‘Exactly, which makes it weird. It’s like a Struan version of the silent treatment. The Struan treatment.’
What could she say? That talking about him opened up a vacuum inside her? That today, she’d had the hardest call of her life and almost broke down in the middle of a hospital corridor? She was trying to do everything she could to fix things with Martha,but nothing ever felt like enough.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It felt like it was all she ever said now. ‘I’m trying, okay? I really am.’
‘Rae.’ Her name shattered on Martha’s tongue, and she leaned forward to wipe away Rae’s tears. ‘Don’t get upset.’
‘Could you please just give me a minute alone?’
Martha nodded hesitantly, shuffling out of the cupboard. She gave Rae one final, solemn look before closing the door on her.
Only in the heavy darkness did Rae realise that she didn’t want to be alone at all – but the only person who could comfort her was all the way in Glasgow, and he’d never be hers again.
36
Panic engulfed Struan when he was jolted from sleep by the ringing of his phone. For a moment, he had no idea where he was, blinking into the darkness of a room that wasn’t his as instinct had him searching for his clothes, his tools, his first aid kit.
And then the smell of old carpet and clean linen cut through his daze, the view of light-speckled Glasgow just visible between the hotel’s thin yellow curtains.
Which meant it wasn’t the rescue base calling. Couldn’t be, because they knew he was here, unable to respond to emergencies.
He grabbed his phone, fumbling to switch the bedside lamp on at the same time. White noise filled his ears when he saw Martha’s name on the screen beneath the time, two-thirty a.m. He instantly jumped to a dozen different catastrophes. Somebody was sick or injured. Martha. Vik. Mum. Doug.Rae.
His thumb jabbed the answer button, only realising it was a video call when his own distraught expression stared back at him. Then, Martha, limned by the glare of her phone screen. With her eyes bleary and face sombre, he couldn’t be sure if she’d been crying or just asleep.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ he choked out.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ she was quick to assure.Softly, which wasn’t like her, though he passed it off as an attempt to keep her voice down. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. Well, I did, I suppose, but I didn’t mean toworryyou…’
Struan rubbed the crust from his eyes. He couldn’t have been asleep for longer than half an hour, too caught in his usual cycle of miserable late-night thoughts. Most of them, Rae. How she was feeling now Doug’s surgery was done. Whether she was thinking about him. Whether she wished all of this could be different. The sound of her fragile voice over the phone had left him seconds away from packing up and going home, but he knew it would only have made things worse.
‘Jesus, M.’ He sat up, duvet pooling around his bare torso. ‘Why are you calling me at two a.m.?’ He squinted to better make out her background, seeing only silhouetted trees. ‘Where are you?’
‘The orchard. I needed a walk.’
She tilted her phone, displaying the etching of Martha and Rae’s initials in the trunk of the huge oak tree. Even just the sight of that wobblyRmade his blood pump faster, and he dug his fingernails into his shoulder in an attempt to distract himself. ‘A walk to the nearest doctor, maybe.’
‘Shut up,’ she replied flatly, the whites of her eyes flashing in what must have been a roll.
‘Don’t call me and then tell me to shut up.’ He feigned annoyance, though concern still niggled too deep for him to really feel it. Martha called him out of the blue all the time, but never in the middle of the night.
The camera shuffled as though she was adjusting her position, and then he could see the grim tension still etched into her face as she settled.
He could sense the truth hanging between them like a brass pendulum, heavy and unavoidable. Was that why she’d called? To yell at him again?
He waited, seconds ticking by on the clock above the TV. The muffled shuffles of drunken footsteps echoed down the hallway outside, a heavy door banging shut somewhere else in the hotel and causing one of the paintings to rattle on the wall. With only the echoes for company, he’d never felt quite so alone, even with his sister’s grainy pixels staring back at him.
‘Have you fallen asleep?’ he asked when she said nothing.
‘No.’ She frowned down at him, wiping her cheek with the sleeve of her hoodie. ‘I was just… I was lying awake for a while earlier, thinking about the wedding. Whether Mum would even be there, and how much I wish Dad could be.’
A pang of grief struck him. It had come in waves before: at Martha’s graduation, or the day Struan had signed up to become a Mountain Rescue volunteer. But Struan had never really stopped to think about just how much of their lives Dad would miss. He deserved to be there, to see his daughter find happiness. Struan knew he would have talked some sense into Mum.
Struan wondered what he’d say about him falling in love for the first time. Would he agree that it was wrong, warn him away and to respect Martha’s wishes, or would he try to convince Martha that Struan deserved a happy ending?
‘Aye. He would have been so chuffed for you,’ he whispered, wishing they could have had this conversation in person so he could give her a hug,even if she would have wriggled to be free of it. ‘Imagine all of the shite jokes he would have come up with to win Vik over.’
She snorted. ‘At least we still have you for that.’
