Page 66 of Scotlander

‘It was at this point’, Willa said, watching as Finn’s shoulders began twitching and flexing as if reliving it all in a REM nightmare, ‘when the usually friendly villagers turned.’ Almost overnight, his father had gone from being a hero whose ownership of Balcraigie ‘kept things local’ to that ‘bloody Englishman, storming in, taking over, lording it about everyone with his fancy this and fancy that’ completely forgetting that Finn, his mother and father had lived in near poverty for years. Farming, it turned out, had not been his father’s gift.

Willa swallowed before starting the next bit.

Tragedy struck. On a rare morning off from farm work, Finn’s dad died. Their border collie had swum far out into the loch to try to ‘round up’ Finn and his dad who’d gone fishing. His dad dived in to get her when she began to struggle. When his dad didn’t climb into the boat after he’d got the dog safely in, Finn, who’d been eight at the time, had thought that his dad was playing one of his practical jokes on him. Swimming under water all the way to the shore. But he had drowned.

They’d been utterly heartbroken. His father had been the centre of their universe. Their light. Their joy. And then, for reasons Finn still couldn’t understand, his mother married her ex a year later. Duncan. Duncan used the money they’d earmarked for the castle to build the modern, pebble-dashed ‘monstrosity’ next to the stables and that had been that. Life went on as if his father had never existed. And Finn had spent the rest of his childhood in a not-so-silent rage.

His mum changed. Was prone to depression and days-long silences. Orla learnt how to cook out of necessity and, only later, when she’d met Dougie, out of joy.

Finn’s childhood was defined by losing his dad and gaining a stepfather he couldn’t – or maybe wouldn’t – bond with. He’d endured a childhood of being picked on for being ‘English muck’ as his stepsister received the full glow of a community ‘looking after its own’. There had been a complete wall of silence from Duncan and Finn’s mum regarding any sort of future for the castle that, until now, had lain completely neglected.

When Finn had gone off to college and then university – more to get space than to study agriculture, which he’d been born to – he’d finally felt he had room to breathe. ‘And that’s when you decided to teach at the agricultural college instead of coming back to Balcraigie. Even though you inherited it when your mom passed, over the years you’d come to think of it as Orla’s.’ She had to tread carefully here. ‘A penance, maybe – a peace offering for a complicated childhood. And even though Duncan and Dougie are good farmers, it’s a tough market. Especially when you’ve double-downed on your potato crop to clear some bills, the potato harvester breaks and there’s no money to fix it.’

‘Eh, well.’ He washed his hand over his face. ‘It’s a neat and tidy way of telling me I dropped the ball.’

‘What? No,’ Willa protested. ‘I wasn’t saying—’

He cut her off. ‘I know you weren’t. This is me giving myself lashings for something I should have done long ago.’

‘Which was?’

‘Move back here and help my family.’ He gently lifted the piglet from his lap and laid it on top of the pile of polka-dotted porkers already sleeping in the crook of the sow’s legs. He pressed his hands to the chest-height railings and looked out to the sprawling farmland beyond the barns. ‘I know my stepfamily and I will never be close, not the way my mum, dad and I—’ He stretched his jaw against a hit of emotion and began again. ‘There’s no sense in rehashing what’s happened in the past. But if I’m going to help Orla and her lot, and prove that my dad had nothing but good intentions when he bought this place, what we need to focus on is the future.’

A flush of pride warmed her. Misplaced or not, she felt like he’d included her in the statement. Not just in a could-you-help-me-out-with-a-few-errands way, but in a bigger, broader sense. And it surprised her to realise she wanted to be a part of the solution.

‘So how are we going to give you and Orla the happy ending the audience want?’

‘Is this you trying to get me to do some positive imagery or something?’ He flashed her an unexpectedly bright smile. Her heart flipped.

She gave a hapless little shrug. ‘I can’t help being a source of pure, motivational energy.’

He laughed, then let his smile fade. ‘First and foremost? We can’t let anyone know that Orla’s set this whole thing up because the potato harvester is broken. If they knew she’d had them pay good money in exchange for their labour while she tried to get parts in? We’d have to give all of that money back – and from what she told me last night, it’s gone.’

‘Okay. Noted.’ Willa made blinker gestures with her hands. ‘Eyes on the prize. Do not reveal deceptive holiday ruse to guests.’ She hesitated. ‘Gabe?’

‘Not even Gabe.’

She looked up at ‘heaven’, asked Val for permission to keep Gabe in the dark and received it. ‘Done. What next?’

‘We make sure the guests have a bloody good time and pray the parts for the harvester come in.’

‘Cool. How?’

Finn gave a self-effacing laugh. ‘You and I head down to the village. Me with my tail between my legs, you with your sunshiny American charm, and we convince folk to help us. Otherwise this place is going to have a “For Sale” sign on it in three weeks’ time.’

‘Which we will not let happen,’ she said definitively, before addressing the final and possibly stickiest problem. ‘How do we give a fully immersive, once-in-a-lifetime experience to Outlander superfans?’

Finn’s expression sobered and his voice grew thick with an unexpected charge of emotion. ‘Research, lass. Prepare for battle, then head directly into the eye of the storm.’

‘Awesome. I’m all in.’ She stepped towards him and put up her hand for a high five.

Just as their hands connected, her phone began to buzz. They both started laughed. ‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘A phone mast?’

‘Yes. That’s it exactly. All the texts in Scotland come through me.’

They stood there for a moment, smiling at one another, their hands still pressed together and then, when her phone buzzed again, Finn pulled back. ‘Looks like your real life wants a word with you.’

‘You know Hollywood!’