Only Beatrice didn’t eat, and while the crafters took a break, Atholl set his demonstration basket aside and sat down with an arm around his girlfriend by the crackling fire. He didn’t say anything, only holding her wordlessly. They leaned their heads together. From the outside they looked a picture of contentment. Nobody knew the struggle waged within Beatrice between her hopes and her fears.
Nina’s black bun and coffee didn’t last long.
Never before had she enjoyed food like this, not even back home when she was younger. She wasn’t even sure what black bun was; some kind of spicy fruit cake, black as treacle and weirdly somehow baked inside pastry like a pie. Whatever it was, it was heavy and boozy and tasted of wintertime. Gene’s food was proving to be a sensation, and she found she couldn’t get enough of it, even if eating alone in her room in the evenings while she researched Highland designers and makers wasn’t exactly festive.
She turned back to her basket, almost finished, and not at all as accomplished as Ruth or Mutt’s. She didn’t look around but she could hear Mutt at the kitchen nook behind her washing up the mugs. Every so often she felt a prickle of awareness, like goosebumps at the back of her neck, and she could have sworn it was Mutt’s glance passing over her.
She didn’t want to give that any more thought whatsoever, so instead she did what the Buddhist meditation master had told her on that retreat in the Catskills that she’d tried to get Luke to go on with her way back when they’d first met. He’d found he couldn’t get away from the city that weekend so she’d gone alone.
She focused on being mindful now. All that matters, she told herself, is the intake of breath, the body centring, the slow exhalation and the sense of calm. For the first time, she really thought it might be working.
As she breathed, Nina slowly became aware of the sweet aromas around her. Warm and natural, green and dry. It must be the thatch, the peat and the fire, she told herself, but then came a scent that was bitter and bright – the sharp goodness of the willow whips the little group had warmed with their touch, no doubt. Earlier, Atholl had cut out strips of supple brown leather that he intended to wrap around the baskets’ handles and now she could detect the deep buttery scent of the hide too. There was something else in the air, woody and floral. Something she’d picked up in the air a few times since her arrival in Port Willow; that heathery honey smell, that soapy lavender, but she had no idea where it was coming from.
The sound of someone shifting on the bench behind her brought her out of her thoughts and she found herself blinking as though she had slept. She peered behind her only to see Mutt, his attention drawn from his attempts at finishing his basket by the sight of her stirring.
His eyes were no longer mocking; in fact, she thought they looked heavy-lidded, as though he were weary. She jolted her eyes away from his and was glad to have her attention drawn to the great copper contraption in the far corner behind him. ‘What’s that thing?’ she asked, nodding her head towards it.
‘That’s Gene’s lavender still. He has a field of lavender at the back of this cottage,’ Mutt told her. He looked down at his hands, winding a long leather strip around the handle of his basket.
‘I knew I could smell lavender all over Port Willow!’ Nina said turning back to her work.
Atholl heard her and spoke across the room.
‘Aye, in the autumn we pressed the entire lavender field’s harvest. Produced two braw quart bottles of lavender oil. We’re hoping for even more next summer. All thanks to Beattie.’
Beatrice was by now thoroughly warmed by the fire and making small talk with Mark about his work and trying to draw Ruth into the conversation too, but Mrs Firth seemed intent on finishing her basket and was short on words. Beatrice broke off and smiled back at Atholl.
It had been her who, back in the summer, had the idea of replanting all of the leggy dry-stemmed lavender plants that had been left to overgrow in the field next to Atholl’s willows. She’d saved the field and added a nice new side line to the willow workshop business. Gene used the lavender oil in his baking, but other than that they hadn’t quite decided what to do with their harvest yet.
‘We should probably get back to the inn,’ Beatrice said, glancing out the low window to the sea. ‘The sky’s not clearing at all. I think that storm’s arrived earlier than forecast.’
Soon, Mutt was helping Atholl tidy the workshop, and Nina slipping on her cold, wet boot with a revolted grimace. Mark pulled the zip on his jacket and looked around for his wife and found she was nowhere to be seen.
‘Ruth?’ he called.
Her shock of white spiky hair appeared from beneath one of the benches. She was on all fours, sweeping a hand over the workshop floor.
‘Something wrong?’ Mark asked her.
‘My ring! My wedding ring. It must have slipped off my finger.’
‘Right!’ Beatrice announced, stepping forward, very much feeling this kind of thing was her forte. ‘Don’t panic. When do you last remember having it?’
‘Are you sure you were wearing it?’ Mark said, looking all around by his feet.
‘I haven’t taken it off in nearly twenty-five years,’ she told him dryly before saying to Beatrice, ‘I’m sure I had it on the walk over to the beach. It must be down there somewhere, on the coral. I think I was still wearing it when I sat on the rock.’
The whole party had run down to the beach in the wind and rain and searched for as long as they could withstand the weather, now a howling gale.
Mark seemed to search the hardest, soaking his shirt and jumper well past the elbows, disturbing the rockpools and turning over pebbles, sifting through sand with his cupped hands. Nina and Mutt split up to search separate spots on the shore. Even Echo and Bear, refreshed after a long sleep at the But and Ben, played at digging and scraping at the water’s edge, mirroring their humans.
After a while, Atholl said he wanted to take Beatrice back to the inn as it was growing dark and she hadn’t eaten and Beatrice had protested and said she wasn’t a child, but then Ruth had insisted she couldn’t let her blood sugar get too low so eventually Beatrice gave up and bent to the ex-midwife’s instructions to go back and have dinner.
Neither Mutt nor Nina gave up and renewed their efforts until Nina’s hair was completely flat and water ran down her neck and made her shiver again.
At first Ruth cursed the storm, but, after a while, as they realised the ring really was gone, she was glad the rain hid her tears.
‘I’m sorry, Ruthy. I think you might have to accept that it’s lost,’ Mark had said, and he’d beckoned for her to give up too.
