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Harry Boyle fell in love with Magenta when he was eight years old. It happened in the sandpit of the local primary school. The five-year-old girl had been building the biggest sandcastle Harry had ever seen. He’d paused beside her, wondering if he should give her tips on how to make it more structurally sound, but he’d learned the hard way to keep his super brain to himself.
“Hairy Boil,” one of the class bullies shouted behind him. “You going to play with the wee girls now?”
There was laughter.
Magenta looked up at him with huge golden eyes, her honey-coloured pigtails askew and full of sand. She blinked several times as she studied him. “That’s a funny name. You don’t look hairy.”
Harry took her comment seriously, as he did most things. “They’re making fun of my name. It’s Harry Boyle.”
She scowled. “That’s mean.” She studied him a bit more before nodding to herself. “Do you want me to punch them for you?”
Harry’s mouth fell open at her words. He looked over his shoulder at the group of boys who were still pointing at him and laughing, then he looked back at the fairy in the sandpit. He would have laughed too if she hadn’t been so serious. The bullying had gotten worse since his brother Flynn had gone to secondary school, and as much as he would like someone to stand up for him, he didn’t think a five-year-old girl was the best protector to pick.
“They’ll get fed up soon and annoy someone else,” he said.
“I don’t mind hitting them.” She shrugged and turned back to her castle.
Harry couldn’t take it anymore. “You need to reinforce it, or it will collapse.”
She eyed him thoughtfully. “How?”
Harry sank to his knees beside her and showed her how to make the castle stable.
And that’s how his friendship with Magenta started. Of course, back then she was still called Maggie Fraser. It wasn’t until she was thirteen, and Harry was in university, that she dyed her hair black, bought a giant tub of eyeliner and started calling herself Magenta. Harry had come back to Invertary for the holidays to find his friend replaced by a sullen Goth who’d looked him up and down slowly, smirked and turned away from him. She’d never turned back.
And Harry had never stopped loving her.
“She’s the reason you’re making us pack up and relocate to the middle of nowhere?” Rachel didn’t make any effort to hide her disgust as she pointed at the lingerie shop. Magenta could be clearly seen through the shop window.
Harry looked at his business manager. He’d met Rachel in the university cafeteria when he was sixteen. His big brain had meant that he was years younger than his fellow students and socially out of his depth. Rachel had felt sorry for him and had pretty much adopted him as her pet—at least, that’s what it had always felt like to Harry. She’d been older and wiser at nineteen, not to mention she was studying the much more socially savvy business studies course. The friendship had stuck, and eight years later, Rachel was the face of Harry’s programming business. And he was grateful for it.
“Her name is Magenta, and she’s not the only reason we’re moving to Invertary.” He glanced around his hometown, with its rows of quirky white and grey crooked houses and cobblestone roads. Heather-covered hills cradled the town, while the cool loch sparkled beside it. “Look around, Rach—this is much nicer than London.”
She stuck her tiny nose in the air and folded her arms over her designer blue business suit. Everything about Rachel was polished and expensive. She’d once told him her shoes cost more than his car. Every time he looked at them, he wondered why.
“You know how I feel about this,” she said. “It might be pretty up here in the Highlands, but our business contacts are in London and Europe.”
“We can conference call. Skype. Fly in for face to face. I don’t see the problem. This isn’t Outer Mongolia. It’s Scotland.”
“You can’t network over the phone. You do that face to face, over lunch or a casual drink after work. None of which we can do here.”
“I don’t do that stuff anyway,” Harry pointed out.
“No, but I do.” She flicked her manicured fingers in the direction of the town. “What am I supposed to do here while you’re communing with your laptop? This town is stuck in the fifties. It doesn’t even have a decent clothes shop. And you want to drag everyone up here. The team will go insane inside of a week.”
“No they won’t.” Harry sighed. “As long as they have internet access, they won’t care. It’s only you who’ll miss the London scene. I told you. You can stay there. We’ll work it out.”
“Who will you bounce ideas off if I’m not here?”
“I can call.”
“It won’t be the same.” She patted the tight bun that held her auburn hair.
He couldn’t argue with that. For eight years she’d been his sounding board, and he wasn’t sure how he’d function without her. Rachel let out a dramatic sigh.
“Why this girl? I don’t see anything special about her. I mean, she works in a lingerie shop and she obviously has no idea how to dress. She didn’t even finish school. How are you supposed to have a conversation with her?”
