Chapter 9
9
Twenty minutes later, I was wobbling along the main road into Port Cathan while cursing my stupid need to help random strangers in airports, lottery tickets, the suitcase-rucksack, which I now suspected Blessing had topped up with rocks, Lander’s cows and most of all my hare-brained idea to jump on an aeroplane without bothering to take a single day to book somewhere to stay, or research how to get around the island, or anything at all whatsoever.
I tried being mad at Pip for helping me get here, instead of talking me out of it, but that was a lot harder than being cross at a random bunch of cows.
Every few minutes, a vehicle rumbled past, one driver hollering at the ‘mainlander’ hogging the narrow lane.
When a few minutes later the road started to curve upwards in what appeared to be a gentle slope, but felt to my burning thighs like the side of a mountain, I gave up, levering my stiffening limbs off the bike.
Barnie had assured me that Port Cathan was three miles away, ‘Eighteen minutes if you’re not a regular cyclist. Twenty, max, if you’re massively unfit.’
I checked the time. It was eight-fifteen. The longest twenty-five minutes of my life, and no village in sight. The urge to keep going, with the hope that at the end of this hell I’d find a comfortable bed, a shower and a hot meal, battled with the exhaustion dragging at every bone in my body, and the fear that when I arrived at the village things might somehow get even worse.
I settled the argument by awarding myself a five-minute break, wheeling the bike off the road and sinking onto the damp, grassy verge.
Leaning back on my hands, I closed my eyes and once again became aware that I was somewhere utterly other .
More birdsong, a distant lowing that I decided must be Lander’s herd on their way home and, of course, the gentle rhythm of waves breaking.
Opening my eyes, I caught the first hints of evening pink and gold shimmering around the sun, now hovering above the field beyond the road. I guessed at least an hour until it set, but the air carried the coolness of a summer night, and the light had softened with the lengthening shadows. I hauled myself up and did a full three-sixty, taking in the fields on either side, one full of half-grown wheat, the other a grassy meadow. A few hundred metres back from the road sat a stone farmhouse, surrounded by a large barn and several outbuildings, all encircled with a white fence. Up ahead, a small thicket prevented me from seeing how far the road still stretched, but the treetops almost glowed beneath the waning rays.
A rabbit suddenly scampered out from the hedgerow, bolted across the road and disappeared into the wheat. I spied a bird of prey circling over the far side of the meadow.
This place was beautiful.
I sank back onto the verge, the weariness of a very long day prompting me to consider finding a soft patch of grass, wrapping myself up in my new clothes and sleeping there, when a truck came chugging out of the thicket and down the hill.
I attempted to adopt the pose of a non-lost tourist who knew what she was doing, but it came to a stop anyway.
And, in what might possibly have been the best moment of my life so far, the door opened and Pip sprang out.
‘Hey.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets, squinting due to the sun being behind me.
‘Hi.’
‘You decided to cycle from the airport?’ he asked, his tone uncertain. Because clearly for the sweat-soaked, dishevelled woman now slumped by the side of a near-deserted road, cycling three miles uphill with a wheeled rucksack was not a wise decision.
‘The bus never turned up. The road was blocked with cows.’
He grimaced. ‘Why Big Lander trusts his eejit grandson with live animals is one of the island’s great mysteries.’
Holding out one hand, he helped my aching legs to a stand. ‘Did no one offer you a lift?’
For a thrilling, electrified second, Pip carried on holding my hand after I’d stood up, before suddenly dropping it as if realising I was the crank who’d jumped on a plane and followed him home.
‘Not that hiring a bike isn’t a perfectly good solution, of course. It’s a lovely wee cycle. Just a braw thing to do after a full day at work and your first ever plane ride. I’d be too focused on finding somewhere to stay. But then, I don’t do so well when it comes to winging it.’
It didn’t need to be said that I wasn’t doing that well, either.
‘Places in Daffy’s van were in high demand. I wasn’t about to leave a child or an elderly person stranded.’ I rubbed at one of my sore arms. ‘She did offer me a ride on Rozzo’s moped, but, well…’
Pip cringed. ‘Rozzo celebrated his sixteenth birthday last week by devouring his girlfriend’s “special brownies”, then driving his new moped through Port Cathan wearing nothing but a helmet, hoping it would disguise his identity.’ He picked up my bag. ‘At the very least, you’d have wanted to disinfect the seat.’
‘Is anyone on this island normal?’
He laughed then. A full-on, deep rumble, his teeth flashing as he opened the truck door. ‘This is normal. It’s you mainlanders who’re the strange ones.’
‘Are you stealing my bag? Is that normal island behaviour, too?’
He slammed the door and moved to pick up the bike. ‘I’m doing what I should have done two hours ago.’
He placed the bike in the back of the truck, then turned to face me, hands on hips. ‘I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. I’m a random guy who buys pasties from you every now and then, and while here, it’s totally normal to offer a complete stranger a lift if they need it – as Daffy demonstrated – I’ve spent enough time on the mainland to know that women there can feel nervous if a man invites them into his truck. I wasn’t sure what the honourable thing was, so I wimped out of asking.’
‘You’re not really a random guy any more.’
He sighed, rubbing one hand through his thick hair. ‘I don’t feel like one but I wasn’t sure if you felt that, too. Once I got home, I stopped overthinking it, realised that, after having lunch with me, if you thought I was a potential creep then you’d have flown to Belfast instead. Or at least got the Siskin plane tomorrow. So, I came to find you. Just in case.’
‘You didn’t know about the bus, but you still came to find me?’
He gave a sideways glance. ‘Have I gone and made it creepy now?’
It was my turn to laugh. ‘Pip, look at me. I am very much in need of rescuing. If Rozzo rocked up naked on his moped, I’d have probably said yes at this point.’
I dared to let my eyes meet his for a moment longer than any mainlander woman would consider normal. ‘Besides, I followed you. If anyone’s sounding the creep alarm, it’s clearly me.’
Pip had reversed the truck and was heading back up the hill before I thought of the most important question.
‘I was too relieved to see you to even ask where you’re taking me.’
‘I could make some joke about my lair, or where I stored all the other girls, but I’m genuinely trying to be reassuring…’
‘Kind of too late now you’ve mentioned it anyway.’
‘Yeah. If it helps, though, I’m not taking you to my farm.’
I swatted away the ripple of disappointment with a sensible mental finger wag.
‘My sister Lily has converted one of our old barns into a B&B. I didn’t mention it earlier because she’s not officially open for another fortnight, and, as well as being clueless about what’s appropriate when it comes to talking to women I haven’t known my whole life, I’m also horribly clued up about how my sister will react to me mentioning that I know a woman. Let alone asking if she can stay in her not yet open B&B.’
‘But you’re going to ask her anyway?’
‘I already did. When I panicked about not picking you up, I called the Island Arms to see if you’d got there safely. They’re fully booked for a mainlanders’ wedding, which has the knock-on effect of the other decent hotel also being full.’
‘I could have stayed at the caravan park.’
‘I’d be very happy to drop you off there. I’m sure there’s space. But the caravan park shop closed at six, and the family who run it are so stingy, you won’t even get a teabag, let alone milk or sugar. Lily used to run a café that officially served the best breakfast on the island. If you stay with her, it’ll be worth it. And she said you can stay rent-free for the weekend if you show her how to make your pasties.’
It took me another half-mile before I dared to ask the next, obvious question.
‘How did she react to you asking if a woman can stay?’
‘I told her the hotels were full, so she was fine.’
I was so flustered at the very thought of what Lily might be assuming, let alone the exhaustion, the wild events of the day, I blurted the next question before my common sense could intercept it.
‘No. I mean, does she think I’m… your woman?’
Pip almost swerved off the road.
He cleared his throat, keeping his eyes firmly ahead. I braved a glance and saw that his cheeks looked as warm as mine felt.
‘She knows who you are.’
‘The person you buy pasties from.’
Another pause. ‘Exactly.’
We soon reached Port Cathan, winding along the seafront where the harbour displayed boats ranging from dinghies, through fishing boats to a sleek superyacht. On the other side of the road, I counted four cafés, two hotels – including the distinctly non- Grand – a few touristy shops and an art gallery. Bookending all these were a row of pastel-painted terraces and some larger cottages with brightly coloured window boxes and picket fences.
‘It’s like something out of a film,’ I said, taking in the crowded patio outside one of the cafés.
On the far side of the harbour, we drove past a beach, lit up with solar lights, and a group of people sitting on camping chairs around a firepit, watching the sunset dance upon the waves while dog walkers wandered closer to the water.
‘While I admit that Harbour Road does maintain a sheen that mainlanders love, on the other side of those houses is the real village. There’s the village store, Tenneson’s Farm Supplies, the community centre, school and the fish-market.’ Pip grimaced. ‘Put it this way: the harbour is busy this evening because the wind is blowing in the right direction. Although plenty of the people living along here have got used to the smell. Mainly because they can’t ever get it out of their clothes.’
The road then veered inland, winding back uphill until, less than twenty minutes after we’d set off, we turned down a one-lane gravel track for a couple of hundred metres, pulling into a driveway with a sign that I could just make out through the twilight as Sunflower Barn .
I grabbed my case from the back seat while Pip lifted the bike out of the back of his truck, assuring me that it was the best way to get around the island.
The red front door was set underneath a porch trellis, which had a baby honeysuckle making its way up one side. Instead of using the brass knocker, Pip opened the door and walked straight in.
‘Hello?’ he called, prompting a woman to shoot out of an oak doorway on the other side of the spacious square hall.
‘Shush!’ she hissed, waving both hands at him. ‘I’ve finally got Beanie down. If I have to read about that mole one more time, I’m going to dig myself a flippin’ tunnel in the garden and live there.’
‘Still obsessed?’
The woman, who I presumed must be Lily, hurried across the hall and threw her arms around him. ‘It’s not natural for anyone to know that much about moles. Let alone a three-year-old girl. It certainly shouldn’t be keeping them up an hour past their bedtime.’
She caught herself, peeling herself away from Pip as if suddenly noticing the stranger in her house.
‘Oh, you must be Emmaline.’
Her face, framed with the same dark hair as her brother, only pinned in a messy bun, lit up as she stepped forwards to give me a hug. I noticed then the pregnant bump beneath her loose T-shirt.
‘My friends call me Emmie.’
‘Emmie it is, then.’ She stepped back, the pale-blue eyes beneath thick, dark lashes dancing between me and Pip. ‘I’m Lily, Pip’s biggest sister. Come through and make yourself cosy. You must be dying for a drink. Pip, will you take Emmie’s bag up to the yellow room? It’s got a daisy on the door.’
I followed Lily into the kitchen, a gorgeous space with appliances to rival my garage and a huge, purple table near a sliding glass door at one end. Beside that was a corner sofa, television and a mountain of toys.
‘This is Malcolm, my husband. Malcolm, this is Pip’s friend who spontaneously jumped on his plane when she heard he was heading home for good, and so is going to be our pre-launch test guest.’
Malcolm, a bear-like man with a shaved head and hearty beard, gave a non-committal nod from where he sat at the table absorbed in paperwork. An older child, sprawled on the sofa reading a Malorie Blackman novel, sprang to a sitting position, her book forgotten.
‘You’re Uncle Pip’s girlfriend?’
Oh, boy.
‘No. Just a friend.’ I resisted the urge to reverse out of there.
‘But you’re the pasty girl he’s always going on about when he comes home?’
‘Um. I do sell pasties, yes…’
‘Only a matter of time, then.’ She flopped back, lifting the book to her nose again. ‘You’re smaller than I expected. But a lot prettier.’
‘Oh?’
What had Pip said that made her think I wouldn’t be pretty?
Never mind that – Pip had been saying things about me?
She turned her page. ‘Well, you look nice. And he’s… Pip.’
‘Are you being rude about your uncle?’ Lily scolded. ‘To his new friend?’
‘She can see what he looks like. And if anyone mentions pasties, he goes quiet and awkward like Barnie when he’s trying to tell Auntie Violet he loves her.’
Lily spun around, a kettle in her hand. ‘What? Are you talking about Barnie Cork?’
‘Or what, all the other, non-existent Barnies living on this island?’
‘When did he tell Auntie Violet he loves her, and why on earth did no one tell me?’
‘I said he tried to tell her, Ma.’ The girl rolled her eyes, still reading. ‘He always gets shuffly and stammery when she talks about how she wants to go travelling. Then he starts going on about all the reasons she should stay. Apart from the biggest reason, which is him being in love with her. Do you people notice nothing?’
‘We notice that it’s nearly nine o’clock on a school night, and you’re not in bed,’ Malcolm said in a lilting Welsh accent. ‘If you spent more time concentrating on your own business rather than snooping into other people’s, you might not have another after-school correction tomorrow.’
‘Ugh! I was answering Ma’s questions. If I’d walked off, you’d have moaned at me again for being rude.’ She rolled off the sofa and stomped out.
‘That was Flora,’ Lily said. ‘Twelve going on seventeen. The only child on the island who gets in trouble for reading too much.’
Malcolm got up and took a couple of glasses off a high shelf. ‘I know Lily’s put the kettle on, but I’m wondering if wine would be more suitable to the occasion. Low alcohol, in honour of those of us gestating a baby or driving home later.’
Before I could answer, Pip appeared in the doorway. ‘It’s looking great up there.’
He exchanged a brief half-hug with Malcolm.
‘Had a good nosey about?’ Lily poked him with a corkscrew. ‘Not hard to guess where Flora gets it from.’
‘Back in April, the upstairs was a pile of plaster dust and rubble. Now it’s all, “show Emmie to the yellow room”. Of course I had a nosey.’
They carried on swapping banter until Lily handed me a glass of white wine. Malcolm pulled back the sliding door and ushered me outside to a large patio, with two dining sets and a more informal seating area around a coffee table.
‘How’s the garden getting along?’ Pip asked, once we were all settled on the comfier seats. I’d carefully chosen an individual chair rather than one of the sofas. I still felt whisked up in a whirlwind, and sitting beside Pip would have made it even harder to act normal.
‘Come on, little brother, we have far more interesting things to talk about than the garden,’ Lily said, with a wink in my direction.
I automatically glanced at Pip, our eyes catching before his darted away again.
‘Yeah. I was going to see if I could catch Mammaw, but now I’m wondering if it’s safe to leave Emmie alone with you.’
Lily spun towards him so quickly, she sloshed wine over the edge of her glass. ‘You haven’t seen Mammaw yet?’
Pip squirmed on his seat like a naughty schoolboy. ‘She was napping when I got back to the farm, and then I went to find Emmie…’
‘Wait. What? Instead of bringing Emmie with you to the farm, you lost her?’
Pip turned to me. ‘Our grandmother is ninety-one. She’s normally in bed by now but will be waiting up for me. Is it okay if I head off, or do you want me to stay and explain to my sister, who has the audacity to accuse me of being nosey, that you’re not on the island with me?’
‘Of course, that’s fine,’ I managed to stammer. As embarrassing as this situation was, Pip leaving might just make it easier.
He kissed his sister, drained his glass, threw me the faintest twitch of a smile and left me to it.