Sheila hadn’t accepted the invitation to the inn for Christmas dinner, saying she’d rather have a quiet day at home since her husband was there so rarely. Everyone had understood.
Young Kelly Fergusson, Atholl’s little sister, had taken a job teaching horticulturalists at a college in Wales, having at last flown the family nest back in the autumn, so she wouldn’t be around to help her mum as the darkness drew in.
Mrs Fergusson tried to comfort her family. ‘I can see the telly no’ bad, when I sit close enough, and there’s the wireless, and the audiobooks Sheila downloads onto the e-pod for me.’ Nobody corrected the elderly matriarch. ‘Only thing I’ll mind missing is seeing wee Archibald growing; he’s bigger every time he visits. And my films, of course, I’ll miss my films.’
After that, Christmas day rather lost its lustre and the family had drawn their chairs closer together, talking more quietly, as Atholl held his mother’s hand and Gene pulled up the chair by her side.
Beatrice, however, was already letting her thoughts run riot. She prized nothing better than a problem to solve, solutions to find, and plans to put in place. She wasn’t going to glumly accept this new turn of events. Mrs Fergusson was alive and well and Beatrice was going to make her life the very best it could be for as long as can be. She longed to get back to her little sun room to start her scheming. She revelled in the familiar buzz of being needed and, yet again, she was finding she had exactly the right brand of organisational zeal the Fergusson family needed.
The fervour was enough to lighten her anxiety about her own recent discovery. If she helped Mrs Fergusson, she could put off thinking about her own predicament.
Yes, she was going to be as useful and as busy as possible helping Mrs Fergusson, and maybe by the time she’d exhausted her usefulness she’d feel a little more assured about the life growing inside of her. Until then she had every reasonable excuse to hold the tiny dream at arm’s length.
Chapter Fourteen
Inviting Glenda
‘Oh no,’ said Atholl the next evening, coming to a stop inside the door of the sun room, having found Beatrice by the crackling fire, eyes narrowed with concentration, pencil in hand, hunched over the little yellow Formica table she’d picked up at the General Stores’ thrift furniture section and now called her ‘command centre’. ‘You’ve got that look in your eyes.’
‘The just-struck-upon-a-genius-idea kind of look?’ Beatrice smiled back, watching Atholl stripping out of his waxed winter coat and dark scarf, enjoying the lovely buzz of seeing him again after seven hours apart while she had run the inn and he’d talked his – slightly hungover and overfed – crafting holidaymakers through Boxing Day’s willow demonstration – making little woven birdfeeders.
‘It’s more of an up-to-no-good look,’ Atholl said, coming to sit beside her at the table, pulling up one of the vinyl chairs Beatrice had rescued at the same time as the retro table.
Clara was fast asleep in a baby sleeping bag on the sofa, bundled beside a rolled blanket to stop her falling. Her mums were on a snowy, starlit walk along the seafront after dinner; their last chance for any time alone before heading home to Warwick in the morning.
Beatrice had talked them into it, waving them off from the door and watching them holding hands awkwardly as they strolled off remarking to each other how it had been months since they’d actually held hands; someone usually had pram handles to push or a baby to carry.
Atholl kissed his girlfriend and she lifted her eyes once more to smile for him. Since they were babysitting Clara, and Beatrice obviously had a bee in her bonnet about something, there was no chance of the pair of them sneaking off to their shared inn room, tumbling into bed and letting the evening slip away, as they often had as the dark nights drew in.
Beatrice waggled her eyebrows impishly and laughed. ‘I might have outdone myself with this one.’
‘Oh aye?’ Atholl leaned close again for another kiss which she willingly gave. ‘Better than the redesigned layout of the But ‘n’ Ben? Better than the willow products website you insisted the business needed? Or the turning of the inn’s junk room into this cosy wee sun room, just for us?’ Each question was punctuated with a slow, smiling kiss.
‘Better than all of that.’
The moment Christmas dinner was over yesterday and the guests were all happily sleeping off the champagne or taking their Christmas day constitutional along the jetty and Mrs Fergusson had been safely shuttled back to her cottage in the shadow of the Black Cuillin on Skye, now permanently sitting under the damp grey haze of winter, Beatrice had done what she did best. She’d spent Christmas night searching every medical journal and text book she had access to online, paid a small fortune in fees to read scholarly articles behind paywalls, taken pages of notes and finally, sadly, broken it to Atholl that there was very little to be done to help. There was no remedy to be found. Mrs Fergusson was likely to lose her central vision completely.
Of course, then, seeing Atholl’s breaking heart, she’d done what she always did next in these situations. She’d swung into action. A list of local nursing agencies had been found and she’d already emailed every one of them hoping to arrange weekly visits to Mrs Fergusson. Then she’d emailed the local paper with an advert for a daily housekeeper.
Hoping those would prove fruitful in the New Year, she had drawn up a rota to bring inn-cooked meals to her, lifting the weight of responsibility from overwrought but uncomplaining Sheila, spreading the load between the many, many people who loved Mrs Fergusson.
No one was surprised when Seth McVie volunteered himself and his bicycle for the job of helping ferry the food from the mainland to Skye, in spite of being over eighty himself and always busy with something or other. He wanted to help the woman he’d known since they were both bairns.
Yet Beatrice hadn’t been able to stop there. She was no ordinary planner. Her brain had ticked away until the early hours, wishing she could do more.
‘I’ve struck upon it, at last,’ she announced to Atholl now as he tried to get a peek at her notebook, the glow of the fire making his hair shine like copper coils. ‘I’m going to get Glenda to visit the village.’
‘Naw, none the wiser,’ Atholl said, tipping his head, seemingly to better take in her sparkling eyes, bright with enthusiasm.
‘Well, you remember Richard?’
Atholl sniffed a wry laugh at this. Beatrice was in no doubt he remembered her ex-husband gate-crashing the Harvest Home ceilidh on the last night of Beatrice’s summer holiday, trying to convince her to leave with him, even though he’d been the one jumping ship on their – admittedly sinking – marriage months before, leaving her to grieve the loss of their baby alone.
Seeing Atholl’s cynical expression, Beatrice quickly carried on. ‘Well, when I first met him, he owned a vintage cinema mobile, Glenda. She wasgorgeous. Enough seats for a couple of families to squeeze inside, and I’m sure I remember a popcorn machine, and she only showed lovely old Hollywood classics.’
At this Atholl couldn’t help smiling.
‘Do you think your mum would like to see Gene Kelly on the big screen again?’ Beatrice asked.
