Something in his expression made Ally’s heart crack. He really believed what he was saying, and she had to admit they hadn’t actually promised each other exclusivity. Only, after a whole year, Ally had simply assumed. That was reasonable, wasn’t it?
‘Oh no!’ was the only sound that escaped her lips. The embarrassment was too much. ‘Oh no!’ she said again.
Laura, however, was only just getting into her stride. Ally wondered if she was actually enjoying this a bit too much. Cars were pulling up into the gravel lot at the front of the McIntyre property. More repair clients got out, all of them craning their necks to get a good view of the unfolding drama.
‘So you strung her along?’ Laura went on. ‘Look at her, Gray. She’s heartbroken! Here she was expecting forever and you were taking me to see the chuffing polar bears and buying me diamonds!’ She struggled to roll the bracelet off her wrist before throwing it to the gravel at his feet. She was definitely enjoying herself.
‘It’s OK, you don’t have to defend me…’ Ally began, but Laura wouldn’t be stopped.
‘What do you have to say for yourself?’
Gray was backing away. ‘Look, I’m sorry, all right? I never said we were anything. And you pair were never meant to meet.’
‘How many more of us have you got on the go, eh?’ Laura called after him as he crossed the car park, leaving the diamonds in the dirt, hastily retreating towards the gap in the stone boundary wall that led to the riverside footpath.
He kept his hands jammed in his pockets and his head down.
Laura saw him off with a barrage of expletives, all highly appropriate, before turning to Ally who was only just beginning to think of all the questions she’d have asked him had they had an ounce of privacy.
Had he been shacked up with Laura Mercer all those nights recently when Ally could only get through to his voicemail, and later when she’d quizzed him he’d said he’d been visiting his granny?
Hadn’t he meant it when he said he was falling in love? All those times in his bed when she’d gazed at their clasped hands in soppy wonder and they’d planned their futures and he’d joked about them having a whole five-a-side team of little Grays? Was it all said in fun?
‘What a lowlife!’ Laura was growling, turning to Ally. ‘You’re crying! No, no, no! Don’t do it. He’s not worth it.’
But it was too late. Ally’s mortification was complete. Gray, who she’d misread so completely, had walked away, seemingly without a care.
Laura tried to pull her in for a hug but it made Ally bristle.
‘I’m fine,’ she insisted. ‘I’m fine.’
Even more customers were arriving now, some getting off bikes on the drive, some coming on foot from the riverside path, pulling broken-down machines in carts, shouldering sacks, hauling armfuls of old treasures in open boxes, and all of them casting wary glances at the two women.
Ally turned away, swiping at her cheeks. She couldn’t bear going back inside and facing the volunteers, or the TV camera for that matter, and staying here to be consoled by Laura – evidently more riled up with the drama of it all than she was heartbroken – was out of the question. So she ran back across the mossy lawn towards the McIntyre family home, fumbling for her key before locking herself inside.
She leaned against the door before sliding right down onto the kitchen’s cold quarry tiles.
She’d allowed herself to get carried away on a romantic fantasy, listening to all the old clatterers egging her on, getting her hopes up when there’d been no definite sign Gray felt the same… other than all the lovely dates and the long, lazy Sundays in bed together at his flat, and the flowers and cards and texts and ‘I think I love you’s. He’d looked her in the eyes and seen her, gullible and hungry for love, and he’d lied, over and over again while she ate up his empty promises like Valentine’s sweeties.
There, winded on the kitchen floor, while her mum and all the concerned repair shop women knocked to get in, Ally McIntyre made a tearful, bitter promise to herself. She would never ever allow this to happen to her again as long as she lived.
3
Exactly a month after Ally’s broken heart, the June sunshine was beating down on the repair shop’s corrugated iron roof. It was getting on for the end of a long Saturday’s fixing, but the locals just kept coming in. The repairers had been markedly busier since their segment was finally aired on the news programme, Highland Spotlight, the night before.
Everyone had been amazed. They were only expecting a brief plug in the last news story of the day; the light-hearted ‘and finally’ story, the cheery antidote to all the awful stuff that had come before it. What they got was a long ‘special report’.
McIntyre had been onscreen for all of five minutes. First, he’d been shown working away at his station, goggles on and head down while Füssli’s voiceover explained the ‘repair revolution’ sweeping the planet since Martine Postma launched the very first Repair Café in Amsterdam sixteen years ago and her idea swept the planet.
The volunteers had watched it together on the big telly at the Cairn Dhu Hotel bar and there’d been a hearty cheer when the shot cut to McIntyre standing stiffly in front of the camera outside his workshop explaining why he’d opened up the barn for repairs.
‘The throwaway culture we’ve come to rely on has to end, and it ends with us, grassroots organisations for locals. Our waterways are choked with plastics and chemicals, there are landfill mountains as big as Ben Macdui itself. Even the air we breathe isn’t clean. Single-use living is over. We are the skill-sharing, fix-it generation. Our grandbairns’ll thank us for it. And we’re only a wee part of a worldwide effort to make a change.’
McIntyre’s cheeks had turned ruddy as he spoke and his eyes shone. Nobody watching could doubt his dedication to the cause.
Then there’d been some interviews at other repair projects across the Highlands, including a free bicycle repair and toy swap shop in Inverness that was doing a roaring (charitable) trade.
In what seemed like an ill-judged moment, the programme editors allowed the café sisters to have the final word of the show and Senga had appeared on-screen speaking over Rhona while pouring a cup of tea for Cary Anderson who was posing as a customer at the counter.
