Chapter 38
The thing about the Highland winter weather that people down south neglect to mention is how some of the finest, brightest, crispest days of the year can come in February, surprising everyone with their chilly beauty.
Today, Wednesday the fourth of February, was one such day, though it only went a small way to mending the longing ache in Alice’s heart.
She’d tried to fill it, of course, with her therapy and her work, and with treating Finlay Morlich without the need for a hospital admission, something everyone, especially Finlay, had agreed was for the best, given his attitude to busy institutions and, well, people.
Then of course, there’d been last Saturday, the very last day of January, which she’d spent away from Cairn Dhu in a wonderful old castle with its own spa and pool, and a series of group talks and activities arranged by Bonnie, the counsellor, for lots of her women clients who battled with anxiety and trauma, and the whole thing had been eye-opening and challenging, as well as freeing and restful.
For some reason, everyone in town had wanted to want to pick her for details about it. She couldn’t understand why it was anyone else’s business and she’d explained to no one, not even to the overly invested Gracie, what exactly she’d done on her precious spa day.
There was one person she’d have liked to tell all about it, but he still hadn’t returned to town and Alice had begun to accept that, horribly, he was never coming back.
She’d needed him too, on Sunday, when no one was around to help with the garden project because Finlay and Murray were recovering at the cruive, and so she’d had to muddle through the planting of some winter pansies and the turning of the compost heap all by herself until, much to her surprise, the whole gang had arrived; Mr Forte, Kellie Timmony, Livvie and Shell, Mhairi and Jolyon, and they’d all stuck it out for at least twenty minutes before they’d fled inside the warmth of the shed and demolished Senga’s big cairn of chocolate-dipped rock cakes in front of the fire.
Even though everyone had been chattering away, getting to know one another better, and the two kids seemed to be happily sharing Jolyon’s tablet to watch cartoons, Alice hadn’t been able to join in with their talk with quite the same enthusiasm as she might have had Cary been sitting next to her taking a deep interest in her life, the way he used to.
She’d noticed Kellie being quiet too, hanging back from the conversation, until Roz had come in bringing the two puppies and asking if anyone wanted to help walk them.
Kellie had been the first to volunteer and she’d gone out on her own with both of them, walking the tumbling, squabbling little dogs in slow laps around the repair shed and the new garden so many times Kellie said she’d lost count, but the whole time she’d been smiling more broadly than Alice had ever seen.
When her parents had picked her up, Kellie had a hard time saying goodbye, not to the rest of the group, but to the dogs.
Alice had already asked Roz if Murray would mind her incorporating the pups into all the garden project Sunday activities until such a time as they were rehomed, to help Kellie’s recovery, and Roz had, without even checking with Murray up at the cruive, said that would be more than OK.
On her lunch break today, which Dr Millen was insisting she take away from her desk, Alice arrived at the repair shed and took her customary peep inside, just to check.
Cary’s workbench was still piled with new repair jobs – she wasn’t the only one hoping for his return – and behind it stood his grandfather clock under a dust sheet, all fully repaired, according to Dr Bonnet, who was making herself at home in her designated corner of the shed which was already cluttered with her tools and with umpteen ticking clocks on the wall.
Alice had ordered and eaten a toastie with salad and crisps, and a slice of fruity flapjack with green tea, then she’d sought out the other thing she had come here for.
There was the small matter of the garden project participants’ feedback forms to attend to and, as patient liaison, that was her job.
She reached for the little box on the café counter, hand crafted by, of course, Cary.
It put her in mind of the polling station boxes where she’d slip her voting papers back home.
He’d made it knowing they needed a way for folks referred to the garden project to anonymously report on their experiences of it, and this was Alice’s first time emptying the thing.
She tried to put from her mind the knowledge that Cary’s hands had cut and hammered, sanded and painted it – in a gaudy pink to match the shed’s neon logo on the wall – and she turned the catch to release the door on the back.
Inside were three folded papers. She sat at one of the café chairs to read them, since there was nobody in here this morning, except Rhona pottering behind her counter, and McIntyre washing oil from his hands with stinky Swarfega.
The first paper showed a stick-figure drawing in crayon of a boy with a red curving smile and a girl holding his hand with what looked like a blue blanket in her free hand, standing under a spiked yellow sun. She turned the paper over to find in an adult hand the words in Biro:
Thank you. We are enjoying meeting new people.
Mhairi and Jolyon Sears, thought Alice. It had to be.
A second paper displayed the shaky whispery ink of someone trying hard to control the pen.
Too cold for gardening. What kind of eejit starts an outdoor project in January? Enjoyed meeting new folk, even if it is freezin. Come summer, mind, I might feel up to a wee bit of weeding. We’ll see.
Alice was sure this was Mr Forte who had spent a good amount of the last session complaining that it just ‘wasnae the weather for pottering aboot outside’.
She hoped the project wasn’t already at risk of losing its first participant, put off by the elements.
Maybe she’d put him on seed-sowing duty inside the shed, if he came back.
A third paper was filled in with bullet-pointed notes in a youthful script. Kellie’s, for sure.
Friendly
Cold
Well organised
Bonus puppies
Kind of a weird atmosphere between some of the project facilitators (do they fancy each other or hate each other, or what?!?)
Alice hoped this last point referred to Murray and Finlay who, no one could have failed to notice, didn’t always get on.
It was, however, just as possible Kellie meant Cary and her.
The thought made her shrink with shame. She was supposed to be the medical professional at the heart of the project.
Had the patients seen through her disguise to the messy reality beneath?
Something Bonnie, her therapist, had spent a long time unpacking with Alice, both at the therapeutic spa escape and in her consulting room over the high street, was exactly what Alice thought she had gained from hiding her difficulties from the world.
Alice had to conclude that not one positive benefit had come from acting like she was coping when she wasn’t.
Just saying out loud how unbelievably hard it had all been for her – the awful things she’d seen in training, the parental pressure to excel when she’d have been happy just coasting along, had she been allowed, and then everything with Bastian and how, deep down, she’d known she was dating him to make her dad happy, while letting her own needs go unmet – every word of it, when said out loud in front of a trained listener and knowledgeable advisor, had felt like weights lifted one after another from her soul.
‘Penny for them?’ came a woman’s voice.
Livvie Cooper was by her side in the café.
‘Oh, just…’ She’d been about to lie. ‘Thinking how far I’ve come.’
Livvie smiled like this was something she’d been waiting to hear. ‘Good for you, Doc.’
Little Shell emerged from behind her mum’s back, fixing those startled wide eyes on her.
‘You OK, Shell? Why aren’t you at school?’ Alice asked in her softest voice. Still, the girl withdrew like a snail being eyed by a hungry bird, pulling back its horns.
‘The primary school kids can go home for lunch if they want,’ said Livvie, though Alice had never heard of such a thing happening in England. ‘I pick her up and bring her here to eat with me. She was hoping to see Jolyon, I think.’
‘He’s a nice boy,’ Alice said, careful not to pose this as a demand for Shell’s agreement.
The little girl nodded almost indiscernibly. ‘He’s all right,’ she said. ‘I wish he’d keep his hands off my blanket.’
Alice laughed but when she noticed Livvie pointedly not laughing, she straightened her face.
The girl clearly objected to this infringement, and who was Alice to say that was unreasonable?
It was her security blanket, after all. Alice, of all people, having sent Bastian packing all too late, should know how frustrating it was when a boy insisted on pushing a boundary.
‘Here,’ Alice said, sorting the letters in her hand, figuring it couldn’t do any harm. ‘He drew a picture of you both.’
Shell took it wordlessly in her hand and looked it over, a smile sneaking over her lips. In an instant she was gone, digging for her paper and crayons in her backpack over by the beanbags.
Livvie and Alice watched her settle down to draw.
‘She’ll be making him a picture,’ Livvie told her, coming closer, deciding to sit, but only perching on the edge of a café chair.
‘When the police moved us out of town, we weren’t allowed anything from the house, just had to go in the clothes we stood in.
But Shell happened to have that doll’s blanket with her.
She grew right out of baby dolls while we were away.
’ Guilt and worry creased her face as she spoke. ‘But she kept hold of the blanket.’
‘I get it,’ Alice said. ‘You know, if there’s anything else we can do, at the surgery… or if there’s anything I can do, you will just ask?’
Livvie smiled, as much as she’d ever seen her smile. ‘You’re doing enough, just being here in the town,’ and that, coming from the measured Livvie Cooper felt like the best appraisal Alice had ever had.
‘I’d better head back to work then, now I’ve collected these,’ Alice told her, folding the feedback forms up to take with her, and letting her eyes for the briefest moment flit to Cary’s side of the shed and his vacant spot by the sharpening wheel.
‘Do you still think he’s coming back?’ Alice said. ‘It’s been ten days.’
Livvie tried to soften her shrug of uncertainty with another smile.