‘It is your anniversary,’ McIntyre said under his breath as he passed his daughter, casting an eye into the courtyard, scanning for the news crew.
There’d be clients arriving soon too. They usually started rolling in at the turning on of the sign. Ally sighed heavily but couldn’t help following her dad’s gaze outside.
Gray was coming at ten, he’d said, so any minute now, and he’d said there was ‘something important’ he wanted to talk about. That’s how all this theorising had begun in the first place.
‘We’ll probably just go for a walk,’ Ally said, refusing to show she too was swept up in hoping, but secretly she was hoping, very much.
It had been twelve happy months since she’d met Gray, right here in the shed when he’d brought in his granny’s vacuum cleaner to have its jammed rollers freed up. They’d fallen for each other in moments while Ally’s dad took the thing apart and Gray approached her with a sly smile and small talk, the dust motes sparkling like glitter in the shafts from the barn’s skylight window.
‘When a man runs errands for his dear old granny like that, you just know he’s a good one,’ the repair café sages had agreed at the time, and sure enough, he’d been nothing but charming and fun all year long.
The only problem had been her dad’s cooler attitude towards Gray. Sachin – not that it was any of his concern – had agreed there was, ‘something we cannae quite put our finger on with that lad. Something sleekit,’ which is Scots for something both skulking and smooth.
It didn’t really matter what the repairers thought. Ally was having fun and if that fun was enhanced by a little more romance (or even a great big commitment), then that would be very nice indeed. She’d attempted a home manicure last night specially, in case there were surprise engagement announcement photos. Nothing flashy, just a glossy ballet-slipper pink. Subtle, like the butterfly flutter in her chest.
A proposal would mean she was doing something with her life as she approached twenty-eight, other than checking her emails for job alerts and sending out speculative CVs in the hope of getting out of her IT customer support day job and repair-shed-Saturdays rut.
Even her twin brother was helping her from afar. If he was taking time out of his schedule to help, it had to be obvious to everyone her career was seriously on the skids. Only last night Murray had sent her a heads-up about a job that was about to be advertised at the charity where he worked in Switzerland.
Hey you. Just had word from HR one of our Blue Sky Thinking Techs is leaving. We need a twelve month replacement with a knowledge of the sustainability sector ASAP. There’s a huge IT skills gap in Switzerland, just look at their visa page. Anyway… I already floated your name to see if it’d be a problem, you applying, being my sis and all. Boss says to send her your resume direct.
This had not been well received. At first she’d laughed, then she’d fallen into exasperated incredulity. A blue sky thinking tech? What even is that? Murray had his answer prepped.
It’s just someone who knows how to work the office printer and they can dream up creative communication solutions to assist in the delivery of the charity’s projects all over the world.
When he put it like that, it didn’t sound so daft. It sounded quite nice, actually. Nevertheless, Ally protested. How could she go to Switzerland? She was always needed at the shed on Saturdays, for a start. And how could she up and leave, moving to a whole new life in a place she didn’t know? Leaving Gray for a year, just when things were, hopefully, taking a serious turn.
She’d scoffed and blown at the notion. What a load of nonsense. She’d told Murray all of this, more or less, and he’d rang her immediately.
‘Zurich’s almost exactly like the Cairngorms, only there’s less fly-tipping and a few more billionaires, and everybody’s carrying those wee Inspector Gadget penknives with the corkscrew and that thing for getting stones out of horses’ shoes. I think they’re distributed with babies’ birth certificates actually…’
She’d cut short his rambling, telling him to be serious for a minute. He couldn’t go playing games with her life like this. What had he been thinking, talking to his boss about her? Besides, how could she possibly be properly qualified?
‘Hey,’ he stopped her. ‘You’ve got the exact same degree as me!’
It was true, both of them had passed the same Environmental Science, Technology and Communications degree, both gaining distinctions. Only Murray had actually put his to good use.
He was still talking. ‘What was that thing you told me about how men apply for jobs even if they only have 60 per cent of the qualifications in the job description, and women only if they have all of them? You’ve got to out-bro the bros! You’d be working at the Zurich office with me – well, when I’m there – and it would get me out of interviewing applicants because I’d have to declare an interest to HR, and that would free me up to go on the overseeing trip to Mali! Please please please apply, sis!’
‘All right! As a favour to you, I’ll apply.’ She’d huffed a breath down the line, even though she’d been smiling too.
Ally never fully understood what her brother did on his trips all over the world, something to do with when a charity shifts a large amount of money to some place far away they send someone from the charity to watch it being spent and get hands-on with the project too. He was always somewhere incredible, doing life-changing stuff. He made a difference on a global scale, whereas, last Saturday, Ally had replaced the wires in a faulty battery-operated pencil sharpener. They were in different leagues.
Still, she’d read the job specification and charity mission statement as soon as they’d hung up on the call. The job was all about ‘brainstorming tech solutions’, creating a more ‘sustainable planet for humans and nature’, ‘scientific co-production’, ‘dropping in to communities where we’re needed most’, and lots of other buzzwords about cool office culture, hot-desking and employee perks – presumably to make up for the less than amazing salary.
This was way beyond her experience and capabilities, she told herself. Yet, she’d still sent away her CV with a covering letter at just after midnight, telling herself it was nothing but a favour to her brother, not even wanting to hope she might get into the first round of interviews for a job based in Actual Switzerland.
A thought struck her now. How would she plan a wedding in Scotland if she was galivanting in the Alps for a year?
No! She wouldn’t let herself daydream. Nothing had changed yet. Her life was still fixed in its pattern of work, sleep, repair.
She checked her nail varnish for chips.
The repair shop doorway darkened as two people arrived together; a glamorous woman in a long beige tartan mac and a young bearded guy wearing big black headphones with a tablet camera attached to some kind of holster across his chest and a boom mic sticking out from it.
‘Charlie McIntyre?’ the TV reporter asked, and Ally’s dad swept them inside.
They got straight down to business on planning the interview. If McIntyre was nervous, he was hiding it well enough, apart from a pink flush across his cheeks.
