Page 27 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

Brodie and Jo exchanged the quickest glance that Ally didn’t know how to read, before all three of them hugged their friend in turn. Ally felt Mhairi shaking as she pulled her close.

‘You OK?’ Ally said.

Mhairi only nodded and dropped onto the sofa beside Brodie.

‘I can’t believe we’re actually all together in one room,’ Brodie enthused, pouring Mhairi’s tea and pulling the plate closer to the new arrival so she could inspect the cakes. Mhairi seemed to be having trouble taking her eyes off Jolyon.

‘He’s getting big,’ Jo said, following her gaze.

‘Too big for that buggy?’ Mhairi said quickly.

‘What? No, I wasn’t…’ Jo was panicking. ‘I just haven’t seen him in a wee while, and he’s got so tall, that’s all.’

Mhairi looked close to crying.

‘Doll, what’s up?’ Brodie said. Doll . Ally hadn’t heard her say it in ages.

‘Just some woman at the primary school trial session the other day. Said he was too big to be in a buggy at all.’ Mhairi pulled her mouth shut like she’d said too much.

Ally wasn’t sure how old some kids were when they got rid of their buggy, but she felt sure it couldn’t be anybody else’s business and she told Mhairi so now.

‘Yeah, fudge her. What does she know?’ said Brodie, reining it in since there were kids everywhere.

Jo, however, was looking at where the boy’s feet touched the café linoleum. Mhairi caught it.

‘He doesn’t like to walk far,’ she explained. ‘Just drops to the ground and cries. It’s just easier with the buggy.’ Her voice trailed off.

‘It’s OK,’ Brodie said, her hand on Mhairi’s arm. ‘You don’t have to explain yourself to us. God knows, it’s hard enough raising a kid without people being judgy about your choices.’

Jo nodded vehemently. Ally too, for what her opinion on parenting felt worth.

‘I’m not sure it is a choice,’ Mhairi said in a shaky voice. ‘Just something we have to do or we’d never get out the house.’

Everyone looked at their friend with sympathy.

Ally had never seen her like this. She was in jeans and trainers and a big sweatshirt hoiked up at the sleeves.

Her hair was mousey brown and hanging over her shoulders instead of her signature honey highlighted bob she’d had since they were twenty-one.

‘Anyway, let’s not talk about me. How are you, Ally?’

Even Mhairi was deflecting conversation away. Were they really stuck with this small talk? Ally couldn’t stand it. If they were going to get anywhere she was going to have to take a hammer to the reserve that was trapping them all like flies in setting toffee.

‘Honestly?’ Ally began, her voice soft. ‘I know I’ve been crap at keeping in touch.

If I’m truthful, I’ve been completely stuck since Covid times.

I’m working from home in a job I could do in my sleep.

I’m trying to help Mum and Dad with the repair shop in case Dad slides back into depression and hides out in his shed by himself at all hours like he did when he was first made redundant, and I’m worried about Murray because he hardly talks to me any more and he’s gone all stuck-up and Swiss and I’m pretty sure he’s been shagging one of his work colleagues and things are bad for him but he won’t open up about it.

In fact, I don’t even know where he is right now, and yes, Gray cheated on me, and I’m trying to rebuild my life one little thing at a time, and I wanted to start with you lot because you’re such a big part of me, and I’ve really bloody missed you, but most of all, I’ve missed myself and who I was when we used to hang out and,’ she gasped for breath and realised she couldn’t help what was about to happen. She was going to cry.

Brodie had her hands to her cheeks in amazement.

‘And I just want to say I’m sorry for hiding away. It’s not because I didn’t care. It’s because I thought you might not need me any more with your jobs and your kids and your lovely homes and everything being perfect and…’

‘Perfect?’ Jo all but spat the word. Her eyes were round like they’d been when she was a kid. ‘You think our lives are perfect?’

‘Well, maybe not perfect, but many, many more steps ahead than mine, and…’ Ally wasn’t doing a good job of explaining herself. Everyone looked hurt.

Brodie was leaning forward, having abandoned her cake shovelling.

‘Sure, we’ve got our dream baby in Gillian,’ she said in a low voice.

‘And the catering business is beyond busy but we’ve expanded to a point where I barely have time to shower!

And me and Luce haven’t had sex since we got shitfaced at New Year and even then I can’t actually remember it!

So no, things aren’t perfect, even if it looks that way. ’

‘Oh!’ Ally’s shoulders slumped.

‘New Year? Try March last year!’ Jo threw in.

‘What? Since you…’ Ally’s eyebrows must have shot up.

‘Honestly, I can’t remember; we have to have done it when we made Seren but I don’t remember any times after that. Gus is literally never there, even when he’s working from home, he’s completely wrapped up in his job. Things… things aren’t perfect, guys.’

‘Shit.’ Brodie’s mouth hung open. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘Why didn’t you say anything about you and Luce, or about the business?’ Jo countered.

Brodie accepted this without appearing too wounded. ‘Good point. Are you and Gus really struggling?’

It took a moment for Jo to answer. ‘I don’t know.

What I do know is I’m supposed to be in the office in an hour for the first time in six months and my boobs are leaking and my dress is cutting into me, and all I want to do is go home and wrestle Seren off this new au pair Gus has hired.

She barely looks old enough to look after herself let alone a baby. ’

Jo dabbed a napkin under her perfectly underlined eyes, as close to sobbing as she’d allow herself to get in public.

Ally was in the middle of reassessing everything she’d been thinking about her girlfriends these last couple of years.

‘Well…’ Ally began, trying to compose herself, but with tears running down her face in public, something she’d normally never do, it was too late now. ‘Why didn’t we talk about this stuff?’

‘Because,’ came Mhairi’s quiet voice, ‘it’s all so… isolating.’ She smiled sadly towards her sleeping boy before smoothing his lovely golden hair off his sweet pudgy face.

The three friends watched Mhairi, waiting for more.

‘What?’ Mhairi said, once she noticed, looking between them.

‘You’re the worst of all of us!’ Brodie said, injecting some jokey lightness into her voice, though her brow was crumpled.

Mhairi’s expression cycled through indignation, before falling to shame, then utter defeat. ‘You guys… how am I meant to tell you how hard it’s been when you’re not supposed to complain about it all?’

‘Says who?’ Ally asked.

The three mums pulled the exact same world-weary expression and said in wry unison, ‘EVERYBODY’.

‘And there was you fighting for baby Gillie,’ Mhairi continued.

‘Going through all the tests and injections and the worry of assisted insemination. And, Jo, you make it all look so easy, juggling kids and working in the city and you and Gus looking busy like some Instagram power couple. And, Ally, I couldn’t burden you with my stuff when you’re young, free and single.

You’re going on dates and working hard.’

All three were huffing dismissively, telling her this was ‘rubbish’, laughing at the very notion they had their lives together or they were too self-absorbed to relate.

And yet all three were throwing guilty glances too, acknowledging that maybe there were grains of truth in all of this.

Mhairi, however, was finally getting this off her chest and she couldn’t stop herself now if she tried.

‘And my life is so boring and child-admin heavy, I can’t even bring myself to repeat it to anyone!

I’ve done nothing but try to get Jolyon an appointment with the Speech and Language Therapies people for the last three months and will they answer my messages?

No, they won’t. Or I’m at home worrying that he’s still in nappies when he’s supposed to be starting primary school in August, and asking myself why does he only eat yogurt and breadsticks?

How can he be getting what he needs to grow?

And where the hell’s my mother when I need her?

In a timeshare in chuffing Alcúdia with her new man!

And exactly how many smug parents and nursery assistants have to casually let me know that my baby’s missing key milestones, unlike their four-year-old who’s already signed up for NASA space camp or something, but not one of them actually offers to bloody well do something and help me!

’ Mhairi covered her face in her hands and fell into stifled sobs.

Ally, Brodie and Jo had their mouths open and eyes searching in a what just happened? way, only for a moment, before they were on the move and draping themselves over their crying friend in a group hug that drew the attention of the whole café.

‘OK,’ said Jo, releasing herself from the weepy bundle after a moment. ‘Just a sec.’

She got her phone from her fancy handbag, rang through to a number in her contacts list and explained she couldn’t get in to her keep in touch afternoon, she was going to have to reschedule, and they weren’t compulsory anyway so what were they going to do about it?

Then she hung up, a look of utter relief on her face, and she lifted a fork, handing it to an astonished Mhairi, before taking another for herself and cutting a great wedge of cake, not caring about the crumbs.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Start from the very beginning, Mhairi, and then we’ll do the same. No one leaves until we’re right up in each other’s business!’

And that was how it all came out; four friends, two rounds of tea and cake, and the great unpacking of the last few years of absolute chaos, anxiety, surprises, celebrations, and disappointments.

It was an unburdening. Everyone listened, nobody judged, and four friends found out more about one another in that one afternoon than they’d discovered in twenty years, and Ally McIntyre had to lay down the chip on her shoulder that had told her she was the only one feeling under-supported, misunderstood and overwhelmed with everything, learning that even her most ‘together’ friends struggled with many difficult things they had for the most part kept to themselves.

And all before their childcare duties resumed at teatime.

Afterwards, Ally chugged her way home in her mum’s old car, thinking hard all the way, because – just like her dad – she knew a good idea when it presented itself to her.

It was meeting the girls again that had really focused her vague plans to do something even bigger than her and Jamie’s big emergency meeting when they’d both swung into action and brought the community together to recover the repair shop’s reputation.

All she had to do now was bring everyone together again, an easier prospect now that she knew how to do it, and she would put on a Cairn Dhu event to go down in the history of the repair movement as the biggest ever seen in the Highlands.

She’d need help. From everyone, Murray included, wherever he was, and yes, the police station, and Jamie too – if he was still allowed to be in the same room as her without turning morally corrupt in the Force’s eyes.

It occurred to her as she drove that maybe the whole ‘I want to see you again, but I’m not allowed’ thing that he’d spun her might be nothing more than an excuse, a way of letting her down gently after coming to regret how they’d got so close so quickly that night at the Ptarmigan.

She rubbed a hand over the twinge in her chest where her seatbelt pressed against her.

Hadn’t he missed her at all? She hadn’t even spotted him patrolling the high street recently. It was like he’d disappeared.

No, she’d set to work on her big repair plans and do her best to rope him in. There could be nothing in the rule books about them working on the same community cohesion plan together, surely? As colleagues? That way, maybe she wouldn’t have to live with the ache of missing him quite so much.

He’d been serious when he’d said he had to keep his distance. Still, a message would have been nice. How could he stay away from her, even if he felt just a tiny bit of how she felt about him?

She’d shaken those thoughts away as she got out of the car. Friendship (and temporary friendship, at that; Jamie was leaving soon) was all she could ask of him, and she’d have to make peace with that sooner rather than later for the sake of her great big idea.

If she was quick, she could finish plotting it all out on her laptop and capture the plans circulating in her head, making use of it all in her Future Proof Planet second interview preparation. The interview was in a couple of days and this time she’d wow them.

She wasn’t going to leave her friends out of her plans either, not after they’d reconnected today.

Heck, she was going to rope in every parent in a thirty-mile radius if she could, and their parents too!

But first she had to convince the repair shop regulars that she could pull it off.

With a bright ember of conviction burning within her, she pulled on the handbrake outside the mill house.

She had work to do.