Chapter 6 #2
‘Repair is a highly skilled world,’ Roz chattered on.
‘Niche, expert. My holiday idea is just one way of passing on dying skills to a new generation. We’ll start with the holidays, and one day we’ll run proper apprenticeships here.
Government funded, hopefully. And we’re going to convert the downstairs bedroom in the Mill House too, for better accessibility to our holidays.
That’s a job for the spring. Because, you know, free repairs are great, but paid repairs are also essential to encourage expertise and sustain lifelong careers.
How many young professional repairers do you know? ’
Roz tipped her head to catch Florrie’s eye, evidently seeing something there that made her panic spike. She rose from the chair. ‘Oh, I’m blethering and you’re tired. I’ll go.’
Out of politeness, Florrie made a show of protesting but underlying it all, she was relieved.
Roz unbolted the gate and it swung inwards so she could step onto the ladder.
‘No one comes in here outside of repair shop hours or when we don’t have events or social groups using the space.
You’ll be quite alone this afternoon, and safe.
I’ll make sure Mac takes a couple of his…
’ she glanced behind her at the shapes on the repair shop floor, ‘his… gnome things with him to the house to keep him busy tonight. You’ve got my phone number from your booking confirmation, and I’m just across the drive if you need anything.
I’d have gladly let you stay in the Mill House, but our twins are staying with us this month…
’ The woman didn’t seem able to stop talking.
A strain showed behind Roz’s smile. ‘Ally’s house-hunting with her boyfriend, Jamie, and Murray’s having building work done, so he and his boyfriend Finlay are staying with us as well…
’ Her voice rose in pitch the more she babbled on.
Florrie was sure she could hear her own pulse beating inside her exhausted brain.
Roz watched her from the ladder. ‘Listen… I won’t charge any money, if you’ll just stay and be my bunk room guinea pig? Test out the visitor experience, leave us our first review?’
‘Well, when you put it like that,’ Florrie said, trying to smile. ‘Do you think four fifteen’s too early to hit the hay?’ She looked again at the lovely low bed, and Roz finally relaxed.
‘I’ll bring you over some Scotch broth, and some towels. There’s a loo on the ground floor. You’ll have to come to the Mill House if you want a shower, though. Just knock, or text, even?’
Florrie was too tired to explore her feelings about visiting the McIntyres’ house to shower. She’d confront the realities of that in the morning. ‘Appreciate that. Thanks.’
‘Right. Well. Welcome to Cairn Dhu,’ said Roz, freeing a big metal key from a bunch, presumably for the shed doors, and leaving it on the rug for Florrie.
She lowered herself down the ladder. Just as she was about to disappear below the mezzanine parapet, she stopped to tell her in an assured way, ‘You’re in for a braw holiday! ’
Florrie nodded wordlessly and pulled the straight-mouthed smile she’d already picked up from the Brits.
Florrie had slept for some time, safely locked inside her strange nest. It was warm and stuffy.
She could tell the bed hadn’t been slept in, the duvet was thick and heavy, and the whole place smelled of freshly hewn wood, beeswax and lavender polish.
The orange lampshade cast a comforting atmosphere over the little roost under the eaves.
She’d passed out within minutes, having thrown on her, thankfully completely dry, pyjamas and a jumper and thick socks.
No rain had got inside her case. That, and this cosy bed, were at least some things to be thankful for today.
It was the best sleep she’d had in days and it would have lasted all night if she hadn’t been whispered awake by a voice at the foot of the ladder telling her she was leaving soup and bread on the café counter below.
Roz had tiptoed away again, using her own jangling keys to relock the shed from the outside.
Florrie had lain still for a while, summoning the willpower to get out from under the covers but the good smell of soup had risen up to meet her nostrils and drawn her down the ladder.
Whatever Scotch broth was made of, Florrie loved it. Salty and golden, fresh and filling. There’d been buttered crusty bread too. She’d wondered if it was also home-made. Roz looked the type to know her way around a loaf tin.
After supper, padding around inside the big echoing shed didn’t feel anything like as cloistered and protected as her little ledge up in the air, but she managed to find the bathroom, saying the word ‘loo’ to herself in the mirror over the sink, mimicking Roz’s accent until the word lost all meaning. ‘Loo-oo-oo!’
The water was hot. A sticker on the glass told her the shed’s heating system was one hundred per cent renewable, something about a heatsink and turbine.
Sure enough, there were fresh bath towels waiting for her too, not that she could do all that much with them, other than take them up the ladder.
The plan had been to throw herself back into the rich sleep of the recently landed transatlantic traveller, but she found the drowsy darkness wouldn’t come for her a second time.
After a while spent staring through the skylight and replaying her mortification at the hotel check-in desk and out on the high street earlier today, she gave up trying to sleep and went in search of a glass of water from the café tap.
The crisp water awakened her even more and she decided she might as well finish what was left of her Aspen airport cookies.
She also decided to check on the special box that had gone with her everywhere in her suitcase ever since she left the Fl?m Valley. Despite its age, the box was intact, thank goodness. It was always a worry when unpacking her belongings in a new place.
She lifted the lid carefully and softly parted the brown straw-like packing paper that protected the precious treasure inside.
Her eyes fell upon the rich berry red glass with its gold lacquer swirls and the glitter she felt sure must have been added, probably by her grandmother, years after the pretty bauble was blown in some German glass foundry.
She wished she’d thought to ask her about it as a child, but children have no idea how few Christmases a lifetime grants us.
Every Christmas the bauble had been hung from a festive branch in the home she shared with her mother and Omma, and before that her Omma had hung it in her married home.
Florrie was carefully lifting the decoration from the paper nest to examine its long elegant glass finial, so fragile and so beautiful where the berry red glass thinned to a deep red loop where the ribbon attached, but a notification sounded on her phone charging by her bed, and she hurriedly packed her treasure away again, stowing the box safely in her suitcase.
She wasn’t going to hang her decoration anywhere this Christmas, just like all the other Christmases since she left her childhood home – now someone else’s house – always waiting for a day when she could say she was truly home for Christmas, and she’d decorate the branches of her own tree, safe in the knowledge she was staying put all year round and forever.
She lunged for her phone. No messages could have come from either of her brothers, she knew that for sure.
Tusk, somehow short for Torvald, her eldest brother was being nursed at home by his fiancée since shattering his femur attempting Whistler’s ‘West Cirque’ with a new advertising sponsor six weeks ago, and Ren, her favourite brother, was on an off-grid honeymoon in an undisclosed location in Malaysia.
He’d insisted on a digital detox post-wedding vacation having worked for their father every single day for the last year, trying to keep up with his tireless pursuit of establishing the family at the heart of the winter leisure economy worldwide.
She unlocked her phone. Maybe it was the Lamontagnes, checking on how she was?
It had been two weeks since she’d left their family home in beautiful Bormio in the French Alps where she’d made herself useful to Juliette and Callixte, always busy running their hotel chain, while she looked after their boys, eleven-year-old Callixte Junior and nine-year-old Jean-Christian.
She’d missed the youngest boy most of all since leaving, though she hadn’t missed reasoning with the brothers over the need to put down their Nintendos and pick up their calculus homework.
Jean-Christian had tried to sneak his (secretly) favourite hamburger plushie into her case when she was packing.
The innocence of his sacrifice had made her want to cancel her Aspen flight.
She hadn’t the heart to take the toy with her and so tucked it right back under Jean-Christian’s pillow where it belonged.
The boys had been sending her funny memes and little messages ever since she left and they seemed to be keeping up their promise not to give their new au pair a hard time, most of the time.
But the message wasn’t from the boys or their parents. It was from her father.
Day one, checking in. What have you found out?
No ‘how was your flight, darling?’ or ‘did you get there OK?’ She pushed the covers away while she considered her response, as if she’d been caught slacking off and in bed at only seven in the evening when he’d probably still have been in the office at this hour.
She couldn’t tell him the truth; that she hadn’t even made it to the ski centre yet, or that she’d bungled the accommodation booking and had to resort to sleeping like a pigeon in a loft.
She typed:
Not sure yet. The place looks kind of hopeless at first glance but…