Gracie the receptionist appeared at the door with a tray of oddly homespun ceramic mugs and a milk jug with a lopsided, pouting lip. She poured tea for everyone except Shell, who was passed a wonky mug of milk which she only stared at before shaking her head in refusal.
‘That’s me away home, then, if that’s everything, Dr Millen?’ the receptionist asked. ‘I’m throwing my first vase tonight!’
‘Best of luck with that, Gracie.’ The old doctor was of an age where he didn’t even try to hide his wry amusement. ‘Cheery-bye now.’
‘Senga’s made us some of her chocolate digestive squares,’ Murray said as the receptionist left, and he pulled the lid from a tub to release a sweet scent of milk chocolate over buttery, bashed biscuits cooked with condensed milk, soft brown sugar and golden syrup. He made sure Shell was offered the first tasty piece.
When he offered the tub to the new doctor she looked sorely tempted but after hesitating over them, she scrunched her nose. ‘I don’t really like to eat refined sugar.’
This elicited a shared glance between Murray and Livvie as Dr Millen dived his hand into the tub and claimed the biggest piece.
‘As you know,’ he said, biting into the treat, still cool from the repair shop fridge, ‘we’ve been asked to provide a new community service. An initiative to combat the mental-health crisis and loneliness epidemic we know all too much of in this part of the world.’
‘The weather isn’t helping,’ Murray put in. ‘Can’t remember a rainier winter.’ He too bit into his biscuity square, careful to catch the crumbs.
‘Tell me about it,’ interjected Alice, only realising once the words were out that everyone had turned to face her. ‘I… I, uh, thought Manchester was dark and grey in the wintertime, but this is something else.’
Cary caught the shake in her voice that told of her sudden discomfort, and he remembered a time when he was the new arrival in town. Cairn Dhu certainly took a little getting used to. It must be harder for the young doctor, landing in the depths of January when she’d been used to the shelter and fun of a big, towering English city.
‘You get used to the long dark nights,’ he wanted to tell her, ‘and the people.’ Cary wished he could ask the new doctor if she’d had a chance to observe the stars over the mountaintops since her arrival; the brightest in the British Isles, the air was so clean here. The sight of them could cheer anyone and help get them through the winter. But he said none of this because Dr Millen evidently had his dinner waiting for him at home and was intent on pressing on with this meeting.
‘Social prescribing is all about supplementing health care with social solutions,’ droned Millen. ‘The idea is to tackle the things that often accompany health issues; loneliness, barriers to social mobility, panic and anxiety, for instance,beforethey compound into larger health concerns. Thanks to Murray’s funding bid talents we’ve been gifted a few hundred pounds to begin a community garden to be created and run by volunteers for the benefit of patients in the community, where they can grow their own food, learn about plants…’
Out of the corner of Cary’s eye he noticed Alice wasn’t note-taking at all, but circling her Biro in black loops the way children draw curly hair on the head of a stick figure. Her pen travelled in tight rings along the margin.
‘Come to think of it…’ Dr Millen was saying. Alice’s pen froze. ‘Where’s the laddie they were sending from the mountain rangers’ station? Jemmy promised us a man, did he no’?’
Murray McIntyre knew the answer. ‘Oh, yeah, uh… the guy called in at the shed earlier, said there’d been a mix-up? Finlay, his name was. Finlay Morlich. He wasn’t much interested in helping out.’ Murray shrugged. ‘Sorry ’bout that.’
‘Maybe they’ll send someone else?’ Livvie offered. ‘We might be better off without Morlich, anyway, bringing everyone down with his grumpy patter.’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Murray tried, generously, ‘he seemed all right, just a bit… harassed.’
Cary had seen the ranger around the town, recognising within him another reticent soul, but Finlay was surely someone with no time at all for others. A shame really, as a few days in town with his hands in the earth would probably do him good. Some people, he’d come to learn, didn’t take much of an interest in the world, or in themselves for that matter, and without knowing it, they cut themselves off from everything good. Until they had the awareness or the courage to ask for help, they often couldn’t be helped.
Livvie had more to say about him, clearly not a fan. ‘I doubt Morlich will lumber into town again anytime soon, not until he wants more of his precious snacks, anyway.’ This elicited a tiny giggle from behind her where Shell concealed herself.
‘No matter,’ Murray said. ‘We’reall here, and fully committed to helping. Cary had some thoughts on where to start, didn’t you, Cary?’
This pulled him from his position as quiet observer.‘Ah, right enough.’
Drawing the plans from his dad’s leather satchel that was probably as old as he was and, also like him, soft as butter, he shared the blueprints he’d inked up on his drawing board at home. The papers brought with them an apple from his bag that he caught in a quick hand before it could tumble to the floor.
‘Shell?’ Cary said, softly, knowing the little girl was prone to getting startled. ‘Apple?’
The child’s face appeared around her mother’s side, looking to her for approval before she spread her hands to catch the fruit. Cary passed it to Livvie first, instead of chucking it. With the red fruit delivered into her hands, Shell went back to drawing, trying to silence her bites. Cary’s heart ached a little to see her still so shy, in spite of all the time she spent at the repair shed on Saturdays and after school, sticking so close to her mother there was rarely a gap between them.
Although nobody really knew for sure, Cary had a rough gist of what Livvie and Shell Cooper had been through in recent months. The local police had uncovered a crime gang operating across the region. They’d been using Livvie’s house as a kind of ad hoc HQ, and using Livvie as… he dared not think.
Ally McIntyre, who’d left town for Switzerland in the summer, had a policeman boyfriend, Jamie Beaton, and he’d had something to do with the raid that saw the gang’s ringleaders jailed and, as far as Cary had gathered from the scant facts published in the papers and what Ally had been allowed to tell the repair shop volunteers, Jamie had put his life at risk in the process.
Livvie and Shell were never mentioned in the papers, of course, and for four months they’d been rehoused somewhere out of sight for their safety. Now they were free of the tyrant man who’d controlled them. The gang had been put away for years, and little Shell was re-enrolled in the primary school down the road.
Livvie had been unable to resist the welcoming gravity of the repair shop (something Cary Anderson knew a little about too), and she’d quickly found herself drawn into its schemes. Murray’s clever funding bidding had made sure she was salaried, their official events manager and overseer of the various community groups who met at the shed, including Cary’s children’s woodworking group. Cary couldn’t count her as a friend exactly, she was too self-contained for that, but he admired her organisational skills and competence.
‘Get on with it then,’ Livvie snapped, rather testing his sympathy for her.
Cary spread the papers across his legs and softly cleared his throat. ‘This is the land to the south of the repair shed,’ he began. ‘Generously surrendered to public use by the McIntyre family.’
