Highland Fling

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

“You’re late.”

Oof. That’s not friendly, is it? A pity too as when I saw who was waiting for me outside Kirsty’s home, I sent prayers heaven-wards. Katya, guess what? I imagined how the conversation I’d promised her as soon as I arrived would start. Only Jamie bloomin’ Fraser was waiting to greet me in the village. Kirsty had said one of her friends would be waiting with the keys, but she mentioned no names.

And darn, if he isn’t even better looking than the pictures we saw of him on the town website. In those, he grinned at the camera and his dark-red curls touched his shoulder. Now, his hair’s been cut buzz-cut short. I’m not always a fan of hair you can’t run your fingers through, but the short length of it shows off his razor-sharp cheekbones and a jaw that is at this moment clenched tight. You can see his eyes better too, and they are so dark brown they are almost black. They flash with irritation, instead of laughter and immediately I’m reminded of school and the chemistry teacher who took a dislike to me after I blew up a lab.

[Hey. You give teenage girls the means to create chemical combinations that are highly flammable and what do you expect to happen?]

Jack’s dressed in combats too. Perhaps he really is a soldier. The cargo pants mould to his shape, and it looks like he’s giving that black tee shirt from the caber toss win another airing. His foot taps in irritation.

“You told Kirsty you’d be here at two o’clock. It’s now half-past four,” he says, the eyes turning from annoyance to a full-on basilisk glare. I want to poke my tongue out at him, but I sense such an immature response would only inflame him further.

“I stopped at Glencoe,” I say. “Isn’t it obligatory?”

When preparing for my move to Scotland, I read lots of travel blogs. All of them told drivers heading north-west to stop at Glencoe. The A82 road took me that way, anyway. My journey started at eight thirty this morning—half-an-hour later than planned because my farewell to my mum and Katya proved more tearful than any of us had expected. Despite Katya’s jokey promise that she’d be coming too so she could check out Jamie Fraser, in the end, I was the only one to say goodbye to Great Yarmouth. I stuffed my tiny Toyota Yaris with everything I thought I might need—my iMac, my clothes, Wellington boots and a lot of toiletries and food as Mum and Katya both insisted that Scottish villages in the middle of nowhere have no shops—and set off. The minute I reached the Scottish border, the heavens did what everyone tells you always happens in Scotland. They opened and let it all out. Honestly, every cloud reminded me of me, post the engagement party and coming to terms with the non-Ryan future that now beckoned me.

I made slow progress. Scottish drivers, I decided as I hunched over the steering wheel and peered through the windscreen wipers swishing back and forth, must develop specialist driving skills that make them good at this kind of thing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t master it at all as the occasional angry honk of the horn proved. “Yes, yes,” I muttered at the other cars on the road. “I know you’re allowed to go 60 miles per hour here, but 40 is fine in these conditions isn’t it? Learn some patience.”

Something miraculous happened as soon as I got to Glencoe though. The travel bloggers all said the same thing. “Glencoe,” they announced, “is the most magnificent sight you will see. The problem is seeing it. Expect shyness from this glorious glen and its surrounding mountains. It rarely likes to peep out from behind the clouds.” Not so for me. A few miles before my car drove through, the rain stopped and the clouds cleared away. Honestly, it was like someone had taken a duster to the skies, rubbed hard and revealed a light polished blue and a bright sun that sent rays down to spots where it lit the whole place up. I had to stop.

And the minute I did so, I got caught up with two coach loads of tourists, giddy with excitement. The first load had spent a week on the roads, and the rain hadn’t stopped once. They’d travelled to castles, cliff tops, ancient battlefields and more, accompanied all the time by rain or at least drizzle. Like me, they clung onto the bar at the viewpoint and stared in wonder at the purple-topped mountains glistening in the sunlight. As they were Japanese, most of them had those top-of-the-range cameras and they shoved them at me. “Please, can you take our photos?”

I don’t get asked that question often as most people use their phones or selfie sticks. It felt like a huge responsibility, so I had to take a lot of photographs. I wanted to make sure when the tourists got home and raved about Glencoe to their friends and families, they didn’t pull up a picture where I’d cut off the tops of their heads or made them so blurry it looked like an alcoholic going through detox had taken the shot. (That might also confirm stereotypes of Scots, my one-quarter only status notwithstanding.)

Then, the other coach load moved in and didn’t they turn out to be American? I heard one woman excitedly tell her friend that they’d filmed part of Outlander here, and I had to butt in. Katya and I count ourselves as the number one fans of everything Jamie Fraser related, but the woman on this coach tour who introduced herself as Darcy had Wikipedia style knowledge of everything Outlander. She pointed at a particular bit of ground and swore that was where Jamie and Claire had galloped over in series one, episode four. I stared long and hard at it until she pointed out a stone and its proximity to a small stream of water. “That bit there,” she yelped. “Claire got off her horse and bent at the water to drink a little.” I took her word for it. After that, we had to compare our viewing experiences to the book. There, we were in agreement.

“I love a good book,” my new friend Darcy said. “But Sam Heughan who plays Jamie is exactly how I imagined! Don’t you think?”

And we were off again. I was on the verge of inviting her to come on a detour to Lochalshie with me when the coach tooted its horn, and a cross-looking tour guide emerged. Darcy’s chat with me had held them up for half-an-hour, and they were eager to get on their way so they could make the next stop on their tour.

“A haggis factory,” Darcy whispered to me as she hastily gathered up her bag and coat. “Do you know what it’s made from? I guess they’re gonna make us eat samples.”

“Oh, it’s delicious!” I said on behalf of the tourist board in my new land. “It’s just like chicken.”

So, that’s why I was late. Common sense warns me now I’m at my destination that repeating the photos, the Outlander stories and the haggis explanation will not go down well.

“Tourists,” he mutters, and the temptation to not only poke my tongue out but blow a gigantic raspberry returns. Instead, and bearing in mind this is my new home for the next three months, I opt for stating the obvious.

“This is Kirsty’s house then?” I say brightly, the sat nav having delivered me to the location. The sun disappeared again fifteen minutes after leaving Glencoe, but the rain kept away. Lochalshie highlighted its location with a bright sign, Welcome to Lochalshie! We love careful drivers. And then something in an incomprehensible language I took to be Gaelic. The village comprised a long high street in front of a lake, or a loch I should call it now I’m in Scotland. Clouds gathered at the far side of the loch in front of more heather-clad hills, but otherwise, it was picture-book pretty—enchanting little houses with well-cared for gardens lining the street, one small shop that promised it sold everything and two hotels book-ending the place. One had pride of place at the far end, a huge Victorian edifice that towered over the loch as if daring the waters to rise, and the other appearing much more up to date, three floors and a large garden studded with tables and benches, all occupied by people enjoying an early evening pint.

Kirsty’s house astonishes me. It is next to the pleasanter hotel (the Lochside Welcome) and sits forward, so its garden runs onto the loch shore. I spot a barbecue, sun loungers and a swing ball which makes me jump for joy. As a kid, I was Great Yarmouth’s best swing ball player as even Katya would grudgingly admit. Next to the house is a lean-to garage up a neat gravel pathway. The Toyota Yaris seldom gets to sleep inside, and I gave the old girl a little pat as I got out. “Sleep well, tonight sweetheart. Not often you escape the elements at night.”

A good job, I reflected now, that Jamie Fraser aka Jack McAllan didn’t overhear me saying that as I got out of my car. As it was, he appeared minutes after I’d driven up, marching from the pub and making bad-tempered comments on my timing.

“Should I...” I gesture at the loaded-up Yaris, but Jack shakes his head and mutters something about already being way behind schedule. Chastened, I follow him into the house, the front door opening into a well-lit hallway.

Good grief. I don’t know about most people my age, but we don’t tend to live in these kinds of places. Our lot is either to live with our mums and dads, in which case we do live in homes like this depending on our luck at birth. Or we’re more likely to live in grotty rented bottom of the barrel dwellings. Katya shares a flat with four others, the place originally intended to house three. Mould on the walls in the bathroom and kitchen are among its delights, and Katya and her house-mates fight a losing battle with the cockroaches. And I might have left my plush red sofa and hand-sanded furniture behind, but the house Ryan and I shared was nothing like this. There’s an atrium—an atrium for goodness sakes—above me as the house is open plan. The hallway is really a living c*m dining area fronted by full-length windows where you can sit on grey, sink into ‘em sofas and chairs and stare at the gently rippling waters of the loch. The kitchen space is to the right, all Shaker units and walls festooned with hanging copper pots and pans, and above me are mezzanine floors. It looks like two bedrooms take up most of the space up there, the master of which is above the seating area so it must share that same full-length window looking out over the water.

Unless house prices are vastly different in Scotland, how on earth did a 26-year-old afford it?

I’m still staring at it all wide-eyed when Jack clears his throat impatiently. He pulls out a sheet of neatly typed paper and thrusts it at me.

“Here’s the extra info you need,” he says, words abrupt and clipped. “Wi-Fi password, where Kirsty stores Mena’s food, the phone number for the vet etcetera. I take it you don’t need anything else?”

He’s not said that much to me, but the Scottish accent is kind of killer. He rolls his r’s—numburrr, etceterrra. I’ve always had a thing for accents, and since Katya and I started watching Outlander, my love for the Scottish one has only increased tenfold. If only the present speaker of it wasn’t so grumpy.

I take the piece of paper and glance at it. My mistake. Not a piece of paper; five of them with instructions typed on both sides. I skim the first—Mena likes lightly boiled chicken chopped into small pieces—and decide it can wait till later. Then it strikes me. I’ve yet to clap eyes on this pampered puss.

“Where’s Mena?” I ask, and Jack... smirks, I decide after a few seconds of trying to work out what the tiny upturn to his mouth means.

“Sleeping, probably. You’ll ken when Miss Mena wants your attention.”

And with that, he’s gone throwing a hasty goodbye over his shoulder as he leaves. “Not even a bloomin’ offer to help me unload my stuffed to bursting car,” I tell Katya in my head and nod along with her when she says she’s outraged.

“Too right, Katya,” I answer back. “He might look like Jamie Fraser, but I promise you looks are the only thing he has in common with our favourite fictional man. He’s awful!”