Dry mouthed, she looked around for the bottled water that any hotel worthanythingat all should provide. Nobody had told Nina about the fluoride-free tap water everyone in Scotland boasted about.
Beside her single bed lay the empty teacup. She’d been so bone-tired she couldn’t really remember draining it after Gene had left the tray at her room door. She’d found he’d ignored her instructions to nix the shortbread which still lay on its dish on the tray now. It looked buttery and golden and smelled homemade in a way that made her think of her late grandmother and Hove and what her mum and brother might be doing now that it was early afternoon on Christmas Eve.
She hadn’t eaten since New York and her stomach growled in spite of its training over the past few years to expect very little, and certainly nothing in the way of carbs. She and Luke were clean eaters. If it wasn’t raw or organic or at the very least, exquisitely presented, it didn’t make it onto their plates.
She climbed out of bed and opened the window, taking deep gasps of the fresh, icy air. It was growing dark along the waterfront and the tide was coming in. Had she even noticed the beach immediately across the road and beyond the low sea wall as she’d dragged her case along the snowy pavement this morning?
The waves were shushing quietly now in the two o’clock twilight and the whole waterfront was coming to life with strands of white lightbulbs swagged between lampposts all the way past the jetty and on towards the train station. The warm smell of coal and logs burning in countless Port Willow hearths and the sea salt on the air mingled on the chilly breeze with something crisp and clean like lavender – or could it be heather? Somehow it made her hungrier. Feeling her willpower snap, she turned upon the shortbread and took a furious, deep bite.
‘Oh my God!’ she couldn’t help exclaiming over and over as she rolled her eyes back, sinking onto the rug by the window and devouring the sweet crumbly slabs of biscuit, licking her lips and fingers to catch every granule of white refined sugar from its golden crust. Luke’s set often dismissed certain foods as ‘not worth the calories’ and she’d said it herself many times lately, but this? This tasted of comfort and sweetness. It was light, not cloying, and very, very moreish.
She found herself wishing for another cup of tea, and not the tea of her New York daily rituals either, but another cup of Gene Fergusson’s real caffeinated black tea with – she couldn’t quite believe she’d drunk it – real cows’ milk which, no doubt, came from a massive plastic bottle.
She wanted to curse the deliciousness that had thrown her off the waspish New York diet that had simply become a way of life for her, and at exactly the same time she knew she wanted more.
The shortbread had done nothing for her hunger, but it had given her something she hadn’t felt in a long time: the curious pangs of an enthusiastic appetite.
Just what were they cooking downstairs in that kitchen, anyway? It smelled of Christmases long forgotten, tapping into memories from her childhood, and from school dinners too, of tasty things served with gravy, and thick custard for dessert, memories from a time before green wheatgrass shots downed before early morning workouts in Luke’s building’s gym complex and spotting him as he lifted weights while she’d grown thinner and thinner and gained more and more approval.
Well, all the clothes in her case were sample sizes, she told herself, so there’d be no more shortbread for her, and to stave off her hunger and distract herself she ran the bath.
The little copper tub had, she had to admit, a kitschy appeal, and she’d photographed it as the bubbles reached the rim and her phone’s camera lens had fogged with the steam.
Even if she did have a signal she wasn’t sure who she’d have sent it to. She still hadn’t told her mother she was in the UK yet, out of pride, maybe, at having blown her Christmas plans and lost her boyfriend and her important job, all in the course of days,dammit, and when she’d been so confident and secure too. Nobody in England was expecting a call anyway, except maybe tomorrow to wish them a happy Christmas, so she was off the hook for now.
Undressing, she let the airport-crumpled suit she’d napped in fall in a heap on the polished floorboards, and she stepped into the tiny tub under the inn’s sloping eaves, her knees practically around her ears. Closing her eyes once more, she tried to acclimatise to her strange new surroundings and figure out how on earth she was supposed to succeed in Seamus’s mission in a backwater like this, asking herself, in her newfound paranoia, Luke’s final gift to her, whether she’d actually been set up to fail by her clever bosses.
Her dismissal would be unfair if it looked like they were trying to get rid of an unwanted girlfriend – something like that could draw Luke into a scandal and a lawsuit – but if she was, say, sent on a fool’s errand to Scotland and she failed to bring back the goods she could be fired without any comeback whatsoever. Shehadto succeed, but how to do it, she had no idea.
Chapter Nine
Unpacking
Check-in wasn’t going as smoothly as it usually did. Even with Kitty there to help, Beatrice was struggling to find the guests’ names on the new booking system she’d insisted upon installing in her first month in her new job.
By the time they’d made it downstairs there had been eight new guests and their luggage squeezed into the little reception, standing on the threadbare tartan carpet that even with all of Beatrice’s improvements she had conceded the inn couldn’t afford to replace just yet.
The last person to come inside had closed the heavy oak door that led straight onto the roadside, shutting out the snow and wind and the view of the low sea wall and the wild, wet bay beyond it.
In spite of Beatrice’s stumbling and confusion, the potters were quickly checked in and sent off immediately to their first lesson down at the village hall with old Mrs McPhail, the retired headmistress of the Port Willow primary school. Kitty had seen to them, but now the words on the monitor were swimming around before Beatrice’s vision. She gulped and stared, narrowing her eyes, trying to pick out the surnames on the system.
‘Ms Batsford and Ms Klein… Batsford, Batsford…umm, sorry, your reservationishere somewhere.’
Kitty leaned over Beatrice’s shoulder behind the old oak reception desk, taking a key from the brass hooks on the board. ‘Batsford and Klein. Room three, bed and breakfast, watercolour lessons with Mr Garstang along the front at his home-gallery. First lesson is this afternoon at four and then picking up again after Christmas, on the twenty-seventh, I believe.’
Kitty efficiently handed the smiling women their keys and directed them to their room. ‘First on the left, top o’ the stairs. I’ll bring shortbread and tea to your room in a wee while.’
‘Sorry,’ Beatrice whispered to Kitty, as the artists resumed their excited chatter and went off in search of warm baths and hot drinks, and the next guests shuffled forward.
‘Bea, why don’t you go and make yourself a drinkand tell Atholl,’ Kitty hissed under her breath before greeting the next holidaymakers.
Beatrice whispered back, ‘I can’t tell Atholl. Not yet.’
Kitty’s eyes rounded. ‘Um, O-kay? But will he no’ mind that I know before him?’
‘I don’t want to tell anyone,’ Beatrice’s voice quaked.
Their snatched conversation was cut short by the chatter of the willow-weavers: two middle-aged women and two girls in their mid-teens, obviously seasoned crafting holiday enthusiasts with backpacks and tote bags stuffed with all sorts of arty materials. Kitty proceeded to check them in. That’s when Beatrice spotted Atholl, by the inn door, stopped on his way from the bar, a crate of the Christmas day champagne in his arms, his sleeves rolled up, simply watching his girlfriend, a quirk of a smile on his lips.
