Page 22 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop
While the gale raged on all the next day, bringing chilly, whipping rain in from the east, everyone in Cairn Dhu stayed close to home.
The shops didn’t open and the buses didn’t run.
A few phone and power lines were brought down by toppling ancient trees.
Nobody dared set foot on the mountains. Chimney smoke from the remotest crofters’ cottages spread sparsely across the range where it was whipped up and away in the winds.
The birds hid in the hedgerows and heathers.
Everywhere fell quiet except for the heavy gusts beating at the windows.
Jamie hadn’t called Ally. Her brother hadn’t replied to her text.
Her friends hadn’t acknowledged any of her comments on their socials from days ago.
Her mum and dad were watching TV, cuddled up on the sofa, enjoying the chance to stop and relax.
Ally’s work systems were down, so she couldn’t even do her day job.
Everyone seemed to have somewhere to shelter and something to do, except for her.
The hiatus of the gales gave Ally time to think.
One thing she wasn’t going to do was slip back into her dark mood of late spring.
She’d come too far for that and, yes, having an incredible time with Jamie was partly responsible for the great big boost of confidence and adrenalin she’d been surfing, but she had also gone a long way towards turning a corner on her own too.
Seeing Gray and Laura had helped. She’d faced the moment she’d dreaded since the break-up and, to her surprise, upon seeing him there in the club, gangly and oblivious, being dumped by Gray hadn’t felt like a huge loss, a thorn in her heart, or even a devastating betrayal, any more.
He’d looked, well, kind of grey. The hold he’d had on her was gone, those big desperate feelings she’d nurtured for him sapped of all their strength and colour.
Laura was welcome to him: welcome to his long monologues about his work, his bland taste in practically everything from food to fashion.
She was welcome to his shifty ways. Ally tried and failed to remember one interesting thing she’d ever heard come from his mouth.
She must have been in a bad place, wanting to tie herself to someone like that for life.
Sure, spending time with Jamie might well have helped her reach this realisation quicker (the contrast between the two men could not be starker), but the curious little buoyant feeling within her was her own doing.
She’d achieved so much recently. She’d successfully brought the locals round in their attitudes to the repair shop – and if she could convince snooty Carenza to allow her precious baby, Peaches, to return to the repair den of iniquity, she could convince herself she wasn’t completely without talents.
Plus, she’d helped the Beaton family take a big first step towards healing their unspoken grief when she’d re-united Jamie, his dad and sister with Holiday, and by extension, their beloved mum.
That feeling of having made a difference through making a repair was increasingly deeply rewarding; not something she’d really understood until she saw it for herself written on Jamie’s face.
If she could do these things, she could do more. She could build on these feelings.
As the storm buffeted the Cairngorms that wild and moody Monday in July, Ally took action, directly messaging her three closest friends from back in the day, asking if they fancied a catch-up, saying she was sorry she’d been out of touch lately, she’d got a bit stuck in a rut.
She’d love to see them and meet their kids properly.
It was risky. They could reply where the hell have you been?
and tell her to get knotted. They could be indignant at her lack of interest in their lives recently.
There was also a chance they might simply ignore her, too busy to meet up with a singleton friend from the past with whom they had nothing in common now they’d moved on, leaving her behind.
Sure, she knew she also had feelings she needed to put aside; self-pity at having been forgotten, at not being enough for them now they had families and she didn’t.
If she valued their old friendship, however, which she was sure she still did, she thought she could bridge the distance that had kept them apart, or at least she could try.
It had taken all of sixty seconds for the replies to start coming in.
Brodie
Oh my god Ally!!! We’ve been meaning to get in touch. Can’t believe we haven’t seen you since the wedding! Hold on I’m adding you to the group chat.
A notification appeared and Ally accepted the invite.
Jo
Ally! How are you??
Ally
I’m good! Are you all OK? I’ve missed you guys.
Jo
We’ve missed you too. I’m tagging @MhairiSears so she gets the notification. She needs to see this.
Brodie
She’s in this group but ghosts us lol
Jo
She’s super busy with Jolyon.
Jolyon was the only one of the friend group’s kids she’d actually met beyond naming parties and Christenings back when they were wee woolly bundles in their parents’ arms. He’d been the first baby born in the gang, just before lockdown.
Ally had met up with Mhairi and her husband, their Jack Russell, and little Jolyon in his pushchair for fresh air walks when restrictions first lifted.
She’d held the little guy in her arms and smelled his new baby loveliness.
When restrictions tightened suddenly and everyone was confined to their houses yet again, she’d sent him presents and FaceTimed with his mum.
Jolyon was the only kid she’d ever held or got to know in any real way.
He was gorgeous, never cried, barely made a sound, in fact, and was always contented. The perfect baby.
Somewhere around about Jolyon’s third birthday Mhairi had grown distant in her DMs. Ally could have made more effort, she knew, but she’d taken it as the sign it was, that Mhairi was happy with her new mummy friends, the pre-school crowd. Too busy for Ally.
Brodie
We should meet up!
Ally
We definitely should.
They’d said the same thing in their Christmas texts when the whole Covid nightmare was coming to an end. They’d repeated it when she’d bumped into Jo that time in the big Tesco, but it hadn’t happened. It was just one of those things old friends say.
Jo
How about a Friday? 18th July?
Ally’s heart jumped. The happiness surprised her, even though reaching out had been her idea in the first place.
Brodie
I can actually do the 18th!
Maybe for once they’d pull it off and get together? This felt good.
Ally
Fine with me. Where? At the Ptarmigan? Like old times?
Ally wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted to go back there any time soon, however. It would fall short, compared to Saturday, no matter how good it was.
Brodie
Lol, nope. I was thinking morning coffee? Gillie’s in playgroup from 10-3. I can drive over to Cairn Dhu, park at Luce’s mum’s. @MhairiSears can you do the Friday? We haven’t seen you in like 2 years!!
Ally
You guys haven’t met up either?
That was a revelation. She’d thought they’d been wrapped up in a mummy bubble together.
Jo
It’s been way too long since I saw any of yous!
And so the chat went on, drilling down to the finer details of the women’s availability.
Ally would be working until one o’clock that Friday so could only meet after then.
Jo had one hour between a paediatrics appointment with her eldest, Alfie, and something called a ‘Keep in Touch’ afternoon at her office near Aberdeen.
She was nearing the end of her maternity leave for her second baby.
She thought she might be able to drop the kids at her mum’s so she could arrive child free and ‘actually drink her coffee hot for once!’ Brodie would be bringing little Gillian along unless her wife happened to be working from home that day, meaning she might be able to ‘sneak out on her own!’ too.
It had been eye-opening as to how fiddly the logistics were just to get out for an hour. Their plans now hung on Mhairi answering and being able to come to meet at the Cairn Dhu Hotel bar at precisely one fifteen on Friday the eighteenth.
They’d left the chat open for her reply, signing off with kisses and, once Ally had taken a shower, she’d come back to see Brodie and Jo had shared comedy Gifs of harried mums speed-drinking espressos which she thought had to be a good sign that they were looking forward to this meet up.
Not finding the Gif thing all that amusing (it must be a bit sad, mustn’t it, rushing everything all the time?) she nevertheless responded with a laugh-crying emoji, her heart bouncing with excitement that yet again her proactiveness was paying off.
This felt good, and in direct contrast to the dark skies outside. The howling winds blew on while Ally rubbed her hands together over her laptop. If she could orchestrate a friends’ reunion after absolutely ages, and in no time at all, what more could she do?
She’d opened a new document and had begun typing ‘Repair Shed Community Event Ideas?’ at the top of the page when the doorbell rang.
* * *
Jamie had been as taken aback by the increasingly high winds sweeping through the wide Cairn Dhu valley as he’d been by the crushed feeling within him.
He’d been on a high after the breakthrough with his dad and all the incredible emotions the reunion with post-makeover Holiday had brought about for him and his family.
Added to that, his night out with Ally had made him feel like he was soaring, but now here he was having been (albeit informally) reprimanded and having lost a lead on a suspect, making his way through the tempest to Ally’s door, his head and heart in the very eye of another kind of storm.
She answered the door out of breath, like she’d sprinted to answer it. She still seemed full of excitement, which made this all the worse, knowing what he was about to do.
‘Oh no, what?’ Her face fell from a picture of expectant joy to worry, like she’d suspected a hitch was coming, just not this soon.
Once inside, standing in the kitchen, it hadn’t taken long to explain how, for now, perhaps it was for the best if they tried to keep things strictly friendly since, morally, he was hanging on a shoogly peg (which is the Scottish version of skating on thin ice, only much, much more fun to say, usually).
He risked compromising the investigation for his colleagues if he kept seeing her while she was technically still a witness.
Even if Edwyn hadn’t come down hard upon him, he’d got the message that what they’d done at the Ptarmigan was definitely frowned upon.
Ally protested how she knew fine well the Mason lads had dated girls whose brothers and uncles and fathers had run-ins with the police. ‘They were putting it about all over town and they didn’t get into trouble at the Station.’
‘That you know of,’ he’d replied. ‘Maybe it’s different if you’re full time, and a local,’ conceded Jamie. ‘Whatever the rules are, I don’t think we should do it again.’
Ally seemed to be keeping an ear open for her parents listening in over the TV game show from the living room before she spoke, lowering her voice to clarify, ‘What shouldn’t we do again?
Run after criminals? Or kiss each other?
’ There was still something playful in her eyes, an inner light he hadn’t yet extinguished.
She’d stepped closer as she said it. Too close.
Jamie inhaled the wave of her freshly washed hair and her body lotion and it kickstarted something running low in his belly like an engine and he’d had to hold his arms to his sides like he’d done in the Reserves during a ‘turnout’ inspection, or else he’d have grabbed her there and then, pulling her close.
Her lips looked softly pink and plump, somehow even more inviting than when they’d been unable to stop themselves on the steps of the club.
The wind whistled down the old mill house’s kitchen chimney and rattled the front door behind him.
He had to get out of here or he’d fold like laundry.
‘I can’t…’ he began, drowsy with wanting her.
‘You understand what a gossiping place Cairn Dhu is. Word spreads so easily. Carenza McDowell managed to convince the town the repair shop was a hotbed for criminal activity in the space of a few days!’
‘Well, her plus a news programme and the same news article re-posted everywhere online,’ Ally countered.
Jamie persisted. He’d come here to make his point and he wasn’t going to fail now. ‘If we were spotted like this, even just talking as friends, it could be… misinterpreted.’
Ally stepped back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head, looking annoyed with herself.
‘I don’t want anything getting misinterpreted.
’ Her voice had a tiny spike of bitterness in it, but it was soon quashed with the sympathy she seemed to have running through her.
‘Look,’ she sighed, ‘the last thing I want is to ruin things for you, with your application and everything, of course I don’t. ’
She’d stared hard at him, eyes moving over his face. She was trying to act cool but it was clear she was steeling herself for what was, basically, goodbye.
She gave a forced smile, and there came an awkward moment where she reached for the latch to send him on his way, and for a split second he thought she was reaching for him, and he’d been about to say ‘screw it’ and risk it all for another hard kiss, but, caring woman that she was, not wanting to ruin his chances at becoming a full police officer, she hauled the door open, struggling with its weight against the wind.
She let him turn and walk out.
‘I’ll be seeing you around,’ he tried, and the weak words were caught in the wind and carried away.
‘Okay… bye.’ She slowly closed the door on him, still smiling thinly like a consolation prize winner.
From the other side he heard the latch clunk into place.
For a short while he just stood there, staring at the barrier between them, fighting the urge to knock again, before resolutely tugging up the zip on his jacket.
‘Shit.’ He let his head hang. ‘Shit.’
Hunching in the raging air, he trudged slowly back to his empty flat.