‘Now?’
She looked down at her pyjama bottoms. She’d changed right after dinner but picked out a baggy green jumper to keep away the evening chill (Murray’s, as it happened, and nothing to do with Jamie saying she looked nice in green).
‘Unless you were busy, of course?’ he said, suddenly, darting his eyes to the window ledge where she’d been sitting. So he had seen her.
‘Busy?’ She laughed. ‘No, I just sit there when I need to…’
He tipped his head, waiting for the rest.
‘I’ll get my boots on.’
‘I’ve got a torch, if that’s any help?’ he offered weakly.
She glanced up at the sleepless night sky, now tinged with the tiniest green haze of the summer aurora, seen now and then in these parts. ‘We won’t be needing a torch.’
‘It’s along the main road for a wee bit, then across Hutchinson’s farm field, over the meadow and onto Nithy burn side,’ she’d said, all businesslike.
It was no surprise to pass dog walkers and club-goers as they walked, but after a while yomping along field margins in the wide valley that Cairn Dhu nestles inside, they found themselves alone.
The summer twilight sky, not satisfied with its cloudless display of infinite galaxies, turned greener as the northern lights awakened and fell in barely-there, rippling curtains of emerald.
‘Woah!’ Jamie stopped dead, eyes lifted to the heavens. ‘We don’t often get this in Edinburgh.’
Even Ally with all her stubbornness couldn’t bring herself to dismiss it as a regular occurrence up here. She stopped too. ‘I know. I never get tired of it. Some summers the lights are more active than others; some, we get none at all.’
‘Looks like I picked the best summer to come here then.’
He looked for his phone to take a picture, then thought better of it. ‘Doubt I’d get a good photo.’
‘You’re better off just storing it in your memory. Photos can’t do it justice,’ said Ally, catching Jamie glancing at her briefly before fixing his eyes on the sky once more.
‘So, you’re only here for the summer?’ she said, and this was enough to break the sky spell and get Jamie walking again. She matched his slow pace.
‘Temporary transfer.’
She let this sink in. This was good news, surely? He’d be on his way soon, and she could act like a normal human being again.
They reached a stile in the fence, the last enclosure before they hit gradually rising mountainsides, icy-cold lochans and perilous shifting scree leading on to about two thousand square miles of serious climbing and precipitous peaks dotted with dangerous black corries.
‘You’re a volunteer, you said? How can you afford to live out here?’ she asked absently, only wondering if that was a rude question once she heard it on the air.
‘Oh, uh…’ He stepped up onto the stile and swung a leg over.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.’
He climbed down the other side then waited for her to cross. For a second she thought he was going to hold out his hand to help her but he was balling up his fingers into fists by his sides instead. ‘I came into a wee bit of money on my twenty-fifth birthday,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘Mum’s life insurance.’
Ally was over the stile with a jump, her boots hitting the dry ground just as Jamie delivered this bombshell.
She searched his face to make sure she’d understood. The sadness was back. Just for a flash.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was years ago when it happened. I was tiny.’
It sounded like something he’d said many times, as though it might make other people feel better for him, as if it made it less awful. For Ally, the fact it was long ago made it much, much worse.
‘Still sucks, though,’ he confessed, and that sounded more honest to Ally’s ears.
