Chapter 2
Chapter 2
I n contrast, Morag MacIntyre, the town’s pilot, along with her grandfather, Ranald (and Calum’s money, which she didn’t like being brought up) couldn’t be happier with her boyfriend, Gregor. Everything about this curious, clever, understated man just obsessed her more and more. It felt like they would never and could never get to the end of each other; rubbing off each other’s foibles, the push and pull of early courtship; the sex, the wonder, the fights about washing up methods.
But his location was, to say the least, a problem; Gregor lived on Inchborn, a mostly uninhabited island with a ferry once a day in the summertime. It wasn’t practical or remotely affordable for her to commute via plane, so she was stuck with days off, when she could get a lift, and using the radio when she couldn’t, which wasn’t ideal as half of the village (the male half, generally) could tune in at will.
It would have been all right if she hadn’t had to spend the rest of the time bunking with her grandfather, Ranald. She had cash, she could have rented somewhere herself, but everywhere in town was expensive holiday lets; and buying places was pricey too. So many local houses were empty second homes, which drove everyone absolutely crazy with the unfairness of it. Just because they were born in a beautiful place, it meant they were never going to be able to afford to live there.
And she did love her Gramps, and she had her own room; the room she and her brother always used to share on their summer holidays, where Morag would be so excited to sit in the plane, and Jamie would be happier down on the sand, staring at the shellfish or chasing crabs. He was now a renowned wildlife photographer and illustrator, having broken the family’s hearts by getting a scholarship to an incredibly illustrious art school and becoming extremely well-respected and successful in his chosen field (which, unfortunately, wasn’t piloting a plane). He normally started conversations with Morag by asking her cheerfully how many ducks she’d killed that month.
The room was still stocked with her old, slightly weather-beaten, dog-eared paperbacks; Harry Potter, of course; Garth Nix; and a complete set of Biggles books. The single-paned Victorian glass looked out to the wild sea and, to the left, the airfield. The house was kind of falling apart, but its rambling, homely nature had always been a balm to Morag.
There was one fly in the ointment, however, and it was round and stern and came with a flatulent hound. Peigi.
When Morag had lived down south she hadn’t given Peigi a second thought, beyond the fact that she was quite pleased Ranald had someone looking after him. Peigi had moved in as a “housekeeper” not long after Ranald’s beloved wife, Morag’s grandmother, had died. Ranald, like many men of his generation, had stoically battled on and refused to discuss it, something that worried everyone. Peigi had arrived to help out with cleaning and providing dinner, once the supply of sympathetic lasagnas from the neighbors had dried up, and that had seemed a reasonable solution; she was a widow too. It would be company, Morag had thought.
When Morag had had to come up and help out the previous summer, Peigi had been annoying, but she hadn’t had much to do with her.
Now, however, Morag was living there long-term, paying board (nominal; Ranald didn’t want to accept anything at all but Morag had insisted. The rest she put into a savings account for... well, one day. Maybe.). And Peigi didn’t like it one little bit. She scowled if Morag came into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She slammed around when Ranald and Morag sat down in the evening to discuss routes and weather patterns and got even more furious when Morag bought Ranald a fabulous flight simulator for Christmas and they spent hours making up complex routes for each other and trying to land on the roofs of skyscrapers.
She wouldn’t let Morag cook. Morag wasn’t a great cook—that was very much Gregor’s department—but she craved some variance to the bland stringy stews and pies Peigi turned out. Ranald didn’t really care: he was a proper “food as fuel” man. Morag, though, found it all stodgy and uninspiring and not what you wanted to come home to after a set of tricky landings or some swift turnarounds or a mechanical fault that wouldn’t wait for an engineer and required her to get grease up to her elbow, outside the plane in the rain.
“So how long are you staying?” Peigi would ask with a sniff every so often.
On the other hand, when Morag escaped gladly at the weekends for Gregor’s, or zipped over to her parents, Peigi would then make a big deal out of her not treating the house like a hotel. The last time she had gone, Peigi had pulled her aside, her dog Skellington following her, farting with every step of his short legs. He had conjunctivitis again, something Peigi never seemed to bother getting cleared up, so kept pawing at his pus-filled red eyes whilst hacking like a sixty-a-day smoker. The whole house smelled of wet dog.
“I just need to know,” said Peigi. “Because your grandfather is too polite to tell you. But I can do it for him. Just so he knows. When will he get his house back?”
And Morag had mentioned the predicament to Gregor in the hopes that he would perhaps suggest them getting a place together, except he had very gently pointed out that it was very early days and they probably shouldn’t shack up together just because of subpar stew, and Gregor being a careful man was one of the things Morag loved about him, but it was still very annoying.
So that needed sorting out, as well as the lovely but also slightly tricky news that Nalitha, who ran check-in for the airline, was pregnant again. This was great, of course it was, but Nalitha had been with the company for a long time and did absolutely everything, and Morag was going to have to find a replacement sooner rather than later. Jobs were abundant in the Highlands so she wasn’t sure how, exactly, she was going to find someone happy to come and check in, haul luggage, and handle everything at their little kiosk in the breezy tin shed Carso proudly called its airport. And her boss, Calum Frost, who she had rather hoped would be quite hands-off when he had taken over, was proving quite the opposite. He was rather taken with the place.
But finding a place to live. That was the real problem.