Chapter 31
The repair shop volunteers jumped from the windows and had to arrange themselves in such a way that suggested they hadn’t been wiping at the frosty glass and silencing screams of amazement and delight at the sight of Rhona very much getting back together with her mysterious boyfriend from the old days when they saw them stepping apart and making towards the shed doors.
‘They’re coming in here,’ Florrie had yelped, and the whole band had scattered.
If Rhona noticed the unnatural way they were all busying themselves with nothing when she brought Eric inside, she didn’t show it. Indeed, she looked too happy (and a little too sweetly abashed) to suggest she was thinking anything at all, other than of her desire to introduce Eric to everyone.
When the handshakes were done and everyone was sitting around with their hot sweet tea and slices of Christmas cake, and Senga was smiling preeningly, but saying nothing, the very picture of a contented and vindicated Cupid, having made the very best match of her life, there still seemed to be so much that required clearing up.
Eric led the questioning. ‘Why were you looking for me in connection to my old toboggan?’
Florrie had immediately produced the sled and there followed another long round of exclamations about how wonderfully it had been restored, and how clever McIntyre and Cary were.
Eric and Rhona, sitting side by side, each held the rope reins in their hands and looked at one another in a way that had made Florrie and Hamish, looking on, choke up, and they’d both remembered simultaneously, as if a reminder were needed, that as much as they’d kissed and made up, their own story was coming to an end, whereas Eric and Rhona’s was only just getting started again.
‘We wanted to meet the man who designed the original toboggan,’ McIntyre said on everyone’s behalf.
‘And find out why it became the model for the whole fleet at the ski centre,’ said Roz.
‘Ah, well, that’s easy. I left it at the ski centre that day me and Rhona… visited.’ No one could miss the flush of pink on both his and Rhona’s cheeks as they exchanged a smiling glance at this. ‘And I said to the fella that worked there, Forsythe, was it?’
‘Farquhar,’ Hamish corrected.
‘That’s the one. I said he might store it at the slopes, let the kiddies play on it.’
‘And he copied it and made loads,’ Florrie added.
‘Must have done, I suppose,’ Eric said with a shrug.
‘And the whole resort became famous for its toboggan run,’ Ally McIntyre put in.
‘I’ve still got the drawing for it somewhere,’ said Eric. ‘I’m no draughtsman but I enjoy making a plan and then seeing the thing off the page and onto my saw bench.’
‘Aye,’ McIntyre said as though that were the entire meaning of life.
Florrie listened as her friends all volunteered their stories about how people had been bringing their broken old toboggans back to the ski centre for days now, and how they were all identically made according to Eric’s original, even down to the red paint.
‘Some are knackered, mind,’ Sachin said, unromantically.
‘It’s a shame we can’t repair all of them, like this one,’ Florrie heard her heart saying out loud, and all eyes shifted from the gleaming toboggan on the floor and onto her.
‘What did you say, lass?’ McIntyre asked. ‘Repair all of them?’
‘We could, given time,’ said Cary the carpenter.
Florrie’s brain was racing ahead, like a skier taking leaps and bouncing over moguls, a finish line coming into view.
‘What if we make more?’ she said. ‘Lots more? Could we do that?’
McIntyre, not a man known for sitting about, got to his feet. ‘Go on, what are you thinking?’ he said, pulling the paper party crown from his head.
Hamish had taken hold of her hand and was staring at her now. ‘Yeah, go on,’ he encouraged.
‘What if we said we were relaunching the toboggan run, and started selling tickets now, opening… Christmas Eve, say? And what if you guys made, I don’t know another forty or so, and we fix the broken ones, and I run the projections for profits and submit those to the Regional Authority in my report, saying how you might be able to make enough money in snow or in the dry weather to stay open a little longer, and we all pitch in and get it done, the way you’ve shown me, ever since I arrived? ’
Everyone was looking at her in growing interest.
‘You haven’t submitted your decision to Mr Banks yet?’ said Hamish.
‘Nope,’ Florrie said, smiling, knowing there’d been a good reason she hadn’t, and this was it. ‘And my dad’s seriously pissed off about it. But they said, technically, I had two weeks to submit it. There’s still time.’
‘We’d need to get the newspapers in and the telly folks up here for the launch,’ said Murray McIntyre.
‘I’ll sort that out,’ Ally volunteered.
‘And we’ll need to have some kind of launch party? A proper, whole community sort of party, like the lights switch-on,’ said Florrie, still working things through in her mind, but loving the way Hamish was squeezing her fingers and his eyes were gleaming.
‘But we’ll need loads of hardwood,’ said McIntyre. ‘I’ve used all my supplies to fix this one toboggan. It’s going to be expensive, even with us working round the clock for free.’
Everyone looked at the toboggan in its pristine perfection, running the maths, the first flaw in Florrie’s plan, until one voice cut through all their ruminations.
‘Not a bother. I own a sawmill,’ said Eric, with a broad smile, bringing the whole room to their feet, and sending Rhona crashing into his arms. Eric returned her embrace strongly, rooted to her side in a way that said he’d every intention of staying there.
‘So, are we doing this?’ Florrie asked.
‘We’ve got to try,’ said McIntyre.
Hamish kissed Florrie hard before the pair of them ran off to the mezzanine to rewrite her report and do the new calculations, and the party went on into the night in the repair shop below them.