She was thinking that for that night she’d make some little chive dumplings with a spicy chicken broth, and some garlic and chili kale. Perfect for the boys if they were hungry coming in from the fields; the day was bright and clear, but there was still a wind coming down from the north and it would be good to have something warming inside.
“Hello,” she said to old Wullie, who worked, as far as anyone could tell, about twenty hours a day running the island’s only grocery shop. He might not even be that old. He might actually just be a very tired thirty-five.
“Flora MacKenzie,” he grunted. Flora felt oddly disgruntled. She’d have quite liked someone to have taken a look at her smart clothes and nice boots and gone, “Flora MacKenzie! Look at you!” But nobody had.
“Hi there!” she said. “I’m back! Well, for work, you know. I work in London.”
Wullie stared straight ahead without interest, as he always had.
“Aye,” he said.
“So,” she said. “Um. Have you got any . . . rice wine?”
“Neh.”
“Lemongrass?”
He looked at her and blinked slowly.
“Soy sauce?”
“Aye,” he said, and pointed out a tiny, very dusty, sticky-looking bottle.
“And what about vegetables?” she said brightly. Wullie gestured at a shelf full of cans and Flora felt very cross. They grew all sorts of good stuff on the island: carrots, potatoes, tomatoes that loved the long summer evenings as long as you could keep them warm enough. Why was none of that here?
“Isn’t there a farmers’ market?” she said.
“A waut?” said Wullie with a faint air of menace in his voice.
“Nothing,” said Flora, scampering away.
In the end she made it, out of all things, from an old Pot Noodle bouillon cube and some harsh local onions she found in the pantry at the house. In her anxiety—as well as trying to clean the filthy kitchen at the same time—she horribly overboiled the chicken on the unfamiliar Aga, and the dumplings were hard as bullets.
Innes regarded the food carefully when they came in from the fields, washing up at the big sink.
“Is this a feminist position?” he said as they took their familiar places at the table: Innes and Hamish on the window side, Flora and Fintan on the other, her father nearest the range. “Is being terrible at cooking all the rage in London these days?”
“Well, we could pebble-dash the barn with it,” suggested Fintan, poking at his plate dubiously.
“Or there’s that drywall that needs putting up,” said Innes. “We could use it for putty.”
“Stop complaining and just eat it,” said Flora.
“But it tastes like dishwater,” said Innes, in what he clearly thought was a reasonable tone.
Flora wanted to throw a plate at him. She knew it was ridiculous—the whole thing was absolutely horrible—but she felt incredibly embarrassed and angry at the same time. She was so rusty about everything up here.
“I like it, Flora,” said Hamish, who’d practically licked his plate clean. “What is it, please?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Hamish,” said Fintan. “You’re worse than Bracken and Bramble.”
“Is there anything else?” said Innes sadly.
“Not unless any of you thought to make anything.”
They all looked at each other.
“Well, you can starve then,” she said, crossly.
“Toast!” said Innes joyfully, and they all got up.
“What?”
“Mrs. Laird,” explained Fintan. “You know, who used to look after the vicar? She can actually make stuff. She makes bread for us.”
Flora went pink.
“I can do all that.”
“Come on, love,” said her dad from the fireplace. “We’re only messing with you. Nobody gets it right the first time.”
Flora took a deep breath and looked round at the filthy kitchen.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said.
“To the chippy?” said Hamish hopefully.
“No!” said Flora, tears stinging her eyes as she marched out of the house. She’d have banged the door behind her, but it never got shut in the summer and had warped a bit, and nobody had thought to oil the hinges, which also made her furious. Had they all just given up?
And now they were doing the big ha-ha-has, teasing her, just like they always used to. With no one to stick up for her.
Well, she wasn’t putting up with it. She was going to head out, go somewhere . . . but where? The pub would be full of her dad’s friends and she didn’t want to get into that. Everything else was shut. Oh for God’s sake, this place. But she couldn’t go home either.
She decided instead to take a walk up the Carndyne fell and clear her head.
The great fell, from which you could see across to the mainland, and to the islands behind if you went on that side, was a beautiful hill—more of a mountain, really. People came from all over to climb it, and in the winter it got very snowy. It was unexpectedly dangerous; it could be mistaken for an easy summer walk when in fact it was unusually tricky and could get perilous in bad weather. There wasn’t a season passed when Mountain Rescue wasn’t called out to one idiot or another who thought they’d take a quick wander up the lovely green hill and got themselves into trouble far faster than they could imagine, even though there were plenty of signs and the guidebooks were very clear.
Murians, who often made up Mountain Rescue in the summertime, scoffed at this kind of thing and had little truck with girls who marched up in flip-flops and T-shirts, or boys who thought they could traverse a col without a rope and were very grateful for the dog rescue and the wry remarks of the locals.
Flora, of course, knew it like the back of her hand, had first climbed it at the age of nine. It was also the alternate-year school trip, which always provoked loud groans. The other class got to go to Esker, a little village on the mainland that hosted a pathetic excuse for a summer funfair, with rackety rides and straightforwardly fraudulent stalls that nonetheless provoked wild excitement in the stimulus-hungry island boys and girls, who would come back laden with enormous lollipops and cheap felt toys, sneering at the climbers, who had nothing but empty lunch boxes from sandwiches eaten at 10 A.M., sore feet, and, occasionally, hoods full of rainwater.
It was late in the day, but the evenings were so long now, and as Flora climbed higher, she began to breathe deeply and take in the sights all around her. After another ten minutes, she turned round in surprise to see that Bramble was following her, panting cheerfully.
“Oh no!” she said. “No, go back down. Honestly, I need some alone time.”
Bramble completely ignored this and waddled up to her, licking her hand gently.
“Dog! You are too old and fat to walk up this mountain! What if you get stuck?”
Bramble wagged his tail gently. Flora looked behind her. If she took him all the way down, she’d have to walk back into the kitchen, into the weird silence she was sure would have descended on everyone, and apologize for her outburst, or just generally look foolish. She sighed and marched on.
“You’d better keep up with me, then.”