Chapter 16
Chapter 16
I t happened. It actually happened. Calum and Morag’s co-pilot Erno marched the man out of the terminal and dumped him on a taxi driver. Erno was on a diet for his heart, and his old intake of bacon rolls, sausage rolls, and occasionally sausage bacon and egg rolls had been cut off at the source by a family desperate to keep him alive, and a stringent air specialist doctor who was testing his cholesterol every five minutes and basically ruining his life, so anyone who looked like they needed a bit of roughing up was totally fine to Erno; he was in a bad mood anyway. This way he didn’t have to think too much about the cashew salad he had packed for lunch. Also, he liked it when some of the passengers waiting in a queue they went past clapped.
The man, astonished, waved his fist at them and shouted a lot about suing, and how he knew his rights, but Calum had merely smiled and suggested he read the small print in his ticket, but good luck with everything and they had him on CCTV verbally abusing a member of his staff, which wasn’t remotely true; unbeknownst to Gertie, the only CCTV was outside and looking after the planes, but Calum said it in a way that seemed it very much might have been.
Gertie was desperately trying to calm down by the time the men came back into the hangar. She had inadvertently told the next people in line, a nice young couple on their honeymoon, that it was her first day and therefore everyone had crowded round her, being incredibly nice and sympathetic and chatty. A bit too chatty in fact, as Gertie realized, to her annoyance, that Majabeen’s big son Krish was in the queue for the Glasgow flight and had seen everything, which meant that this terrible thing that had happened on her very first day would whizz round the KCs before she’d get a tea break.
“I’m completely fine,” she said, trying to smile, even if her voice sounded a bit wobbly. She wasn’t used to people yelling at her; Jean might—okay, definitely did—take on a chiding tone with her, but that was only when she was complaining about Gertie’s hair. She’d never yell at her, and Gertie never did anything bad anyway. The teachers at school yelled at her to stop daydreaming, but not seriously, and she spent most of her schooling terrified that one would really get her into trouble. When in fact Jean would turn up to the parents’ evening of her beloved only child to find the teacher had only the haziest idea of who Gertie actually was.
Calum came striding back across the floor.
“Well,” he said. “Well done, you.”
Gertie looked up at him, her knight in shining armor.
“Thanks,” she said, going pink. “I didn’t realize the owner was so aggressive!”
“I’m a pussycat,” growled Calum, then smiled. “You’re new, right?”
Gertie nodded mutely, going a deep pink.
“Do I know you?”
“I served you in the supermarket.”
“You did!” he said. “You tried to poison me with... blue stuff.”
“I...”
“I’m only kidding,” he said, seeing her face. “Welcome to the team.”
Meanwhile Morag, arriving to check the little twin otter, which was sitting outside pristine on its two little wheels like training wheels on a toddler’s bicycle, gleaming in the cold sunshine, was surprised to see some people still not checked in yet, then remembered with some sadness that it was her first day without Nalitha. Her life returning to Scotland had been a lot to do with her best friend, and it was such a help having her there, running everything smoothly, whilst making incredibly rude and libelous statements about anyone and everyone to make Morag laugh. She wasn’t sure about Gertie. She was so quiet, which was absolutely perfect in a flatmate; but in this job you needed people with a bit of grit.
Now, she came upon Gertie talking to Calum Frost, of all people, who as usual, irritatingly, hadn’t told her he was coming down. It was a delicate relationship; he had replaced her aircraft when Dolly was out of commission, which was amazing. And MacIntyre Air was a wonderful advert for flying, the plane landing on the beach—the only beach-landing strip in Europe—and people came from far and wide to experience it. Calum had made his money, though, in not being remotely glamorous. He had turned flying into the opposite of exciting and glamorous, in fact, and he didn’t give a stuff about it. It could be a tricky dynamic.
Calum was also a plane enthusiast who would probably have preferred being a pilot—Morag had met a few of them—but he had gone into the family business instead and was high profile and well known everywhere for his cavalier attitude toward customer comfort and the fact that he didn’t give a stuff if people missed their flights or had to pay extra money for bags, or couldn’t make their connections, or got dumped miles away from the town they actually wanted to be in, at one o’clock in the morning. His airline was cheap—that was all that mattered—and as such, he was right. It was incredibly successful and had made him very well off.
But Morag cared about her passengers, many of whom were repeat visitors, and cared a lot about the route they flew; a vi tal lifeline for the communities they represented; communities where ferries often couldn’t manage through the rough weather or, frankly, were simply falling apart. She felt she owed something to the people she worked with. Calum very much didn’t. He thought he owed something to connecting people for not too much money and that was all he thought about. They had a very uneasy truce, partly because she owed him so much and didn’t like admitting it, partly because he was still after her route. Also, they received government subsidy because they acted as postman and occasional medical backup, and were providing a vital service. It wasn’t much, but it kept them going in the windier months. Morag wasn’t 100 percent sure Calum didn’t also have a plan to do something with that subsidy and his tax requirements.
So she eyed him with some suspicion, which he blithely ignored, and chatted to her regardless as if she were his best mate, constantly offering her new staff or new uniforms or access to their global booking system whilst she smiled politely at him. She had a very hot boyfriend, thanks , with a big beard and holes in his jumper, and extremely tidy blondes didn’t really do it for her.
And here he was, holding up her line and chatting up her newest staff member, which didn’t matter to the people outgoing, as they weren’t going to miss the flight until everyone was up there. But if they had a delay turning round, the people coming back from Larbh and Cairn would miss their connections to Glasgow and they would be furious and, unfortunately for them, the only B Majabeen was more interested in any oil millionaires and Gertrude had to say that she wasn’t intending to use it as a pickup joint and the KCs sniffed, as if they would be the judge of that.
But as she moved through the week, her thoughts were completely filled with one man.
Back at the flat she had googled him straightaway. He was everywhere! There were profiles in magazines called things like Fortune , and the Financial Times . He was the wunderkind saving flying, according to some people, and an evil monster who stranded old ladies on purpose, according to some others.
Gertie wasn’t about to go online and start correcting them—doing that, even anonymously, was not her thing at all—but she would have liked to very much, and she burned with righteous fury on his behalf at the people who had never even met him saying mean things about him.
He was divorced, it said, with homes in Oslo and Luxembourg, which made it a little strange that he spent so much time in Carso. In fact, Calum loved getting away from it all, as much as anyone who came there did. Away from the bright lights and the fast pace of running his businesses, he was very fond of taking long walks along the white islands, enjoying the white nights of his childhood, away from how busy he was at home: he used his own jet to fly in and out, and as the weeks passed Gertie took to looking for its tail every morning.
Of course he wouldn’t notice Gertie in a million years, she thought. Obviously. But she drifted off at night, finishing a scarf in the sweetest softest gray, with a red stripe running through it, like his flag, she thought dreamily; or perhaps he’d like a very smart striped one—that would be a lovely thing to do. Obviously it hadn’t worked out last time, when she’d made the Valentine’s gift for Struan at school, but they were stupid kids back then. And knitting was the very very best thing she did.
No, she’d knit it for him and present it to him and his lovely white teeth would make a surprised grin and he’d say, “Why, Gertie...” No, nix that—she hated the sound of that. “Why, darling girl...” Yes, that would do better. “Why, darling girl, what a surprise... look at this.”
Then he would look for a shop tag and, not finding one... raise those light denim blue eyes to look into hers.
“You... you made this for me?”
And Gertie would nod shyly but sweetly but not too much in a way that made her chin go into her chest or anything. And he would shake his head in amazement and say, you know, people bought him presents all the time but never made him things, and still politely not asking her name again, would ask if she would like a cup of coffee later. Then he’d laugh and say, well, of course not the coffee here... perhaps you would like to join me in the jet?
And things got a little hazy here because Gertie didn’t quite have an insight into what a private jet might look like inside, over and above what she’d seen on television programs. Also she didn’t like thinking about the private jet crew she’d seen flounce through the airport from time to time, all of whom looked like supermodels, like they’d been hired to make a very glamorous and/or dirty film about pilots and air stewardesses.
Okay, forget that. Then he’d say, “Let’s go out and find something better,” and then they’d go... well, where exactly? The Silver Tassie on the High Street had the racing going very loudly at all hours, the Grapes was where the shinty team drank and was notoriously rowdy; there was a kind of wine bar that also did chips... but use her imagination as she might, she just couldn’t see millionaire Calum Frost kicking back there...
She sighed. If there was one thing she’d learned from reading novels and watching romantic movies, it was that rich men and princes really loved down-to-earth girls to distract them from all the shallowness of their rich world. And frankly, there weren’t many people more down to earth than Gertrude Mooney.