Page 58

‘I don’t think he’s going to stay with her, you know,’ Eilidh said as they sat in the pub. They all had strong drinks, but just as Bex had said, she stuck to her lemonade.

She’d parked outside the pub, in a spot she was confident she’d be able to get out of quickly, although Lorna had ordered her a pint of the soft drink and it was clear they wanted to discuss the matter fully before they even thought about letting her go. And she’d understood that. Still, Bex’s frustration had grown slightly when she’d had only a quarter of her drink left and Niall had appeared and immediately bought another round, including another pint of lemonade for Bex. At this rate, she was going to have to stop at every service station en route just for toilet breaks.

‘Oh, he will,’ Lorna said. ‘He’ll definitely take her back.’

‘Honestly, no. I can’t see that,’ Eilidh insisted. ‘She broke his heart. I don’t think she will. And you didn’t see him with… when… you know…’ Eilidh’s sentence drifted into nothing, but Bex knew exactly what she was struggling to say. Lorna hadn’t seen him and her together. Eilidh had. Eilidh had seen them when Bex was doing a terrible job of pretending she wasn’t interested in Duncan, and even then she’d seen straight through it. ‘Besides, I never saw Katty as the maternal type,’ Eilidh added, changing the direction of her comment so to divert attention away from Bex.

‘Well, Duncan wants children,’ Lorna said. ‘Definitely. So maybe he’ll raise it on his own.’

‘And where does this leave Archie in all this mess? Does anyone know if Katty’s even seen him?’

They were all talking around her, but Bex could barely listen. Instead, images kept floating through her mind – images of Katty and Duncan, sitting together at a doctor’s appointment, holding each other’s hands, tears in their eyes as they looked at the ultrasound of the baby together. Images of the wedding. She was sure it would go ahead now, too. Would they still have it at The Haven? At the place where they had shared their first kiss? The thought made bile sting at the back of her throat.

‘Hey,’ she said, breaking in, ‘I really appreciate this, but I want to get down to Glasgow by tonight.’

‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen,’ Niall said. He had been pretty quiet most of the evening, letting the girls talk while he kept his attention fixed on his phone, but now he glanced up at the group, looking decidedly pale. ‘Sorry, Bex, but I think you’re going to have to delay your leaving. The ford’s flooded. None of the cars are getting through.’

‘What?’ Bex’s jaw dropped as she shook her head in disbelief. ‘It can’t be.’

He turned his phone around and showed her a Facebook post of a road. One she recognised; it was the one she’d come in on. The ford that she’d walked through barefoot to ensure the car wouldn’t get stuck. But that was exactly what had happened to someone. Their little yellow car was bobbing in the water, the stranded owner photographed still trapped inside.

‘How?’ she asked. ‘It hasn’t rained in days.’

‘There’s been some trouble with the lochs, I think,’ Niall said. ‘They’re trying to sort out the dams or something. That must be what’s done it.’

‘Great,’ she muttered. She didn’t even know lochs had dams. ‘I’ll have to go the other way.’

‘You mean the other way that adds three hours to your trip?’ Eilidh said. ‘That’s just silly. You might as well stay until morning.’

‘Hey, look at it this way,’ Lorna said, nudging her. ‘At least now we get to give you a proper farewell, right?’

Bex let out a groan, but Lorna grinned.

‘You can stay at mine. We’ll have an impromptu Stitch and Bitch night.’

‘Without the sewing part, though,’ Eilidh clarified with a smile. ‘Obviously, without the sewing.’

‘Well, yes,’ Lorna said, before picking up Bex’s lemonade and moving it to the edge of the table. ‘Now that’s decided, let’s get you a proper drink. A double shot, I think. And I know exactly whose tab we’re going to put it on. Again. Actually, I think the whole night’s going to be on him.’

Bex wondered whether Lorna knew that it was Fergus who paid off Duncan’s tabs at the pubs, rather than Duncan himself, but she wasn’t going to disagree. Regardless of who was paying, she needed to drink.

54

Bex blinked once, only to scrunch her eyes tightly back together. The light was blinding, sending sharp pain from her temples all the way to the back of her throat. How many drinks had she had last night? She couldn’t remember. After the news about the flooded ford, Lorna had swapped Bex’s lemonade for something a lot stronger and brought out shots for them all to do in celebration of Bex staying an extra night. She remembered that. Just like she remembered Niall having a go at mixing cocktails behind the bar and insisting everyone try them. If Bex’s memory served her right, that included old Moira, the ancient matriarch who sat like a gargoyle in the corner.

Either way, everything hurt, and her throat felt like she’d swallowed a porcupine.

With a loud groan that made the headache even worse, Bex rolled over, expecting the large expanse of her double bed to stretch out onto, only to hit the hard floor with a thud.

‘Argh!’ She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, which, after the impact, was no longer contained to every inch of her skull. As she lay there, unsure which part of her body she could try to clutch, thundering footsteps rattled through the floorboards, rushing towards her.

‘Bex, are you all right? What happened?’ She opened her eyes to see Lorna’s face peering down at her. ‘Did you fall off the sofa?’

‘Did I sleep here?’ Bex asked, her voice croaking into life. With a light chuckle, Lorna offered her hand and helped pull her up.

‘You didn’t want to go back to the castle, so you crashed on the sofa. But clearly forgot. Didn’t I tell you it was a sofa bed? You could have pulled it out to make it bigger.’

Given that Bex had no recollection of getting here last night, imagining that she would have been able to work out the mechanics of an unknown sofa bed in her previously inebriated state felt very optimistic, even for Lorna.