“Is that what I sound like?”
“What? No!” said Flora, panicked.
“You sounded like you were finishing my sentence for me.”
“So I remember not to mess it up,” said Flora quickly.
“Hmm,” said Joel, looking at her. “Uh, good, I guess.”
Flora tackled Maggie Buchanan first. She lived alone in one of the big houses along by the vicarage, and had always seemed rather grand to Flora.
“Ah, the wanderer returns,” she said as she answered the door, dressed neatly in a sweater, scarf, and waxed jacket. Two or three dogs pottered around her heels.
“Hello, Mrs. Buchanan.”
Flora felt as if she was about to ask the woman to sponsor her for a charity fun run, and didn’t feel massively better when Maggie didn’t invite her in.
“So. You’re a city girl now.” There was disapproval in every word.
“Hmm.”
Awkwardly, Flora explained the situation.
“Oh, right, you’re working for the American.” She said “the American” as if referring to Donald Trump.
“He wants to do things right up here,” said Flora. “Make things nice.”
“Well, he can start by filling in that awful gap along the harbor.”
“What do you mean?”
“The pink shop. The empty one. He bought it and hasn’t done anything with it. He’s just going to buy up everything on this island and turn it into his personal theme park, and I’m not having it.”
“Okay,” said Flora, making a note. “I’m sure I can talk to him about that.”
“Are you?” Maggie regarded her over her spectacles. “Well, good luck with that. But that wind farm could bring a lot of money to Mure. And we don’t see much of his.”
Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t much better, and she also had a lot to say about Flora’s dancing, or lack thereof. Flora listened to her to be polite and ended up half promising to look for her old dance outfit again, though if it fit her, it would be an absolute miracle.
Disheartened, she headed to the shop to pick up something for dinner—she found, to her surprise, that she was looking forward to cooking—and practically ran headlong into a large figure who was counting out sausages into his basket.
“Hello!” he said cheerfully when he saw her. It was Charlie, the genial Outward Adventures host. Flora found herself thinking how few men in London looked like him. Outdoorsy. Healthy. Not as if they spent too long under strip lighting, and inside windowless bars.
“Where’s your dog?” he said, frowning. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s doing fine, thanks,” said Flora. “Where are all your little shadows?”
“Oh, that lot are done,” he said. “They’ve had their time. Back home again. It’s businessmen next week. That’s why I’m buying the posh sausages.” His voice sounded glum.
“You don’t like them so much?”
“The team builders? Neh. They moan all the time and are weirdly competitive with each other, then they get drunk and get off with each other and treat it like a party.”
“Can’t it be a party? Or is wet and miserable the point?”
“They don’t take it seriously, so they don’t learn anything. They complain about the gnats and never see the beauty of it. If I can get them to lift their heads out of their screens for ten minutes, I consider that a triumph.”
Flora thought of Joel, buried in his phone or his files.
“So why do you do it?”
“Because they’re idiots who pay a fortune for it. And that pays for the lads.”
“Oh come on, you must teach them something.”
“I try,” said Charlie, his face softening a little. “Sorry. It’s just we sent the lads home this morning and I’ve been worrying about them. Some of them come from really tough backgrounds. I wish . . . sometimes I wish they didn’t have to go home. One of them said that to me. How bad does your home have to be when you’re twelve years old and you don’t want your mother?”
They stood in silence for a minute.
“So. Probably why I’m not so cheered by the prospect of a dozen management accountants from Leicester who are turning up to form better inter-team disciplinary practices.”
He glanced into her basket.
“Sorry, ignore me, I’m banging on. What are you getting?”
“I’m not quite sure,” said Flora, looking down. She’d popped into the butcher’s for some good stewing steak, and had added some flour, and was now reading from her mum’s recipe book for whatever else she needed to make Yorkshire puddings. She wasn’t sure, though, that mere ingredients would be enough to replicate the light, golden, puffy joy of her mother’s Yorkshires.
“It’s nice you’ve come back to look after your family,” observed Charlie.
“I haven’t!” said Flora. “Honestly! I’m working. But doing a bit of cooking. They’re big boys. They should be looking after themselves. I just want to show them how.”
“Well, whatever it is you’re here for . . .,” he began, then reddened a little, as if he’d said too much.
“Actually, I’m trying to stop the wind farm.”
Charlie squinted.
“Why?”
“Because it’s ugly.”
“Do you think? Have you not seen them all whirring around on a windy day? Harnessing all that lovely free energy? I think they’re beautiful.”
Flora glanced in his basket. There were oatcakes and Weetabix along with the sausages.
“There’s a lot of brown in your shopping,” she observed.
Charlie followed her gaze.
“Next thing you’ll be telling me that oatcakes and Weetabix don’t go together.”
Flora smiled.
“I mean . . . you could make a really good pie out of what you have,” said Charlie.
She looked up at him.
“Are you hoping I’ll ask you to dinner?”
“Maybe I’ll just put the Weetabix between two oatcakes and bite in . . .”
“Can I change your mind about wind farms?”
“No.”
Flora took a bottle of the deep-brewed local ale off the shelf.
“I could make a steak and ale pie,” she mused.
“I hate wind farms, and always have,” said Charlie.
Flora smiled.
“All right,” she said. “I’m already cooking for a bunch of ingrates. I might as well get some compliments while I’m at it.”
Flora finished her shopping and Charlie carried it up the track to the farm for her.
“Do you live in a tent all the time?” wondered Flora as they walked along.
Charlie shook his head. There was an office on the other side of the island, he said, and he had a croft around there.
“So when it’s raining, aren’t you tempted to just go home?” she said in surprise. “Seeing as you’re nearly there?”
“For rain?” said Charlie. “It’s just a bit of rain—why would I?”
“Because it’s yucky and disgusting?”
“Not as yucky and disgusting as a hot, sticky tent,” said Charlie. “Neh, give me a bit of wind and fresh air any day.”
As he strode along, Flora admired his broad shoulders and the way he carried all the shopping as if it weighed nothing at all.
“I don’t know how anybody can take the heat, I really don’t.”