Chapter 26
Florrie opened her eyes to a strangely monochrome world. The sky through the window was darkest grey, the sun not yet up over the valley. Yet, the light in Hamish’s room was reminiscent of mornings waking up in the wintry Alps, or high on the Fitzsimmons Range or the snowy Rockies.
She sprang from under Hamish’s duvet. Somehow in the night they had ended up beneath it together.
‘Snow?’ One glance confirmed it. Everything was washed of its colour and blanketed in white.
She wanted to shake Hamish and tell him his candle had worked.
Ullr had brought the snow he’d been wishing for to kickstart slope season in earnest. She looked again at the flakes thickly falling, far too late – and with no promise of staying – to save Hamish’s business.
She decided to let him sleep and tiptoed to the bathroom as quietly as she could.
She hadn’t expected to sleep in anyone’s bed on this trip, and she certainly never expected to wake up innocently next to Hamish, but Cairn Dhu had brought nothing but surprises right from the first moment she arrived.
She hadn’t counted on her very next surprise coming at the exact moment she was rehearsing her farewells in the bathroom mirror.
‘Thank you for having me,’ she whispered to her reflection.
‘Uh, no! He didn’t have me. Ugh.’ She cringed at her own awkwardness.
‘It’s been wonderful doing business with you,’ she said with a weak smile.
‘Way too cold.’ She leaned her forehead against the glass over the sink and tried again, in a voice barely a whisper.
‘Hamish, you’ve been nothing but a gentleman, and I’m so glad I got to know you.
I wish… I really wish we’d met in different circumstances because…
we’re actually pretty good together, or I imagine we would be, if we’d had the chance.
’ She pushed herself back to standing with a sigh and attempted to fix where her hair had escaped its crown of plaits, finding she had regained some more movement in her fingertips this morning, but feeling weighted down with the thought of leaving today.
A loud buzzing noise made her flinch. Hamish snorted himself awake. She watched him through the crack between the bathroom door and its frame as he padded across the floor in his socks, clawing his hair away from his face before reaching for an intercom on the wall by the door.
‘Kenneth? Sorry, I must have slept in. Have you opened the shop? Cheers, pal. A visitor? You’ve let them up the stairs?’
Hearing this, Florrie escaped the bathroom and ran for her boots on the floor at Hamish’s feet. ‘Someone’s coming up here? Help me put my boots on,’ she hissed, trying to lift her jacket off the coat hook.
They both froze, wide-eyed, at the heavy steps clanking up the metal staircase beyond the door. Whoever it was stopped on the Ptarmigan landing before continuing their climb upwards.
‘Who is it?’ she mouthed. ‘It’s not your parents, is it?’
‘Nae idea.’ Evidently Hamish didn’t see the need for whispers. ‘I don’t get many visitors. Look, sit on the sofa and I’ll get rid…’
He was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Florrie suppressed a yelp and ran back into the bathroom clutching her coat and boots.
She heard Hamish sigh like she was being silly but as soon as he opened the door, Florrie knew she’d been right to hide out of sight.
‘Hello, Mr Skelton? I’m Barry Banks.’
‘Uhh…’ Hamish didn’t seem to remember the name. Florrie knew it all too well.
‘Contracts Officer for tourism, leisure and sports? Cairngorm South and East Regional Authority?’
‘Oh, right, aye, of course. Uh…’
Through the crack in the door, Florrie could see the top of the man’s head reflected in Hamish’s bedside window.
Mr Banks was trying to peer around Hamish’s shoulder, angling to be invited inside.
She prayed to all the gods that Hamish would hold firm.
This guy could not find the woman he’d hired to audit Hamish’s business hiding in his bathroom before nine in the morning and about to embark on what to any outside observer would look very much like a snowy walk of shame.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Banks?’ His voice was firm but affable. Now was not the time to note its morning gruffness or to appreciate the span of Hamish’s shoulders seen from behind as he barred Bank’s way with one hand gripping the door and one palm pressed to the wall.
‘We’d been hoping to receive the consultation decision letter by now. Has uhm,’ Barry Banks peered under Hamish’s arm. ‘Has Ms Norheim conducted her audit, do you know? The person we spoke to at Norheim Consultancy yesterday seemed very cagey. Didn’t seem to know what was happening on the ground.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Florrie heard Hamish reply. ‘No, she’s uh… As far as I’m aware Flor… Ms. Norheim already sent in her report and has, uh, left, the country.’
‘Gone, has she?’ Another look around Hamish, followed by a tap on the door frame as though Mr Banks was testing it for woodworm. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind showing me around? It’s been… a while since my last visit.’
‘Yes, right, of course. Tell you what, let’s start down in the hire shop, shall we? Where you already met my colleague, Kenneth?’
Florrie slumped with relief as she heard Hamish pull on boots and grab his keys, letting the door latch as he left, and she listened to them chatting all the way down the stairs.
She had to get out of the ski centre without being spotted or risk questions about why she was still here and delaying sending her final report.
None of which she could answer. All she knew was it felt as though there was still something else she had to learn before signing off on Hamish’s future.
Ridiculous, she knew, now that she was about to grab a flight out of here to anywhere, but still, she knew for certain she was going to delay sending the report until the very last permissible second.
She felt for her phone in her coat pocket but it wasn’t there so she had to look around the flat.
She shouldn’t have been surprised when she found Hamish had put it on charge on his kitchen counter last night.
That was so like him to take care of the little things.
As she listened at the door for the all clear, she wondered if she had any right to hope Hamish might miss her a little, because she was going to miss him.
The sadness of her last morning, which had momentarily been chased away by the appearance of the unexpected intruder, Banks, flooded back in, and of course, inevitably, it was accompanied by a text message from her father.
Is there a delay I don’t know about, Flor? Are you still redrafting your report following my feedback or have your recommendations changed somehow? Why is this Banks guy calling my office asking if you’ve gone AWOL?
Florrie, with her feet shoved uncomfortably into her unlaced boots and with her coat, charity shop bag, and mittens bundled in her arms, pulled her hood over her hair and crept furtively down the stairs, listening all the time for the sound of footsteps coming up to meet her.
As she gingerly escaped the outer doors, she caught the faint strains of Hamish’s lovely Scottish accent coming from the ski hire shop. He was telling Mr Banks about the photographs he’d found.
Crunching through snow, the high street appeared so cheerful to Florrie with its colourful lights cast in soft focus through the snowflakes on her lashes.
The icy cold air caught her breath, and she put the ache in her chest down to the sudden chill and not the fact that she hadn’t got to say goodbye to Hamish Skelton, the man who’d hugged her calves to his chest all night, rubbing her feet to keep them warm even in his sleep. She was never going to see him again.
The mountains rising up on either side of the valley were deeply veined and ridged with white.
The bundled-up children on their way to school on the other side of the street delightedly hurled loosely packed, powdery snowballs at one another and caught falling snowflakes on their tongues, but she couldn’t share in the seasonal joy.
Leaving deep prints as she walked, she dialled the number saved on her phone and, of course, it picked up on the first ring. Empressa was always the very definition of efficient.
‘It’s Florrie,’ she said. ‘Can you get me a flight out of here, please? As soon as possible.’