Mark didn’t notice the birds lifting from the long grass of the meadow beyond the lavender field, but Atholl spotted them. He raised his eyes to follow their flight. It meant the crafters were making their way to class and they’d be here in a minute or two.
Atholl’s mind raced. Had he achieved what Beatrice had asked of him? He suspected he’d made a breakthrough here with Mark, as though they’d both said things they’d bottled up for a long time.
Thinking on his feet, he offered the invitation Beatrice had insisted upon. ‘Now you’ve stripped these willows, you’ll stay and make something with them?’
Mark considered this for a moment.
‘I’ll get the kettle on, and there’s fresh bannocks too,’ Atholl offered as encouragement.
This prospect seemed to have an impact on Mark, who looked over at the cottage door. His hand patted at his mobile in his pocket, making Atholl worry he was about to flee.
‘I,uh, I hate to say this,’ Atholl added. ‘But next week you’re booked in for silver crafts, so you may as well surrender to the fact you’re on a crafting holiday now.’
Mark drew his neck back. ‘Silver craft? Who booked me in for that?’
‘It was either that or paper quilling with Mr Abercrombie, and I really fought for the silversmithing for you. I’ll level with you, Mr Firth, it’s Beattie putting me up to it, and I darenae tell her no. She wants you to get the full Port Willow experience.’
Mark laughed. ‘Does your wife always tell you what to do?’
‘She’s not my wife actually, but I admit I find that, generally, it’s easier to be guided by her when she has a strong feeling about something like this. For your own sake, and mine, I’ll beg you to go along with it too. You’ll no’ hear the end of it otherwise.’
Mark nodded, amused. ‘I always thought that was the key to a happy marriage. Your wife wants to go to the garden centre, you go with her; she wants a shelf putting up, you put it up. That’s what my old man told me anyway, back when we first moved in together. Do what she wants and keep her happy. And that’s what I’ve always tried to do.’ Mark seemed to think and reach an unhappy kind of conclusion. ‘I thought that’s what I’d done anyway.’
The willow crafters had turned into the little cottage garden and made their way round to the back door of the school, waving gaily at their tutor, summoning him to them, so Atholl couldn’t say any more. He wasn’t sure he needed to anyway.
Mark obediently followed Atholl inside the school, each of them carrying a bundle of willow and both of them feeling they had stripped away a thin layer of themselves, feeling a little lighter, if a little tender and exposed, having made their confessions.
That night over dinner and, as far as Ruth was concerned, completely out of the blue, Mark presented his wife with the stripped willow loveheart he’d made in Atholl’s workshop.
The thin whips were bent and bound to form the simple heart shape and then sprigs of dried lavender were bound around its frame with even thinner strips of willow bark tied in tight bows.
Even more out of the blue, he’d thanked her for looking after the boys all these years, for giving up so much of herself, and then he’d carried on eating the excellent corned beef stovies Ruth had made that day during her lesson.
His wife had blinked in surprise and, feeling she might cry, watched her husband stoop to his plate and eating hungrily as though he’d worked harder that day than he ever had before. She felt a tiny spark of warmth; a spark that her husband had woven into the willow heart he’d carried home for her that day, all the way from the bonny willow beds above the coral beach.
Chapter Twenty-six
A Shopping Excursion
Mutt watched the minibus pulling up at the inn door from his painter’s platform where he was giving the inn’s Victorian roof cornicing a coat of glossy black paint.
He’d overheard the driver saying they’d only had the minivan left at the rank today but at least they’d be comfy, and he’d listened to Beatrice making sure the driver knew the addresses of all today’s shopping excursion stops.
By the time Mark and Ruth had emerged from the breakfast room and were standing on the pavement getting ready to leave, Mutt had shimmied down from his scaffold.
‘You’re going shopping?’ he asked. ‘To the tartan outlets and all the rental places? And you’re going to Florence Sakura’s? Hold the bus for a minute.’
He dashed inside the inn, hurrying all the way to Nina’s room door.
‘You want to meet some new makers? Small scale, high-end stuff? You’d better grab your coat,’ he’d told her when she answered his knock.
Within minutes Nina was hustled out of her room where she’d been on the phone with her mum assuring her that her ankle was getting better and promising that she was indeed eating and getting plenty of sleep. In fact, that’s all she’d been doing since the accident, and it had been really rather lovely, if a tiny bit lonely. She had a nice routine going involving long breakfasts, working interspersed with lunch and dinner in the bar restaurant, then a seriously long bath and magazine reading before bed. The painkillers were still making her woozy but at least the swelling seemed to have reached its peak now and she could feel a little flexibility returning to her ankle.
She hadn’t told her mother, but one of the most surprising things about the recent turn of events that had shaken her entire world was that she found she wasn’t actually missing all the noise and striving, all those parties and air kisses quite so much as she thought she would.
Sure, she’d have traded a big wodge of her newfound relaxation for an appointment with her hair colourist or her eyebrow technician, but generally, she was starting to see the positive aspects of the snail’s pace, peaceful Port Willow lifestyle, and a tiny bit of her was dreading the bandages coming off in a few days’ time when she’d have to focus entirely on resuming Seamus’s mission.
Mutt had looked so breathless and wide-eyed at her door, Nina had immediately reached for her crutch – just the one now she was feeling more confident – and she’d followed him out to the taxi.
