‘Oh. Right.’ Mal looked a bit disappointed now.
‘So good old heart-throb George…’ Mal threw a glance at Kaylinn, whose ears went slightly pink ‘…rides off into the sunset and fathers a few boys to keep the family name going. He sorts the family fortunes, the McKells keep the castle, job done.’ He looked around now at the sooty walls. The dog whined again. ‘And yet, we’re still here.’
I could see the questions in all their faces, but I had no answers.
‘Look, let’s all go topside and keep an eye out.’ Lachlan threw me a glance that carried a potential conversation. ‘At the very least we can wave George off. There can’t be many people whoget to meet a relation from eight generations ago or thereabouts, so you might want to make the most of the chance, Pax.’
It was feeble but, yet again, everyone seemed glad that someone was telling them what to do. It was as though the fact of still being here had removed any independent thought and anything that stopped us dwelling on the horror of non-return was welcome.
And I didn’t like to admit it to anyone, but a horrible thought was beginning to creep into my mind. No more than a suspicion, just a flash of intuition lying under the surface of consciousness, but enough to dry my mouth.
Outside in the stable yard, the frost had made the rutted ground hard and difficult to negotiate. The small boy, whose name I realised I had never learned, was carrying bits of horse tack around in a self-important way, while Fergus readied the big dark grey. As soon as we appeared, the horse started swinging around with much snorting and threatened half-kicks.
‘Ah, calm down, ye wee beastie,’ Fergus said, not unkindly, patting the horse’s neck, which did little to soothe its fear that four invisible people were creeping up on it. To one side of us, the women were beginning the milking of the cows, carrying stools and buckets into their enclosure, where the goat stopped chewing for long enough to stare our way in its caprine inscrutability. Two kilted men, their feet bare and breaking the crust of frost on the mud, leaned on the wall to critique the women’s technique, and I was pleased to hear Kenna scold them roundly in a stream of unintelligible Scots.
‘So far, so bucolic,’ Lachlan murmured to me.
‘What are you expecting? Herds of wildebeest?’
‘Och, it takes something to work aFawlty Towersreference into a “three hundred years in the past” situation, but I see you managed it.’ Lachlan gave me a sideways grin. ‘Are we going fora Monty Pythonturn, because I can do the whole of the French Knight’s speech?’
‘You do surprise me,’ I said dryly. ‘But really, what do we think will happen now? Do we get whisked away back to our own time? Because last night would have been the ideal time for that to happen.’
Lachlan pulled lightly at my arm and we walked away from the women, who were chatting away as they milked, gossiping about the men, from what I could gather. ‘What’s your theory?’ he asked once we were out of earshot of everyone except the goat.
‘I didn’t know I was meant to have one,’ I replied.
‘You’re notmeantto, but I think you do.’ He’d stopped looking at me now and was picking lichen off one of the stones in a wall. ‘You think about things way more than you let on, Pax.’ Now I got a proper grin. ‘It’s a very attractive trait.’
I preened silently for a moment. I’d never been told I had any attractive traits before, as my abilities rested strictly more on the ‘setting homework and organising trips’ end of the scale and, with the exception of booking holidays, this did not translate well into non-teacherly life. But the feeling that had been building in the back of my mind needed to come out, and Lachlan was the only person I could confess it to.
‘I’m wondering if there’s something else,’ I said, the words coming out rather faster than I had meant. ‘If it’s not just stopping George fighting in the battle we’re meant to be here for.’
Now Lachlan’s frown deepened. ‘What else could it be?’
‘I don’t know. But George is leaving today and yet here we still are.’
I let my gaze travel up and over the busy yard. The young lad had gone to Jeannie and clearly received his instructions because he had looped a rope over the horns of the goat andwas leading it out of the enclosure. The goat was not altogether complying, and there was a degree of wrangling going on, some of which was occasioned by the fact that Mal was leaning against the wall of the paddock and the goat had to pass him to go through the entrance. Mal did not help matters by giving the goat a little wave as it went.
‘You don’t think it’s us, do you?’ Lachlan spoke quietly, his lips hardly moving. ‘Keeping us here? I mean, you don’t seem overkeen to get back to the teaching, and I’ve got an uncertain future waiting for me there. Nothing to rush home for, if you get my drift.’
I stared at him with my mouth falling open. ‘Lachlan!’
He hung his head and the part of his face visible above the ginger beard went pink. ‘Just a thought,’ he mumbled.
‘Well, yes, but – I can see where you’re coming from but isn’t that just a touch hubristic?’ I almost wanted to laugh, but things looked too black for humour to work. ‘You might have an unwanted career change,’ I said carefully, trying not to let the word ‘unemployment’ slip out. ‘And I’m not desperate to get back to teaching, but it’s ourlives! There’s nothing here for us.’ I waved an arm to indicate the muddy yard and the activity. ‘Plus, there’s three other people here and they all want to go back. Kaylinn wants her mum, David needs to get back to see his sister is safe and Mal…’ I remembered Mal and his confession of the loneliness in his life ‘…probably wants to go clubbing and buy ridiculously priced shoes.’
I went back to concentrating on the goat, which seemed the least objectionable thing around at the moment, even though it did seem to be attempting to butt the child into the mud in an attempt to get to Mal, presumably with murder in its little goaty heart. ‘Anyway, I thought you had your life sorted.’
‘Aye, well.’ Lachlan shrugged. ‘It’s not so bad. Just a wee bit precarious, you know. Losing the lecturing job when I’d got mymortgage all sorted, and the cottage could do with a bit of tidying up – like a roof and some actual foundations, that sort of thing.’ I flicked him a glance and it must have had a level of disbelief in it because he hastened on, ‘Oh, it’s liveable. Needs a bit of work, that’s all. I thought I’d stay in Glasgow and do the place up a bit at a time, put on a nice extension, plant out a garden. Looks like I’ll have to live there full-time though, and I’m not sure it’s fit for that yet.’
A hand reached out and took mine. It startled me a little because I wasn’t sure we’d come to this level of casual acceptance of touch yet. A few kisses, an admission that we liked one another; was that it? Was that how one went about forming an attachment to someone? Then I felt the mud underneath me, heard the gulls screeching lines across the sky and remembered that here you probably married someone you’d never evenmetand let my fingers close around Lachlan’s.
‘You’re trying to be in control again, aren’t you?’ This time I let the hint of a smile cross my face.
‘Maybe. Och, Pax, I don’t know. I just want a wee bit of order around here, do you know what I mean? It feels like there’s no ground under my feet and I’m not used to that.’
I tightened my grip on his hand. ‘Maybe we have to let go a bit,’ I said. ‘Maybe we’re trying too hard. If we let things happen and stop trying to second-guess, it might make things easier?’
