Page 91 of Scotlander

She stared at him, begging him to see that she cared for him, that she might even love him, but that she wasn’t brave enough to change her life course. Not yet. Not in the throes of all this endorphin-inducing magic. She knew first-hand how wrong this sort of thing could go. What went up, always came down.

‘We’ve got to go,’ she said, tugging her hand free. When he didn’t move, she beckoned for him to join her as the BBC producer gave her an irritated time’s a-ticking tap on his watch. He called out to them. ‘Is it you two then who’ll be doing the interview?’

Finn said, ‘This is a family farm. If this is going to go on the telly, I’d like to do it with my family.’

It shouldn’t have, but the comment hit her like a slap. Obviously, she wasn’t family, and Finn was absolutely right to want to do the interview with his, but . . .

Wow. So this was what happened when you didn’t tell a man you loved him when you had the chance. He reminded you of the person you were when you first came to him: an outsider.

These past few days, sharing their problems, helping with the solutions, she’d felt like she was part of Finn’s family. Mucking in, doing chores, laughing, crying, stressing, soothing. All the things she’d wanted to share with her own family and hadn’t managed to. All the things she’d shared with Valentina’s family and couldn’t any more.

Finn, distracted now as the sound guy fed a microphone wire up his ghillie, pointed at his eyes then out to the crowd. ‘You wouldn’t mind, would you, Willa? Having a quick run round to find them?’

It was a simple request. A sensible request. And yet, as she pasted a smile onto her face and bobbed out some yes, of course she would help nods, she felt her heart break clean in two. This was Finn drawing a line between them.

He’d asked her if she’d believed in him. The unspoken part of his question, of course, was Do you believe in me enough to stand by my side? And she’d refused to answer.

If he’d been a film star asking her if she loved the film she would have instantly said yes. Lied straight to his face if necessary. But when Finn, a man who deserved every single fibre of her belief, had asked her to tell him where she stood – by his side or elsewhere – she’d let him down. Just like she’d let Valentina down when all her friend had wanted was to have someone she loved and trusted by her side while she confronted the most terrifying future a person could face. She’d chosen the coward’s route. Not Val. Not Finn. So, yeah. She deserved this. Deserved her supporting role as Little Miss Reliable because it was only the people who truly risked their hearts who could reap the rewards.

‘Willa?’ Finn prompted when she hadn’t yet moved. ‘Are you okay to find them?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said, desperately trying to keep her smile bright. ‘Always here to help.’

Chapter Thirty-Eight

By the fourth day of the harvest, Finn was riding such a high he was convinced he was wearing a jetpack. He wasn’t used to being this happy. A crash seemed inevitable, but paradoxically impossible. He glanced up at the sky. It was bright blue now, but he could see dark, ominous grey clouds gathering away up on the hills to the north.

Though the stream of fans had remained steady, the work was hard, so folk tended to do a day or so, then headed off with a complimentary sack of potatoes in thanks. Those who weren’t keen to howk for tatties, bought them.

Before Finn had even got hold of the wholesaler, the freshly picked potatoes had started flying out of the huge bins and into the cars of well-wishers who wanted a bite of Balcraigie. The honesty jar – a huge old stoneware pot his father had unearthed decades back – had to be emptied several times a day.

It had begun with a kilo here or there, but now people were buying the huge jute bags the howkers filled up at the edges of the fields, saying they liked the idea of having a few months’ worth of quality food. Farm shops wanted them. A greengrocer’s in Glasgow. A chain in Edinburgh. Orla’s children were running a roadside stand that kept selling out. If it kept going like this, they wouldn’t need the wholesaler. He felt like Rumpelstiltskin spinning gold from straw, only his gold was potato-coloured.

And at the heart of it all was Willa.

He’d been, and continued to be, floored by her work ethic. After he’d done that BBC interview, some sort of switch had flicked in her and she’d gone into what she kept telling him was her ‘production mode’.

He knew they valued her back home at her work and now that he was seeing her in action, he wasn’t surprised. She’d booked countless interviews for him and the family – even Orla’s kids had had their ten minutes of fame. She ensured the TV crews who randomly pulled up without an appointment didn’t interfere with the picking. The whole point of this, she regularly reminded them, was to get the harvest in. The celebs who showed up were asked to only do interviews if they had a memory about the Scotland they’d grown up in or could sing a song their grandmother might have sung to them, recite a poem their grandfather had loved. Mike Myers flew in to do a stint of picking, then, with some of the potatoes that had been damaged, convinced Orla to help him make a cauldron of mash – both of them pretending they were in Shrek the entire time. It had been hilarious. And, of course, encouraged by Willa, Mike made a show of reminding everyone about the hard work that went into not only the harvesting of the potatoes, but of farming in general. ‘There’s nothing magical about food production,’ Mike had said in his interview. ‘But seeing something like this, here at Balcraigie, people helping other people in times of need, it’s hard to believe otherwise. Pure Scottish magic.’

And she didn’t only organise things for the telly. She kept the volunteers happy. Somehow, word got out that she was trying to set up a mini Highland Games and even more people came out of the woodwork, so that every afternoon, as the day began to set in, there was tea and shortbread or tablet, and caber tossing or axe throwing or a musket shooting display. She’d even got a couple of guys who worked at the museum over at Culloden to bring a couple of the cannons over and shoot them into the water. It was impressive stuff. Yesterday, a gentleman had pulled up in a van filled with falconry birds and owls. He’d been on his way to a Living History Fayre down in England and pulled a detour when he’d heard about the ‘Tattie Fest’ on the radio.

Willa had suggested to Finn that he reach out to his students, still on their hols, to see if they wanted a go at working for Jules, who had set up a Rumbledethump Chain Gang – a kitchen squad devoted to making the handheld potato and cabbage pies his grandmother had made for his mother. A few of the kids had responded and they were loving it. Jules was the perfect type of taskmaster. Using that cheeky smile of hers, she demanded brutal consistency and had them slavishly eating out of her hand.

Jennifer had convinced a nearby knitting shop to ask customers to come along and set up their spinning wheels and aged looms in the castle’s great hall. The gentle thwick-thwack of their work providing a rhythmic beat for the dozen or so pairs of hands always at work in the kitchen kneading bread for the crowdie sandwiches they provided for the howkers.

She’d even reached out to her show, Topline in Tinseltown, who’d sent a freelance crew from Glasgow to film a daily feature of what was happening here. They never interfered with the work, discreetly asking dirt-covered celebrities who’d just spent a few hours picking to host short segments highlighting the various elements of what they were trying to do here at Balcraigie. Traditional, organic farming with rare-breed animals and, hopefully, a sensitive restoration of a castle that was once home to generations of Highlanders before it had fallen to ruin.

Scores of Scots who’d worked on Outlander showed up. Extras. Costumiers. Stuntmen and women. Sword and knife fighting specialists. And not one of them was there to show off. They were there to show up. Lend an hour or three – whatever they had spare – to help a Scottish family in need.

Finn felt proud of his country in a way he’d never experienced before. As if the genetics that ran through them all had homing beacons, warning calls that went out when a fellow countryman was in need.

This morning he’d rung the agricultural college and given his notice. They weren’t surprised. They were when he asked if he could host apprentices at Balcraigie – take in the odd student who had a difficult home life who might benefit from a bit of one-to-one tutoring. Duncan had been the one to suggest that.

Balcraigie was alive in a way that far surpassed his father’s dreams.

‘Hey.’ Willa appeared beside him at what had become his regular post – the large arched gateway that led to the tattie fields.

‘Hey.’ He smiled at her and leant in to pick some dried potato leaves out of her hair, but really, he just wanted to get close to her. He didn’t know if it was the workload, or all the people constantly buzzing round the place, but something had shifted between them over the past few days, and he didn’t know what. She was still as friendly and smiley as ever, but when their eyes met there was something missing that had definitely been there before. Maybe he’d been too pushy. Trying to get her to tell him how she felt about him instead of growing a pair and saying what was constantly on his mind. He was falling in love with her. When she turned, he caught her scent and tried to memorise it. She smelt like a peach that had been rolled in honey and toasted cardamom. Don’t ask him how he knew. He just did.