Kitty

Chapter 2Moving Home

2

‘And where are you off to, if I might ask?’ Marjorie said as she wiped the grill pan dry after its scrubbing.

Kitty looked down at her flat, fourteen-year-old’s chest, her skinny, purplish chicken legs and her sorry-looking bathing suit, turned grey from having been thrown into the wash with the navy towels. She bit the inside of her cheek, remembering what her mum had said about being sarcastic and how it was most unappealing. ‘I was going to go for a quick swim.’ She nodded in the direction of the pool, beyond the side garden and behind the hedge, as she draped the large, rough-textured beach towel over her shoulder.

The one good thing to come out of the riding accident back when she was younger was the advice from the doctor at St Bride’s. After the second or third failed operation on her wonky arm, he’d suggested she take up swimming to help with dexterity, muscle tone and all the rest. And Kitty had loved the idea straightaway. Seven years on and swimming had become an important part of her life. Something no one could deny her, not even Ruraigh and Hamish.

‘A quick swim?’ Marjorie did this, repeated nearly everything she said, which irritated her. Her dad had explained that Marjorie was no spring chicken and was probably doing so to ensure she had heard correctly. No matter, it still grated.

‘The sun’s out.’ As if proof were needed, Kitty pointed to the light flooding through the wide sash window and onto the worn wooden countertop, highlighting the bleach marks left by Marjorie’s overzealous scouring. ‘I don’t want to miss it.’

Having lived all her life in the notoriously unpredictable climate of the Scottish Highlands, Kitty was well used to it being summery in the morning and wintry by the afternoon, or vice versa, and she wasn’t about to give up on this glorious window of opportunity. It was Easter and the weather was unseasonably good.

‘Patrick has cleaned the pool out and I’ve been waiting for a dip. I shan’t be too long.’

‘Waiting for a dip? They’ll be here any minute! I’d advise that rather than messing about, you go and wash your face and clean your teeth.’

‘Wash my face and clean my teeth?’ Maybe this repetition thing was infectious. ‘I don’t see why I have to, it’s only Hamish and Ruraigh and I know for a fact they don’t clean their teeth when they’re going to see me! They hardly spoke to me last time they were home.’ She toyed with the edge of the towel and pouted in the indignant way that only a fourteen-year-old girl could.

It had been a hard thing for her to accept that in the four years since her two cousins, brothers by any other name, had started at the prestigious Vaizey College, hundreds of miles away in southern England, they had stopped including her as much, if at all. Each trip back to Darraghfield had seen a slow but undeniable erosion of their closeness. Gone was the rough and tumble of their playful holidays, and no longer was she confident of being able to make them laugh or challenge them to a kick-about. It was as if they no longer found her good company, and she wondered what about her could have changed so much. ‘Oh no, not Kitty!’ she overheard Ruraigh moan when Hamish had suggested inviting her for a muck-about on the river. ‘She’ll only slow us down!’ Her cheeks had flamed with anger and her eyes had sprouted tears. Suddenly she’d found herself relegated to the status of a baby. She also heard Ruraigh remark to Hamish that she was ‘the most boring girl in the world’, and that hurt.

The changes were subtle at first; they began asking Patrick the gardener’s sons to make up a four with them for tennis, Monopoly or golf, even though she and Isla, her friend in the village, would have happily stepped up to the plate. They made private jokes about people and places she had never heard of: ‘Aye, Twitcher! Twitcher!’ they bellowed, before rolling around on the sofa. She sat, excluded and awkward, staring at the TV and trying not to care, wondering who or what Twitcher was and why it was so funny.

Their bodies had changed too, the soft pouches of boyhood replaced by hard muscles and wiry hair. When they’d arrived at Darraghfield for the summer holidays after their first year at Vaizey, she’d thought they looked yucky. She was nearly twelve, but at thirteen and fourteen, they were like alien creatures. Their voices had altered too, becoming deeper, with less of a crackly edge, and their vowels had got more rounded, the burr of their Highland heritage much less distinct. Words like ‘grass’ and ‘bath’ were elongated in a way that made them sound like royalty or the presenters on the BBC.

‘Stinky old school, stinky old boys!’ had been her conclusion when they’d finally left for the start of the autumn term.

‘What’s that?’ her dad had asked over the top of his newspaper.

‘I said, “Stinky old school and stinky old boys!”’ she repeated with clarity and passion, lifting the teaspoon with its smudge of tea residue and smacking the top of her boiled egg with force.

Her dad had placed the paper on the breakfast table and given a half-smile. ‘It’s not easy being Ruraigh and Hamish. Their mum and dad are far away—’

‘Yes, India.’ Kitty was happy to show her knowledge and did so with a tone as dismissive as she could muster, hoping to indicate that she couldn’t care less. So what if her stupid uncle was in the stupid army and they lived a stupid amount of miles away. Why did that make it okay for the boys to leave her out? She could play Monopoly as well as Patrick’s boys. Fact.

‘That’s right – India. And that’s why Darraghfield has always been their home, and that means you, Mum and I are very important to them.’

She sighed, wondering how he hadn’t noticed their rejection of her and if he had, why he wasn’t bothered by it.

‘And here’s the thing, Kitty – when you get older, things change, your mind and body grow so that you can absorb everything you see and everything you do. That doesn’t mean you forget what you already know or who you already love, but it does mean that things that seemed so very important in your childhood get a wee bit diluted.’

I don’t want to get diluted! I want to stay as I am.

‘D’y’understand?’ her dad asked earnestly.

She nodded even though she didn’t. Not really.

In some ways, Kitty felt differently about her cousins now that she was fourteen – or at least about teenage boys in general. She and Isla gawped and giggled at the pictures of David Essex and John Travolta in the copy of Jackie magazine they bought every week from the village shop. They gossiped about what their first kiss would be like and which of the boys in the village they’d choose if they had to. Kitty secretly suspected that Isla had a bit of a thing for Ruraigh, but nothing had been said yet, much to her relief.

Marjorie placed the grill pan in the top oven and shooed the dishcloth in Kitty’s direction, sighing affectionately and bringing her back to the discussion at hand. ‘It shouldn’t matter who is coming to the house, you shouldn’t want to greet anyone with mud on your cheek or anything less than sparkling teeth!’

‘Ah, well, the mud will be taken care of in the pool.’ Kitty wondered if this qualified as sarcastic or practical. It was hard to tell.

Marjorie pushed the tight sleeves of her blouse up over her wide, white arms. ‘Tell you what, let’s compromise. You go and clean your teeth, and I agree, a quick dip will take care of the mud on your cheek, but you are not to dawdle in there – a short swim, then back up here for changing.’

‘Thank you, Marjorie!’ she yelled as she darted along the hallway to the downstairs bathroom, adjacent to the boot room.

She raced past the two suits of armour that stood like the shells of soldiers at the bottom of the wide, sweeping staircase, and out of habit she patted the huge tapestries that lined the corridor as she whizzed by – patting them helped stop the dust from gathering, her mum always said. They were ancient, possibly from a similar period to the pikes crossed on the wall above them, talismans from significant battles fought by the Dalkeith Montrose family back in the day.

Darraghfield was pretty grand, but Kitty, having spent every day of her fourteen years there, knew no different and so never gave it a thought. The Dalkeith Montrose family had lived there for three hundred years, and some of the people in the gilt-framed portraits on the stairs, hallways and half-landings did look a bit like her dad. It was her dad who now ran Darraghfield and its estate, making sure the salmon-rich rivers and grouse shoots were well managed and kept the family’s wealth steady. Despite its history and size, the house itself was homely: in the reception rooms, the furniture was rounded and worn, with thick wool blankets over the arms and rugs brought back from travels far afield on the slate floors. Everywhere carried the residual smell of real fires.

In the bathroom, Kitty grabbed at the toothpaste tube and squeezed it, stuck out her tongue, licked a blob off the end, then swiped her hand across her mouth. Job done.

‘What are you up to in there, Kitty Montrose?’ Her mum leant on the doorframe, smiling at her.

Kitty was pleased to see her as these days her mum was more often than not upstairs. ‘I’ve just cleaned my teeth.’ She twisted her jaw defiantly.

‘Uh-huh.’ Her mum widened her eyes, not letting on if she was aware of the lie or not. ‘And you are off for a swim? As if I need to ask.’

Kitty nodded, looking at her smart, beautiful mum, who knew better than Marjorie what her outfit meant.

‘Can I plait your hair? It’ll stop it getting so knotty in the water, my little mermaid.’

‘Sure.’ Kitty followed her to the stairs and sat on one of the lower steps. Her mum sat a little higher, with her silk nightgown and robe flowing over her knees and down the wooden stairs. Without a brush or comb, her mum raked her long fingers through Kitty’s wild mane of curly red hair, smoothed it from her scalp and unpicked the knots. It felt so special to have her mum tending her hair so lovingly, and she enjoyed the snug feeling of sitting against her legs with the caress of soft silk on her arms. This was the version of her mum she loved best, the one who did these nice things for her, unhurried and interested, in close proximity.

‘My mumma used to do this for me each morning and I loved it. When I first met Daddy, I used to get him to brush my hair for me. He thought I was odd, but I loved that feeling, Kitty, of someone looking after my hair while I sat with my eyes closed and let my thoughts wander…’

Kitty closed her eyes and did just that, as her mum nimbly divided her hair into two bunches and twisted them into fat plaits that sat either side of her head, close to her scalp. She fastened the ends with two elastic hairbands recovered from her robe pocket.

‘There.’ Her mum leant forward and kissed Kitty on the forehead. ‘You’ll do.’

‘Thank you.’ She stood and turned to face her mum on the stairs. ‘I love you, Mum.’

Her mum’s face broke into a wide, adoring smile. ‘And I love you too, so much.’

‘You can come and watch me if you like?’ She pointed towards the garden.

‘Oh…’ Her mum shook her head, a little crease of worry at the top of her nose, as she gripped the neck of her nightgown. ‘I think I might just go back up to bed.’

Kitty nodded and swallowed the lump of disappointment in her throat. Her mum slowly stood and began her climb back up the stairs; the effort it took, it could have been a mountain.

Kitty ran into the boot room and slipped on her flip-flops, which were a tad too small, this now apparent from the way the backs bit uncomfortably under her heels. Shutting the stable-door of the boot room behind her, she sprinted down the gravel path, leapt over the shrub border, raced across the patch of grass and made her way through the narrow gap in the laurel hedge.

The hedge was the screen around her special place, providing shelter and privacy for Darraghfield’s beautiful Italianate-style heated swimming pool, a fancy addition for the third wife of her great-great-grandfather. Throwing her towel onto one of the wicker steamer chairs, she paused, taking in the perfect sunny vista as she stood on the edge with her long, pale toes curled around the curved lip of the tiles. The sunlight danced on the surface as it shifted in the breeze and the Roman steps at the far end wobbled, distorted in their watery home.

Kitty bent her knees and angled her back just as her dad had shown her. With her head tucked, arms level with her ears and hands reaching out, she leapt and pushed herself forward, feeling the immediate thrill of breaking the surface as the water rippled from her form. Working quickly, she propelled herself forward, hands slightly cupped, waggling her feet, moving at speed until her fingertips touched the opposite wall. She flipped around awkwardly, lacking the grace of swimmers who had the knack, and headed back, feeling the delicious tensing of her muscles against the resistance of the water.

Eight, maybe ten lengths later and her breath came fast. She trod water and wriggled her finger first in one ear and then the other, then smoothed the droplets from her face with her wrinkled palm. She felt both peaceful and very much alive. The sun warmed her freckled skin and all was right with her world.

I could stay like this forever… My happy place.

She lay on her back in a semi-doze as the water lapped at her ears. Lying like this turned the world into a quiet place, a refuge of sorts. It had been lovely to see her mum up and about earlier and she was grateful for the touch of her fingers on her scalp. It was a reminder of how things used to be. She let her eyes wander to the slate roof of Darraghfield, picturing her mum ensconced in the beautiful turret room, curled up, as she often was, looking small in the middle of the big bed and wanting to do nothing more than sleep. Dad said she was ‘very tired’. Marjorie said she was ‘under the weather’. Neither explanation came close to answering the many questions that flew around Kitty’s head. It was as if life exhausted her mum and nothing interested her, not even the tiny bird skull Kitty had found next to the path up by the stables. She’d rushed eagerly up the many fights of stairs and along the hallways, cradling the tiny, delicate thing in her palms, but not even this remarkable discovery had been enough to draw her mum from her sadness.

It wasn’t a surprise, not really. Kitty knew that if her mum wasn’t interested in her once-beloved horse, it was most unlikely that a little bird skull was going to prove a hit. The handsome Ballachulish Boy was groomed and fed but rarely ridden. He too took on the drop-headed melancholy that seemed to be spreading over the estate like a malaise. And then he was gone. It had been a dark day when she and her dad had watched him being goaded reluctantly into a trailer, tears prickling their eyes. ‘He deserves better’ was all the explanation her dad could offer.

Kitty executed a forward roll in the pool, as if resetting her thoughts. Then she reassumed her floating position.

Peaceful. Thinking now of nothing…

Just as the light arrived dappled through the leaves of the laurel hedge, so sound was diluted, reaching her ears differently. Kitty closed her eyes and let her arms bob by her sides, and there she stayed, happily floating on the water with the spring sun on her skin and the muted burble of birdsong in the distance. She heard the faint echo of a car door slamming and pictured her cousins alighting with bags, sports paraphernalia and a desperate need of the bathroom, as her dad slapped them on the back and wrapped them in brief, tight hugs. Just the image of her dad close by made her feel safe.

She had no idea how long she stayed like that – minutes, an hour? Her hold on time was skewed, so lost was she to the water. But then, quite unexpectedly, she sensed a change to the shape of her world.

A dark shadow loomed between Kitty and the sunshine.

Slowly she opened her eyes to see a man standing on the poolside. He stood with his hands in his pockets, shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow. She blinked and realised it wasn’t a man but a boy; a little older than her, but a boy nonetheless. Embarrassment made her right herself in the water. Ashamed that he’d seen her in a state of complete abandonment, her blush flared.

She stared at the floppy-haired outline of him and the shape of his face, a face that would become very familiar but which was not yet known to her. It was as if the universe knew that to reveal him to her completely might be more than her teenage heart could bear. Far better this gradual revelation of the body, the name, the life that would become so entwined with her own.

Kitty quite forgot she was wearing the ugly swimming costume that was baggy in places, worn thin on the bottom and discoloured to a dull grey. Truth was, she could barely think straight.

‘Angus!’ Ruraigh’s voice called and the boy turned slowly and was gone.

Kitty watched him walk through the gap in the hedge, then lay back in the water. But she was no longer at peace. She was in fact agitated. Thoughts crowded her mind – what might be for supper, how long would it take for her toes to turn to prunes, and when would she grow boobs – and each one of them was topped and tailed by the image of a slender boy called Angus.

*

‘So that’s a fine Scottish name you’ve got.’ Kitty’s dad smiled at the boy over the dinner table as her cousins heaped peas and buttered new potatoes onto their plates, dwarfing the slabs of poached wild salmon that they’d been served.

‘Yes, but that’s about where my Scottishness ends, I’m sorry to say.’

‘Can you believe that, Uncle Stephen? There were Ruraigh and I picking him for our rugby team, thinking we were kindred spirits and that he’d know the game, guessing we might have friends in common, and all the time he was from the New Forest, masquerading as a Scot with a name given to him by his grandfather!’

‘Was your grandfather Scottish?’ Kitty’s dad asked with thinly disguised hope.

‘I’m afraid not. Ruraigh is right – I’m a fake. My grandfather served with an Angus in the war and that was how I got my name.’

Stephen Montrose shook his head. ‘Well, we shall make a Scot of you yet.’

‘No wonder we kept losing at rugby – he couldn’t kick straight if you glued the ball to his foot!’ Hamish rolled his eyes.

The boys laughed, Angus blushed, raising his hands in defeat, and her dad chortled in the way she loved, with creases at the side of his eyes and his mouth wide open. This was how he used to laugh, on the sofa in the days when her mum had managed to keep her illness at bay. Or at least when Kitty had been less aware of it; if she really thought about it, the signs had always been there.

She felt torn, hating the male camaraderie and her exclusion from it, but pleased her dad was laughing. When he was like this, his happy mood lifted everyone, made everything seem possible. Gone was the stilted conversation around the table, when everyone ate too quickly, in a hurry to be elsewhere, and gone too were the worried glances at the dark shadows beneath eyes in want of sleep. The knot of unease in her stomach miraculously unwound, leaving her with a void that she filled with hope. It was nice to get a break from the anxiety.

She wished it could always be this way.

‘Well, if it’s a kicker you’re wanting, you could do a lot worse than Kitty, isn’t that right?’ Her dad waved his laden fork in her direction. ‘Been training her since she was knee-high.’

‘Not much call for kicking in a swimming pool!’ Hamish nudged his brother and they laughed. ‘Got them gills yet, Kitty?’

For the first time, she wondered if she too had changed. Maybe her cousins were not solely to blame for their gradual estrangement. Ordinarily she would have stood and thrown a spud at Hamish or shouted out loud that she’d seen him close to tears when they watched Kramer Vs Kramer – she had a store of insults ready for occasions such as this. But today the words stopped on her tongue and her cheeks reddened. She was aware only of Angus’s presence and how she might appear to him if she let her rage get the better of her.

She was still trying to think of an appropriate response when Angus leant forward, his elbows on the table, his white shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal bronzed forearms peppered with fair hair.

‘I thought a strong kick was exactly what’s needed to propel you through the water?’

He didn’t look at her, didn’t address her directly, but she knew that he spoke in her defence and it felt wonderful! Fireworks of happiness danced in her stomach, along with something else – a tingling, a churn of longing that was as new as it was scary. As if on autopilot, and to mask her confusion, she did what came naturally, picked up a spud and lobbed it – scoring a direct hit at Angus. Immediately, she ran from the room, tears gathering.

Twenty minutes later, Kitty sat with her jeans rolled up and her feet dangling in the water. The pool lights were on and the bright turquoise space seemed to glow in the evening darkness. She heard the rustle of the hedge and whipped round to see who or what might be disturbing her moment.

‘It’s only me.’ Angus spoke as he approached and Kitty’s heart leapt into her throat. He padded around the tiles and came to sit next to her, so close she could smell the tang of his end-of-day sweat and the whiff of supper and nerves on his breath. She stared ahead, hoping that her heart didn’t sound as loud to him as it did in her ears, thinking it would be a most bizarre thing for him to hear. He slipped out of his Docksides and rolled up his jeans before sitting down next to her, only a reach away, then placed his feet in the water next to hers.

‘I’m sorry about your shirt,’ she whispered, still mortified at the memory of the buttery spud landing squarely on his chest.

‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll wash. Your dad said Marjorie might have a go at it tomorrow.’

She nodded, thankful for Marjorie, who just might save the day. ‘I wasn’t aiming for you.’

‘As I said, no harm done.’

She kicked out in the water and watched the ripple spread.

‘I think there’s so much more to a swimming pool than a place to swim,’ he began.

She turned her head to the left. He had her interest – although he could have been reading aloud from the phone book and she would have been drawn.

‘What d’you mean?’

Angus took a deep breath through his nostrils and spoke softly. ‘When you get into a pool alone, it has a special kind of feel about it. You almost become one with the water.’

‘Yes!’ She nodded. Exactly. This boy might be a friend of her cousins, but he understood.

‘It always feels like the biggest win if you arrive at a pool and there’s no one else in it. I think you swim at a different level – it’s impossible not to, with that whole body of water there just for you. Doubly so if the pool is outside.’

‘I’ve only ever swum here and in the sea.’

‘Which do you prefer?’ He looked at her now. She noticed the way his hazel eyes meandered all over her face, as if committing her to memory, learning her, and she liked it.

‘Here. It’s my spot.’

‘Yes, I saw you here when we first arrived…’ He let this linger.

She smiled and nodded at the memory of that moment, which had managed to set the tone, hijacking her day.

‘The pool at Vaizey isn’t up to much. It’s big but not pretty, and they keep it on the cool side. And there’s something quite revolting about a school pool that has a hundred or so unwashed boys’ bodies in it each and every day.’ He laughed. ‘One of the lifeguards once told me I wouldn’t believe the things they found lurking at the bottom!’ He pulled a face.

‘Urgh, no thanks!’ She felt a little sickened by the thought.

‘Well, you’ll have to get used to it or find somewhere else to swim, and that’s not easy in rural Dorset.’

Kitty turned her body to face him. ‘ I’m not going to Vaizey! No way! Why would you think that?’ She shook her head at the absurdity of his suggestion.

‘Oh, I don’t know. My mistake. I… I thought…’

‘There you are, Angus!’ Ruraigh called from the gap in the hedge. ‘Fancy knockout snooker in the games room?’

‘Sure.’ He stood and stamped his wet feet on the tiles, gathering up his Docksides and holding them in his outstretched fingers as he walked off.

Kitty stared at the imprint of his wet feet on the ground next to her. She watched them dry and fade, wondering if he’d been hinting that he might like her to attend Vaizey… But surely not – he was sixteen and she was pale and boyish with a wonky arm and no boobs and, according to her cousins, the most boring girl in the world.

*

Over the rest of the Easter holidays, Kitty tried to engineer ways to be alone with Angus; she wasn’t trying to be devious, she was simply keen to study him without anyone else around. Once or twice she caught him at the tail end of breakfast. Ruraigh and Hamish always wolfed down their eggs and toast at breakneck speed, unwilling to waste a moment of the day. Such was their impatience, they’d abandon Angus, who ate in the same manner with which he undertook any task, with precision and consideration. He would sit alone at the table in the morning room with a slice of Marjorie’s homemade bread raised to his chest, the crust of which was always thick, hard and slightly burnt, delicious with a generous curl of salted Scottish butter.

One time Kitty walked nonchalantly into the room to look out of the window, as if assessing the weather. On another occasion she opened the drawer of the mahogany sideboard, searching for goodness knows what in a place that she knew contained only faded playing cards and her dad’s ancient solitaire board with some of the little white pegs missing. These activities were a red herring; her sole purpose was to be near him, to look at him, gathering images that she would store in the evolving montage in her brain. Tiny details held unfathomable fascination for her: the way his long fringe flopped over one eye when he leant forward; the square shape of his fingertips when they flattened on a surface; the barely audible ‘T’ sound he made before he laughed, and how if something wasn’t that funny to him, he omitted the laugh altogether and just uttered the little ‘T’. Kitty collected up all of these snippets and built Angus in her mind, layer by layer, filling in the gaps with her wishes and desires about what a boy, no, what a boyfriend should be.

Today she’d been pretending to look for the morning newspaper.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked from the table.

She looked down at her jodhpurs and riding jacket. What is it with people?

‘I’m taking my pony Flynn out for a hack. He’s getting on a bit and I need to keep his joints moving or he seizes up.’

Angus seemed less than interested.

‘Do you ride?’

Please say yes… She pictured the two of them cantering along the ridge as day broke, watching the warm sun soften the brittle spikes of the conifers that loomed large on the snow-capped hilltops.

‘God, no!’ He laughed and she heard the echo of that little ‘T’.

‘Have you ever tried?’ she pushed, unable to accept that someone was willing to miss out on the most fabulous experience the world had to offer. After swimming, of course.

‘Yes, once or twice. Not really my thing.’ He dusted the crumbs from his hands and reached for a napkin. ‘Plus I’ve seen your pony. Don’t think he’d take too kindly to having to ferry me around.’

‘He’s stronger than he looks.’ She leapt to her beloved Flynn’s defence. ‘You should have seen my mum’s horse, he was a beauty.’ Kitty smiled at the image of her mum in her riding habit astride the impressive Balla Boy, who used to do her bidding at no more than a click of her tongue or a flick of the reins. ‘But he’s been sent to a yard somewhere near Hawick. He needed a lot of looking after.’

‘I guess with your mum being depressed, that was hard – too much for her.’

Depressed. She stared at him. It was as if a thunderbolt had been fired into Kitty’s chest. That was the first time she’d heard the word associated with her mum. She knew almost nothing about depression, but she instinctively sensed Angus might be right. Her stomach bunched with equal measures of sadness and anger. How come Angus knew about her mum’s illness, which meant Ruraigh and Hamish did too, and yet she didn’t?

Tears welled and colour bloomed on her cheeks – entirely regrettable in front of Angus. She drew herself up tall, turned on her heel, and without another word marched out of the door, along the hall and across the back yard. Without knocking on the door of the former stable that had long ago been converted into the estate office, she turned the handle and walked in. Her dad was on the phone. He winked at her and pointed at the leather chair positioned on the other side of the wide mahogany desk, which was cluttered with piles of paper and faded, dog-eared files. While he continued his conversation, she sat and stared at the tartan carpet, until her eyes felt a little fuzzy.

‘Yes, yes, of course, Malcolm, that sounds good. Will you call Dezzy for me about next week’s fishing permits and lodge accommodation?’ Her dad nodded, as if Malcolm on the other end could see him. ‘You’re a pal. Speak soon.’ He put the phone down and clapped loudly. ‘Well, how lovely, a visitor!’ He beamed. ‘Although in future please remember that the only thing better than a visitor is a visitor bearing tea.’

Kitty declined to comment, in no mood for his banter, not right now.

He failed to take the hint. ‘And if memory serves correctly, you usually only come down here when you either want something or I am in trouble. So, which is it?’ Her dad smiled and sat forward, knitting his knuckles together on the desk.

‘It’s both.’ She picked at a loose thread on her sand-coloured joddies.

Stephen Montrose let out a loud laugh that sent ripples of love around the walls. She wished he wasn’t being so upbeat, not when the topic was anything but.

‘Is Mum depressed?’ She sucked in her cheeks, disliking the feel of the word in her mouth.

Her dad sat back in the chair, his soft expression disappearing. He rubbed his eyes and face, as if suddenly overcome with fatigue. ‘Who said that to you?’ he asked quietly.

‘Angus, but I know he will have heard it from the boys.’ Whip-smart and in tune, she held his gaze, daring him to lie to her.

He nodded and let out a deep sigh. ‘I suppose I’ve been waiting to speak to you about it, or, more accurately, putting it off.’ He inhaled and continued, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Your mum… Your mum is very poorly. A lot of people say, “Oh, I’m a bit depressed,” but what they really mean is fed-up or angry or tired, and that’s very different.’ He paused again and looked skywards, in the way that he always did when considering his words. ‘What your mum has is much more than being a bit fed-up. It’s called severe clinical depression and it isn’t a trivial thing.’

Kitty racked her brain, instantly trying to think of the times in her life when she had seen her mum with her head back, laughing. Happy. ‘She did my hair the other day and she seemed fine – she wasn’t dressed or anything, but she smiled at me.’

Her dad nodded. ‘She has days, moments when she is good.’

‘What about a nice holiday, or a day at the beach, or we could go up to Kilan Pasture and pick her some wildflowers?’ Kitty suggested.

Her dad continued, with a quiet, sad smile. ‘I wish it were that simple, darling. I wish there was a place or an event or a distraction that might bring her happiness, but it’s nothing she can snap out of, it’s not like a mood. It’s as if your mum has been plunged into darkness and no matter where she is, what lies ahead, how good things are or how much we love her, it doesn’t bring her any joy. Nothing does.’

‘Not even me?’ Kitty’s voice was small.

Her dad sniffed and pulled his handkerchief from his corduroys before blowing his nose loudly. ‘Well, Kitty, never doubt how much she loves you, how much she loves us. But this should surely show you how terrible this depression is, because you… you are all the joy in the world, and so if your mum is unable to take part in that, to enjoy you, it must surely be because part of her brain is a bit broken.’

‘How did it get broken?’ She thought about falling from her pony and her arm snapping – was that possible with a brain?

Her dad shook his head. ‘We don’t know. But it did and it’s just like breaking a limb…’ She looked up, wondering if he had read her thoughts. ‘Or having a disease of any other kind. But the difficulty with having a broken brain is that other people can’t see what’s wrong and that makes it hard for them to understand it.’

She nodded because she too found it hard to understand. ‘Can’t they just fix it?’ She inadvertently looked at the kink in her wonky arm and flexed her fingers, thinking of all the operations and recuperations at St Bride’s.

‘Well…’ Again his voice was crackly with emotion. ‘She has spoken to a lot of doctors and they’ve given her medicine, and sometimes she feels a bit better, a bit brighter, but most of the time she doesn’t. It’s like someone has switched off her happiness.’

Kitty looked out of the window as it started to rain, and considered the facts. The thought of someone switching off your happiness was one of the saddest things she could imagine. ‘How long will her brain be broken for? How long until they can switch her happiness back on?’ She pictured turning off the video recorder in the TV room and counting to ten in the hope that when she turned it back on it would work just fine.

‘Those are good questions.’ He swallowed and rubbed his beard, she could tell that, like her, he could not wait for that day. ‘It’s like part of Mum has gone away and all we can do is wait for it to come back to us. Hope and pray that it comes back to us.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘But the truth is, we don’t know where it’s gone and therefore we don’t know if it’s a short or long journey. It might have gone round the corner or it might have gone to Timbuktu.’

It was Kitty’s turn to sigh; this was not the answer she’d been hoping for.

‘Her brain might never get fixed, or it might only get a bit fixed or it might get completely better.’ He raised his palms. ‘And that’s another thing about this terrible illness – no one knows. No one can give me certainty, facts or timelines, only what they think.’

‘Like guessing?’

‘Yes. Exactly like guessing.’

‘Can you… can you catch it, Dad?’ Her eyes flickered with the guilt of being concerned for her own health at a time like this.

Her dad tucked in his lips and shook his head vigorously from side to side, seemingly unable to verbalise his response. She saw tears now sitting in little pools in his eyes.

‘I think it’s a proper shit disease,’ she offered.

‘Aye, Kitty, it is. Proper shit.’ He smiled at her warmly. ‘Would you like me to come out with you? I can saddle up Benson and—’

‘No, thanks.’ She stood. ‘I’d rather go out on my own.’

*

Kitty saddled up her horse in silence and rode Flynn hard along the path that ran adjacent to the wide river at the bottom of the glen. ‘Oi, Kitty!’ Ruraigh called out from the bowl of the river as she flew past. She barely glanced in his direction, aware of him standing in the water, waders pulled high, casting his rod back and forth with a flourish that he hoped might tempt supper. She knew Marjorie was hoping for a haul of fat fish. Hamish lay sprawled on the grassy bank with a cigarette held high. She suspected Angus had stayed up at Darraghfield, and who could blame him if it meant not having to spend the day with those two idiots.

‘Good boy, Flynn!’ She spoke into his mane. His ears pricked up and with her head bent low, the two tripped with confidence along the stony path. As they rounded the curve in the river, her breath stuttered in her throat. She discovered that Angus had not stayed up at Darraghfield but was in fact standing all alone in the shallow fringes of the river, kicking up the sediment with his wellington boots and skimming flat stones over the surface of the water. His jeans were tucked into his boots and his jersey and shirtsleeves were pulled low on his wrists to ward off the worst of the cold breeze that was known to gather speed along the riverbed.

In a single action she pulled Flynn to a stop and jumped down, almost running into the water. With her heart pounding, she stood in front of the boy who had invaded her dreams and unsettled her equilibrium from the moment he arrived. This new knowledge about her mum had shaken her, frightened her, and she instinctively thought that contact with Angus might somehow help her.

‘Kitty!’ He looked a little surprised to see her. ‘Hello.’

‘Do you want to kiss me then?’ she asked, with her hands on her hips and a tremble to her limbs.

He raised his eyebrows and an amused if slightly confused smile crossed his lips. ‘Do I want to? I’m not sure,’ he answered rhetorically, looking up the river to see if the other boys could see them.

Without giving him a chance to consider her proposition further, Kitty stood on her tiptoes and pressed her closed mouth against his, abandoning herself to the moment. Her worry over her mother’s ill health flew from her mind, to be replaced with a deep, joyous longing that filled her gut and spread along her limbs like fire along kindling. She pulled away and looked at the flushed face of Angus, who smiled and drew her to him once again – into his arms and into his life.

*

When the others were around, Kitty and Angus did their best to be discreet, snatching sweet, chaste kisses on flushed cheeks whenever they could, and joining sweaty palms to hold hands when no one was looking. As the end of the holidays drew near, and with it the time to say goodbye, Kitty was surprised at how sad and listless she felt. She couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t even summon the enthusiasm to go out on Flynn. Tears came at the slightest provocation from Ruraigh or Hamish, and she had an almost continual sinking feeling in her stomach. She and Angus said a private goodbye in the games room the night before he left, swapping notes and promising to write, but as she lay in her bed that night she started to panic. Was what she was feeling the beginning of depression? Supposing her dad was wrong and it was catching after all? She didn’t want her happiness flying off to Timbuktu, didn’t want to float around in her pyjamas with the faraway look of her mum and unwashed hair sticking to her scalp.

Next morning, Patrick swung the Land Rover and its three teenage passengers out of the yard and she and her dad waved until it was out of sight.

‘So, you quite like this Angus fellow?’ her dad asked as they both stared into the distance.

Her embarrassment flared and her mouth went dry. ‘He’s okay, I s’pose,’ she managed, burying images of the two of them entwined, lips locked – the very last thing she wanted to imagine in front of her dad.

‘Well, that’s well and good, but be careful – I know how sixteen-year-old boys think—’

‘Da-ad!’ she interrupted, with a yell and a dig to his ribs with her elbow.

‘Jesus, Kitty, I’m ancient and I still think like a sixteen-year-old boy!’

The two laughed, standing on the gravel until their giggles stopped and the place felt eerily quiet.

‘You’re going to miss them.’ He ruffled her hair and she tutted, angered by such a babyish gesture. She was nearly fifteen, and what’s more, she was a teenager who’d been kissed , actually kissed, by a boy, and that changed everything.

She nodded. Miss them? Yes, I will…

‘Well, don’t fret, Kitty.’ He smiled at her, pulling her close. ‘You might be seeing them sooner than you think.’

She noted the way he shifted on his feet and how his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in a large swallow. ‘What do you mean?’ She looked up at the big man who didn’t know how to lie to her.

‘I’ve been thinking, maybe you might like Vaizey College?’

Kitty gave a loud snort of laughter. ‘Give over! Don’t be daft, Dad! As if I’d ever leave you and Mum.’ She looked up at the turret that housed her parents’ bedroom. ‘As if I’d ever stay anywhere other than Darraghfield!’