Chapter Two Cameron
Chapter Two
Cameron
Hello, Cam. I can see you today!’
Cam forced a smile to his face. ‘Hi, Jenna. Great, except I can’t see you, unfortunately.’
‘Oh, hold on. Sorry, I had the camera off. Doh.’
Her face popped up, frowning then quickly smiling again.
‘Great,’ Cam said. Then, ‘Hold on while I turn up the volume. The rain is lashing down here. We’ve caught the tail end of a storm.
You can’t even see the Firth,’ he added, waving behind him at his misty window, where the strait that separated the north Scottish coast from the Orkney Islands was usually visible.
‘Really? It’s been pretty sunny here all week.’
‘Winter has returned with a vengeance up here.’
‘Winter?’ Her eyes widened in horror, which made Cam want to smile – and he’d had precious few opportunities to do that in the past week. ‘It’s officially June now.’
He forced a wry grin, the kind that normally came naturally to him whenever he was in her virtual presence. ‘Aye, well, Scotland didn’t get the memo. Again.’
She laughed, rather dutifully, Cam thought. It had been a week since her colleagues had burst in with silly string and exploded a bombshell into his life.
That moment when his faint hopes had been instantly obliterated had kept him awake over the last few nights.
Before he’d met Jenna, he hadn’t really thought about time’s march or that each day marked a moment in his life he could never see again.
Only old people complained of how fast the years were turning: not young men in their early thirties.
Since losing Rachel, he’d become more conscious of time and opportunities passing. He hadn’t realised that that morning in Edinburgh would be their last together. If he’d only known, he would have asked her sooner to marry him.
After her passing, he’d slowly learned to be content with the life he had with Lachlan, his sister and his parents, running three times a week, pub quizzes with his friends.
But ever since the first video call with Jenna, something had begun to shift.
Once more, he was reminded that time always marched on .
. . whether you wanted it to or not. Sometimes you didn’t know when you’d have your last chance . . . all the missed opportunities.
So he’d decided to seize the moment and ask Jenna out after a year . . . because if his feelings for her hadn’t faded by then, they probably weren’t going to.
Now, it wasn’t to be. He’d agonised over how to introduce the subject of her engagement and felt it was better to rip off the plaster in one swift, painful movement.
‘How did your party go?’
‘Good. Great, actually.’ Jenna chewed her lip, the way she had when he’d first ‘met’ her at their initial Teams meeting.
He’d thought it was nervousness then, and it had endeared her to him even more.
He hadn’t seen it since – until today. ‘Um. I think I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Nathan. ’
His stomach knotted. Had she picked up on the fact he’d been trying to arrange a date with her? A date that would have involved him travelling almost nine hundred miles? Or had she still assumed he was only suggesting a friendly drink with her and her colleagues when he was in the area?
He laughed softly, hiding all his feelings of trepidation. ‘No need to apologise. Your private life is private.’
She was tapping her feet on the floor. He couldn’t see her feet – he wasn’t sure he ever had, except in a group photo on the Land’s End website – but he could hear the tapping, attuned as he was to every nuance of their online chats.
He knew the calendar of Cornish scenes behind her, the ceramic pug on the desk – even though she didn’t have a dog – and the coffee mug with her photograph on it. Had that come from her fiancé?
He’d known everything that happened in that small frame of her laptop screen and thought he’d known everything about her.
‘Well, I ought to have at least mentioned him before everyone burst into the office, but I didn’t want to bore you with my love life.’
‘You could never bore me,’ Cam said, forcing a smile, and Jenna’s shoulders slumped with relief. ‘Congratulations – again. So, tell me about the party.’
‘Oh – it was wild.’ She laughed. ‘Well, as wild as anything can be down here. All my friends and family came and we didn’t leave the pub until after two. We all had very sore heads the next morning. Good job it was a Saturday.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I can email some photos if you’d like? As you were in at the start?’
‘I’d love that.’ Cam’s stomach was a tight ball, yet he could feel his mouth stretched in that insane grin. ‘Have you known each other long?’
‘Like forever. Well, not quite, but Nate’s been kind of in and out of my life for decades, really. He was at the same school – but five years above, so obviously we never spoke.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Anyway, I went to uni, he went away – worked in Brighton – then he came back down here and started his business.’
‘He’s a businessman?’ Cam pictured a suit and a Lexus, a mobile phone surgically attached to Nathan’s ear.
‘A property developer. Well, a glorified builder, to be honest, but he’s done pretty well round here.
Good builders are always in demand. Anyway, he came back to Cornwall and we got together and .
. . here we are.’ She hesitated and said shyly, ‘Planning to spend forever together. It seems an awful long time.’
‘Not if you love each other.’
‘No. Exactly.’ She perked up. ‘How’s your weekend shaping up? Are you babysitting Lachlan again?’
It didn’t sound very exciting, put like that, even if it was true that Cam did share a lot of the childcare duties with his sister or she couldn’t have held down her job as a civilian support officer for the police.
‘I’m looking after Lachlan tonight, but tomorrow I’ll probably go to the pub. There’s a ceilidh band.’
‘Sounds fun. At the Tap Room? That involves a folk band and dancing, doesn’t it?’
Jenna seemed relieved that Cam had a life. Did she suspect his feelings for her? He suppressed a shiver. He hoped not. Now he knew about Nathan, he would find it excruciating if she did.
‘Yes. It involves lots of people flinging each other around while getting sweaty.’
Jenna rested her chin on her hand. ‘So will you be flinging anyone in particular around?’
Cam hesitated. Jenna sounded – hopeful. In fact, she sounded desperate for him to have someone in particular to share the ceilidh with.
He managed one more wry half-smile, knowing it was the last one in his armoury. ‘Maybe . . .’
Her blue eyes widened. ‘Oh, “maybe”, he says. Go on, tell me more. Is it serious?’
‘Um. We’re not engaged or anything.’
‘But it’s serious. I can tell from your face. You’re hesitating because you don’t want to admit how strongly you feel about this someone in particular.’
His stomach churned. ‘That’s true . . .’
‘At least tell me her name? We’re friends as well as colleagues, and you were at my engagement party – even if it was virtually, and only at the start.’
‘Her name?’ he murmured, panicking. A string of female names galloped through his mind. Anna, the pub landlady. Robyn, his best mate James’s wife. The postmistress, Mrs McIntyre. She was seventy-odd. His childhood friend, who owned a café and gave Lachlan free chocolate milkshakes . . .
‘Iona,’ he blurted out, ‘but, um, please don’t share that with anyone. It’s all – very early days.’
Jenna sighed. ‘Iona? Oh, that’s a beautiful name. So – evocative. I can just picture her.’
Cam could too. He could picture Iona roaring with laughter if she ever found out he’d invented a bogus girlfriend to avoid coming across as a saddo to the woman he was madly and hopelessly in love with.
He imagined Iona – kind, helpful and always up for a laugh – telling her partner, Laura, the village pharmacist, that he’d made up this pitiful story. And the nudges and sniggers every time he popped in for a packet of plasters or his isotonic energy drinks.
‘She sounds lovely . . .’ Jenna prompted again.
To his horror, he realised Jenna might be hoping for reciprocal photos.
‘I – er – yes, she is. Very nice.’ Cam hastily changed the subject. ‘Um . . . um, let’s chat about the Kilt Challenge, is it all one hundred per cent confirmed? I got your email, but I was waiting for the green light before contacting anyone.’
‘Oh, yes. It’s going ahead . . .’ Jenna’s voice sounded a bit strangled and then, to Cam’s horror, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Sorry, sorry. This is so unprofessional of me. I probably should’ve mentioned it earlier . . . but there’s something you should know about this challenge.’