29
‘ N ow,’ Al is saying. ‘On to gralloching. Gralloching is the hygienic removal of the internal organs of the animal . . . ’
It is a chilly early Sunday morning but the mist is rising, which is unfortunate as it means conditions will be clear enough to carry on with the shooting, Essie thinks to herself.
Everyone else is in ridiculous Barbours and wellies.
She’s in a black puffa she last wore in secondary school, with what her mother calls her ‘torn’ face to match it.
She doesn’t have to go on the deer stalk, she knows.
But if she doesn’t, she won’t see Connor at all, and that is driving her crazy.
*
When she’d met Connor at the tiny airstrip yesterday afternoon, she’d been so excited: he was as handsome as ever. If his stupid friends hadn’t been there, Essie would have run towards him. Instead she’d just grinned.
‘It’s me!’ he’d announced after he’d kissed her. ‘Your money-obsessed Big City Boyfriend. Have you discarded me for a sensitive woodsman who’s taught you the true meaning of Christmas yet?’
‘It’s April,’ Essie had pointed out, rather guiltily quashing any thoughts of Dwight. Because nothing had happened at all, she reminded herself. Absolutely nothing. She had spent the evening trying to explain fire regulations to him, that was all.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Connor.
‘But apart from that, you are more or less exactly right.’
Tris and Trumpet came up, hefting their identical bags, guffawing. They looked like overgrown kids on a school trip. Connor immediately stood back with them. He was, Essie thought, still bound to his school gang. Bros before Hos was the most ridiculous thing in the whole of the world.
Anyway. He was there and that was what mattered.
And oh, my goodness, they had the hotel to look forward to.
They were staying at Harcourt House, a local hotel so posh that Essie had never met any of the guests, who came in and out without seeming to leave a trace in the village.
It had once been a family home – the daughter, Serena, was about her age, Essie knew, and she’d had a huge eighteenth birthday party there, with fireworks, long parades of cars queuing up through the driveway, the house dramatically lit, and not a single Carso child invited.
The entire year group, including Shelby, Essie remembers, had gone down to the sea wall – it had been midsummer so not even dark until well after eleven – and eaten fish and chips and passed round vodka-Bru.
Even among natural enemies there was solidarity in the face of an implacable enemy, i.e.
a fabulous party stuffed full of handsome posh boys, to which not only were they not invited, but nobody had ever considered inviting them for a millisecond.
‘Well, we know Felix and Serena,’ said Tris when Essie commented. ‘From school, you know.’
‘I did not know. Did you go to Serena’s eighteenth?’
‘I assumed you’d know them,’ he said. ‘This is basically a village.’
‘It’s a town!’ said Essie, then realised she sounded exactly like her mum. But then of course that family had moved away a long time ago; Felix had gone into rehab, she’d heard. Now it is a smart hotel where you pretend you’re going to spend a weekend at a friend’s country home.
Now she thought about it, it really was a bit naff. Triss was wearing plus fours, for God’s sake. Everyone’s wellingtons were bright polished green. She was wearing her mum’s, which have flowers on them. Triss had already noted them and scoffed.
They’re larping, she thought. Live-action role-playing as posh, rich people from a world that no longer exists. Larping a world like Bridgerton or Downton Abbey , faking their way all the way to the top. Pretending Britain, the world, doesn’t look the way it really is.
‘So, you shoot?’ Tris had asked, exactly as a character would in a film. She’d looked at him and realised that in her back yard – on her territory, not his – she didn’t care quite so much what she said to him.
‘Of course not,’ she’d retorted. ‘Where would I learn to shoot?’
‘You’re from the Highlands!’
‘I’m not – you’re far higher than the Highlands up here,’ she’d said. And Tris had turned and walked off.
*
‘You look good,’ says Connor now as they follow Al in the car to the place where they’re all starting out. ‘Country life agrees with you.’
Essie realises she hasn’t put smoother on her hair – she ran out and can’t afford to buy more, even if you could buy it in the Carso semi-chem, which you can’t – and she hasn’t used her straighteners in yonks.
There’s absolutely no point, when the wind will blow your hair every which way two seconds after you step out the door, plus you need to wear a bunnet every day because, well, you just do, it’s generally freezing at some point very late into the spring.
There is a girl in town who makes beautiful cashmere ones – Janey managed to snaffle one from her hairdresser and now Essie wears it every day without really noticing.
Connor notices, though; there is colour in her cheeks, and freckles from the early spring sunshine, and her face isn’t looking quite so pinched.
She’s put on weight – he decides not to mention it, but it suits her, takes away that hungry look. She looks softer.
‘It’s good to see you.’
‘How’s work?’
‘Hectic,’ he says. ‘Nuts.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ she says. ‘At least you won’t get outsourced to Switzerland.’
‘Put the willies up everyone, that did, your lot closing,’ he says. ‘I think that’s why we’re working harder, just to stand still.’
She’d crammed them into her mum’s car, reluctantly lent.
They had made some reasonably predictable jokes about Noddy and Essie found herself uncharacteristically annoyed on her mum’s behalf.
She was allowed to slag off her mum’s beloved car, but nobody else was.
Also they didn’t – apart from Connor – know how hard her mother had saved to buy it, and how intensely proud of it she was.
To her surprise, when she parks up beside Al’s battered old Land Rover on Lochouire Fell – obviously this is a much more acceptable vehicle – there’s someone else in the car with him, who soon reveals himself to be Dwight.
The lads get out of the car and stare at him, in his black hat and boots. He’s notably shorter than all of them. Dwight is completely oblivious and hails her.
‘Oi! Essie! I got those wallpaper samples, hon!’
At this the boys start to giggle.
‘The only gay cowboy in the village,’ says Trumpet quietly. Essie wishes, for possibly the only time in her life, that Shelby had been here, to hear him say that.
‘Shut up,’ she says, meaning it to sound jokey, but it doesn’t, it sounds as if she means it, because she does.
Dwight hasn’t noticed a thing and strides over. ‘Hey, darlin’,’ he says, and Essie can feel Connor stiffen.
‘This is Dwight,’ she says. ‘He’s developing a row of cottages.’
‘And Essie is helping me,’ says Dwight, cheerfully. He passes over the wallpaper samples. ‘But I leave the girls’ stuff to her.’
‘Oi,’ says Essie. ‘Honestly, Dwight.’
She looks through them anyway before throwing them in the car. Tris narrows his eyes. ‘You’re doing a housing development?’
Dwight shrugs.
‘I mean, with the new planning laws . . . how did you get round it?’
‘Well, it’s local,’ he says. ‘Local houses. I’m local.’
‘You’re the codicil guy,’ says Connor suddenly.
‘Interesting,’ says Tris. ‘How many houses?’
‘Three . . . but they were sold as one lot. Paid the down-payment in cash.’ Dwight can’t help puffing up his chest and Essie really wishes he wouldn’t.
‘Did you, now?’ says Tris. He sticks his bottom lip out. ‘Clever old you.’
Dwight beams at this approval from the Big Lads up from the city.
‘So what are you going to do, flip them?’ says Trumpet. ‘This place is cute, man. Golf, lots to shoot, plenty of fish. Plenty of out-of-towners are always looking for second homes.’
Dwight looks at Essie, puzzled.
She shrugs back. ‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘your accounts are a mess. You know that’s true.’
He nods.
‘I just don’t want you to lose it all. I’ve seen it happen.’
‘You need to talk to me,’ says Tris.
Essie looks up, surprised. She just wanted him to get some advice, and for everyone to tell him to stop spending his budget without a spreadsheet, but Tris seems serious, even as Dwight shows him photos on his phone.
‘You could get round that codicil, form a shell, flip those places for a fortune,’ says Tris. ‘We could totally help with that.’
Essie is amazed. The super-secret fund that she never gets to work for or have a say in . . . they’re going to let Dwight walk right in! It’s a boys’ club.
Dwight looks completely bamboozled as Tris pulls him aside.
‘What’s going on?’ Essie asks Connor.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I thought your fund was high net worth only. Dwight hasn’t got a pot to piss in, just three falling-down buildings.’
Connor glances up. ‘I think Tris wants to get into more property; he was talking about expanding.’
‘Oh, no way,’ says Essie. ‘We don’t want him living up here.’
‘What do you care?’ says Connor. ‘You’re coming back, aren’t you?’
Essie shrugs. ‘It’s just – it’s not fair,’ she says. ‘I can’t even get a job, and he gets taken seriously immediately.’
‘Ach, it’s just money,’ Connor says simply.
‘I know,’ says Essie. ‘I’m just saying. Did you even mention me possibly getting a job with you?’
Connor looks at the floor.
‘No,’ says Essie. ‘I thought not.’
‘It’s not personal!’
Al is clearing his throat in front of them.
They are all lined up on the side of the fells.
The mist has risen, dissipating into little puddles of smoke at the bottom of the valleys.
The browns and greens of the hillsides are glowing; there are shades of purple on the higher slopes.
Essie finds she is looking around with some pride, and takes a deep breath of the fresh air.