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“I never thought otherwise,” Caroline said.
They stared out over snow-covered hills. All the colour had been bleached out of Invertary.
“There’s something else,” Caroline said. “Because of everything that happened, we never finished the fashion show properly. Dougal and I have been talking and we think that it would make a good New Year’s Eve event.” She took a deep breath. “The dance school will perform the routine they never got to do and we’ll announce the winner of the Battle of the Bras. We want you to be there for the announcement.”
“No way,” Kirsty said. “What difference does it make who won? And I, for one, don’t want to relive that night.”
“You won’t be reliving it,” Caroline said. “You’ll be finishing it. Think of it as closure.”
“I already have closure. The shop is very much closed. I don’t need any more closure.” Kirsty glared at her friend. “Plus, no one cares who won.”
“Everyone cares,” Carolin
e said. “People are asking Dougal all the time.”
“Fine, let him tell them.” Kirsty turned back to the loch. “I don’t see why I have to be there. Lake won’t be there. I doubt he cares about who won the fashion show either.”
Caroline patted Kirsty’s hand.
“He’ll come back for you,” Caroline said. “I know it.”
“You are such a romantic, Caroline Paterson.”
Kirsty, on the other hand, had learnt the hard way to be realistic.
“We need you there for the announcement or it won’t make sense,” Caroline said.
Kirsty twisted on the log to look at her friend.
“Let me get this right,” she said. “After everything I’ve been through, you want me to go out on Hogmanay, sit in a crowd and listen while Dougal tells the world that I lost a fashion show?”
Caroline’s cheeks flushed rose.
“What makes you think you lost?” she demanded.
Little alarm bells went off in Kirsty’s head. She stopped dead and stared at her friend. Caroline wouldn’t look her in the eye.
“What’s going on really?” Kirsty said.
“Nothing.”
Caroline had the same look on her face she’d had the few times Kirsty had talked her into skipping school to go shopping.
“Nothing?” she said suspiciously.
Caroline talked to her feet.
“We just think that it’s right that you’re there for the announcement,” she said.
“Even though I could be humiliated?”
“That won’t happen. I promise.”
Caroline clamped her lips tight so that no other words would escape. Kirsty had seen this before. She was up to something and she was rubbish at hiding the truth. All Kirsty had to do was wait until her guilty conscience got the better of her, then she’d confess.
“And this was Dougal’s idea?” she said.
“Well, it wasn’t mine,” Caroline told her.
