Wildflower Bay (17 page)

‘You know,’ Jinny began, choosing her words carefully, ‘I think if something happened to my mum, she wouldn’t want me living in a state of “what
if”.’

She was, Isla reflected, surprisingly astute for her age, underneath the whirling exterior and giddy nature. Maybe it was being the eldest of eight children that did it.

‘It’s not really “what if”.’ Isla’s voice was quiet. ‘It’s more that – I want to get everything done that I can. I want to prove I can make
it. I want to be able to turn around and say “Look what I achieved by the time I was thirty.”’

She wasn’t quite sure who she was proving it to. She could picture her dad’s face, smiling at her fondly across the kitchen table. ‘You do whatever you like, hen, I’ll be
happy.’ He’d been cheerfully accepting when she’d decided to move out, take the place in the New Town with Hattie. He always maintained that all he wanted was for her to have a
good life, enjoy herself. He never mentioned Isla’s mum, though. She was the great unspoken, a silent presence. And he’d stayed single all this time.

‘Who are you turning round to?’ Shannon sat back, an unexpectedly thoughtful expression on her face. Isla half turned in her chair, watching Shannon as she poked at an ice cube in
her glass, fishing it out with a finger before crunching it up in her mouth.

‘Gross,’ said Jinny, pulling a face.

‘Aye, but my dentist loves me,’ said Shannon, in reply. ‘Anyway, Isla –’ she wasn’t going to let it go – ‘who exactly are you proving yourself
to
?’

Isla looked down at the photo of her mum, arms tightly wrapped around her chest. In the picture she was wearing a blue anorak with a fur lining. She could still remember the smell of it, and the
smell of her mum’s perfume, and the moment that picture had been taken, because afterwards they’d gone to the miniature railway and ridden on the train and had an ice cream and
everything had been lovely, and she’d been treated to anything she wanted. It hadn’t been for a long time afterwards that she’d realized: her parents knew by then. That the
perfect day had been one they’d created deliberately, to preserve memories and leave them there for the future – for an Isla who’d have no mother, no siblings, nobody but her dad
to look after her.

‘It’s not her, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was wonderful.’ Isla smiled at her mum. ‘But I need to prove I’m worth something. I spent years at
school being treated like –’ She stopped. That was a step too far, opening up too much. They didn’t need to know that stuff.

‘It must’ve been hard for you.’ Shannon looked at her appraisingly.

‘Mmm.’ Isla nodded, taken by surprise. Working in a salon, though, Shannon must have heard so many stories over the years – and you couldn’t do the job well unless you
had the ability to listen, empathize, and do it all without judging.

‘I was a right bitch when I was at school,’ Shannon continued. Jinny got up, motioning to the now-empty glasses, and set off for the bar.

Isla, who had already looked at Shannon through the eyes of her teenage self and decided that she’d have steered well clear, tried to make an appropriately surprised but non-committal
sound. It came out as a slight snort, which she turned into a cough. Shannon, undeterred, continued.

‘Yeah, I’d have ripped the shit out of you, likes.’
No kidding
, thought Isla, looking at Shannon’s sharp-edged face, the planes of her cheekbones standing out in
the filtered late afternoon light. ‘I wasnae all that nice to a couple of lassies in my class. Still feel bad about it now.’

‘Really?’ Isla, thinking of Jamie Duncan and Allison Graves and the whole gang who had made her life a misery, wondered if they were sitting somewhere having similar regrets.
Unlikely, she thought.

‘Yeah, the thing is – I was reading a thing about this in
Cosmopolitan
– we pick on anyone who isn’t quite the same as us, don’t we? I reckon you must have
had a hard time, with having lost your mum and that.’ Shannon gave a nod of acknowledgement as Jinny returned with a drink.

‘It wasn’t that much fun,’ Isla conceded.

‘Aye, well, you come across as dead stuck up and that, but you’re actually quite nice, don’t you think, Jinny?’

Jinny’s face was a picture as she tried to simultaneously warn Shannon that she was being profoundly tactless, and emit sympathy and understanding in Isla’s direction.

‘Thanks,’ said Isla with a wry smile. Shannon meant well, even if she did have a habit of galumphing in with both feet.

‘She means we’re glad you’re here, and we’re having a great time without Jessie – not that there’s anything wrong with Jessie, of course, because she’s
lovely, but we’ve learned loads from you, and –’ Jinny paused for breath.

‘Anyway,’ said Shannon with a broad smile. ‘Here’s to a good night out, and no hangovers the morn’.’

Isla, who had sworn after The Incident that she wasn’t ever drinking anything again, had somehow drunk two stiff gin and tonics and was facing up to a third. She felt pleasantly warm, her
limbs had loosened up, and she felt a huge wave of affection for these two funny girls – their odd ways, the fact they’d tried to make her feel welcome in their own unique manner. She
raised her glass to Jinny and Shannon. ‘Here’s to us.’

The third drink finished, they decided to head on to the Anchor Bar, which overlooked the harbour. Thursday night in Kilmannan was surprisingly busy for such a tiny place and the pub was already
filling up, the bar lined with customers. Standing alongside a girl in a pair of skin-tight shiny plastic trousers and a voluminous, gauzy top was a ruddy-faced farmer, still wearing a blue
all-in-one overall, the trousers smeared with – well, Isla hoped it was nothing more disgusting than oil. There was a tractor parked outside, alongside a collection of cars as motley as the
clientele. A battered old Volvo stood beside an immaculate silver Jaguar, lined up beside a rusty moped with the key still in the ignition.

‘Two ciders and a gin and tonic, and can we have three bags of cheese and onion, Andy?’ Jinny yelled over the top of the men who stood at the bar, then she somehow managed to dodge
her way into the corner, where she beckoned Isla and Shannon to join her on the remaining three empty stools that sat around a stripped wooden table. The Anchor was clearly the place to be: there
were signs suggesting that later on there’d be live music playing, and the place was filling up.

‘Edinburgh’s got nothing on a night out in Kilmannan.’ Shannon ruffled her hair carefully, applying a further layer of dark-red lipstick using a tiny hand mirror that she
pulled from her pocket.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Isla. ‘I can’t remember the last time I went out.’

‘With all that stuff at your fingertips? Clubs and bars and restaurants and pizza at three in the morning?’ Shannon sighed enviously. ‘I’d be out every night if I
could.’

‘I go out once in a while with Hattie, my flatmate,’ Isla backtracked. It sounded a bit tragic even to her ears to admit that the last time she’d been out before the drunken
texting episode was months ago. Back when she’d first moved in with Hattie, she’d gone through a phase – when she was Hattie’s new thing, she realized, thinking back –
when she had gone out most weekends, watching as Hattie got plastered on prosecco, making sure she got home in one piece. She’d had fun, cautiously, and there had been more than a few
occasions when she’d ended up in bed with some charming trainee architect or other, and even a few months when she’d dated Philip, auctioneer son of Hattie’s mother’s best
friend (or something like that – everyone in Hattie’s world seemed to know everyone else, and they were all related and owned vast tracts of land in the Highlands). But it had fizzled
out, and so had Isla’s star. Hattie had moved on to Minnie, the ‘absolutely darling’ girl who was working alongside her in the dress agency, and Isla had returned to her normal
Friday night routine of bath, beauty products, book and bed.

‘Well, a night out in this place will be a bit of a shock to the system, I reckon.’ Jinny’s eyes were bright now, three ciders down, and she was scanning the place over
Shannon’s shoulder, looking to see who else was around. ‘I’ll give you the low-down.’

‘That’s George MacKay, he’s got the big dairy farm over the hill as you go out of town,’ Jinny pointed to a stocky man in his late twenties, bright blue eyes above ruddy,
wind-weathered cheeks. He was roaring with laughter, a pint in his hand. ‘And that one with him is Jock Jamieson, he works at the forestry for the estate.’

The mythical Duntarvie Estate that everyone had mentioned. Isla was yet to meet anyone who lived or worked there. She’d driven out that way one afternoon, bored and restless, discovering a
huge sign below one of two stone lions that rested at the gates to a long drive which led off into the distance. She’d pulled the car over to have a look, but driven away as someone had
headed up in her direction in a dark-blue Range Rover – she was worried she was going to be arrested for trespassing.

Isla was having a good night. Not wanting to repeat the same mistake as last time, she switched to Diet Coke when she ordered another round of drinks, and watched with a vaguely maternal air
(which surprised her) as Jinny and Shannon got happily plastered on cider, dancing to the music of a passable covers band.

‘I must get going.’ It was half past twelve, and she had to be up in the morning. So did the girls.

‘Aye, we’d better get a move on.’ Shannon, her rainbow-spiked hair drooping in the steamy fug of the pub, fished under the table for her jacket. Somehow in the noisy, friendly
crowd they’d shifted sideways, and their stuff had been left behind.

‘Thanks for the drinks, Isla,’ Jinny said, as she reached across over the head of a man who was looking down at his phone, pointing something out to the guy sitting next to him. It
was so crowded, it was like playing sardines.

‘Thanks for inviting me out.’ There was a smile in Isla’s voice as she spoke. The two men looked up as Jinny’s bag swung down between them.

‘We meet again,’ said the fair-haired cyclist. A week on from the accident, he had a couple of steri-strips across a gash on his forehead.

Isla looked at him closely for a moment. Without the layer of mud, his hair was sandy blond and thick, pushed back from a tanned forehead sprinkled with freckles. His jaw was marked with
stubble, and he had teeth Shannon’s dentist would presumably find incredibly impressive.

‘Whoa,’ said a drunken voice behind her, as someone propelled her forward so that she found herself jammed between the cyclist’s thighs.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to step backwards. There was nowhere to go, the crowded bar having surged into the space that she’d previously filled.

‘Don’t be,’ he said, looking delighted. He turned to his dark-haired companion. ‘Roddy, this is –’ and he looked at her with a slightly triumphant expression
– ‘Isla.’

Jinny emitted a tiny, excited squeak.

‘Very nice to meet you,’ said Isla, reaching out her hand to shake that of the dark-haired man. He ran his spare hand through his hair, ducking shyly, looking up at her through a
flopping fringe.

‘Roddy Maxwell.’ He shook her hand firmly with impeccable manners, despite the chaotic surroundings. ‘How d’you do?’

‘Good, thank you.’ Isla pulled a face as she was elbowed in the back once again by someone making their way past with a drink, which sloshed over her elbow.

‘You girls coming, or what?’ Shannon’s deep voice carried across from the doorway where she stood waiting.

‘I’ll get out of your way.’ Isla stepped backwards, carefully. As she did, her leg brushed against the blond man’s leg and she felt a rush of something – gin,
probably – going to her head.

‘Jesus, Isla,’ Jinny was actually twirling round in circles outside. ‘You don’t mess about. Straight to the top, eh?’

‘What are you on about?’ Shannon grabbed Jinny by the arm so that she had to stand still for a moment.

‘Did you not see what happened in there? First I nearly hit bloody Roderick Maxwell in the head with my bag, and then two seconds later Isla’s being introduced to him – quite
the thing.’

‘By who?’ Shannon looked across at the bar window, where the silhouettes of drinkers could be seen against the light.

‘I know he’s a fast worker, but how the hell d’you know Finn MacArthur already?’ Jinny cocked her head, looking at Isla with interest.

‘Isla, you’re a dark horse.’ Shannon let out a low whistle. ‘Mind you, with his reputation, I’m no’ surprised.’

Isla shook her head, utterly confused. The drinks must have been a lot stronger than they seemed. ‘What are you two on about?’

‘Finn MacArthur. Total charmer, or a bit of a ladies’ man, if you know what I mean, depending on who you talk to. Anyway, there’s no’ getting away from the fact
he’s gorgeous. Knows it, mind you.’

He certainly exuded an easy self-confidence.

Shannon hitched her bag over her shoulder and set off towards home, the other two following. ‘Aye, and Roderick Maxwell is the Laird of Duntarvie Estate. His best mate. No’ the sort
of person that hangs around with hairdressers.’

Ruth was on her way back from the chemist, bag filled with the ridiculous pills that Doctor Lewis was insistent she take daily, when she passed the steamy window of the
hairdresser’s.

‘Hello, Ethel.’

Her friend looked up from the magazine she was reading whilst waiting for her appointment.

‘How’re you this morning?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Ruth. Just trying out this hotshot new hairdresser we’ve got as a special guest.’ She looked across at Isla, who was busy blow-drying Sandra
Gilfillan’s blonde hair. Sandra, who owned the hotel with her husband Murdo, had always been quite vociferous about the fact that she couldn’t get a decent haircut on the island for
love nor money, so it was testament to the spreading news of Isla’s skill that she’d honoured them with her presence.

‘I see herself is in the hot seat.’

‘Aye,’ Ethel gave a giggle. They’d been friends since school, and in all those years her laugh hadn’t changed. ‘Well, with the seal of approval from Her Majesty,
this place will have bookings through the roof from all the ladies who lunch. I hope Jessie’s ready for it when she comes back.’