Nina nodded. That was true too, but her battered self-esteem meant she couldn’t agree with him.
‘And now?’ Mutt said. ‘Do you still want all that? The blingy stuff?’
‘If I could have it on my own terms, then… maybe. If I could show Seamus I’m not the gold-digging girlfriend he thinks I am, then yes.’
‘Right, then, well we need to find you something special to show him. I’m sure if we keep looking we’ll find it. How long have we got?’
‘I fly back on the twenty-seventh, that’s two days.’
Mutt, who’d topped their whiskies up twice by now, looked suddenly sober. ‘Two days? That’s a shame.’
For a moment they froze, holding each other’s gaze, suddenly aware of their breathing, and then increasingly aware of something else reaching them from somewhere inside the castle.
‘Pipe music!’ Mutt said, as if waking himself. ‘We’ll miss the laird’s speech, come on.’
He pulled Nina to her feet while she fussed over the empty glasses. Mutt grabbed the bottle. ‘We’ll bring them with us. Let’s go.’
He held her hand all the way through the snaking corridors, both of them running along, laughing and not knowing why, until they reached the ballroom door. They opened the door to a room now packed with people; every seat taken, apart from their two.
They drew up short because the piper was leading the head chef in his tall hat and whites into the ballroom in a stately march. The chef carried a silver salver and on it a great fat pudding. Eight waiters paraded behind, the first of whom carried a long knife wrapped in white linen.
They let the procession pass into the room before sneaking in and joining Mark and Ruth at their table, along with some other inn guests Nina recognised but didn’t know.
After much applause, the chef set the haggis before the laird. He was surprisingly young and so smart in his family’s tartan. Nina had imagined he’d be ancient like the castle somehow.
Laird Lachlainn took the knife from the waiter and leaned towards a microphone, surveying the room. He raised the knife dramatically and recited a poem that neither Nina, Ruth nor Mark understood much of, something along the lines of all other food suffering in comparison to the great Scottish haggis.
As he spoke, the laird thrust the knife into the haggis, slicing it across its great belly reciting the words, ‘O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin, rich!’
Nina felt glad she was getting the veggie option, but Mark and Ruth had their eyes fixed on its steaming insides spilling out and bit their lips hungrily.
At the end of the laird’s address, he’d made a toast to ‘the immortal memory of Robert Burns’ and then recited a prayer about thinking yourself lucky you have meat and an appetite to eat it. Everyone had shouted ‘Amen’ like they were saying ‘cheers’ and the waiters hurried out with plates of the national dish, delicately presented with tender sprigs of green and purple on top of fat little rounds of haggis, swede and creamed potato turned out of their cooking rings and drizzled with a whisky sauce – a far cry from Gene Fergusson’s rustic pub food of Hogmanay, but just as delicious.
‘I didn’t understand a word of that,’ Mark told Ruth, and she agreed she hadn’t either, but she’d certainly felt hungry and she gathered that was the desired effect.
The whole room fell upon their meals with gusto and in a loud wave of chatter while the waiters topped up wine glasses. There’d be more poetry later, but now it was time to feast.
Had Beatrice been there she’d have had to fight the urge to clap and squeal at the sight of Mark and Ruth so beautifully turned out, looking far more relaxed than usual, reaching for one another’s hands every now and then when they weren’t eating or drinking.
She’d have been delighted too to see Mutt sneaking looks at Nina, who was telling funny stories about the celebrities she’d met in New York, and every now and then Nina would glace back at him and hold his gaze for a second, her neck flushing pink, and not just because of the whisky.
But Beatrice wasn’t at Castle Carron to see them. She was on a plastic hospital chair in the assessment ward at A&E, and Atholl was by her side, his face ashen.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Hold on
Two pink spots, faint, barely visible, but there all the same. Blood. Beatrice was sure of it. That’s how it had started, and she hadn’t said a word that morning, emerging from the bathroom already dressed for serving up the breakfasts.
She’d worked like an automaton, not hearing, barely seeing, and when she’d cleared the last table and waved off the last guest, she’d rushed to the bathroom and checked again.
This time it wasn’t pink but red. Only tiny spots, but enough to send her screaming for the phone.
At the But and Ben, Atholl had thrown the keys to one of the students assembled in his workshop, he wouldn’t ever remember who, and he’d run across the meadow, over the stile and alongside the train station and the primary school where the children were jumping hopscotch in the playground, his mind racing and beating his usual calm rationality to the same terrifying conclusion no matter how hard he tried to remember his faith in nature.
Beatrice was outside the inn, waiting in the passenger seat of Kitty’s car, the engine running, a badly packed hospital bag on her lap, cursing her caution for not letting herself pack a proper bag like some other expectant mothers had as their fifth month approached, and at the same time glad she hadn’t planned a thing, hadn’t really let herself feel.
Kitty was talking through the open car window at her but Beatrice had no idea what she was saying when Atholl came hurtling down the waterfront.
