Jo
How about a Friday? 18th July?
Ally’s heart jumped. The happiness surprised her, even though reaching out had been her idea in the first place.
Brodie
I can actually do the 18th!
Maybe for once they’d pull it off and get together? This felt good.
Ally
Fine with me. Where? At the Ptarmigan? Like old times?
Ally wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted to go back there any time soon, however. It would fall short, compared to Saturday, no matter how good it was.
Brodie
Lol, nope. I was thinking morning coffee? Gillie’s in playgroup from 10-3. I can drive over to Cairn Dhu, park at Luce’s mum’s. @MhairiSears can you do the Friday? We haven’t seen you in like 2 years!!
Ally
You guys haven’t met up either?
That was a revelation. She’d thought they’d been wrapped up in a mummy bubble together.
Jo
It’s been way too long since I saw any of yous!
And so the chat went on, drilling down to the finer details of the women’s availability. Ally would be working until one o’clock that Friday so could only meet after then. Jo had one hour between a paediatrics appointment with her eldest, Alfie, and something called a ‘Keep in Touch’ afternoon at her office near Aberdeen. She was nearing the end of her maternity leave for her second baby. She thought she might be able to drop the kids at her mum’s so she could arrive child free and ‘actually drink her coffee hot for once!’ Brodie would be bringing little Gillian along unless her wife happened to be working from home that day, meaning she might be able to ‘sneak out on her own!’ too.
It had been eye-opening as to how fiddly the logistics were just to get out for an hour. Their plans now hung on Mhairi answering and being able to come to meet at the Cairn Dhu Hotel bar at precisely one fifteen on Friday the eighteenth.
They’d left the chat open for her reply, signing off with kisses and, once Ally had taken a shower, she’d come back to see Brodie and Jo had shared comedy Gifs of harried mums speed-drinking espressos which she thought had to be a good sign that they were looking forward to this meet up. Not finding the Gif thing all that amusing (it must be a bit sad, mustn’t it, rushing everything all the time?) she nevertheless responded with a laugh-crying emoji, her heart bouncing with excitement that yet again her proactiveness was paying off.
This felt good, and in direct contrast to the dark skies outside. The howling winds blew on while Ally rubbed her hands together over her laptop. If she could orchestrate a friends’ reunion after absolutely ages, and in no time at all, what more could she do?
She’d opened a new document and had begun typing ‘Repair Shed Community Event Ideas?’ at the top of the page when the doorbell rang.
Jamie had been as taken aback by the increasingly high winds sweeping through the wide Cairn Dhu valley as he’d been by the crushed feeling within him.
He’d been on a high after the breakthrough with his dad and all the incredible emotions the reunion with post-makeover Holiday had brought about for him and his family. Added to that, his night out with Ally had made him feel like he was soaring, but now here he was having been (albeit informally) reprimanded and having lost a lead on a suspect, making his way through the tempest to Ally’s door, his head and heart in the very eye of another kind of storm.
She answered the door out of breath, like she’d sprinted to answer it. She still seemed full of excitement, which made this all the worse, knowing what he was about to do.
‘Oh no, what?’ Her face fell from a picture of expectant joy to worry, like she’d suspected a hitch was coming, just not this soon.
Once inside, standing in the kitchen, it hadn’t taken long to explain how, for now, perhaps it was for the best if they tried to keep things strictly friendly since, morally, he was hanging on a shoogly peg (which is the Scottish version of skating on thin ice, only much, much more fun to say, usually). He risked compromising the investigation for his colleagues if he kept seeing her while she was technically still a witness. Even if Edwyn hadn’t come down hard upon him, he’d got the message that what they’d done at the Ptarmigan was definitely frowned upon.
Ally protested how she knew fine well the Mason lads had dated girls whose brothers and uncles and fathers had run-ins with the police. ‘They were putting it about all over town and they didn’t get into trouble at the Station.’
‘That you know of,’ he’d replied. ‘Maybe it’s different if you’re full time, and a local,’ conceded Jamie. ‘Whatever the rules are, I don’t think we should do it again.’
Ally seemed to be keeping an ear open for her parents listening in over the TV game show from the living room before she spoke, lowering her voice to clarify, ‘What shouldn’t we do again? Run after criminals? Or kiss each other?’ There was still something playful in her eyes, an inner light he hadn’t yet extinguished.
She’d stepped closer as she said it. Too close. Jamie inhaled the wave of her freshly washed hair and her body lotion and it kickstarted something running low in his belly like an engine and he’d had to hold his arms to his sides like he’d done in the Reserves during a ‘turnout’ inspection, or else he’d have grabbed her there and then, pulling her close.
