Page 50 of Happiness Under a Summer Skye

‘I saw the shit in the paper about you and Josh,’ he said, saying the drummer’s name as if it left an acidic taste in his mouth. ‘Has he been in touch much?’

Her heart sank and it was her turn to stare out the window now. ‘No. I try not to think about Josh,’ she replied flatly.

The rest of the journey was made in a heavy, weighted silence that neither of them seemed able to break.

After she had updated her parents excitedly about the choir practice, they all watched an episode of Shetland, another of her parents’ favourites. Angelia had preferred the books to the TV drama, having read them on tour when her mum sent them a while back. Her mum had agreed that the books were better. Meghan, however, agreed with Angelia’s dad about the show being brilliant.

After they had watched another episode, with Scrappy asleep beside Angelia on the sofa, she walked Ed out to the campervan.

‘Are you sure you’re going to be okay out here?’ she asked, folding her arms around her body. It was almost midnight now and there was a nip in the air despite the fact it was spring.

He shrugged. ‘Absolutely. It’ll be an adventure. Speaking of which, when do your parents go away?’

‘They leave on Monday to go down to Heathrow, but they fly out Wednesday the twenty-eighth for three weeks. They’re going to travel on the Rocky Mountain Railroad which I’m a tiny bit jealous about. I know I told them they had to go but I’ll miss them like mad. It’s been so good being home with them again.’

‘I know what you mean. I miss my mum and dad too,’ Ed said with a sigh as he stared off into the distance and shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans.

‘And yet you chose to come here instead of going home to Hampshire.’

He pursed his lips for a moment. ‘Yes, but unlike yours, my folks are so hard on me. Always have been. As soon as I get home, they start asking when I’m going to apply for bigger orchestras, or higher paying, more prestigious work. I think they like to live vicariously through me which is an awful lot of pressure. And if it’s not that it’s, “when are you going to settle down and get married? We’d love some grandkids while we’re still young enough to enjoy them”,’ he said in an almost mocking tone. ‘Honestly, I can’t win. I do love them, don’t get me wrong, and I really do miss them but it’s easier to be away from them than it is to visit home more than once a year. Coming to see you was definitely the better option.’

‘Well, I’m glad to have you here,’ she said, hugging him. ‘I hope you manage to sleep okay.’

He removed his hands from his pockets, pulled her into his embrace and squeezed her tightly, giving a small laugh. ‘Believe me, when you’ve slept on as many airport floors as I have a camper is the epitome of luxury.’ She smiled up at him, then turned to walk away. ‘Hey, hang on a sec, I’ve got an idea.’

His words stopped her in her tracks, and she turned to face him with eyebrows raised. ‘Ooh, that’s dangerous,’ she replied with a grin.

He tilted his head. ‘Funny.’ He eagerly took a step towards her. ‘Seriously, I was thinking, why don’t we head down to Glenbrittle for a few days while I’ve got the van? From the pics I’ve seen online it looks stunning. There’s this great campsite by the water out in the middle of nowhere. We’d be undisturbed, I’m sure. We could visit the Fairy Pools and do some hiking. Get some fresh air. Scrappy would love it.’

She laughed. ‘You do know it’ll be midge central, don’t you? It’s May, Ed. On Skye? Do you want to get eaten alive?’

‘Pfft, we can take some of that stuff that repels them, you can buy it online. How bad can it be?’

She shook her head. ‘God, you’re such a towny. It’ll be horrendous. It’ll be heaving with people, because it always is, and I can tell you now Meghan won’t go for it. Imagine how cramped it would be and how bored silly Meghan’d be if she came with us. We’d be reminiscing about uni days, and she’d just be sat there swatting midges.’

He shrugged, disappointment in his eyes and she hated that she had put it there. ‘I just thought it’d be nice to spend some time, just the two of us. We haven’t done that since that time the three of us were supposed to go camping during our second year at uni. Remember? Fee had food poisoning, so it ended up just me and you? We took my car out to Loch Doon and star gazed. Best night ever.’ There was a hint of melancholy in his voice, or maybe even regret. ‘Anyway, never mind. It was just a thought. Goodnight, Angel.’ He climbed into the van and after one final raise of his hand in a salute, he slid the door closed.

When Angelia got back into the house, she kissed her mum and dad goodnight and went to her room. Scrappy was already curled up on his own side of her bed, fast asleep. She changed into her pyjamas and climbed in beside him carefully so as not to disturb the snoozing canine, and she lay down and thought back to that September camping trip in 2014 she had almost forgotten about…

‘This place is stunning,’ Ed said, shielding his eyes as he climbed out of the car on the shore of Loch Doon. It was September 2014 and the weather was unseasonably warm. He wore a slate-grey Hozier T-shirt that fit tight over his biceps and broad shoulders; he’d had a Hozier obsession back then which had meant they had listened to the artist’s self-titled debut album for the whole journey, both belting out ‘Take Me to Church’ and then skipping back to the start to sing it all over again.

Standing there on the shore was magical. The sunlight danced on the water as if it was made up of a billion tiny mirrors glinting and the sky over head was a vivid cerulean that almost looked photoshopped.

Angelia inhaled lungsful of the fresh air and thought to herself that you could be forgiven for thinking you were much more than an hour outside of the bustle of Glasgow. ‘Glorious,’ she said simply, because the word seemed to sum up the place quite succinctly.

Ed turned to face her. ‘I just love Scotland. The fact that wild camping even exists is amazing. And look at that! That castle looks fascinating. We’ll have to go and have a closer look.’

‘Come on then,’ she called out. ‘We can get the tent out later, let’s make the most of the weather because who knows what could happen with that in an hour.’ And she headed off, jogging in the direction of the medieval structure. Ed caught up to her as she paused at an information board to read about the castle. ‘Wow, it says here that it used to be somewhere else, an island in the loch somewhere over there.’ She pointed in the direction the details denoted. ‘But then in 1935 the loch was dammed so, because of the rising water, they took the stones one by one and rebuilt the castle here.’

‘Bloody hell, that must’ve taken ages. Good that they didn’t let such a wonderful piece of history go forgotten, though.’

They walked around the perimeter of the castle and Ed snapped photos on his phone of the view out over the loch. She even caught him snapping photos of her when he thought she wasn’t aware.

Once inside the partial structure it was clear to see it must have once been an impressive place to behold. The holes for the joists for an upper floor were visible, as were the arched spaces that were once windows.

Ed joined her and shook his head. ‘Wow, the painstaking way they must have worked to take each stone and note where it should go, only to carry it all the way over here and place it down in the exact spot it needed to be. Like a giant LEGO set.’ He chuckled. ‘One way to work up an appetite, I suppose. Speaking of which, I’m starving, shall I go light the barbie?’

Angelia laughed. ‘You’re always hungry.’