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“Yes. We still need to talk about—about things, but it’s something.”
Archie nodded again. He hadn’t moved from the door, and Laurel couldn’t bear to have to ask to come in. So she stood there, her hands in her pockets, the wind blowing her hair into tangles, feeling thoroughly miserable, wishing she were brave enough to tell him how much he meant to her.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say goodbye.” Her throat was starting to thicken and she didn’t have it in her to smile.
“That’s kind of you.”
“I wish…” Laurel began, and Archie raised his eyebrows. She smiled sadly, fighting tears. “I wish things were different, I suppose.”
“Yes.” Another one of his wretched nods. Then, gruffly, “Me too.”
Laurel took a step towards him. “Archie…” But she didn’t know what she was going to say, or if she could find the courage to say it, and Archie just waited, a look on his face that Laurel couldn’t read. Coward that she was, she left it.
“I guess I’ll go, then.”
“All right.”
No hug, then, and certainly no kiss. They simply stared at each other, two strangers again, minus the gun, but this felt far worse than their first meeting. Far, far worse.
“Goodbye, Archie,” Laurel whispered, and then she turned and started walking back across the paddock, towards Bayview Cottage.
Half an hour later they were on the ferry, the island becoming no more than a dark green smudge on the horizon. Once on the mainland, they would pick up Abby’s rental car and then drive to Inverness so she could return it, and then on to London. After that, who knew?
The hours passed in a rainy blur. As soon as they reached Thurso, Zac’s phone signal flickered to life, and his thumbs started flying. Laurel watched him from the corner of her eye, feeling as if they were all reverting to their old ways, as if Orkney had never happened, and hating the thought.
“Zac,” she said as she headed for the A9 towards Inverness, “how come you didn’t want to go in the rental car with your mum?” He shrugged, a reply. “Zac… you’re not… you’re not angry with her, are you?” Another shrug. “I understand why you would be,” Laurel said carefully, “at least in a way, but… she does love you. She’s trying her best right now.”
“Can we please not talk about this?” Zac asked in a suffocated sort of voice, his gaze firmly on his phone.
“Okay.” She knew when not to push. “I just want things to be better,” she said a bit lamely. “For everyone.”
“It would be better if we’d stayed on Orkney.”
And how. “Did you really like it that much there?” Laurel asked, and all she got was another shrug.
*
Abby’s apartment smelled stale—Laurel had forgot to empty the bin before leaving—and looked even more sterile than before, after the cosy shabbiness of Eilidh’s cottage. Laurel could hardly believe they were all there.
After a meal of Indian takeaway—the hot curry managing to taste like ashes in Laurel’s mouth—she got ready for bed, sleeping on an air mattress in Abby’s living room. Zac had offered his bed, but Laurel had refused. She didn’t want to turf her nephew out of his room, and in any case, his sheets had not been changed in some time.
Despite the endless day of travel, it took her hours to get to sleep, as a painfully bittersweet montage of moments of her time in Orkney ran through her mind on an endless loop, tormenting her with their poignancy. Laughing over Ludo with Archie and Zac… the clink of dishes as she and Archie washed up together… the lovely crinkle of his smile, his silly, tufty hair, the scorching kiss that had lit up every fibre of her being like a firework…
She eventually woke to a grey, misty dawn, the city shrouded in fog, and stumbled, body aching, from the bed to make herself a much-needed coffee.
To her surprise, Laurel saw Abby already sitting at the breakfast bar in the little kitchen.
“I didn’t realise you were up…”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Abby said tightly, and Laurel nodded.
“Me neither.”
She went for the kettle, her fingers freezing on the switch, as Abby suddenly burst out, “Oh Laurel, why don’t you hate me?”
And then her sister started to cry.
Chapter Fifteen
