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The fact that Lorna was still able to walk and talk coherently was all the evidence Bex needed that she wasn’t suffering nearly as much, but then she was three or four years younger. Maybe it made all the difference. Or maybe she was just more used to whatever the hell they’d been drinking than she was.

‘No, of course not,’ Bex replied. ‘If you’re not back by the time I go… well, thank you for everything. You’ve really made my time here enjoyable. And you know I’ll be back soon, but maybe if you fancy a trip down south you can come and visit me in London? I’ll take you to Wildflower Lock. I think you’d really like it there.’

‘That sounds great,’ Lorna said. ‘I’d like that. A big road trip and everything.’ She hovered for a moment as if there was more she wanted to say. And there probably was. Something about Duncan and how sorry she was at how it had all ended up. That was what Bex wanted to say, anyway. But she didn’t.

No more words were spoken. Instead, they exchanged a warm hug, after which Bex offered Lorna a last wave as she disappeared out of the door. As she let out a heavy sigh, Bex collapsed back onto the sofa bed. Her eyes barely closed before she was fast asleep.

* * *

The alarm blasted through her skull, jerking her awake. Bex felt as if she had barely closed her eyes, and yet the hour had passed.

‘Lorna?’ she called into the flat. No response. Bex wasn’t surprised; she didn’t know her new friend well, but she could tell Lorna wasn’t the type for a quick catch-up. No doubt she was probably out with Eilidh gossiping about last night. A memory stirred in the back of Bex’s mind. She might have got it wrong, but she had a vague recollection of Niall confessing his love to Eilidh, or maybe the others had just been egging him on to do it. She wasn’t sure. Either way, she was relieved Lorna wasn’t there; she’d already done her goodbyes and didn’t want to have to go through it again.

Ready to finally say goodbye to LochDarroch – at least for a little while – she headed out the front door and closed it behind her. Just as she’d hoped, the sheep were gone. She could still hear a faint bleating in the distance, but at least her car was where she’d parked it, by the side of the road, with no animals in sight. It looked like she could finally leave.

But as she approached her vehicle, something caught her attention. Her trusty coupé was at an odd angle, as though it were sloped. Had she parked it like that, with one of the front wheels up? She couldn’t remember – it felt like ages ago now and to be fair, she had been so upset, she could have parked it in the flooded ford and barely noticed. Though as she got closer, her heart sank.

It wasn’t that the ground was sloped, or the front wheel that was raised at all. No, the reason for the peculiar angle of her car was very obvious: her back tyre was flat.

Bex’s jaw clicked as her back molars ground together.

‘You have got to be kidding me.’

57

The anger was rising within her. Seriously? Would the world just not cut her a break?

There, on the ground, next to the bottom of the tyre, was the tyre cap. By the looks of things, it had been knocked off, but how? Sheep. That was the immediate answer that came into her head. The flock of sheep earlier in the day would likely be the reason for that, wouldn’t it? As Bex contemplated the scenarios, questions rose in her mind. Like, how would they manage to do that? It was a screw cap. The only way they would have been able to knock it off was if it had been loose in the first place, and even then, didn’t the valves have some sort of safety to mean that the air couldn’t just pour out?

Well, air had definitely poured out of her tyre. The bottom section was totally horizontal, with the rim of the rubber slumping outwards.

‘Everything okay?’

Bex turned around to find Roddy standing behind her, concern etched on his face.

‘Not really,’ she said. Tears were brimming in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. ‘Honestly, I just wanted to get out of this place and it’s been one thing after another. What with the flood, and the sheep, and now this.’

‘What flood?’ Roddy asked.

‘The ford,’ she told him. ‘The one a couple of miles outside of the village. It was flooded last night when I wanted to leave. Apparently, it was something to do with one of the dams on the loch.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Bex said, trying not to sound sharp. ‘I was ready to leave, to head back to London, but Niall showed me the photos.’

The frown that had been on Roddy’s face since they started their conversation was still there, only now it was getting deeper.

‘What time was this?’ he said. ‘I came through it about five and everything was bonnie then.’

‘It was a bit later than that. Around seven.’

‘And it was definitely that ford?’

‘Yes. It was.’ Bex knew how exasperated she sounded, but really, after the previous thirty-six hours, the last thing she needed was to go in circles with a conversation that was leading nowhere. If Roddy would help her with her flat tyre, then great, but if not, this conversation was just more wasted time. Still, he didn’t let the point lie.

‘But it’s summer. The only time I’ve ever known that to happen was when there was daft rainfall,’ he said.

Bex was grinding her teeth again. She was going to have to tell Roddy to stop talking, or at least ask him about the tyre, but he was still prattling on about the bloody flooded ford.