eyes skirting away. ‘A tiny wee bit.’
With a gratified clap, Elsie beamed in my direction.
‘Perfect! It’s so kind of you, Caroline, to take such good care of your boyfriend’s old dad. Who knows, he might be your father-in-law one day, you want to take good care of him.’
It was impossible to say who turned white the fastest, me, Lizzie or Callum.
‘You don’t have to,’ Callum said. ‘If you don’t want to.’
‘Why would she not want to?’ Elsie cut in. ‘Stop being weird, Cal, Rory is right, she’s a professional masseuse. Isn’t there a masseuse code that says you have to help someone when they’re in pain?’
‘We prefer to be called massage therapists,’ I said feebly.
‘Then you’ll do it?’ she asked.
Sometime, the only way out was through.
I nodded my head.
‘You’re sure?’ Callum asked as a suspiciously spritely Derek leapt to his feet, practically sprinting out the room. I rose slowly, glaring at Elsie and her Cheshire cat grin.
‘Trust me, I’m a masseuse,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘By the way, if you get a chance, could you get my skirt down from the silver birch by the tower? Long red satin one, you can’t miss it.’
‘Should I ask why your skirt is in a tree?’
‘No,’ I said, yanking my jumper down one more time before following Derek out the kitchen. ‘I wouldn’t bother if I were you.’