Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘Tam! Tam! If you’re there, please, open up!’ Sorrel banged on the door of a small terraced house with a red door. Nothing happened. ‘Tam!’ she banged again and rang the bell.
An upstairs window in the house next door opened, and a woman who looked to be in her sixties stuck her head out.
‘Help ye, hen? A little late tae be yellin’,’ she said, frowning.
‘Oh. Yes. I’m so sorry.’ Sorrel stopped banging on the door. ‘I’m looking for Tam Blackwood.’
‘He’s gone out. Saw him head off ten minutes ago.’ The woman shook her head. ‘If you run, you’ll catch him, I shouldnae wonder.’ Her tone suggested that she thought Sorrel was crazy.
Perhaps I am, she thought.
‘Thank you! Where was he headed?’ Sorrel shouted up to the window.
‘Do I look like I’m his social secretary?’ The woman leaned back indoors. ‘Made a noise wi’ carryin’ some bags. That’s why I looked out. Not too much tae ask for a quiet night in. You young people’ll be the death o’ me. He went that way,’ she grumbled, pointing, and closed the window.
‘Come on. Let’s run. It sounds like he’s catching the bus if he’s headed that way with bags.’ Briony tugged at Sorrel’s hand. ‘Come on, Sorrel!’
They ran.
The absurdity of the situation struck Sorrel as she ran to the end of the street and then followed the way they’d come.
She was a thirty-five-year-old successful businesswoman with an accountant and a solicitor, who was currently running down a rain-splotched street in Portree, hoping against hope that she’d find her childhood sweetheart at the bus stop and persuade him not to run away like she had.
She had no idea what she was going to say to him. She also hadn’t run very far for a long time, and she was out of breath by the time she got to the second street.
Still, she ran. A line from one of her favourite movies spooled through her mind – it was something like: When you find your forever person, you want forever to start as soon as possible.
That was it. That was how she felt. It was as if a curtain had been lifted, and finally, Sorrel could see the future. Now she realised how simple it all was.
She wanted Tam Blackwood. She’d always wanted him.
She wanted their forever dream home together.
Maybe children. She wanted to stop holding on to the stone heart he’d given her that night, ten years ago, and be able to hold on to him instead.
She wanted her life to finally start: the life that she’d always thought she was going to have.
She turned onto the high street, and then turned right. Before, when they’d come out of the wine bar, they’d turned left, away from where the bus stop was. But now, Sorrel ran towards it.
She could see the silhouette of a couple of people standing at the stop. She couldn’t see if one of them was Tam.
Please be there. Please, she willed it under her breath.
And as she got closer to the stop, she saw the bus coming around the corner.
‘Wait!’ Briony yelled, waving her arms.