Flora thought again of sweltering London days when the air con wasn’t really working and everyone was a bit begrimed and couldn’t sleep and moaned about it, and the stink rose from the pavements.
“So where do you go on holiday?”
Charlie smiled.
“Och, anywhere with a few mountains. There’s not enough to climb around here. Sometimes I’ll go bag a few Munros. I went to the Alps last year. Oh, Flora, it’s beautiful up there.”
“You climbed the Alps?” said Flora, undeniably impressed.
“Um, one or two of them.”
“With Jan?”
“She’s an excellent climber.”
She would be, thought Flora, looking at him to elaborate, which he did not do.
They arrived at the farmhouse.
“Hi, Innes!” Charlie waved.
“Ciamar a tha-thu, Teàrlach,” said Innes, who was bent over the books and pushed them away with relief when he saw them.
“No,” said Flora. “Don’t switch. It’s boring and I can’t remember any of it.”
“But he’s from the Western Isles!”
“Exactly! He’s a plum foreigner anyway. So.”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t mind,” he said. “Although I do prefer Teàrlach to Charlie. Just sounds more like me.”
Flora rolled her eyes.
“Well, you should have said that when we met!”
“I’m bored of spelling it.”
“What are you up to anyway?” said Innes. “Where’s your little line of waifs and strays?”
“Boatload of wankers turning up tomorrow,” said Charlie. “So tonight I’m grabbing at straws.”
“Oh yeah, thank you so very much,” said Flora.
Innes leaped up.
“Beer?”
They all piled through into the kitchen, which, amazingly enough, the boys had cleared up from lunch. Flora blinked. Maybe it being tidy to begin with was going to make a difference. Or possibly it would last for twenty-four hours, then all fall apart again.
“I heard your boss is here,” said Innes. “Why? To check up on you?”
Flora briefly colored as she imagined what that might be like.
“Of course not,” she said. “He’s here to help Colton. We’re fighting the wind farm.”
“The wind farm?” said Innes after a pause.
Flora nodded.
“He’s called up expensive lawyers and gotten everyone scuttling about . . . for a wind farm?” Innes was shaking his head.
“What do you mean?”
“The problems . . . the things he could be doing. Improving local employment. Putting money back into the island instead of importing everything. Looking after his properties—that pink house has been empty—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But instead he wants to bring businessmen up here to shoot pretty animals . . . Fuck’s sake, Flora, he doesn’t even get his milk from us.”
Flora blinked.
“Is that true?”
“Good luck finding anyone willing to go along with what he wants. This island is under siege, for God’s sake. Wind farms . . .”
Flora was starting to realize the size of the task ahead.
“Okay then.”
She propped up the recipe book and put Charlie on onion-chopping duty. Soon the aromatic smell of caramelizing beef and garlic and onions filled the kitchen, steaming up the windows. She popped round to the back of the house and, to her absolute amazement, found, with the spring, a few of her mother’s herbs still growing in their pots. She’d have thought the winter storms would have taken them long ago. She snipped some thyme happily into the pot.
Charlie made up a spinach salad to go with it. Oddly, she liked having someone else in the kitchen with her. They didn’t get in each other’s way, but instead moved around each other neatly as she passed him a knife or the grater, and by the time Fintan, Hamish, and Eck came in from the fields, groaning and removing their boots, everything was ready, the top of the pie had puffed up into a great delicious golden bowl in the oven, and there was plenty of gravy. Hamish wore a broad grin as they all tucked in. Even her father ate, Flora noticed, rather than sitting staring into the fire as he usually did.
“That was great,” said Charlie eventually, as everyone scraped the very last bits of gravy off their plates.
“What’s for dessert, Flora?” said Hamish, who’d had three helpings. Flora looked at Fintan. Then she grinned.
“Oh, okay,” she said.
She went into the larder and, with a flourish, brought out what she had put together that morning when she should have been working on her files but was too restless waiting for Joel.
Sitting there on the ancient cake plate was a beautiful, shining fruitcake.
“It hasn’t steeped,” she warned. But the effect on the room was instantaneous. Everyone brightened up. Hamish grinned broadly. Flora caught Charlie’s eye and realized he was staring straight at her, and she couldn’t stop blushing.
“Are you sure you didn’t know I was coming?” he said, grinning at her. Then, as she searched unsuccessfully for a knife, he took out a large Swiss Army knife from his pocket and flicked open the biggest blade, handing it over with a flourishing bow. She smiled and started to cut huge slices.
“I like having Flora home,” said Hamish quietly as Innes went over to make the tea.
“You know what we need?” said Flora, looking straight at Fintan.
He shook his head.
“Naw.”
“You can’t have fruitcake without a slice of—”
“Leave me out of it, Flora.”
“Leave you out of what?” said Innes.
Fintan glanced nervously at their father. Flora folded her arms and looked as if she was about to withhold cake. Fintan got up and went outside.
When he slipped back in, they cut slices of the cheese and served them with the cake. The idea was that you took a bite of cake quickly followed by a bite of cheese and washed it all down with red wine. They didn’t have any red wine, but tea was working equally well.
Charlie looked up appreciatively.
“Well,” he said, shaking his head. “That is something else.”
Fintan smiled.
“Thanks.”
“Did you make it?”
Eck turned his head.
“Did you?”
Fintan shrugged.
“Ah, just something I’ve been looking at.”
“But it’s . . . it’s . . .”
“I just matured it next to some old whisky vats.”
Eck shook his head in consternation.
“Is that what you’ve been doing all this time? Instead of helping out in the fields?”
“Well, I wasn’t at the cinema, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
There was silence, and Eck put the rest of his cheese down without tasting it.
Picking up on the tension, Charlie told a funny story about one of his awful Outward Adventures teams getting into a fight with a sheep, and Bramble came up and put his head on Flora’s lap, and everyone had a glass of Eck’s homemade wine, which was perilous stuff at the best of times, and Flora sat back near the Aga, listening to the happy voices, and felt, for the first time, almost content, even more so because Charlie was clearly enjoying himself too (she figured it had something to do with being indoors and not under canvas in a storm, whatever he said).
At eight o’clock he took his leave, even as the big old kettle was being boiled up once again.
“That was amazing,” he said. “Are you that good at being a lawyer too?”