Prologue #2
First, she does the clearing. The plates and mugs go into the kitchen, and the tables are all wiped down.
The magazines and newspapers are stacked up, and the books put back on the shelves.
Wuthering Heights is tucked away next to A Thousand Splendid Suns, and a Beginners’ Guide to Crochet is placed beside an illustrated edition of The Secret Garden.
She pauses to straighten a set of Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree stories, and affectionately strokes the cover of the Seabirds of the Scottish Isles.
She lights one of Ginny’s candles, and moves it to the big table by the fire.
After that, she gets out everything she needs, and makes herself a mug of tea – strong, sweet, a splash of milk.
‘Builders’ tea,’ Angus says, from his spot in the chair opposite her. It was always his favourite, right next to the fire. ‘I should know. I made enough of them for you!’
She glances over, nods in acknowledgement. ‘You’re back, then, are you? Waited till everyone had left before making your grand entrance?’
She lets her eyes drift over him – still a brawny figure, hair grey but thick, face lined with the marks of both laughter and loss. Not handsome in a Hollywood way, but definitely her leading man. The only one she’s ever loved.
‘Of course. You know I only have eyes for you, Moira McLeod. Don’t let your tea go cold now, wife. Though I bet it’s not as good as mine.’
She takes a sip, and decides he’s right.
It’s not. On every single morning of their fifty-year marriage, Angus brought her a mug of tea in bed.
Through sickness, through health, through arguments and stand-offs, nothing would get in the way of his ritual.
He’d present it to her with a kiss, and say: ‘Strong tea, for a strong woman.’ It was the very best way to start the day.
‘So,’ he says, gesturing at the table. ‘You have it all ready, I see? Going through with the crazy plan after all, are you?’
She nods, opening up one of the cards that she has placed before her. It’s one of a set, and each of them bears a beautiful photograph of the local environment taken by this big, gruff man. Mountains, cliffsides, birds and beasties, all in their natural glory, all of them perfect in their own way.
‘Aye. How could I not, Angus? That day we had together, when you came up with this whole idea? I look back now, and it was such a perfect time. Simple, like all the best things.’
‘Do you mean me, woman? Are you calling me simple?’
‘No,’ she assures him, smiling, running her finger over the photo of a nearby puffin colony, ‘you’re far from simple. But that day was the best…’
As it has so many times since, her mind transports her back to the year before.
A warm summer’s afternoon when life was good, and they both felt like they’d live forever.
They’d been perched on the edge of the cliffs, watching the dolphins frolic in the blue of the sea beneath them.
You could spot whales and seals from their look-out too, but the dolphins were always their favourite.
The sun was on their faces, after a day of pleasures: a picnic, and laughter, and even a kiss or two.
‘We’ve been so lucky, my love,’ he’d said, slipping his gnarled hand into hers and squeezing it. ‘Some losses for sure, but more gains I’d say. I think we should pay it forward.’
‘Pay it forward?’ she’d replied, eyebrows quirked. ‘Have you been at the whisky already, Angus? You sound like you’re on the TV using language like that!’
They’d laughed some more – they were always laughing, Robbie said it was their ‘love language’, whatever that meant – but they’d also talked.
An idea had formed, a little project that they’d work on together now he was finally retired from the boats.
At least that had been the plan. Fate had other ideas, as she often does.
‘I thought we’d do this as a couple, Angus,’ she says now, back in the present. She looks across to her man, tears shining in her eyes. ‘I thought we’d always be a double act…’
‘I know, hen, I know. I’m so sorry I had to leave you. You know I never wanted to, don’t you?’
Nodding, she wipes the tears away. Because she knows Angus isn’t really sitting in his chair, chatting away to her. Angus died just before Christmas, and life has never been the same since.
She doesn’t believe in ghosts – the vision of the man sitting across from her is just that.
A vision her mind cooks up when she’s alone to help her cope.
It’s her version of talking to him at his graveside, which she knows Robbie does.
In fact he takes a bottle of Glenfiddich to the cemetery, and shares a wee dram with his grandfather.
They both miss him so desperately, and they’ve each had to find their own ways through the muddle, their own ways to fill the gap Angus left behind.
‘I know. And I suppose I’m a mad old coot for sitting here talking to you about it, aren’t I? You’re long gone…’
‘Aye. Long gone – but in the ways that count, I’ll always be with you, my darling girl. Now, stop blubbing, and get on with it – those cards won’t write themselves now, will they?’
‘I’m not sure what to say,’ she replies, picking up a pen and staring at the blank white space.
‘Do it like you do everything else, Moira – from the heart.’
She looks over, at the empty chair in front of the dying embers of the fire. From the heart, she repeats to herself.
That heart might feel broken right now, but she is old enough and wise enough to know that it will heal. It may still have some cracks in it, but it will heal, and maybe this whole scheme will help. Paying it forward, like he said.
Each card will contain a message, an invitation – an opportunity to visit this bookshop, to visit this village, to spend some time in this world.
Angus loved it here, and believed that others should have the same privilege they did.
He might not be here to see it, but she is determined to make his wish happen.
She will write in every one of these cards, filling them with love and hope and kindness.
Then she will hide each one inside a different book.
Those books will be released into the wild, and she will do her best to get them as far and wide as she can.
That was the spirit of Angus’s original concept – that somebody would find each book, each card, each invitation, and it might just change their lives.
Robbie had loved the idea, and joked that they should even make the envelopes golden, like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
She’d told him that would be plagiarism, though, and they couldn’t possibly steal from Roald Dahl, even if he did seem like the kind of man who would enjoy this type of thing.
Moira chews her lip, and picks up her pen, then one of the envelopes. A flash of inspiration comes to her, and she writes: ‘To the right person, at the right time.’
It’s a good start, and it opens the floodgates of her creativity. She sits and she writes, pouring everything she has into these precious messages – all of her pain, all of her hope, all of her emotional energy. She puts it all in, and feels better for doing it.
Will it work? She has no idea, but she hopes so. She believes so. Maybe not straight away, but eventually, it will. These cards will end up exactly where they were meant to be.
With the right people, at the right time.