Chapter 6
SIX
‘Hm,’ she replied. ‘This is quite bad, isn’t it?’ The walls of the basement were bare brick in a deep brownish red, but the colour was darker on most of the wall apart from the top, where the bricks were lighter. She stared at the wide crack running from top to bottom.
‘It’s not great, no,’ Tam admitted. ‘But hopefully it can be fixed.’
‘Is this the main problem?’ Sorrel knelt down and touched the bottom of the crack lightly with her fingertip.
‘There are other cracks. But the main issue is that when the burn started flooding the last few years, because of the heavy rains, the foundations down here in the basement were destroyed.’ Tam sighed. ‘Not the only property nearby that has this problem, sadly,’ he added.
Sorrel knew the burn, which was another word for small river.
Its Gaelic name was Abhainn a’ Chaisteil, meaning river of the castle.
It ran through the land near to Balhennie Castle and flowed into the loch.
The burn ran along the side of the Inn’s garden and went past the house.
Not far away: yards, that was all. She’d played in it as a child in the summer.
Befriended families of ducks; listened to their officious quacking in the mornings as she stood at the kitchen sink, helping with the washing-up.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said, feeling awful that she didn’t. There was so much that she’d missed by being away.
‘No way for you to know unless you were here. The Laird brought in a team from somewhere to dig in an overflow. That was last year, so we hope that we won’t get any more flooding now. Not in the same way,’ Tam said.
Being in the same space as the man she had once loved so deeply, without warning, without expecting to ever see him again, was strangely heartbreaking.
Her chest ached with a deep sadness; she couldn’t have predicted that she would feel so sad, being with Tam Blackwood, and yet so happy to see him.
But the sadness was for all the years that had gone where she hadn’t seen him every day.
It was a loss, and even though her eyes roamed his face, finding reassurance in every familiar feature, she realised that being with Tam was like walking a once-familiar landscape.
It was lovely to be back in a place that she never thought she would revisit, but her heart ached because she knew that she had lost the map to it.
Lost access to that private place of joy that was Tam: his heart, his thoughts, his body.
This time two days ago, if anyone had asked her if she thought she would ever see Tam again, she would have said no.
Yet, now, here they were, talking about flooding and damp and subsidence as if nothing had happened.
When, in fact, so much had happened that it was impossible to know how to talk about it.
‘How long would something like this have been here without anyone knowing?’ Sorrel looked up at Tam. His eyes met hers, and she felt the old, familiar electricity between them.
She had always loved Tam’s eyes. They were hazel, unusual in that they held beautiful specks of green, like hidden emeralds.
Treasures that the casual glance would miss.
His lashes were long, giving his eyes a soft look.
He was dark-haired; he wore it shaggy, to his shoulders, with a beard.
He hadn’t had one when she’d seen him last, but it suited him.
Sorrel looked away. She couldn’t bear to look at him for too long. He was beautiful, and with every passing second, she was kicking herself for ever letting him go.
But dear god, he was a beauty.
He’d always been tall and wide in the shoulders, but ten years had given him a solidity he hadn’t had before. He’d filled out, as people said. A man’s body now, not a young man’s rangy frame. He looked like he had heft. Like he could put her over his shoulder and carry her, fireman-style.
He’s not yours to ogle, she rebuked herself.
But she hadn’t been ogling. She had been…
appreciating. Appreciating someone she had once loved, like a blind woman gently tracing the face of a lover she once knew.
‘Years. Hard to say how many, but the flooding started about nine, ten years ago. About the time you…’ he broke off, looking uncomfortable. ‘You know.’
‘When I left,’ she finished the sentence for him.
‘Yeah.’ He nodded, chewing his lip.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. That, at least, needed to be said. ‘That I left, and that I never… you know. I never said anything to you.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said, but it was a reflex. A conversational filler.
‘It’s not okay. I am sorry.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’ There was an awkward silence, then he said, ‘Can I ask… what happened?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay.
’ Sorrel thought about how best to explain how she felt.
‘I realise that you do deserve an explanation, but…’ she trailed off.
‘I was… in a bad place. I found something out that really upset me. I decided to leave home. And the island. It wasn’t about you. ’
‘What upset you?’ Tam frowned, looking concerned.
‘I was so worried, Sorrel. We all were. Your mum and dad were beside themselves. And then no one heard from you for all those years.’ He shook his head.
‘And then, you just… come back. Like nothing happened. It’s just weird, okay?
I’m trying to get my head around it.’ He scuffed his foot on the floor.
It was an old, wood floor and it too had degraded since Sorrel had last been in here.
She could smell damp in the air. The smell of wet mud, coppery like blood.
She shivered, wishing they were having this conversation outside in the fresh air.
‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she repeated. She felt sick.
Ashamed of the pain she’d caused, but the pain and the sickness and the shame weren’t hers; they should never have been hers to carry.
None of it was her fault, though she’d left the island thinking it was, and it had taken several years of therapy for her to understand that it wasn’t.
‘Won’t you tell me what happened?’ he asked, again.
‘We were… well. You know what we were to each other.’ He looked so sad, Sorrel’s heart wrenched.
‘I had no idea. I saw you that night, the day before you went. We counted the stars, remember? At Sligachan. I gave you that stone in the shape of a heart. I found it before then, but I wanted to wait for a romantic moment to give it to you.’
‘I remember,’ she said, quietly.
The stone heart had been precious to her for so long. There had been so many times that she’d taken it out – she kept it hidden in her sock drawer – and turned it over in her hands. It was a painful reminder of what she’d given up. Tam. Skye. Her parents. Her sisters.
Tam had pressed it into her hand as he’d held her. They’d stood there, under the stars, and she’d breathed in the closeness of him, grateful for the constancy of his presence. His smell, so familiar, like home. A good, wholesome smell like woodsmoke, fresh coffee, honest sweat.
She’d wondered if it was her heart that was made of stone.
It had felt that way, sometimes. In the years after she’d left, occasionally she looked back on her old life on Skye with a kind of wonder that it had happened at all.
London was so different that it blacked out her memory of the island, as if it covered her remembered Skye with an inky, poisonous smog.
There was a long silence.
‘Well, maybe we’ll chat about that another time,’ Tam said. ‘I can tell you don’t want to talk about it now. But I hope you’ll stay, and we’ll have another chance to.’
‘Okay.’ Sorrel didn’t know if she would ever be able to explore that topic with Tam Blackwood. Or how long she was going to be here. But it was more than she had in her to say that right now.
Tam set his torch on the end of one of the shelves and started examining the corners of the space. ‘It looks like your dad might’ve come in here to hang out, though. He’s got the TV and the cosy chair down here.’ He indicated a side of the room that wasn’t covered in stacked metal shelves.
Sorrel nodded. ‘Yeah. I guess so.’
‘Six daughters. I imagine you’d want some time to yourself.’
‘Rude. We were a delight,’ she sighed. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Oh, I’m not saying that you weren’t.’ Tam held his hands up in mock defence. ‘Just, you know. It’s a lot of oestrogen.’ There was a twinkle in his eye that Sorrel knew meant he was joking. She had missed that twinkle.
‘And what exactly is wrong with that?’ Sorrel raised one eyebrow.
‘Nothing at all. I’m ready for the women to take over.’ Tam held a sensor to the wall for a minute until it beeped. He looked at the display and frowned. ‘Patriarchy hasn’t done a great job of anything, let’s face it. I’d far rather have the Balhennie sisters in charge.’
‘Agreed.’ Sorrel blushed. It was so strange, so sudden, to be in the same room as Tam again.
They’d spent so many nights together, cuddling in his single bed at his parents’ house, or arm in arm at the Fairy Pools, walking in the enchanted landscape, talking, laughing.
She’d known him so well. They’d been so close. Once.
‘He likes to stockpile food. He says you never know when you’ll need it,’ Sorrel said, looking around her at some metal shelving containing tins of baked beans, bottled water and several bottles of whisky. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t moved all this stuff out.’
‘He’s got to before work begins seriously on that,’ Tam said, indicating the crack in the brick foundations. ‘At the moment I’ve just done a basic shoring up and assessing the damage. But it’s months of work.’
Sorrel’s eyes strayed to the shelves along the wall. She realised that one of them ended a little short, and that was because there was an old-looking bevelled wood door set into the wall behind it. She walked over to it and reached out for the small knob.
‘What’s that?’ Tam watched her.