Page 15 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

Ally searched her memory. Kakapo? The big flightless birds that are so friendly and unsuspecting they were hunted to near extinction?

She’d watched maybe two TikToks about them.

Could she pull together some semblance of a clever, impressive answer now and save this car crash interview?

Andreas, she noticed, had closed his notebook and lidded his pen.

‘How I’d help enable the community to save their birds?’ Ally asked, and she knew it sounded brainless.

‘That’s correct.’ Barbara’s tone was cooling by the second.

Ally couldn’t even save her own community of endangered repair experts, and she was related to two of them. How would she reach some remote group and make a difference?

‘Well,’ she gulped, ‘communication is probably key, I’d say?’

‘Is that a question or your answer?’ Barbara pushed, her voice monotone.

‘It’s an answer, definitely.’ Ally sat straighter.

She pictured the empty shed, the neon sign by the open door, the way any random person could come tramping across their yard and into their lives, bringing them their problems. She thought of her dad’s big, open heart and how he’d created something bursting with hope and purpose, and how it was all about to fall apart around them.

‘I think,’ she began, words forming of their own accord. ‘I think, being present matters to people.’

‘Go on,’ said Andreas, his head cocked in interest, and also like this was her very last chance to say something that showed she wasn’t a complete waste of an interview spot.

‘You can’t just turn up somewhere and say, hey, I’m here to fix you and your problems ,’ she said. ‘You have to be invited, or you have to be needed , and you have to be genuinely able to assist. Good intentions aren’t enough, I think.’

‘OK?’ Andreas was nodding. Barbara was listening closely. V was drinking through a straw from a huge water bottle, but at least they were paying attention now.

‘A community like the kakapo protectors, just like our local Cairn Dhu townsfolk, would have to see us as some sort of a sign, a signal , even.’

‘A signal?’ V said flatly.

‘Yes!’ Ally insisted. ‘Being there, ready and able to help, properly resourced, with skills and your heart right there on your sleeve with nothing hidden,’ just like her lovely dad , she thought, ‘is a sign to people that they are better off with you there. It’s a sign that you take their problems as seriously as they do, and when they witness caring and co-operation, and creativity and…

and goodness in action, you’re giving out a sign that change can and will happen, and that people are actually pretty decent underneath it all.

Because, in the end, we all want to be good people, and we all want to save precious things, don’t we? ’

‘Like the kakapo?’ led Barbara.

‘Exactly, like the big silly kakapo and everyone who loves them. If you show up for people and you involve them, you’re sending a sign that you can imagine a world where change has already happened, and if you can imagine that it’s already happened, you have a place to start from, and you can work towards it, together. ’

She stopped, worried she’d blethered too much, gone too far. She’d got excited and agitated. She knew her cheeks were burning red. She tried to slow her breathing.

‘So you asked me how I’d enable that with tech?’ she went on, more slowly.

Andreas had opened his book again and was scribbling something down. Barbara sat as elegant as a statue but with a smiling light in her eyes. She was curious about Ally, that much was clear.

‘I’d find ways to open channels of communication; meetings, activities – and not just for the organisations involved in whatever the project was that we were working on that day – but involving their communities and families and everyone affected.

I’d make sure there were virtual and face to face spaces to meet, to learn and skill share, and where there was resistance, I’d shine my signal even brighter, really showing people I believe change is possible.

I’d distribute tech to those cut off from involvement, find tutors locally to demo how our ideas would work, if needs be, and I’d make sure we were all talking all the time and not breaking off, in case the community got spooked and started to doubt we could actually achieve our goals, because that’s how some really bloody good community projects break down, by getting spooked and not talking.

Sorry. Didn’t mean to swear. But it’s true. ’

Suddenly, it was Ally taking notes of her own. Be The Sign That Change is Possible, she wrote. Talk and meet and share and keep everyone on board.

‘So,’ Andreas was saying, reading from his notes. ‘You’re saying we need to ideate a world in which change is possible and work towards it as though it has already happened? All while on-boarding as many people as possible across the community?’

‘With their hearts open and on their sleeves?’ said Barbara, eyes narrowed and assessing.

Ally nodded, and said, ‘Well… yes.’

And that was it. After a few cursory words of thanks and dismissal – they had other people to see this morning – the screen went blank and Ally was left looking down at her handwriting, her heart still thumping hard.

Automatically, with no delay, she fired off a quick email about being unable to clock in for her shift, saying she had an urgent family matter to attend to. She hadn’t missed a morning’s work in years, even during the thing with Gray, so surely they wouldn’t mind.

She got to her feet, glad she was already in her trainers. It was five to nine, twenty-five hours until the repair shop and café opened its doors to a make-or-break Saturday.

She knew what she had to do now: send out a signal to as many people as she could reach that she believed change was possible. Small, local change, yes, but if everyone was on board, little communities like Cairn Dhu could send a message to the whole planet.

The door clicked shut on its latch behind her as she ran down the garden path and across the gravel yard and into the street, asking the very first person she saw, ‘Have you seen Jamie Beaton out today? You know? The new Special Constable?’ She was determined to keep moving until she found him.