‘PIGLETS NICE, ATTI FLOWA,’ came a small voice. Looking round, Flora saw that Agot was attempting to pull an old blackened saucepan out of the cupboard that was twice the size she was.
‘Agot!’ she yelled, dashing forward, as the entire pile of pots and pans came clattering down on the flagstone floor. Bramble started up from his nap in front of the fire. Their dad started up too, both man and dog glancing round with remarkably similar whiskery expressions.
‘AGOT NOT DO IT!’ shrieked the little one, her face red with defiance.
‘It’s okay,’ said Flora, starting to pick them up. ‘Help me?’
But Agot had fled to her beloved father and had buried her face in his neck as if she had somehow been gravely insulted.
‘You are such a monkey!’ said Flora. She glanced over. Agot was slyly peering out of her father’s cuddling arms to see if Flora was looking at her. As soon as she saw that she was, she buried her face again. Flora smiled briefly to herself, pleased it wasn’t she who would be dealing with Agot’s teenage years.
Fintan came in, carrying a vast bunch of fresh flowers. There were huge peonies; white roses; all sorts of things you couldn’t possibly find on the Scottish islands in March. Flora stared at them as Fintan hummed around and looked for a vase.
‘What are those?’ she said crossly.
‘Oh,’ said Fintan. ‘Colton sends them every day while he’s away. God, I love that man.’ He set about snipping the stems carefully.
‘Well, that’s not very sustainable,’ said Flora, in a mood.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Fintan, arranging them carefully in an old earthenware pot of their mother’s. ‘I think we are.’
Chapter Seven
‘Oh yes.’
‘This,’ said Flora, ‘is one of the many, many reasons we are friends.’
She and Lorna were sitting in Lorna’s front room on Saturday night. Flora had brought the food; her experimental leek and cheese twists were absolutely melt-in-the-mouth tremendous, particularly when accompanied by a rich red wine. The weather was throwing handfuls of rain against the windows out of a deep, pure blackness while they sat on a cosy sofa in their PJs and best woolly socks with a roaring fire in front of them and no work tomorrow.
Flora told Lorna about Jan’s catering request and Lorna burst out laughing, which made Flora feel better immediately.
‘Did she actually say that it would also be a charitable gesture?’
‘It would,’ said Flora. ‘It would be a charity gesture towards the expansion of her gigantic bloody gob.’
Lorna shook her head. ‘Some people are never satisfied. Have you spoken to Charlie about everything?’
‘No,’ said Flora. ‘Should I? I mean, that would be dickish, wouldn’t it? Like I somehow was implying he’d settled for second best.’
‘He didn’t,’ said Lorna. ‘He settled for ninetieth best. On Mure alone.’
‘Oh, she’s all right really,’ said Flora, feeling bad. She picked up her phone. ‘OMG.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a message on it from her. Maybe she’s standing outside the door listening to us!’
‘No more wine for you,’ said Lorna.
Flora looked at it. ‘Oh no. Now I feel bad. She does want us to cater after all – wants me to give a quote.’
‘Who are you competitively tendering with? Inge-Britt making greasy sausage sandwiches?’
‘That’s probably what I’d like at my wedding,’ said Flora.
‘She really wants you there to see Charlie and her getting married,’ said Lorna.
‘Well, that is totally fair enough,’ said Flora. ‘And it’ll be a good test for when the Rock opens. Then we really will be swept off our feet. Hopefully.’
She and Lorna chinked glasses.
‘How’s Saif?’ asked Flora, which was a question she could only really ask after a couple of glasses of wine.
Lorna shrugged. ‘He got excited when he saw a whale.’
‘Oh God, they’re not back?’
Flora frowned. Her grandmother had always said she had a way with them – part of the daft old family lore she ignored about how the female line were all selkies who came from the sea and would go back there. But it was true in part: she felt an affinity for the great creatures, and worried about them when they were in danger.
‘Anyway,’ sighed Lorna. ‘Apart from that, the usual. Sad. Bit foggy.’
‘He’s foggy?’
‘No, it’s foggy … He says it got really cold in Damascus in the winter. But, to quote, “You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face at ten o’clock in the morning.”’
Flora grinned. ‘I quite like it. It’s just nature telling you to get indoors and be cosy and have a slice of cake and sleep for a long time.’
‘I told him that,’ Lorna said. ‘He said he was going to start prescribing vitamin D supplements to literally everyone on the island. I still don’t think he’s used to the NHS.’
‘Any news about …?’
Lorna shrugged. ‘I assumed he’d tell me. But the way he looks out to sea … I mean … Surely he’d have heard something by now?’
‘It’s such a mess over there. Jesus, his poor family. Wouldn’t he have heard if … if they were dead?’
‘They had … have two boys, you know,’ said Lorna. ‘Two sons. One of them is ten. At that age … you know, if they’re captured by the wrong side. They train them up, you know. Train them to fight. And nothing else.’
Flora shook her head. It was beyond imagination, the torment of their tall, gentle GP. She had thought Joel and Saif might get on, but when they’d met they had little to say to one another. ‘God,’ she said. ‘I can’t even think about it.’ She sighed. ‘What do you think he does with his Saturday nights?’
In fact, two kilometres up the road, Saif was spending his Saturday night like he spent every Saturday night, even though as a doctor and a clinician this was exactly what he would have told himself not to do. Amena had had – oh, years ago now, so many years – a YouTube account they’d uploaded little films of the boys onto for their grandparents. But in fact neither set of grandparents had ever learned to use the internet, so it had in the end been a pointless exercise and there were only two: Ibrahim’s third birthday, and Ash at four days old. Thirty-nine seconds of the first – a confused, serious-looking Ibrahim spitting over some candles, his long eyelashes casting shadows on his cheek. To Saif’s utter frustration, Amena was behind the camera. He could hear her voice, encouraging and laughing; he could not see her face.
In the second, the focus was all on Ash, but it was just a baby’s face – just a baby, and his own stupid voice. There was a half-millisecond of Amena, as the camera moved up and then what … how … what had he done? Cut it off, in the full expectation that he would be able to see that face every day for the rest of his life. What had he done …? He watched it. Froze it. Watched it. He glanced briefly at the counter of views. Four thousand nine hundred and fourteen. It was a habit he had to break. He had absolutely no idea how.
‘Tell me more about the whale.’
Flora was refilling their glasses and steering the conversation away from boys, as it seemed to be dangerous territory at the moment.
‘Not sure what type,’ said Lorna.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ said Flora. ‘Call yourself a teacher?’
‘We’re not all sea creatures in human form,’ said Lorna. Flora smiled, but her face was pensive.
‘I don’t want another beaching,’ she said. ‘They’re so horrid. Sometimes you’re lucky, but sometimes …’
‘I know,’ said Lorna. ‘I think the sea is getting too warm.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t see what kind it was?’
‘Does it matter? It looked like it had a funny horn thing.’
‘Really?!’
‘Yeah, on its nose. Or maybe it was eating something pointy.’
Flora waited for the internet to slowly download a picture of a narwhal – a large whale with a unicorn-style tusk on its snout. ‘Did it look like that?’
Lorna squinted. ‘A nar-what? Are those real?’
‘What do you mean, are those real? Of course they’re real! Where do you think Scotland’s unicorn symbol comes from?!’