Chapter 23
Rhona had hung around the repair shed, ringing up hot drinks on the till and serving what was left of the weekend bakes, unbeknown to her sister who would be enjoying a day off at home.
McIntyre had tinkered with repair jobs but there’d been very few clients, being a Monday and not an official open-for-repairs day.
The kids from the local school hadn’t come in for their woodworking sessions with Cary as there were rehearsals for the school Christmas pageant going on, plus it was far too cold for little ones to go traipsing up and down the high street now the temperatures had dropped and the wind was high.
For a short midwinter day – where only a few hours of light broke through the gloom – it had been a very long day indeed, and by four o’clock when Roz had returned from her classroom to greet her husband in the shed, the sky was black once more, and Rhona found herself glad that there was a volunteers’ meeting scheduled for this afternoon, anything to take her mind off the disappearing toboggan that may have been nothing more than a figment of her runaway imagination.
Rhona hadn’t even had the company of the young Florrie to distract her. The girl had kept to her bed up in the mezzanine all day, and from the absolute quiet up there, Florrie must barely have stirred in her sleep.
Roz, McIntyre and Rhona had drained their teacups around the stove and finished their toasted, buttered Bannocks while Roz filled them in on how Jolyon Sears (her own especial charge at the school as his one-to-one teacher), was getting on with his preparations for the school play where he was taking on two roles in their ‘Atlas of Christmas Traditions around the World’.
‘He’s doing a smashin’ job as the nativity star over Bethlehem,’ Roz said proudly, ‘and later in the play he’s the little boy who hits the Catalonian log until it poops sweets and gifts for all the children.’
Rhona thought she mustn’t have heard her correctly, but Roz assured her that the Tio de Nadal, the friendly log who families feed up with treats in the days before Christmas, before beating him with sticks on Christmas Eve until he defecates goodies, was just as much a beloved festive tradition as our own figgy pudding set alight with flaming brandy on Christmas Day, but still, Rhona hadn’t been convinced.
‘It sounds a very… unique Christmas show, well done, Roz,’ she’d told her weakly, brightening only to add, ‘I’m sure Joly will play his parts wonderfully.’
Roz had been explaining how little Shell Cooper, Jolyon’s best friend, had embraced with characteristic gusto her role as a Bondi Beach barbeque sausage in surf shorts and sunhat who gets engulfed with crepe paper flames and everyone cheers, when, to Rhona’s relief, the others arrived all at once and the shed filled with voices exclaiming about how it was nice to be in out of the cold, and Sachin Roy was saying how the temperature had fallen enough for snow, though everyone told him not to be daft. It was much too dry for that.
Coats were shucked off and bobble hats removed and there was the sudden business of hot chocolate to make.
Senga was here to help but she was oddly quiet.
The two sisters steamed the milk and mixed the cocoa and sprinkled mini marshmallows in strained silence, Rhona too afraid to ask her what was wrong in case Senga had noticed how confused she’d been these last few days.
When everyone was seated at the café tables and the mince pies Senga had brought fresh from her home oven were being roundly appreciated, Roz called the meeting to order.
‘Welcome everyone to our repair shed volunteers Christmas party-planning meeting.’
‘Can we make this quick? There’s a Repair Shop Christmas special on the BBC and I want to be home in time for it,’ said Dr Bonnet, the resident clock repairer.
‘Can’t you watch it on demand?’ Willie the sewist apprentice asked, testily.
‘I’ve got that. The iPlayer,’ Senga said, sagely, and the meeting showed signs of careering off the rails in a way only repair shed meetings could.
‘Can we stick to the topic at hand, everyone?’ Roz said in her classroom voice.
‘First things first, we’re looking at the ninth of December, so we don’t have long to prepare. Who wants to be in charge of emailing out the follow-up invitations confirming who can make it?’
No one moved, until Ally McIntyre, not one to suffer awkward silences, volunteered herself and her boyfriend Jamie for the job.
‘Thank you, loves.’ Roz typed into her iPad. ‘Be sure to check on all our garden project volunteers.’
‘We’ve the mailing list on the computer,’ said Sachin who always manned the repair triage desk and took clients’ details.
There’d followed some heated debate when Roz mentioned the need for everyone to declare what potluck items they were bringing for the buffet and everyone tried to outdo each other with their special dishes.
Roz said she’d only have the energy to make some sandwiches, and McIntyre promised he’d take charge of the chicken curry vol-au-vents everyone loved so much.
Rhona tried to say she’d make her stovies but no one heard her over all the showing off.
Cary always made his baked custard apples every year and his girlfriend Alice, who had returned for the meeting after her shift at the surgery, promised some Manchester tarts from her hometown.
Murray playfully told off his grumpy boyfriend Finlay for saying he didn’t even want to come to the party, let alone make anything special for it, and Murray volunteered the pair of them for a few big boxes of wine and party bags of crisps.
Willie declared with a shrug that he could bring a tub of Quality Street chocolates, he supposed, and Senga crowed about how she’d have to bring her iced and marzipanned fruitcake, since it was Christmas and everyone looked forward to it so much, and so it went on until Sachin beat everyone’s suggestions by saying he and his wife Aamaya would bring their famous sarson da saag and makki di roti again this year and they all fell to reminiscing about how delicious it was.
‘Right, can someone start putting names for the Secret Santa on wee bits of paper please?’ Roz interrupted. ‘And, Mac, find a box to put them in?’
This brought back memories of last year too and caused Murray to remark on all the dud presents ‘some folk’ had ‘taken the opportunity to get rid of’.
‘What if we declare that all this year’s Secret Santa gifts ought to be handmade, repaired or repurposed things?’ Ally added keenly, and Senga was in the middle of complaining that ‘some people enjoy a nice M&S bubble bath set,’ when the shed doors slid apart.
On seeing Hamish Skelton standing on the doormat, Rhona snapped her eyes immediately to the dark space above the mezzanine.
The lad had never set foot inside the repair shop until this moment, or so she thought, and it seemed too much of a coincidence to pass off as nothing, now that Florrie was the one auditing his business.
And hadn’t she fallen on his dry slope only yesterday and smashed her poor wrist to smithereens?
(So Roz had told her in a whisper half an hour ago as they drank their tea together.) Had the boy come to pay Florrie a visit now?
If that’s what he was planning on doing, she’d have hoped to see him bring some pretty flowers or a nice bunch of grapes for the poor sickening girl, taken to her bed all day.
‘What brings you here?’ Senga asked first.
Hamish nodded towards Rhona, and that made all eyes turn upon her.
The silence of all those stares made her whole body turn leaden with sinking dread.
Was he here to grass her up for toboggan theft?
Or was he here to demand she be dragged away to the hospital because she’d frightened him with her behaviour this morning at the lock-up?
‘I found some stuff in the ski centre garage today, and I wanted to ask about it,’ he said, and since all he had was a blue plastic folder in his hands – which Rhona had never seen before in her life – she drooped with relief, and the whole room peered at Hamish once more.
Only Senga kept her eyes on her sister, to the accusatory extent that Rhona had to turn and face her, mouthing a (hopefully) innocent-looking ‘what?’
Senga only shook her head in that dismissive way that confirmed Rhona was nothing but a silly old bother.
‘What is it, son?’ asked McIntyre, summoning Hamish into the circle of craning necks in the café corner.
Hamish checked every face as he passed. Searching for Florrie, thought Rhona.
‘Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard…’ he began, still clutching the folder. Rhona watched as Hamish’s baby-blue eyes flitted to the dark bunk room and, seeing no sign of life up there, a little of the light went out of his features. ‘The ski centre’s set to close on Christmas Eve. For good.’
He paused instinctively, knowing that Cairn Dhu folk like nothing more than a big reaction.
When the shock and bluster passed – much of it a little overblown to Rhona’s ears, as though they weren’t all that surprised by the news, having seen the place on the decline for years – Hamish went on.
‘Thanks, everybody. I’m cut up about it too, but there’s nothing to be done now the decision’s made. ’
‘Can’t we gather a petition, send it to the Regional Authority?’ said Alice.
Senga had an answer for this. ‘Like the petition we got together for the library closing one extra day a week? Or the buses only calling at weekends now? Or how about the petition we raised to stop them cutting off our high street phone box, or collecting the mail once a day instead of twice?’
Rhona thought she heard movement up above them, coming from the mezzanine, but kept her eyes fixed on Hamish.
‘It was inevitable,’ he said, distractedly, ‘what with the snows staying away, and folks preferring the big resorts. It’s no one’s fault.’ His attention fell to the folder in his hands. ‘Anyways, I found these in the old lockup when I was clearing it out.’