Chapter 4
Carli
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
The Caselli family – what was left of it – had one year left in Scotland and Carli and Luci should make the most of it.
That’s what Carli’s dad said. As soon as Luci finished sixth year and Carli fourth year, he was flying them back to Australia where supposedly life could begin again.
Her father’s words were a betrayal to her mother who wasn’t yet a year dead and whose ashes were scattered on nearby Loch Lachnashin.
As if her mother’s death hadn’t disincentivised Carli enough, this decision to pull up the few roots she had left, destroy the friendships she’d worked so hard to make when she’d started at this school three years ago and everyone was friends from primary school, made things even worse.
What was the point in trying? Her dad only cared about himself.
Any test she scored well in, or any certificate she was awarded, went unheeded anyway.
And what better place to stop caring than maths?
‘Butler, Caselli, row four.’ Mr McInally, the maths teacher, pointed towards the double desk where he wanted Carli and Niall to sit next to one another.
Most teachers let their students sit next to whomever they liked, but Mr McInally arranged his classes alphabetically.
And rude comments were complimentary, it seemed.
‘You can keep Niall on the straight and narrow,’ Mr McInally muttered as he walked past and threw clean jotters on everyone’s desk.
She looked at Niall. He shrugged.
‘I’m Naughty Niall,’ he said. ‘Hope you can tame me.’
‘Oh,’ Carli whispered, intrigued by this boy, who on the first day back after the summer break was stretched back in his chair, dark blond hair mussed up, his shirt untucked from his trousers, school tie loose at the neck.
She didn’t know him all that well, beyond seeing him around school and Kinshore.
He played football, surfed a lot, laughed freely and got copious detentions.
But their unfamiliarity didn’t stop her sensing a huge dollop of sarcasm.
‘Did you have him last year?’ she asked. Mr McInally wasn’t known for being the most charitable teacher in the school and it didn’t pay to get on the wrong side of him, which Niall may well have done.
‘Aye. And the year before and the one before that too. We’re old pals.’
Carli wondered which had come first, Niall’s attitude or Mr McInally’s? Niall looked like he didn’t care about anyone’s opinion of him.
One thing she would say for Niall: he smelled nice.
It was some kind of body spray that smelled fresh and masculine.
She tried to concentrate by writing her name on the front of her jotter and opening it ready to start the lesson.
His eyes were definitely on her as she did so.
Then pulling his own jotter towards him, he wrote his name on the front: Niall Butler.
Not Naughty Niall. Carli clocked his handwriting.
It wasn’t the neatest, somewhat mirroring his outward appearance.
Mr McInally droned on about class rules for half the lesson, making everyone write them in their jotters, talked through some equations, then set the class a task.
It was simple stuff that Carli worked through quickly.
At question six, she turned to Niall who was still on question one and staring at the textbook.
Naughty Niall seemed like such an ill-fitting name.
‘Are you stuck?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Kind of.’
‘Want me to explain them?’
Niall glanced up to check if they were being watched by the teacher. Carli followed his eyeline to find Mr McInally reading the paper. Week one and this was his disdain. Incredible.
‘Go on then,’ said Niall. ‘Show me how it’s done.’
For a moment, their gazes locked. God, he was cute.
Really cute. Why had she never taken it in when she’d seen him in passing?
Those blue eyes with generous flecks of green were something else.
And sitting so close to him, warmth was radiating through his cotton shirt, his breath smelling faintly of spearmint gum.
And once she’d helped him to not only shoot through his equations but understand them too, her recompense was the broadest of smiles, and Carli wondered if her heart might melt.
It was official. She now had a crush on Niall Butler.
Maths might be kind of awkward from now on, but she sure was looking forward to it.
‘Ms Caselli, I didn’t sit you there so you could gaze lovingly at Mr Butler.’
A heady mix of embarrassment and indignation flooded Carli. Wow! This teacher was a piece of work.
‘I wasn’t, sir. We were doing the equations together.’
‘Well don’t.’ Mr McInally strode up the corridor between the desks to row four. ‘Don’t do anything together. You could do better than this one, anyway. Seems to have water in his ears from all the surfing.’
The blow was low, and Carli noticed Niall tense. No matter what had gone on between him and this teacher in the past three years, surely he deserved a clean slate on the first day of term. Mr McInally was looking for trouble.
Carli eyeballed the shadowy figure standing above her. ‘Well, you were too busy to help, so I stepped in to do your job.’
‘Don’t!’ Niall growled and elbowed her. ‘You won’t win.’
Mr McInally, ignoring Niall, inhaled, through his nose, what seemed like all the air in the classroom.
‘I can only assume you’re suffering from the effects of personal issues.
Either that or Mr Butler has been rubbing off on you already.
I’ll give you the option of stopping now or coming to discuss this with me in detention. ’
Carli continued to meet the teacher’s eye for longer than she ought to, sending him a message of sorts, before putting her pen to paper again and getting on with her work.
Or pretending to. She was fired up with adrenaline now.
It was out of character, but this teacher’s blatant condemnation of Niall, who’d done absolutely nothing wrong, irked her.
That afternoon, Carli was sitting in English class working on analysis of a poem by Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet, when there was a knock at the classroom door.
‘Come in,’ Ms Walker blared.
And in strolled Niall Butler, crumpled shirt untucked, trainers on his feet instead of school shoes and hair still as sexily mussed up as it had been in maths.
Carli’s composure faltered. She tried to concentrate on her poetry, but it didn’t hold as much of an attraction as the boy standing at the teacher’s desk asking if his English teacher could borrow a few copies of the Robert Burns anthology.
His low fully broken voice sent vibrations through her. She glanced up again.
And Niall was staring right at her. He smiled and gave her a little wink. Oh shit!
‘Niall!’ Ms Walker was holding out a pile of books and jotters while Niall was otherwise distracted looking at Carli. ‘If you could tear yourself away for a second.’
‘What? Sorry, Miss.’ Niall turned back to the teacher with a grin on his face. Carli had to stop herself from blushing and from a big beaming smile spreading across her own features. He wasn’t embarrassed one bit and it was so cute.
Carli didn’t see Niall again until maths class two days later. It was period one, and she was exhausted from a poor night’s sleep and an argument with her dad before school. The man seemed to resent that he had to single-handedly look after his daughters now.
And she was in no mood for Mr McInally’s sarcastic comment when she was unable to answer a simple sum because she hadn’t been listening. In fact, tears stung at her eyes.
‘You okay?’ Niall nudged her.
‘Niall? Number three.’ Mr McInally tapped at the whiteboard with his marker and waited for Niall to tell him the answer, expectantly hoping for him to get it wrong.
‘Dunno, sir,’ Niall admitted, unflinchingly. ‘It might be three is x, but it might not be.’
‘Three is x is correct, Niall. Incredible.’
‘Yass!’ Niall whispered, then through gritted teeth he spoke to the desk as the teacher was talking again. ‘FU Mr Cocknally.’
Carli nudged him. ‘Well done, Butler.’
He turned to her and she saw that he’d clocked the upset in her face.
Probably her mascara was smudged already.
But there was no way of talking over the teacher, so he monitored her the whole time until they were working on a set of questions.
She sensed him checking her face every few minutes and it made her skin tingle.
Eventually, there was a light nudge on her arm and Niall spoke quietly.
‘Hey, Caselli… Cass. Do you like poetry?’
‘What?’ Carli mouthed.
‘Girls like poems, right?’
‘Uh… girls don’t hate poems.’
Niall leaned back in his seat and pointed down to his lap.
Carli cast her gaze downwards, slightly nervous of what she might see.
What it was confused rather than alarmed her.
The Robert Burns anthology – the one they were using in English – sat on Niall’s thighs.
The books were meant to stay in the classroom but were never counted – the chances of students stealing a book of poetry were slim to none.
But they hadn’t seen this boy coming.
‘Want me to read you a poem?’ Niall leaned closer to Carli. ‘Wee sleekit cowrin tim’rous beastie.’
Carli stifled a laugh. ‘Did you steal that?’
He raised one shoulder in nonchalance. ‘Borrowed.’
‘Why?’
Niall shrugged. ‘Rabbie’s a dude.’
‘He’s “a dude”?’ Hilarious. This boy who never tucked his shirt in and was mostly staring out the window had stolen the works of Scotland’s national poet from the English classroom from which he was now offering to read to her because said poet was “a dude”.
‘So, do you want me to read?’
‘What, now?’
‘Might cheer you up. Bit o’ Rabbie, ken?’ Niall affected an over-the-top, wide Scots brogue. Carli pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles.
‘Do ye no’ like a bit o’ Rabbie?’ said Niall, far too loudly.
‘Niall!’ Mr McInally’s attention was drawn once again and Carli threw her focus to the maths textbook, pressing onto the page to try and to control her shaking shoulders.
‘Sorry, sir.’ Niall pushed his chair in and leaned forward on the desk as if it would give the impression he was hard at work also.
‘You’re so like your father it’s uncanny.’ Mr McInally drifted to their desk. ‘The deid one, that is.’
Niall stiffened and every last drop of lightness fell from his being onto the floor.
Carli’s eyes widened. She knew a little about his family dynamic because the Butlers were well known in the area.
They operated a whisky distillery run by Niall’s dad, Jimmy.
Except Niall’s dad was actually his uncle, his biological dad – an abusive alcoholic – having died when Niall was a baby.
She would find out later that the teacher had had a bitter falling out with Niall’s biological father.
But at that point, Carli didn’t understand why Mr McInally would have such venom in his voice. And why Niall would be biting back fury more powerful than a Kintyre storm. The teacher had taken things too far for no reason. It was abuse of power. She was fifteen but that much was obvious.
‘That’s out of order, sir.’ So what if she got into trouble for this? She was leaving in a year, anyway. What was the worst that would happen? Detention? ‘You shouldn’t talk to him like that.’
Mr McInally shot daggers at Carli but swallowed hard. She guessed he hadn’t expected to be challenged like this.
‘Get on with your work. Both of you.’ He drifted on to the back of the class as if nothing had happened, a backing down of sorts.
Carli glanced at Niall. His face was grey, pencil clenched hard.
A completely different boy from the one who’d been joking around pretending to be Robert Burns a few minutes ago.
The confrontation might be over, but Niall was still fighting something.
For the remainder of the lesson, they worked in silence, Carli letting Niall copy her answers if he wanted to. At one point, he pressed his pencil so hard into the page that the lead snapped. She offered him a pencil sharpener, and he traipsed up to the bin to sharpen it.
While he was up there, she watched him, shoulders tensed, biting the inside of his lip as he concentrated on the pencil, a little too much for it to not be a necessary distraction from whatever was on his mind.
This Niall Butler was a world away from the one who’d winked at her in the English classroom the previous day.
That boy was sparky and cocksure. The one who’d offered to read her Burns’ poetry was funny and sweet.
This one was troubled and uncertain of where he stood in this classroom, maybe even the world.
Despite the sharpened pencil, Niall spent much of the lesson staring down at his jotter. She wished there was something she could do to make things better, but the tension in the classroom was bad enough as it was.
I won’t stand for any of his shit,’ she whispered to him when the teacher’s back was turned.
‘Don’t get yourself in trouble,’ Niall wrote in his jotter. ‘I’m not worth it.’
‘I’ll decide if you’re worth it or not,’ said Carli, deciding that Niall Butler very much was worth it. She’d known that from the second she met him.