Page 16 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

It was the first Saturday of July and the shed hunkered down among the town houses in the wide green valley beneath great fluffy clouds, bright white against a jolly blue summer sky. Inside the repairers were waiting – and waiting – for their clients to come.

‘We may have to face facts,’ said Sachin, at once bemused at how people so quickly dropped the repair shop and café like a stone, while simultaneously rubbing his hands together at the thought of potentially getting his weekends back and how much his golf would improve because of it. ‘The folk have spoken with their feet.’

‘Nonsense,’ snapped Senga from behind a towering cairn of fresh chocolate-dipped rock buns on the café counter. ‘They’ll come back for the cakes, if they won’t come for the repairing.’

Even though Senga’s delicious rock buns were unmatched in the whole National Park area, nobody seemed very convinced. Nevertheless, they kept their eyes fixed on the doors, willing the morning rush to begin.

‘Peaches and Willie couldn’t contend with their families’ disapproval,’ Roz said, next to their two empty seats behind the sewing machines.

‘Ally not coming either?’ Sachin wanted to know, gesturing to her vacant workbench.

McIntyre and Roz exchanged glances. ‘I’m not sure where she is,’ Roz replied. ‘She’s been in her own wee world since that job interview yesterday. Barely said a word to us when we did catch a glimpse of her late last night.’

‘Came home with her face shoved in her phone,’ joined her husband. ‘And was out of the house before breakfast this morning.’

‘She’ll have a lot on her mind,’ said the youngest Gifford sister. ‘Moving to Switzerland and everything.’

‘She didn’t seem as confident as you about her prospects there, but thank you, Rhona,’ said McIntyre, making Senga jab at her sister with her elbow for making assumptions.

‘It wasn’t a success, I gather, poor thing,’ said her mum, putting the subject to rest.

‘Think I’ll stocktake the paint stripper and varnishes,’ said McIntyre diplomatically.

‘I’ll help,’ said Cary Anderson, hopping from his stool, while the rest of the room fell to thumb-twiddling and long sighs in the silence of the shed.

* * *

At twenty past ten, the postie arrived, making everyone jump to attention.

‘Naebody in yet?’ he said as McIntyre signed for the order of metalworking supplies he’d been unable to cancel after realising demand for repairs had dried right up.

‘Very astute!’ tutted Senga with the look of a woman ready to launch a rock bun at the man for stating the obvious.

‘I’m sure things will pick up, eventually,’ McIntyre smiled placidly, handing back his digital signature.

‘It’ll be the village meeting that’s keeping them,’ the postie said, making his way back to the door.

‘Eh? What meeting’s this?’ asked Sachin.

‘The polis man’s emergency meeting at the school hall,’ he said, before disappearing into the courtyard, leaving the repairers exchanging bemused comments.

‘Why haven’t I heard about this emergency meeting?’ Senga demanded.

Cary Anderson shrugged blankly. He hadn’t heard about it either.

Roz was already on her phone. ‘I’ll look in the community pages on Facebook. Maybe someone’s set up a Saturday event that’s taking our clients? Maybe they’re not staying away on purpose?’

‘But a police event?’ Senga said. ‘What could it possibly be?’

‘I don’t see any mention of a meeting,’ said Sachin, also on his phone. ‘I’ll ring home, see if Aamaya knows anything about it.’

Before his call could connect, voices rose outside the shed in a growing hum. McIntyre was up and at the door in an instant. Footsteps approached and, in a blink, he was swept back into the repair shop by a chattering crowd, headed by none other than Ally and Jamie.

‘You’re not leaving, are you?’ Ally asked her dad with a grin as they were pushed right inside and up to the café corner by the moving bodies still spilling in.

A great gang of people, some of whom had never set foot in the shed were here, some from the neighbouring villages, and some familiar faces too: Aamaya Roy was here, delivering a kiss to her delighted husband, plus there was Joy from the laundrette and nosey Tony from the hop-on, hop-off tour buses with his cousin, Jean.

The school cleaner was here too. Adding to their number was Reverend Meikle, Pauline from the Post Office, Dr Millen the GP, Ozan the barber, Esma from the chippy with her elderly mum in tow, and so many others, all bubbling with excitement and urgency.

An eager Rhona stood on tiptoes to observe them all over the rock buns.

Peaches and Willie were the last ones to step inside, rounding everyone up like collies shepherding Runner ducks.

‘What’s all this?’ asked McIntyre, his eyes shining.

‘Cairn Dhu wasn’t going to sit by and watch you struggle,’ Willie shouted above all the heads. This was met with a murmur of agreement.

‘We’ve been in the school hall,’ added Peaches. She looked delighted with herself in her peach-print dungarees and dyed, acid-yellow space buns.

‘Gathering provisions and people,’ said Aamaya Roy from her husband’s arms.

‘For what?’ Roz asked, moving through the centre of the group to find McIntyre, slipping her arm around his waist when she got to him.

‘For the repair shed’s comeback,’ said Ally. This was greeted with lots of nods and muttered agreement. ‘Because a minor setback is nothing but the set-up for a major comeback!’

‘I told you!’ Senga announced. ‘Cairn Dhu could never forego my baking!’

Heads turned towards her.

‘And, of course, the repairs are needed too,’ she allowed.

Roz beamed at her daughter who was happily watching her invasion unfold, her eyes following the conversation as it bounced around the room.

‘Was this your doing, Ally?’ Roz called to her.

‘It was a community effort,’ she said back, and her words were quickly caught up in a surge of voices repeating what she’d just said all the way to the far reaches of the crowd.

‘ Tush !’ This came from Reverend Meikle and it silenced the room as though he was beginning an impromptu sermon.

‘It was Ally who rallied the whole town. It was her and young Jamie who approached me for help yesterday afternoon, prompting me to ask the school caretaker to open the hall for our meeting this morning.’

‘And between them, they chapped on every door in town,’ added Esma from the chippy. ‘Called in at every business too, and reminded folks that you’ve been here for them all this time and that if they wanted things fixing, there’s no time like right now.’

Jamie had been shrugging this off. ‘It was all Ally, honestly.’

What he wasn’t saying was that Ally had burst into the police station looking for him yesterday morning.

She’d found him sitting behind one of the local officers, Constable Andrew Mason, watching as he typed something on-screen.

Ally had registered the strange mood in the room at the time, and the frown on Jamie’s brow, before she’d stuck to her plan and begged him to help her.

‘You can take him, doll,’ the desk sergeant, who happened to be Andrew’s older brother, Robert Mason, had said, while Andrew had hidden a smirk. ‘He’s no’ much use to us.’

Ally hadn’t understood what that was supposed to mean, and hadn’t given it much thought since then, because Jamie had immediately gathered up his things and followed her out into the station car park.

‘What is it you need me to do?’ he’d said, with a focused intensity he hadn’t lost all the while they set about their task.

‘I see,’ McIntyre was saying now to the whole assembly. ‘We thought you’d lost trust in us.’

Some looks passed around the room, an awkward acknowledgement that maybe there was more than a grain of truth in that.

A hand lifted in the middle of the group and people stepped aside to reveal Carenza McDowell, Peaches’s mother, not quite as shamefaced as perhaps she ought to have been, but with the look of someone here to make amends, if they could.

‘Perhaps,’ she began, ‘one or two of us were of the opinion things weren’t quite above board at the shed, and perhaps…

’ she faltered, casting a glance at Peaches who was filming the whole thing on her phone with a tiny hint of self-righteousness in her smile, ‘perhaps some of us were… overly vocal about our convictions. But after a visit from Special Constable Beaton late last night, he was able to satisfy us of some of the broader details of the stolen jewellery case, exonerating the McIntyres, and well… I apologise. It’s possible we overreacted when we asked the kids to stay away. ’

Roz and McIntyre aimed hurried glances at Senga Gifford with looks designed to make her think twice about saying what was no doubt on the tip of her tongue about this U-turn; that Carenza had made it her business to spread the word the repair shop and café wasn’t a reputable or safe place to bring your prized possessions, or for your precious grown-up children to volunteer their time.

Senga harrumphed to herself instead, folding her arms across her bust, none too happy at not being allowed to speak her mind, but she held it in for the sake of community cohesion and her own little café venture.

‘So… you’re back?’ asked Roz, gesturing to Peaches and Willie. ‘And Willie, your parents are happy you’re here as well?’

‘We’re back!’ they said together, Peaches hopping on the spot excitedly.

‘You haven’t all brought a broken item, have you?’ McIntyre asked the crowd.

Aye! Cries went up across the room. Someone shook a box of broken vase shards. That we have! Another held aloft a strimmer with a severed cable. Can you take a look at this? Another held up a bag of clothes. And these? If you’ve time.

‘And we hastily scraped together some donations this morning – materials and ingredients from our own sheds and cupboards,’ added Reverend Meikle, shrugging his two carrier bags, bursting with supplies, while Bernice, the Cairn Dhu accountant, offered up a lidless biscuit tin full of bobbins of colourful threads and elastics.

McIntyre had to look down at his feet to keep his feelings from fizzing over.

Ally, however, was smiling, clear-eyed and proud.

The community had rallied for her mum and dad.

The repair shop regulars were all here and ready to work.

They weren’t going to be beaten by something as silly as a mistake, no matter how public it was.

And it was all down to her belief in her own ability to make a difference.

That, and the calm, convincing manner of the man standing beside her with his hands shoved in his pockets in his usual, unassuming way.

She was one second away from thanking Jamie, when Sachin hit play on his favourite Bombay Talkie CD, letting nineties’ Glaswegian Bhangra flood the speakers. ‘Let’s get fixing!’ he called out, his arms raised, shoulders thrusting upwards with the music.

‘Get the hot water urn on, Rhona!’ commanded Senga. ‘See? I was right to bake those extra bannocks this morning.’

‘Form a queue for triaging,’ McIntyre instructed, and the bodies slowly moved towards Sachin’s desk in the now absolutely stoatin’ repair shed (which, for the curious, is a particularly Scottish type of happy bounce).

Jamie was making to leave now, having received a hug from a grinning Roz, a handshake from McIntyre, a chuck on the shoulder from Cary Anderson, and a bag of rock buns from a starry-eyed Rhona Gifford.

Ally only just managed to catch him before he left. Was he honestly planning on slipping away before they could celebrate their success? Was he really this modest? She hadn’t even thanked him properly.

Maybe he was in a hurry because he was meeting that girlfriend of his? Ally hadn’t dared broach the subject as they’d dashed across the town together, cajoling and assembling, and setting the record straight about the repair shop.

‘Can you come back later, at closing time?’ she said, snapping her hand away from his shoulder as quickly as she’d tapped him on it.

‘Uh, sure.’ His face bloomed into an easy smile.

‘To get your cow,’ she clarified.

‘Oh, of course. My cow.’ He was nodding fast, schooling his features into seriousness again.

‘About five?’ she said.

He repeated her words by way of agreement.

Just before she turned for her workbench, having heard Sachin directing her first client of the day towards her, she couldn’t help but lift herself onto her toes to give him the fastest, most respectful peck on the cheek. Grateful and friendly, nothing more.

‘Thank you, for all this,’ she said, stepping away, quickly getting lost from his sight in the bustle.

Although she didn’t see it, Jamie watched her go, astonished and frozen to the ground, his fingertips held to the spot where her lips had pressed to his cheekbone.