Mistakes We Make (3 page)

‘I’ll ramp up the heating.’

Lexie fiddled with a control and a fan blew in some warmth. ‘There’s been nothing coming north for the last ten minutes,’ she observed. ‘People must know about that convoy.’

They neared the turn-off to the hotel.

‘We could—’

‘No.’

Molly drove on in silence. A few miles south of the hotel they rounded another bend.

‘What the—?’

They jerked forward, wrenched against the seat belts, and slammed backwards into their seats as they narrowly avoided hitting the last car in another queue of traffic. Molly’s head hit the headrest with some force.

‘Ouch!’

‘You all right?’ Lexie sounded breathless.

‘I think so. I’ll probably have a bruise right across my body in the morning. Are you? Oh my God, Lexie, the
baby
!’

‘Kicking like crazy. I guess she’s OK.’

There was no sign of movement at all. Up ahead,  several drivers had left their cars and were walking  forward, presumably to find out what was going on.

Molly switched off the engine. ‘Let’s see what’s happening.’

A broad-built man with red hair was wandering towards them. ‘Do you know what the problem is?’ Lexie called.

He headed their way. ‘It’s bad news. There’s been a nasty accident. Apparently a lorry has dropped a load of caustic acid. One of the drums trapped someone. And one has burst on the road.’

‘Acid? Oh my God—’ Lexie clamped a hand across her mouth and turned away.

Molly was pale. ‘Someone’s trapped?’

‘Yup. And the worst thing is, they’re not going to be able to get the fire engines or ambulances down from Oban because of the—’

‘—wind turbines—’

‘—and no-one’s going to be able to move until they hose down the road. The caustic acid will eat rubber. You wouldn’t be able to drive more than a mile or two before the tyres go.’

‘What about the poor man—?’

‘They’ve called for a helicopter. It’ll have to come from Glasgow. But I think they’ll have to send some trained firefighters with some equipment up as well. They might send a second helicopter so that they can free him, but to clear the road they’ll need a fire engine with a water tank and hoses. I don’t know if they have any in Inveraray, or Dumbarton. They might have to come from Glasgow. It could take a long time.’

Lexie looked grey. ‘We’re cut off.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘We have to go back to the hotel.’

Molly swallowed hard.

‘We’d be several hours getting to Oban and heaven knows when we’ll be able to move on south. If we get back to the hotel before others begin to think about it, we might just be able to get our room back. We can have supper sent up. We can have breakfast there too, if you want, then we can set off home tomorrow.’

‘I’m not sure—’

‘It’s not a suggestion, Molly. It’s what we’re going to do. I’m shattered after the drive here, I’m starving, the baby’s starving, and if we don’t go
right now
, we could end up sleeping in the car.’

Molly pursed her lips but gave in as gracefully as she could. ‘You’re right. I’m being selfish. Let’s go.’

––––––––

M
olly seldom slept well. She’d never told Lexie this, although Adam knew, of course – it’s hard to hide such things from someone you live with.

When she first met Adam, she’d never even thought about sleep – you don’t when you’re eighteen. And you certainly don’t when all you want to do is have sex, sex and more sex till you can’t help sleeping like a god because you’re satisfied through and through. That was what it was like thirteen years ago, when she’d first started at uni.

She’d been with a crowd of girls at the bar – not that she knew any of them. They’d all met for the first time that day, so they were sizing each other up. Was the sporty-looking one really good at sports? Was the one with the pebble glasses a brainiac or was that stereotyping? How did that girl with the bob get her hair to look so sleek? And who would be friends with whom come the end of term, or even come next week?

Then the boys arrived and there’d been a change in atmosphere – still a lot of girly chat, but covert glances too, some not so furtive. One girl honed in on a well-muscled guy with a light dusting of facial hair who turned out to be gay, though she didn’t discover that for two whole years. Another disappeared after an hour with a preppy-looking youth in a pristine Ralph Lauren polo shirt and pink chinos, setting a pattern that was to be repeated over and again for four years while she worked her way through students and staff.

Molly had arrived at uni the survivor of some short, intense experimental relationships, from her first kiss at the back of a cowshed in Switzerland on a school trip to her first tentative shag with a physics geek with spots and thick glasses, but a great sense of humour.

She turned restlessly. What she remembered most of all was the throbbing sexual hunger she’d felt the first time she’d clapped eyes on Adam Blair, that first night in the students’ bar.

‘Who’s that?’

The girl next to her had shrugged. ‘The skinny guy? How would I know?’

He wasn’t skinny. He was lean. His limbs were long, his fingers astonishingly elegant. She examined the way they curled into the handle as he picked up his pint, marvelled at the square line of his jaw and the way the craggy broodiness of his face was transformed when he laughed. No, he was not skinny, though there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. She could almost see the muscles under the T-shirt, narrowing to the waist, all the power in the honed upper body, while the denim-clad thighs were compact and firm. Everything about him was exactly as it should be.

‘Fancy him?’ The girl was laughing. ‘I’ll fetch him over if you like.’

‘No, stop! Don’t!’

Her face reddened as the girl called out and waved a glass towards him in a wild gesture of invitation.

Across the room the youth’s gaze locked with hers for one ecstatic moment – then some girl in skintight jeans and a slinky top appeared at his side, and awkwardness turned to an anguish so acute that she longed for the embarrassment again.

I don’t care, she told herself, he’s just one guy among hundreds. And she made herself carry on chatting to the girls as if nothing had changed.

When she looked again, he had gone, and her disappointment was so sharp she was forced to acknowledge it.

‘Hi. Can I get you a drink?’

The touch on her shoulder was feather light. She whirled round, her insides detonating. Ka-boom! That had been it. Love at first sight.

Molly was getting stiff. She could feel the tension in her shoulder muscles and rolled onto her side to try to get more comfortable. In the other bed, Lexie was snuffling softly, like a spaniel contentedly chasing rabbits in its dreams.

She reached for her iPod and fumbled for the in-ear headphones. Under the covers, she located the right track of her audio book and set the timer to thirty minutes. If she was still awake, she’d set it again when it turned the player off. And again, if necessary, until sleep finally came.

Adam Blair
. Sexy as hell and with a sense of humour so dry you could set light to it. She’d thought she’d be with him for ever. So how had it all gone so badly wrong?

A couple of hours later and three rooms away, the subject of Molly’s reminiscences was alert and restless. Adam slipped soundlessly out of bed and padded across the carpet to the window. He eased one heavy curtain away from the glass so that he could steal a look at the morning world.

Inside his chest, his heart seemed to swell. This was what he had come for!

He inched the curtain back further, slipped between the fabric and the glass and pressed himself against the cold pane, his hands spread above his head, his nose almost touching the window, as if he might absorb the beauty of the scene through every cell.

Already the early sun was glancing off the water. Across the vivid emerald expanse of grass, the loch was a wash of blue framed by the glinting grey of the rocks by the foreshore.

He could feel his breathing deepen. He’d become conditioned to city living. Day after day, he was hemmed in by Edinburgh’s grand Georgian buildings. Day after day his eardrums were assaulted by the ceaseless noise of traffic. Day after day he was forced to thread his way through the crowds on the pavements or force a path for his bike between cars on his way to work or home.

He closed his eyes. He hadn’t realised how much he’d come to loathe it.

Outside a curlew mewed as it flew across the loch and he opened his eyes again. The siren call of this vastness was too much for him. He had to get out into the fresh air, the wide spaces, the hills. He forgot about the curtain and whirled around in his eagerness so that a bright shaft of light fell across Sunita’s slumbering form.

She stirred, threw a hand across her eyes and moaned softly. ‘What are you doing?’

He dropped the curtain back into place. ‘Shhh. It’s all right.’

‘What time is it? Come back to bed.’

He surveyed her curled body, so soft and desirable. There was no denying her beauty, and for a brief moment he was tempted to climb back into bed and wind himself around her. But he could have Sunita in his bed any time, while the opportunity for a climb was rare.

‘Shhh,’ he whispered. ‘Go back to sleep, it’s still early. I’m going for a walk.’

She raised her arm, the silky brown of her skin stark against the white cotton cover. He slid briefly into her embrace, nuzzled the softness of her neck with his lips, then extricated himself gently. She was already almost asleep again.

‘Back for breakfast?’

‘I promise.’

She turned on her side and, almost at once, her breathing deepened.

––––––––

A
dam missed his way, scrambled up a scree slope and strode across a large patch of heather before he found the path again. He didn’t care. His walking boots felt like forgotten friends. For a moment guilt nipped his conscience. This was Sunita’s weekend. Maybe he shouldn’t have slipped away.

Despite this thought, he didn’t stop climbing. At the top of the next ridge he halted, panting. A few years ago he would not have been out of breath.

Far below, he could see the Loch Melfort Hotel, the early morning sun just starting to pick out its white walls. Sunita would still be asleep.

Molly had never been like that.

He pulled a bottle of water out of his backpack and drank.

Correction.
Years of stress had made Molly restless, and her wakefulness was contagious. She used to listen to the radio, or stories, to help her relax. Did she still do that?

Adam’s jaw tightened. Seeing Molly like that last night ... he’d been shaken. He hadn’t seen her for months, then to come across her so unexpectedly ...

She’d looked tired. There were dark circles in the skin below her eyes that had never been there before. And she’d been so shocked to see him that she’d run off.

That hurt.

Adam shoved the bottle into his backpack, straightened and turned up the hill again. No point in going back now, not when he was so near the summit. Sunita would understand.

He attacked the next few hundred feet with ferocious energy, trying not to think about Sunita, or Molly, or even Lexie Gordon, for heaven’s sake – the link between those two was what had started all the damage in the first place. Besides, he had other worries. The unexpected phone call from his aunt a few days ago to be exact. He’d been working late – what was new? – when she’d called the office.

‘Adam? Is that you?’

‘Yes, hello?’ he’d said uncertainly, trying to place the voice.

‘It’s Jean. Auntie Jean.’

‘Oh, hi!’ He’d pulled himself together. ‘How good to hear from you. How are you?’

‘Sorry to phone ... You know how difficult—’

She’d stumbled to a halt.

Adam had stepped in smoothly. ‘I know. You don’t need to explain. So?’

He’d swung his chair round and stared out of the window. It was August and the Edinburgh Festival was at its height, but he couldn’t see any of the fun from here. His cramped office in Blair King – the law firm started fifty years ago by his grandfather, Duncan Blair, and taken on by Adam’s father, James – faced out into a narrow lane at the back of the building. It was an uninspiring view. All he could see was the grubby white-tiled wall of the tiny car park. He could have demanded one of the prime rooms upstairs, but Adam hated pulling rank.

‘Are you all right?’ he’d prompted, realising she’d gone quiet. ‘Or—’ he’d had a premonition, ‘—is it Uncle Geordie?’

‘He’s dying, Adam. That’s what I’m calling about.’

Adam gulped and closed his eyes. He hadn’t seen his uncle for three years, and then only at his cousin Hugh’s funeral – and what a difficult, stilted encounter that had been, with his father and his uncle not speaking and only an unwelcome sense of family duty driving his father there at all.

‘I’m so sorry to hear it,’ he’d said, swinging his chair back to his desk and picking up a paperclip. ‘What’s—?’ He stopped abruptly. What was the best way to put such a delicate question? Has he had an accident? What’s he got? Is it imminent? Can anything be done? Everything seemed tactless.

A vivid picture of Geordie Blair flashed into his head. Bluff, humorous, warm-hearted, a kind of country version of his father, but physically stronger – the result of a lifetime of heaving hay bales around and hauling calves into the world instead of sitting behind a desk pushing a pen.

‘You wouldn’t recognise him, Adam,’ Jean said, as if guessing his thoughts. ‘He’s just a husk. There’s nothing left of him.’

Her voice had shaken slightly for the first time. Jean Blair had always been a strong woman; it didn’t take much imagination to guess at the distress she must be feeling.

Adam fiddled with the paperclip, turning it round and round between his fingers. This was difficult. His father hadn’t exactly forbidden him to visit George at Forgie End Farm, but he’d felt bound to take his father’s side in the dispute that had opened a chasm between the two brothers. As a child, he’d adored the farm. Jean’s voice had brought the rich reek of it flooding back – the unmistakable warm smell of cowpats, of hay and meadow flowers, of baking and woodsmoke. He was unprepared for the profound sense of nostalgia. He clenched his fist so hard that the paperclip bit into his palm.