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Magenta opened her mouth and shut it again, making her black bob bounce. Kirsty held up a hand.
“Don’t answer that,” she said. She wrapped a pink woollen scarf around her neck. As usual, the beginning of November was freezing in the Highlands. “Hold down the fort. Try not to kill Morag. I’m going to see my mum.”
Magenta placed her slender hand on Kirsty’s arm.
“While you’re there,” she said, “have a nice cup of calming tea, take several long breaths and try to remember that you’re an adult.”
“Ha!” was all Kirsty said before she headed out of the back door and into the alleyway that ran behind the long row of shops.
She turned into the wind and headed down the hill towards the loch. Her mother’s shop sat in a tiny, crooked building on the corner of the high street and the road that ran along the waterfront. As she walked towards it she could feel some of the tension seep from her. This was home.
She’d grown up in her mum’s wool and craft shop. Played on the floor while her mother dealt with customers. Did her homework at the old table at the back of the shop. The table that was in constant use now as the unofficial meeting place of the Knit Or Die ladies group and they were just the women she wanted to see.
“Darling!”
Her mum jumped up from the round table near the open fire at the rear of the shop. The usual group of middle-aged women smiled up at her while they continued to knit.
“Hey, Mum.” Kirsty pulled her tiny, round mother into a hug, resting her chin on the top of her greying hair. She took one of the deep, soothing breaths that Magenta had ordered her to take and actually did feel better.
“Come and have a cup of tea with the girls,” her mum said when she pulled away.
Kirsty hung up her coat and scarf on the pegs beside the back door and plopped into an old wooden chair close to the open fire. Around her the floor-to-ceiling shelves were crammed with all sorts of wool and craft materials, giving the shop the same smell a cosy blanket would have. She’d always loved this place. It was where she’d had her first kiss when her mum thought she was doing homework, where she’d run to every time things had gone wrong at work and it was where she’d hidden when cancer had taken her dad. Naturally, after her accident it was the only place she wanted to be. She took the mug her mum offered with a tiny sigh of satisfaction. If only she could stay cocooned in her mum’s shop forever.
“What’s up?” her mum said as she climbed back into her armchair and picked up her knitting.
Kirsty looked around the group as she sipped her tea. When she was little the women only met once a week, but now that most of them were retired, or free in the mornings, their time was spent gabbing and knitting in Margaret Campbell’s shop—much to the delight of their husbands, who welcomed a little peace.
“It’s okay, dear,” Jean said. “We can keep a secret.”
“I know you lot are running some underground war thing and I want in,” Kirsty said.
That stopped the clack of needles dead. Smiles were gone.
“We don’t know what you mean,” her mother said. Her lips drawn tight.
“I caught Billy messing with Lake’s pipes,” she told them.
“Fine,” her mother sighed. “We might have one or two ideas, but we thought it best if you weren’t involved.”
“Deniability,” Shona said. “I saw it on Taggart; apparently it works well in court.”
“I don’t need to deny anything. I need to ruin the man and send him back to England with his tail between his legs.”
“Why now, what did he do?”
“He set Betty loose and now Morag is picketing my shop.”
“Outrageous!” Shona said.
“Morag thinks I sell sex toys,” Kirsty said indignantly.
“Do you?” said Jean hopefully.
“Of course not,” said Kirsty’s mother, and Jean’s face flushed before she went back to her knitting.
“This is just what you need after all that trouble of yours,” Shona said in the faux-sympathetic voice they all barely tolerated. “First that fiancé of yours leaves you dying in a hospital in Spain and runs off with your money. And now this. There’s no justice in the world.”
Kirsty rolled her eyes and watched as her mother fought a smile.
