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“Thanks for coming,” she says, once Big Ian, the landlord has delivered my drink, looking exactly like a man who plans to message Shona McLaren and tell her we’re here as soon as our backs are turned. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I wasn’t sure I would either,” I admit, wishing I could see her eyes behind the stupid dark glasses. “I didn’t think you’d be in much of a rush to see me again.”
And I definitely wasn’t in a rush to seeyou.
“Yes. Well. I can see why you’d think that,” says Kathryn stiffly. “I haven’t exactly made things easy for you since I got here. I’d like to apologize for that. It’s nothing personal.”
She picks up her glass and takes a huge gulp of wine as she finishes this short speech, which she delivers as if she’s been practicing it inside her head.
I wonder if Jack told her to apologize to me?
“It…feltkind of personal?” I venture at last, feeling like I should probably just accept her apology, but also feeling kind of dead inside, really, to the point where I just can’t be bothered pretending to be polite. “Especially when you kept referring to me as ‘this girl’ and implying I was only after Jack for his money. Which I’m not, by the way. I sometimes think it would be easier if he was as poor as I am. At least that way his family wouldn’t have to look down on me all the time.”
Kathryn sighs heavily, and puts down her drink, as if I’ve wounded her terribly with this.
Well, she started it.
“Look, Emerald, I like you,” she says — a statement that would make me laugh if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t feel like I’ll ever laugh again. “And I know I’ve been hard on you, but—”
“Did Jack send you here?” I interrupt, not wanting to have to listen to any more of Kathryn attempting to salve her conscience when I could be lying on my parents’ couch, moping, while Mum tries desperately to encourage me to eat something. “Do you have a message for me from him?”
And can you just give it to me if you do, rather than trying to make my personal tragedy all about you, as usual?
I stare at her, hoping I remembered to keep that last sentence inside my head, rather than saying it out loud, but she just shakes her head and takes another sip of her drink.
“Jack? No, Jack doesn’t know I’m here,” she says, gesturing for Ian to bring her another. “He’s… well, he’s not too happy with any of us at the moment. Rose especially. He won’t even talk to her.”
This makes me feel momentarily better. Then I remember Jack isn’t speaking tomeeither, and I’m back to heartbroken.
“Okay, well, if that’s all you wanted to see me for,” I say, standing up and wishing I hadn’t gone to the trouble of combing my hair and interrupting my heartbreak for this attempt at an apology. “I guess I’ll be going.”
“McLeod,” Kathryn says, as if this should mean something to me. “Katie McLeod.”
“Huh?” I sit back down again. “Is that some kind of code word?” I ask, confused. “Are we still doing the ‘spy’ thing? Because, sorry, but I’m not really in the mood, Kathryn. You’ve caught me at a bad time.”
“Spy thing?” she frowns. “No, McLeod is myname, Emerald. Well, my maiden name. I was Katie McLeod. From Glenroch.”
I stare at her, wondering what on earth she’s talking about. Glenroch is the next village along the coast from Heather Bay. But Kathryn…
“Wait,” I say, the fog clearing slightly. “You’re saying you’re from here? From the Highlands? But I thought you were from Edinburgh?”
“I met Bertie in Edinburgh,” Kathryn says, looking impatiently at the bar, where Big Ian is taking his sweet time bringing her wine; probably because she’s the first customer in months who’s asked for some. “But I grew up here, in the Highlands. And I grew up poor, Emerald. Very poor. We all did. When I met Bertie, people accused me of just being after his money, because he was so much older than me. But the truth is, he didn’thaveany money for me to be after. His father … well, he didn’t manage his finances well, let’s put it that way.”
“But… I thought?” I frown, my brain frantically trying to make this version of the “Jack’s grandad” story match the one in my head, where the grieving widow is forced to turn her back on the home she loves because the memories are just too painful.
“By the time the war ended, there was nothing left,” Kathryn goes on. “Well, other than the house, which Bertie’s mother couldn’t afford to run.”
“So that’s why she moved to Edinburgh?” I ask. “It wasn’t because of her broken heart, like Jack said?”
“Oh, her heart was broken all right,” says Kathryn, taking her drink from Ian. “But it was as much because of the loss of the money as it was from the loss of Freddie. He really did leave her with nothing.”
“Wait,” I say, sitting up a little straighter. “So, you’re telling me you’ve been giving me a hard time for allegedly taking Jack’s money — which I haven’t, by the way — when all the timeyou’rethe one who’s been freeloading?”
This comes out a little harsher than I intended it to, but I can’t help it: I’m incensed. Well, as incensed as someone who’s recently had her heart ripped out of her body can be, anyway. So maybe justcensed, then.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Kathryn says, looking like this conversation isn’t going the way she planned it. “But Jack’s been very generous to us all, yes. And we’re extremely grateful to him. Which is why I can be a little… overprotective of him sometimes.”
“So you’re not posh, then?” I interrupt, wishing I’d ordered something a bit stronger than the orange juice I swear to God Ian’s watered down again. “You’re just…normal? Like us?”
