Jamie didn’t seem to think it was such a silly thing to say. He handed her a sandwich and they set to eating, their bodies both drained and somehow invigorated from the walk.
‘So will you come to our skills share and societies festival on the ninth?’ she said as they ate.
He seemed to think for a long time before saying, ‘I think so, but that’s round about the time for me to be going home. I’ll let you know.’
She didn’t push it further. If they hadn’t just walked for an hour and a half she’d have felt her appetite wane.
As they ate they became aware of the cloud shrouding the bothy from the change in the air alone. Everything felt suddenly dampened, the way it does when heavy snow falls and everything becomes muffled under its weight. The strange quality of the silence outside was enough to get Jamie on his feet and pulling the door open to investigate.
‘Ah!’ he said, standing aside to let Ally see the wall of wispy white beyond the door. ‘The clouds have come down.’
Oddly, Ally didn’t panic. Neither did Jamie. He stepped right out of the door in his socks to take a better look and, after only three steps, he was gone in a wash of white. That alarmed Ally; Jamie’s absence. Even the few brief seconds while he was shrouded in watery vapour and diffuse mountain light felt like an alarm jolting her awake. She got to her feet just as he came back inside and shut the door once more, telling her, ‘Whole mountain’s gone.’
‘Good,’ she said.
He smiled too.
His phone worked, miraculously, and he rang the station to report themselves safe at the first bothy on the pass, and he asked for Finlay, the ranger, to be reassured they were fine and that they had plenty of supplies, as well as a fire going. They’d come down when the cloud lifted.
He dropped a pin on his GPS app, so everyone else would know where he was and then he checked the weather report. The low pressure was due to lift by evening. Rain was already breaking over on Ben Macdui, and the wind was set to rise. Theirs was only a temporary confinement, he was sure of it.
Ally used his phone to ring home and she repeated to Murray everything she’d just heard Jamie saying. Murray made some remarks about making sure she used their time alone wisely and she hung up as he sang her a smutty version of ‘she’ll be coming round the mountain,’ and she had to stifle a laugh and pretend to Jamie nothing had happened.
‘So,’ Jamie said, pocketing his phone now that everyone knew they were safe. ‘We sit it out?’
They focused on the fire. Someone had collected pinecones in a basket and left them by the hearth for fuel. Every so often Ally threw some into the flames and they watched them spark into brief, blazing light. As they talked about all of Ally’s plans for the skills share and they made short work of Senga’s drop scones, they shifted their bodies until they were toasting their feet against the hearth, their arms wrapped round their knees. The tea was soon drunk, and the world outside forgotten completely.
‘Have you… been in many relationships?’ Jamie asked, not quite out of nowhere, considering the unspoken buzz between them.
‘Hmm, not so much. Gray was the longest I was ever with anybody. Never anyone at school. Some little things at college.’ She shrugged. It was all true. There’d been guys and some not very good hook-ups and lots of teen angst and crushes, but relationships? She didn’t have much to say about those. ‘How about you?’
This made Jamie take a deep breath and he looked into the fire. His brown eyes shone bronze in the hot glow. ‘A few. A big one when I was seventeen, lasted until I was nearly twenty-one.’
Ally raised her brows at this. It made sense, actually. From what she’d gleaned, he’d been a lonely kid, the sort who might commit to someone early.
‘I’m glad you had somebody,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, the inevitable. She met somebody else in her final year at uni, in Brighton.’
A devious little part of Ally registered that this guy had navigated a long distance relationship between Edinburgh and Brighton, and for a long time too. He was a walking green flag. Not that this was relevant to their friendship in any way, of course.
‘Was that it?’ she said.
‘Hmm, there were others after that, kind of short-lived things, but all pretty amicable when they ended.’
‘Why did they end?’ she said, when what she wanted to know was why would anyone let Jamie Beaton go? She couldn’t fathom anyone breaking up with him.
‘I guess some relationships are just a mismatch and there’s nothing you can do about that.’ He said this with an easy shrug.
‘A mismatch?’
‘Yeah, you might spend time trying to change yourself for them, or they might try to change you in small ways, but in the end you both have to face facts; it’s not that there’s something wrong with either of you – you’re both basically good people – it’s just a mismatch.’ He said this with a lift in his voice like it was so simple.
‘When you put it like that, breaking up sounds easy.’
‘Relationships don’t have to be dramatic. I’ve been called to enough domestic disturbances and street arguments between couples to recognise relationships that aren’t going anywhere. Sure, things can get tricky sometimes and you need to work together to fix stuff, but generally, I think if you’re mismatched it’s never going to be good.’
Say it! Ally’s brain was up to no good. Say it! it prompted her. But nothing, not even the smile on Jamie’s lips and the way he was leaning his folded arms on his knees and his head on his arms, blazing eyes fixed upon her, would bring her to blurt out the question. Do you think we’re a good match? She kept the words inside.
