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“So,” Archie said once he’d polished off the brownie. “Why do you think your sister left you the way she did?”
“I don’t know.” Laurel chewed her own brownie slowly. “I suppose she’d had enough. I mean, looking back, I can see how taking care of an eight-year-old when you’re only fourteen must have been pretty tough.” And yet, had Abby had to leave so drastically? Cut Laurel out of her life? That still hurt. That, Laurel suspected, would always hurt.
“What about your dad?”
“He was around,” Laurel said quickly. “It wasn’t like he was a deadbeat, or anything like that. But he was a police officer, and he worked all the time. And he’s never been…” She paused. “Cuddly.” All of that sounded like paper-thin excuses now. Why hadn’t she seen through them before? Why hadn’t she expected her father to take at least some responsibility?
“Still,” Archie said thoughtfully. “It sounds like he left the hard work of it all to your sister.”
“Yes, I think he did. More than I was ever aware of at the time.” She shook her head as she let out a sigh. “So I can see how Abby might have got fed up. But even so…” That lump was coming back again. Laurel swallowed it down. “I just wished she hadn’t left so dramatically.”
Archie raised one shaggy eyebrow. “Was it dramatic?”
“Well, not dramatic, I suppose. She didn’t storm out one day and say she was never coming back. In some ways, I wonder if that would have been easier. Then I would have known.” She took another sip of whisky and let it burn through her. “As it was, I kept hoping. For a while, anyway. But when she started not returning my emails or voicemails, well, I realised she really didn’t—didn’t want to be my sister anymore.” Laurel managed a wobbly smile. “We lost touch for ages, years really, and then she let me know when Zac was born. She had him by sperm donation, so there was no father in the picture, and I thought it might be a new start for us. But it wasn’t.”
“Until now.”
“Yes, until this call out of the blue. I don’t even know what she’s in for—drugs? Alcohol? Depression? Really, no clue.” She shook her head slowly. “And as for Zac…”
“He can’t have had an easy time.”
“I suppose not,” Laurel said slowly. “I don’t really know. He’s been going to a posh school, which he just got excluded from, and he won’t say two words to me, but I thought we were getting somewhere tonight… until we weren’t.” Archie waited for more, and so Laurel told him about her plans—the hot chocolate, the tree, the game of Ludo, and how Zac had turned his back on it all.
“I know I’m being silly to be so hurt by it,” she said with a sigh. “I know that. But I am, all the same.”
“Hard not to. But he might come around.”
“Honestly, I don’t know if he will. Maybe it was a mistake to come all the way up here. I had such happy memories of Eilidh’s cottage, and Orkney, but I think I was counting on some sort of magic to bring us together, like in a film.” She shook her head wryly. “I’ve always been a bit of a romantic that way, expecting things to work out for the best in the end. But if it hasn’t worked out for me, why should it work out for me and Zac?”
“It hasn’t worked out for you?” Archie repeated with a frown, his glass raised halfway to his lips.
“I just mean… you know… with a bloke. Romantically.” Even in her semi-drunken state Laurel heard how ridiculous she sounded. Why on earth had she brought that up? She hoped Archie didn’t think she was fishing for compliments or something awful like that. “I’ve been waiting for Mr Darcy my whole life,” she said, and that was when she realised she might actually be properly drunk.
“Mr Darcy?”
“From Pride and Prejudice. BBC version, obviously.” She had to stop now. Really, just stop.
“Don’t think I’ve seen it,” Archie said with a crinkly-eyed smile. He really did have lovely eyes, very blue.
“Don’t think I’m surprised,” Laurel quipped back. “Colin Firth… all dark and brooding and mysterious, but with a kind heart, of course. Deep down. Really deep down.” Her mouth was not getting the message from her brain to stop talking immediately. “I’ve always had this dream…” But she couldn’t go into her dream of how one day, finally one day, she’d meet the man and know, just know. How he would, too. How it would all fall into place, because while Laurel was smart enough to know life wasn’t a rom com, she still believed in the magic of romance. Of true love. At least she wanted to.
It was a dream she’d held onto, even though she’d had to let go of others… like having a mum and dad at home, and a big sister who came back.
Thankfully, she wasn’t drunk enough to admit all that to Archie MacDougall. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s worth a watch.” There. That sounded more normal, she hoped. “But here I am wittering on about Zac and Abby and—”
“Colin Firth.”
“Right, and you’ve been so kind… but what about you? You’ve lived in Orkney your whole life, you said?” In terms of changing the topic, Laurel could practically hear the conversational tyres screeching. Never mind. Archie took the turn of topic in his easy stride.
“Yes, lived in this farmhouse my whole life. Born upstairs.”
“Really?”
He nodded solemnly. “Likely I’ll die there, too, if I’m lucky.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
A pause, and then he nodded slowly. “I had a younger brother, Allen. He died of leukaemia when he was just a wee lad. Only four years old.”
