Page 17 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

Twenty minutes to five o’clock in the repair shop and the door is closed after their busiest day on record.

Scores of repairs were triaged and taken in to be attended to outside opening hours.

Many were started and finished today and chalked up on the board, items saved from landfill and taken home to continue being useful (or simply very much loved), until the next time they needed repair.

Now industrious heads are bowed over the last tasks of the afternoon.

No one speaks. Cary Anderson and Charlie McIntyre plane wood at the carpentry bench, Cary taking the lead on making the new curved rockers for an old chair that has soothed generations of comfy, dozing folk.

Cary perfects the curvature and sands away rough edges.

McIntyre mixes his own recipe of two part epoxy with milled glass fibre, stirring the concoction in a pot, perfect for filling gaps.

Cary drills in the guide holes and washers.

McIntyre paints on the glossy goop where the joins will be.

Cary holds the runners in place while McIntyre screws them fast, then the rocking chair is tested in turns by the satisfied repair duo.

Peaches and Willie are taking the hems down on grey school kilts and trousers to extend their wear into the new school year. Willie struggled with the folds on the skirts but Peaches knew the trick was all in the ironing and showed him how to get a crisp, pleated finish with the steam press.

The Gifford sisters are delighted to have a full kitty and not one rock bun or bannock left.

Whispering, they set their baking plans for next Saturday.

Rhona thinks they ought to try strawberry tarts (which Senga dismisses out of hand as too lavish.

What does she think this is? Balmoral?) Undeterred, while Senga wipes down the counter, Rhona whispers to Siri the way Ally showed her how, to add fresh whipping cream to the provisions list, two large cartons.

Roz is sewing the last of the stuffing inside a soft highland cow toy that had been loved to pieces by a little boy who became a bigger boy who couldn’t let it go.

The little cow’s fleecy body, which has had a gentle bath in soapy suds followed by a thorough rinse and dry out, has had its threadbare spots invisibly patched with new, perfectly matching material sourced from an online warehouse way down south.

It has a new black glass eye to match the lost original, and a fresh shaggy hairdo of rust brown between its tufted ears which, instead of flopping askew, are now sticking up, alert.

Its face, which had lost all its contours and character is back in its original shape with a hidden structure of new boning inside the broad snout.

While Sachin works his broom across the floor in rhythmic sweeps, Ally hands her mother the repaired black plastic speaker with its new battery and advises her where to position it so the now-functioning activation button can easily be pressed through the plump animal’s fur.

Lastly, Roz stitches back into place a lazy pink smile.

Across the shed, threads are snipped, steam billows upwards in warm blasts, clean teacups are stacked and sugar supplies toted up, a chair rocks on creaking floorboards for the first time in a long time, and the big clock on the wall ticks its way past five o’clock.

This is what skill and dedication looks and sounds like when combined with time generously surrendered to saving everyday things.

Ally isn’t thinking any of this, however. All she can think of is that any second now, he’ll be back and she’s hoping this time she can keep a lid on her feelings.

The knocking makes every head lift from their work. Roz, more clear-thinking than her daughter, pulls a yard of purple fabric from the shelves to conceal her latest repair from its owner and slowly the doors pull open and in walks Jamie Beaton.

‘Oh!’ Ally can’t help the sound escaping her as two others follow him.

It’s the woman from the other day. The one who’d been holding his arm and laughing. Ally’s brain glitches as she sees her grip at his arm once again. There’s a man behind them, smiling pleasantly, nodding to her dad and Sachin. He looks a lot like Jamie, just older and world weary.

‘Hi, hope you don’t mind. I’ve brought my dad,’ Jamie announces. ‘He’s been visiting me, staying at the hotel.’

‘Not that I’ve seen much of you the last couple of days,’ the man says in a gentle way.

‘Oh.’ Ally fights her own awkwardness to step forward and greet them all properly, realising it was her fault Jamie’s missed much of his dad’s visit. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘And,’ Jamie added. ‘This is my sister, Karolyn.’

‘Sister?’ Ally pumped Karolyn’s hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you! Not that it wouldn’t be nice to meet you if you weren’t Jamie’s sister. Obviously. I mean…’

‘I’m Roz, welcome to the repair shop.’ Ally’s mum was stepping in to save her. She still felt the searing flush of red race down her neck, though. ‘And this is my husband, Charlie McIntyre.’

McIntyre shook their hands and bid them come to the sewing table.

Even though the Gifford sisters would have loved to stay and observe Ally in her agonies, Sachin was ushering them out of the door saying something about letting Ally see to Jamie without an audience, which all the Beatons and McIntyres overheard.

Once alone, with the big doors pushed shut, everyone was smiling politely, shrugging off the sudden sense of being cloistered in this big cathedral of a repair barn, the anticipation growing.

‘We couldn’t believe it when Jamie mentioned he was getting Holiday repaired, just like on that telly programme!’ Karolyn was saying. ‘We cut our wander round the tourist shops short specially to come and see this.’

Roz and McIntyre stood on one side of the table with Ally between them, and opposite her stood Jamie, with his dad’s hand on his shoulder and his sister watching closely.

‘Is that it?’ Karolyn said, pointing to the lump under the cloth.

‘I don’t know if this was a good idea,’ Jamie said ominously, his eyes fixed on it too.

‘He was your cow?’ Roz asked.

‘She, actually,’ corrected Jamie with an apologetic, slightly nervous laugh. ‘Yeah, she was mine, from when I was wee.’

‘You took that cow everywhere,’ Karolyn put in, tugging at her brother’s arm affectionately. ‘First day at school, football camp…’

‘She even went on that Duke of Edinburgh residential with you,’ his dad pitched in fondly.

‘And you were sixteen then,’ Karolyn teased.

‘All right, all right!’ Jamie was laughing but it was stiff and pained. He looked at Ally through the embarrassment. ‘Holiday was important to me. Still is.’

‘Well, she’s had quite the makeover,’ said McIntyre.

‘Do you want to see?’ asked Roz gently.

A silent moment passed where all three Beatons breathed deep. Jamie and his sister nodded and their dad tightened his fingers over Jamie’s shoulder, his chest swelling in readiness.

Ally lifted away the cloth, her eyes on Jamie’s face.

What she saw there, she’d never forget. An expression like she’d never seen before and one so complex and raw no actor could ever replicate it.

Even with his hands thrown to his mouth to cover his emotion, she saw what this meant to him.

Karolyn gasped. ‘Oh, that’s lovely!’

Jamie let the sight sink in. ‘Can I pick her up?’ he said.

‘She’s yours,’ said Ally.

Turning the creature in his hands, giving her the softest squeeze, unable to resist the urge to give it the quickest sniff (which made his family laugh again), his eyes melted into the softest of full moons.

‘She’s exactly how I remember her,’ said Jamie. ‘Thank you.’

All through this exchange, Mr Beaton stood still as a statue, his lips buttoned together.

‘That’s not all,’ said Ally.

‘Hmm?’ Jamie was looking the cow directly in the face with childlike innocence.

‘I repaired the voice chip,’ she said.

‘Voice chip?’ Jamie looked from Ally to his sister and dad. Both shrugged back.

‘It speaks?’ said Karolyn. ‘I don’t remember that.’

‘The speaker’s been gummed up for some time. Maybe you all forgot?’

‘Oh, my,’ said Jamie’s dad in a rush. ‘It’s coming back to me now.’ He brought his knuckles to his mouth. He looked afraid.

‘You can squeeze it, there,’ Ally told Jamie softly, ‘where you feel the wee hard thing? That’s it.’

Ally watched Jamie’s fingers move around the fat little cow’s belly until he struck upon the button.

He had that same look she’d seen the other night, as they approached the Nithy Brig, of a person who was at once desperate to remember some locked away thing and at the same time terrified of what they might discover.

‘It’s OK,’ Ally whispered.

Jamie pressed the button in the deepest of silences and a voice bloomed in the air.

‘Mummy loves you, my darlin’, happy holiday.’

A sharp hitch in his breath, the kind that becomes sniffs and then silent tears, shook at Jamie’s ribs.

Karolyn’s mouth fell open in amazement. She put her hand to the toy, now clutched tightly to her brother’s body.

Roz and Ally let their tears well through their gladness, and McIntyre pushed his glasses up onto his head so he could pinch at his eyes.

The three repairers hugged each other close and watched on as a family were, to some small degree, re-united.

Only, what came next, nobody expected.

Jamie Beaton’s father, Samuel, once big and broad, now wiry and hunched, a man of few words and even fewer smiles, the man who had taken on the hardest of tasks – one he’d never believed he was fit for – a man who never once thought about his own grief, prioritising his two heartbroken children, reached for the silly toy in his son and daughter’s hands and joined them in pressing the button once more.

When Lucy Jayne Beaton’s voice trilled out loud in the room once again, he opened his eyes to the ceiling, his lips twisting apart, and he let out a hard sob that had been waiting to escape for twenty-three summers and he sobbed and cried and laughed and clung hard to his children.

The McIntyres didn’t have to look at one another to know it was best to leave them to this moment, so they took their own feelings out into the front yard to share together, convinced more than ever that this work was the most worthwhile thing they could be doing with their spare time.

‘Well done,’ Roz said as she hugged her daughter. ‘Good job, Ally McIntyre, you clever thing.’

When the Beatons eventually emerged from the repair shed, there was a good deal of hugging and hand shaking and a great outpouring of thanks, and the McIntyres happily waved the family away and made their way into the mill house.

* * *

‘We’d better be on our way,’ Samuel Beaton said to his son, bestowing Holiday back into his hands, still standing in the gravel of the repair shed courtyard. ‘It’s a long drive to Edinburgh and the roads’ll be busy with the weekend traffic.’

‘You’re going already?’ Jamie hadn’t been prepared for this. ‘Can’t you stay for dinner, or something…’

Karolyn already knew what her brother wasn’t willing to accept. That their dad had been exposed to a lot of unprocessed feelings in that repair shop, and he was deep in flight mode, wanting to get back to his safe space where nothing ever got talked about.

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Karolyn said, as their dad left the yard through the gap in the wall, making for the hotel car park where their bags were already in the boot of the car.

‘We could have had dinner, talked a bit more. I didn’t get a chance to say any of the things I wanted to, what with me working so much, then I was helping rally the town all day yesterday.

I’ve got these photographs I wanted to show him, you see?

It was just never the right time this week, but now… ’

‘I know,’ said his sister. ‘But you know what he’s like. I’d better catch up with him. Come here.’ She held her brother close. When she released him she surveyed his face. ‘You look… lighter. Being here’s doing you good.’ She patted the cow once more and their mum’s voice activated.

This time they smiled without any tears.

‘I still miss her every day,’ said Karolyn. ‘The grief never got any smaller, but I’ve grown around it, if you see what I mean? It’s still in there,’ she thumbed her chest, ‘but it’s deep in there.’

‘Whereas Dad is still a big man-shaped ball of grief?’ Jamie said, a little wry, a little sorry.

Karolyn nodded. ‘But I think he made a bit of progress today, don’t you?’

‘I’ve never heard him cry before.’ Jamie blinked in wonder, remembering how it had happened.

‘I have.’ His older sister’s eyes were soft. ‘You just don’t remember.’

Jamie looked down at Holiday, considering something. ‘Here,’ he held the toy out to her. ‘Give it to Dad. I think he needs her now more than I do.’

With all the understanding of siblings united by the unspeakable, she took the cow without words. Jamie pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen, opening the voice note app. When the recording symbol showed, his sister pressed Holiday’s tummy once more and Jamie captured the sound.

‘Got it,’ he said, saving their mother’s voice.

‘I’ll be seeing you, then,’ said Karolyn.

This set off a twinge in his chest, the little-boy-left-alone feeling that had once consumed him. She knew this, of course. Her eyes flickered to the mill house behind him.

‘You know, you could make evening plans? You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’

‘Plans?’ he echoed. ‘What kind of plans?’

She smiled over his shoulder, lifting a hand to wave at someone behind him.

When Jamie whipped his head around, he caught Ally at the kitchen window, quickly hiding herself from view. And when he turned back to his sister, she was walking away.

‘Ask her out, you dingus,’ Karolyn called over her shoulder with a laugh. ‘Call it your way of thanking her, if you need to!’

Damn his sister and the way she always knew what was going on in his head. He couldn’t read her anything like as well.

Left alone, Jamie looked down at his feet, his hands feeling very empty and redundant without the soft fur of Holiday between them.

His brain ticked over. He pictured his flat. Dinner alone on the sofa. Indecipherable Gaelic programmes on the telly. His weights on the floor. One hundred reps. Shower. Hydrate. The same old podcasts, then sleep.

Or, he could turn around and knock on that door.

It took all of one second to make up his mind.