She didn’t know what to say, not wanting to push for details, especially when she’d been a royal pain in Jamie’s arse since they met. Why should he trust her with the most painful details of his private life?
Fortunately, Jamie was talking now. ‘I’m getting my voluntary hours up so I can apply for a regular police officer’s job at the next intake, and then it’s just the application process and the physical exam to go through.’
‘Well, the physical shouldn’t be a problem.’ The words had jumped right out of her mouth. ‘Oh God! I wasn’t saying… well, you know what I meant, you’re…’ She was pointing feebly at his bicep, making things so much worse. ‘Are you grinning?’
He barely hid his amusement. ‘Not at all.’
They walked on in smiling silence accompanied only by the growing sound of gently trickling water.
‘So you’re not sticking around at Cairn Dhu station?’ Why was she searching for confirmation?
‘By the end of summer, I’ll be back in Edinburgh. A regular police constable, hopefully.’
‘We’re nearly at the bridge,’ said Ally, quieter now.
Only their boot treads and the grasshoppers chirping on the soft summer breeze broke the silence for many minutes.
‘Did your folks get any customers at the repair shed, then? Apart from me, obviously?’ hazarded Jamie.
‘Three, they said.’
‘How many do you usually have on a Saturday?’
‘More than we can handle.’
‘Ah! Right. Not good, then?’
‘Not good,’ she repeated solemnly.
‘Ally, listen, I’m sorry if anything we did spoiled things…’
Hearing him apologising brought out all of Ally’s shame at her behaviour. ‘Don’t apologise. You couldn’t have done anything different. I was being overprotective, and a bit of a dick.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said, throwing a smile her way.
‘You looked ready to cuff me, that first day we met.’
‘Hah!’ He was laughing again, as they made their way over a path of rolled stones where once upon a time a glacier, never witnessed by human eyes, had cut its way through granite. A few feet away, only a crystal clear trickling burn on a diminished riverbed was left of its waters.
‘You were frightened. It’s OK,’ he said.
She mused on this. ‘Being scared is only a reason; it’s not an excuse. I’m still embarrassed.’
They approached the ribbons of shallow river. ‘It’s good to be protective of the people you love. Don’t worry about it. And for the record, I’m hardly ever allowed to cuff anyone.’
This made her smile. Then it made her think things she really shouldn’t be thinking on an innocent night walk with an upstanding member of the police force.
‘Edwyn would have, though,’ he slipped in. ‘You were this close.’ He pinched his fingers to show her.
Their laughter ebbed away as the view opened out before them. Below the Reaper’s sickle of a moon, glowing gently green in the welkin lights, arched what remained of an ancient stone bridge, low and long in the landscape.
Ally hung back and let Jamie approach it alone, sensing this was a pilgrimage of sorts and not wanting to spoil his arrival, especially since she’d gone out of her way to antagonise him up until tonight.
She watched him tread slowly into the scene.
His breath shaky, he paced around the bridge, easily crossing the shallow rivulets that ran under it. Stones scuffed and kicked out from under his boots.
He held the photo before him as he walked, looking for the exact spot where it had been taken from, nothing else driving him but the need to match up the edges of the image – a tiny window on a lost time – to his own perspective.
