‘So I’ll be seeing you,’ Murray told him, and he kissed him on the lips, to make sure he understood. ‘A lot. If that’s what you want?’
Finlay dropped his head to Murray’s shoulder with a laugh of relief and the three of them, two people newly in love and the ranger’s delighted, bouncing dog, hugged in the warmth of the mill house kitchen.
45
Cary knew that they were supposed to wait for the big reveal, like McIntyre enjoyed, and Dr Bonnet probably wanted, so that the horologist could talk at length at him about the minutiae of her repair work, but that didn’t appeal quite so much as sneaking away now to take a peek at the restored clock with Alice.
So as the first of the gardeners were taking their leave for the day, and the afternoon was turning cold, he held her hand and led her into the repair shed.
‘Do you want to do the honours?’ Alice asked, and Cary shook his head. No, he wanted her to pull the cloth.
As the material fell away, Cary felt all words leave him, and he stepped towards the clock, Alice’s eyes fixed upon him.
He put his head to the case where inside the pendulum was swinging,tick tock, in a deep tenor that carried him right back to his childhood in Glo Glo’s house. Never a man afraid of his feelings, he let his eyes fill with tears and spill over.
The wood, the stain, the metal, the glass, everything looked and smelled just as it had done when the clock had overseen every family party he had known. He had his old friend back.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Mum gave me this.’ He drew a photograph from his pocket and handed it over.
Smiling children surrounded an elderly couple at the centre of the picture and in the background stood the clock, looking much as it did now. ‘And that’s me,’ he said with a laugh in his voice, pointing to a very dapper little boy in a suit amidst all the others in jeans and t-shirts.
‘I’d have guessed,’ Alice told him, with a fond look at the child he once was. ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said. ‘And it might sound strange, but hear me out, yeah?’
Cary was sure it couldn’t be that bad, so he waited for her to be ready.
‘You see, the thing is…’ She swallowed hard. ‘When you told me you might be going back to Glasgow for good’ – Cary resisted the urge to interrupt – ‘and you told me your Glo Glo’s story about the clock and how it was magic, and… well…’
He nodded his encouragement. ‘It’s OK. Go on.’
‘I was so afraid you were planning on leaving. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I kept dreaming about you going away, and it all sort of got mashed up in my head with your story about the clock, and I’d daydream about how it was going to carry you away, out of this time and place, which I know is silly, but…’
‘I used to imagine the same things exactly,’ he told her. ‘When I was a kid. It is, after all, a very magic clock.’ He was smiling, wanting her to see it was all right, but she wasn’t done yet.
She nodded as she spoke. ‘But it wasmewho was in danger of slipping away, because I needed to take better care of myself. I needed to ask for help. Do you get it?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And talking about all of this with my counsellor and in my mentoring sessions with Dr Millen, and reallyactuallytaking care of myself, and dealing with Bastian at long last, and being here, and working in the garden, andallof it… made me even more sure that I liked you, very much. And I don’t want you to go back to Glasgow, not because I need you, but because I want you, and because I’m planning on staying here. For good.’
The words made his heart chime like the bells inside the clock case.
‘And not that I can make you stay or anything,’ she went on. ‘But I wish you would. So, there! That’s what I had to say.’
It was so beautiful he wished she’d say it all over again, but instead he reached for her hand. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Are you?’
‘Of course. I don’t want to be anywhere you aren’t.’
‘But, Cary…’ She hesitated. ‘You… you’re so quiet, it’s hard to know what you’re thinking.’
‘Well then,’ Cary smiled, his heart swelling with pride to be the one who got to tell her this. ‘Let me be perfectly loud and clear. Dr Alice Hargreave, I have been at your service since the day we met outside the bank. I’velikedyou since that meeting at the surgery when you looked fit to drop with exhaustion and sadness. I’ve beendevotedto you since you fell ill here in the repair shop and we sat by the fire together, and I had to go to war against all my instincts in case I told you how I felt, there and then. And, God knows, I’vewantedyou since you listened to my heart beating through my shirt that day, and you sent my pulse sky high with the need to hold you, and from that day my heart’s beatenonlyfor you.’
He stopped, letting her think.
‘Is this clear enough?’ he asked.
‘So, we’re not going anywhere?’ she asked. ‘Neither of us?’
