The disappointment must have shown on her face as the man reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a phone, which surprised her as he didn’t look like he came from a time where phones existed, let alone like he’d know how to use face recognition to unlock it, like he was doing now. He smiled for the screen like he was having his photo taken. It was wonderfully odd, and a tiny bit endearing.
‘I’ll send you the deli number, if you like?’ His voice was gentle, nothing pushy or brash, and again she found herself following along, pulling her own phone free and reciting her number for him, something she’d never,everdream of doing back home with a complete stranger, but this wasn’t back home. Far from it. And this man was like no stranger she’d ever met.
He dutifully typed in her number, scrolled and tapped until the notification sounded on her phone.
‘There,’ he said, and after hesitating as though he had more to say but didn’t quite know how, he nodded and went on his way with his barrow.
‘Thank you,’ she called after him. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’
He didn’t reply, only smiled over his shoulder, hurrying like he was late for something important, leaving Alice watching in his wake, feeling very much like running alongside him, asking him where he might be going, and couldn’t she go along too? He was the only person she’d spoken to in hours and there’d been something appealing in his unstudied gentlemanliness, nothing like the Manchester thrift-store hipsters who’d kill for his vintage gear or an ounce of his quiet charm.
She stopped herself dreaming up a story for him, placing him in a woodland burrow of a home, turning him fully into the White Rabbit he’d reminded her of. He was nothing but a helpful stranger. She let him go and peered at the message he’d sent, a phone number with the words ‘Laura Mercer’s deli’ and, under the number, what she assumed must be his name: Cary Anderson.
She rang the deli immediately as she turned back for her flat where at least the heating was on now. When the call connected, a bubbly Scottish woman greeted her with, ‘Good mornin’, what’s your order, please?’
Alice resisted the urge to ask if they happened to sell birthday cake by the slice and enquired about their fresh fruit and veg instead.
5
The traffic lights glared in the Saturday afternoon gloom. Sleety drizzle slashed sideways. Beats blared from slowly passing cars. Dirty slush gathered in the gutters. Compared to the silent wilderness of the bare mountain slopes with their dusting of pristine snow, Cairn Dhu town was a nightmare.
The green man flashed. Walk Now. An orange countdown of seven seconds hastened Finlay Morlich across the street as though this were a sprawling urban metropolis and not, in fact, a valley gouged by retreating ice millennia ago, leaving a pewter-coloured river and a spot ripe for the nineteenth-century development of a hundred or so granite houses in the frumpy Scottish gothic style. Their chimneys choked out smuts and sweet pine-resin smoke for the winds to whip away.
A minibus carrying adrenaline junkies in ski gear rumbled past on its way to the mountain resort on the other side of Aviemore – much bigger than Cairn Dhu’s offering – as Finlay tramped along, his arms crossed over his body. Headlights glared. Some vehicles were hazardously double parked outside the animal feed store and the Post Office, their owners unfazed by the presence of the police station just yards away.
Light spilled from every shop window as well as from the streetlights overhead and the phone screens of teenagers too absorbed to drag their eyes upwards as they passed him on the pavement.
‘Mind yersel’!’ he warned, as a group of teens in black hooded jackets barged past. ‘You’ll be needing reflector patches on those jaikets!’
A brief silence followed before the lads burst out cackling behind him.
‘Suit yourselves,’ he muttered as he walked on, scanning the street for fresh dangers.
Ahead, the floodlight above the repair shed further spoiled Finlay’s afternoon.
With a resigned sigh, he made his way towards it, with his rations tin in his coat pocket, its contents scoffed by the group he’d escorted down the mountain no more than an hour ago.
He’d been alerted to the news that three office workers from Kilmarnock had lost sight of the community path somewhere to the south of Gillie Fell and he’d stormed out with his rescue gear on his back. It had taken him all of thirty minutes to locate them in the early-afternoon gloaming, their (useless) GPS glowing on their phone screens and giving them away.
He’d taken no pleasure in showing them the way back through the scrubby low heath and onto the path, only a few metres from where they’d wandered off it only to discover that, in the winter dusk, it was impossible for them to retrace their steps.
They’d been all apologies and pasty faces, promising that next year they’d book a bowling alley for their team-building outing. Finlay had agreed that’d suit them much better than an amateur survivalist adventure in one of the most dangerous environments in the world.
He hadn’t really registered the smirks two of the lads exchanged as he marched them down to the rangers’ station and sent them on their way armed with theStaying Safe in the Cairngormsleaflets he carried with him always.
One of the men, however, was shakier than the others, and hadn’t said much since Finlay discovered him, further off from the other two and staring into space, muttering about how he’d seen a huge shadowy figure of a ‘yeti man’ coming out of a bank of low cloud.
‘It even waved to me!’ the lad had said, his voice trembling, and his friends had found the whole thing hilarious.
‘That was nae yeti,’ Finlay snapped, silencing their laughter. ‘You saw the Brocken spectre.’
One of his pals made a ghostly ‘wooo’ sound at this, which Finlay nipped in the bud with a scowl.
‘It’s no’ a ghost of any kind. It was your own shadow cast against the low cloud as the very last of the sun set behind you. It’s a well-known phenomenon amongst mountaineers. Never seen it myself, mind you.’
‘But it had sort of rainbow rings all around it, and it held its arms out to me,’ the man confessed in a low voice only for Finlay’s hearing. ‘Near aboot shit myself.’
‘Trick of the light,’ Finlay told him. ‘The pair go hand in hand, glory they call the coloured rings, and your shadow projected onto the mist. Brocken spectre.’ He shrugged like that should be more than enough to make the lad understand, but from his haunted eyes, Finlay saw he thought he’d met his maker.
