It was true, no one had touched Finlay for a long time. The last had been that pharmacist giving him his booster shot right in the middle of the chemist shop and telling him not to be ‘such a big bairn and kindly mind your language’.All he’d said was ‘dammit’ at the scratch, and there’d been nobody but a few families in the queue waiting for their jabs. Granted, one of the wee kids had burst into tears and he’d thought he heard their mother muttering something about ‘the Grinch’, but she could have been talking about anyone.
‘No,’ he told himself now, pouring the steaming water from the kettle into his chipped old teapot, watching the tea leaves drown in the dark chamber. He had to put Murray McIntyre, and all the rest of them, far from his mind.
He sat back, cross-legged on the rug, pulling his woollen blanket around his shoulders and reaching for his textbook.
A bit of Gaelic was what was needed. He’d been teaching himself for well over a year, fancying that it was the language these mountains spoke and that they would understand him all the better when he wanted to tell them things if he said them in the old tongue.
He had never mentioned these self-directed lessons to his recently departed mother. The Gaelic was probably another of his ‘notions’, the likes of which she used to tut about, like the time long ago he’d learned the name of every British native tree and made a notebook with their leaves and buds drawn in pencil, instead of doing the chemistry or maths revision for his exams. Maybe the Gaelicwasjust a notion, but he knew full well the mountains didn’t whisperanythingto him in English.
He flipped to the correct page, poured his tea into his mug, lifted the chocolate and cherry bauble from his tin, and settled in to revise his colours and shapes vocabulary – he was still just a beginner.
Rich, glossy chocolate gave way to smooth deep pink mousse as he bit. There was cherry syrup and a satisfyingly soft biscuit base, so good he momentarily closed his eyes to chew.
Another bite. The warmth, the solitude, the sweetness. It was enough to make him think generously of good old Senga Gifford.Another bite. A slurp of hot black tea stirred with sugar. The fire crackled and he turned a page. The steam from his chipped mug may as well have spelled outThere’s No Place Like Home Alonein the air as he tried to relax into his evening.
‘Red.Deargorruadh. Green.Uaine. Pink.Ban-dheargor simplypinc.’ He rehearsed the vocabulary, while his slippery, troublesome brain conjured up Murray’s ruddy hair, shining green eyes, rosy cheeks.
‘Dammit!’
He licked his fingers clean now the bauble cake had disappeared, then downed the last of his tea in a gulp.
His hand strayed to his chest. The hand that still bore the residual sensation of Murray’s touch where he’d crushed against him. There was only the faintest white graze over his knuckles where the metallic thing Murray had been holding had scuffed him. It hadn’t hurt at all. On the contrary…
Finlay’s hand happened to settle on the compass in his breast pocket. He pulled it free now and stared down at it. Its familiar dial might help orientate him, drag him out of this strange brain fog he was in danger of getting lost in since bumping into Murray McIntyre.
‘Whit?Aw, naw!’
He shook the compass, then turned it over, briefly sighting the engraving on the nickel casing, his grandfather’s name, Fredrick Morlich. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’
He shook the compass again. The dial, a slender Cupid’s arrow of aluminium, jumped a few degrees before smoothly pinging back to the wrong cardinal point once more.
Finlay knew his cruive and its fireplace wall faced due south. The compass arrow now directed itself right at his chest and the north. The dial was lying to him.
North had become south and south had become north.
‘Broken!’ he said, giving the device another little jolt.
He ran through how it was possible the poles had switched places.
Then it hit him. It happened when Murray ran into him with that sleek brushed-metal thing in his hand. Now he knew it had to have been a phone case. He was the very type of man who was chronically online, never separated from the internet and would own a magnetised phone case which had grazed Finlay as he shielded his compass. That metal had demagnetised the sensitive compass, turning Finlay’s world on its head.
‘Dammit!’ he yelled again, throwing off the blanket from his shoulders, leaving the warmth of the fire and his books and tea. He crossed the cold stones and well-worn rugs, grabbing a box from a shadowy alcove. The room was chilly even this short distance from the hearth. He rummaged among the odds and ends, confirming what he already knew. He didn’t have a strong magnet with which to repolarise the compass; the only way he knew of fixing the thing and getting his life realigned once more.
The awful, irritating realisation seeped in. He’d have to go back down to the town on Monday and ask for help.
Even through the thick stone walls of the croft, even through the heavy droplets in the damp night air, Finlay’s friend the mountain stag flinched at the sound of the shout that echoed along the pass.
‘Dammit to hell!’
7
Her first morning in her new job and Alice had slept badly. Typical.
She’d jolted awake just after six that Monday morning in the pitch darkness of her strange new surroundings, having dreamt she was stuck on the Friday night on-call shift with six wards and a hundred and fifty patients to oversee. Dream-Alice had been hunching over a desk with a phone pressed to each ear while colleagues barked orders at her or begged for her help, and all the while her bleeper was going off non-stop. She’d been one sweaty, breathless second away from snapping and running screaming from the hospital when she had jolted awake. Not the most auspicious beginning to her first day.
Now, however, she was standing staring at her name on her very own consulting room door.
Dr Alice Hargreave
