7
‘ I t’s about hair-smoother,’ says Janey quickly. ‘I’ve got this weird frizz at the front that’s appeared out of nowhere. It’s sticking out like TV aerials. TV aerials are, uh . . . things we used to have on TVs.’
Sitting in her tiny, beautiful bedroom, with its tasteful old wardrobe and glorious view, as the evening sun hits the window frames, Essie can’t believe the predicament she’s in.
Saying it is going to make it real. Her landlady had said, very casually that evening, that in fact she was going to start doing short-term lets for the room, so she’d need it back.
Essie had known it was coming. And she supposes she shouldn’t blame the woman after all; she’s just getting by, like everybody else.
Which doesn’t stop her hating her with the passion of a million fiery suns and wanting to spill red wine on her beautiful pale furniture, which wouldn’t help matters as she desperately needs the deposit back.
The agony of looking at horrible rooms on the same websites she used to idly browse for country homes is not helping either.
Essie takes a deep breath. She had known her mum was proud of her, going to university – first in the family, she’d told everyone – fleeing far away to the big city, away from that small life, and the awful atmosphere in the house, and her parents getting divorced the second – the second – she was out the door, making it entirely clear that they had made their lives a living hell just because she was at home and wouldn’t be doing it for one minute longer.
Leaving her adrift in a distant city with nothing underfoot to moor her; just years of her parents wrangling about the house and money and every bloody thing while she and Al just had to get on with it.
It had been hard to forgive. Essie isn’t there yet.
Janey knows it, and it cuts her to the bone, and Essie lets it.
Dads . . . dads get away easier. And Colin is incredibly busy with his new family anyway.
‘Ess?’ says her mother’s voice, in a way that always makes her feel reassured and slightly furious at the same time.
‘Um . . . Mum, I was thinking . . .’
Essie finds herself, surprisingly quickly, on the brink of tears.
She’s worked so hard, come so far. Her mum is so proud of her.
How will she square this with all her friends; with everyone in the village from the Scot Nor supermarket, all the way to the GP surgery and the hospital; all of them will know that her fancy daughter who went all the way to the big city was crawling back with her tail between her legs.
The humiliation is going to be unbearable.
She takes a deep breath.
‘Mum, I thought maybe I’d come home for a wee bit.’
*
Janey had stopped the car again to make the call.
She knew theoretically she could just do it on the speaker, but she didn’t like driving and talking at the same time.
The light was deep pink on the long side of Ben Leven.
She glanced back at the lambs, whose mothers obviously wanted them away, but who continued to frolic in the muddy water.
She couldn’t help smiling. She didn’t say anything down the phone, though.
Didn’t want to jump in and get it wrong, as she always did.
But now she is trying to hide her delight as she parks outside her tiny house, the fading sun hitting the walls of the empty cottages on the corner.
She has got used to having the street to herself; it’s going to be weird.
Please, please, she thinks. Please let it be someone local.
But it might be too late. It’s too picturesque, has too much potential.
They could whack it on the North 500 route, add camper van parking .
. . oh, lord, please no. She likes tourists in the village, everyone does – you can’t deny the joy of toddlers picking up their first crabs, their parents relishing the freshest fish suppers or listening to Struan McGhie’s ceilidh band play in the pub, while lingering over a Badachro malt and staring at the bright, clear sky.
It brings fun, and life, and colour. But she worries about a tipping point: the young ones vanishing off to the cities for opportunities, and nobody left to run the school or do the doctoring or clean the hotel rooms or work the farms. It’s a good life at the end of the world, it truly is. But it can be a tough one too.
But it would be so nice to have Essie home.
‘You’re in a cheery mood,’ comes a voice, and she starts and looks round. It’s Johnson, the postman. He’s married to Lish.
‘What are you doing down here?’ she says. ‘I thought you were meant to be finished at lunchtime and playing snooker or whatever it is posties do.’
He chuckles good-naturedly. Johnson is a big ball of good nature.
‘You need to sign for a parcel,’ he says. ‘I know when you finish.’
‘Oh, Johnson!’ she says. ‘You can just leave it outside; nobody will nick it.’
‘Can’t take chances,’ says Johnson, even though there is so little crime in the village that Pete, the policeman, spends most of his time giving parking tickets to tourists for reasons he has just made up. Everyone is very grateful he is not running for political office. ‘Also . . . ’
Johnson and Lish live out in the country, far away from the shops. She looks in his hands. Sure enough, there’s clear evidence of a Fry’s Chocolate Cream bar on there.
‘Have you been to the Scot Nor?’ she says.
‘Don’t tell Lish! She’ll start going on about my cholesterol again. Do you want your parcel or not?’
Janey picks up the box and colours slightly.
‘Don’t tell me,’ says Johnson. ‘I am very good at this.’ He concentrates. ‘Some miracle skin cream you saw advertised on Facebook.’
‘Lish told you.’
‘She didn’t,’ says Johnson. ‘All you ladies get it all the time.’
‘Oh, really?’ sighs Janey. ‘Is it working, do you think?’
‘I think,’ says Johnson, ‘you are all lovely and you shouldn’t worry so much.’
‘Well, Lish is a very lucky woman.’
‘She is. Oh, also, look out for a big dog that’s gone missing.’
‘What kind of a dog?’
‘How about, any big dog you see running free, you just call it in anyway?’
‘Who needs Facebook when we’ve got you?’ says Janey, smiling, as Johnson gets back on his electric bicycle and pedals off, grinning broadly, and she takes out the rusty old key to her very own house, and steps inside.