Page 32 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

Peat-scented and low-ceilinged, the bothy slouched tiny in the grand landscape, waiting to welcome them.

They clomped inside, Ally wondering aloud if she dare take her boots off, the backs were rubbing at her heels, and she was sure her feet had swollen.

But would she get her boots back on if she did?

Jamie sat on the low bench at the door as Ally sealed them inside. She slipped the thick wooden latch, knowing he’d notice.

He was throwing his running shoes off in a careless way. ‘Get cosy!’ he said. Then, thinking better of it, he immediately reached for them, placing them neatly side by side.

There wasn’t much to the little shelter: stone walls and a fireplace, a threadbare rug, probably seventy years old by the looks of it, spiderwebs and a small window under the eaves.

‘A hobbit house,’ Jamie said, delighted with the place, now unpacking their picnic.

‘I wonder who was here last?’ Ally said, lifting an old jumper off the back of the only chair in the place.

‘Whoever it was, I love what they’ve done with it.’ Jamie was about to unzip his jacket but thought better of it. ‘Are you cold too?’

Together, they lit the fire with kindling and the smallest of the dry logs from the pile by the hearth. It was slow and smoky but better than nothing.

‘We need to make sure that’s extinguished properly when we leave,’ Ally said, not remotely wanting to think about leaving.

She lifted the lid on a polystyrene storage box in the corner and found sealed bags of dry pasta inside. On the floor stood a container of fresh drinking water, ready for an emergency and a long stay if needed.

Jamie had unpacked their picnic and Ally passed him her bottle of handwash.

As the fire tried its best in the hearth, the world beyond the little window under the eaves grew duller and further away.

‘I could live here,’ Ally announced, fancifully.

Jamie didn’t seem to think it was such a silly thing to say. He handed her a sandwich and they set to eating, their bodies both drained and somehow invigorated from the walk.

‘So will you come to our skills share and societies festival on the ninth?’ she said as they ate.

He seemed to think for a long time before saying, ‘I think so, but that’s round about the time for me to be going home. I’ll let you know.’

She didn’t push it further. If they hadn’t just walked for an hour and a half she’d have felt her appetite wane.

As they ate they became aware of the cloud shrouding the bothy from the change in the air alone.

Everything felt suddenly dampened, the way it does when heavy snow falls and everything becomes muffled under its weight.

The strange quality of the silence outside was enough to get Jamie on his feet and pulling the door open to investigate.

‘Ah!’ he said, standing aside to let Ally see the wall of wispy white beyond the door. ‘The clouds have come down.’

Oddly, Ally didn’t panic. Neither did Jamie.

He stepped right out of the door in his socks to take a better look and, after only three steps, he was gone in a wash of white.

That alarmed Ally; Jamie’s absence. Even the few brief seconds while he was shrouded in watery vapour and diffuse mountain light felt like an alarm jolting her awake.

She got to her feet just as he came back inside and shut the door once more, telling her, ‘Whole mountain’s gone. ’

‘Good,’ she said.

He smiled too.

His phone worked, miraculously, and he rang the station to report themselves safe at the first bothy on the pass, and he asked for Finlay, the ranger, to be reassured they were fine and that they had plenty of supplies, as well as a fire going. They’d come down when the cloud lifted.

He dropped a pin on his GPS app, so everyone else would know where he was and then he checked the weather report. The low pressure was due to lift by evening. Rain was already breaking over on Ben Macdui, and the wind was set to rise. Theirs was only a temporary confinement, he was sure of it.

Ally used his phone to ring home and she repeated to Murray everything she’d just heard Jamie saying.

Murray made some remarks about making sure she used their time alone wisely and she hung up as he sang her a smutty version of ‘she’ll be coming round the mountain,’ and she had to stifle a laugh and pretend to Jamie nothing had happened.

‘So,’ Jamie said, pocketing his phone now that everyone knew they were safe. ‘We sit it out?’

* * *

They focused on the fire. Someone had collected pinecones in a basket and left them by the hearth for fuel.

Every so often Ally threw some into the flames and they watched them spark into brief, blazing light.

As they talked about all of Ally’s plans for the skills share and they made short work of Senga’s drop scones, they shifted their bodies until they were toasting their feet against the hearth, their arms wrapped round their knees.

The tea was soon drunk, and the world outside forgotten completely.

‘Have you… been in many relationships?’ Jamie asked, not quite out of nowhere, considering the unspoken buzz between them.

‘ Hmm , not so much. Gray was the longest I was ever with anybody. Never anyone at school. Some little things at college.’ She shrugged.

It was all true. There’d been guys and some not very good hook-ups and lots of teen angst and crushes, but relationships?

She didn’t have much to say about those. ‘How about you?’

This made Jamie take a deep breath and he looked into the fire. His brown eyes shone bronze in the hot glow. ‘A few. A big one when I was seventeen, lasted until I was nearly twenty-one.’

Ally raised her brows at this. It made sense, actually. From what she’d gleaned, he’d been a lonely kid, the sort who might commit to someone early.

‘I’m glad you had somebody,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, the inevitable. She met somebody else in her final year at uni, in Brighton.’

A devious little part of Ally registered that this guy had navigated a long distance relationship between Edinburgh and Brighton, and for a long time too. He was a walking green flag. Not that this was relevant to their friendship in any way, of course.

‘Was that it?’ she said.

‘ Hmm , there were others after that, kind of short-lived things, but all pretty amicable when they ended.’

‘Why did they end?’ she said, when what she wanted to know was why would anyone let Jamie Beaton go? She couldn’t fathom anyone breaking up with him.

‘I guess some relationships are just a mismatch and there’s nothing you can do about that.’ He said this with an easy shrug.

‘A mismatch?’

‘Yeah, you might spend time trying to change yourself for them, or they might try to change you in small ways, but in the end you both have to face facts; it’s not that there’s something wrong with either of you – you’re both basically good people – it’s just a mismatch.

’ He said this with a lift in his voice like it was so simple.

‘When you put it like that, breaking up sounds easy.’

‘Relationships don’t have to be dramatic.

I’ve been called to enough domestic disturbances and street arguments between couples to recognise relationships that aren’t going anywhere.

Sure, things can get tricky sometimes and you need to work together to fix stuff, but generally, I think if you’re mismatched it’s never going to be good. ’

Say it! Ally’s brain was up to no good. Say it!

it prompted her. But nothing, not even the smile on Jamie’s lips and the way he was leaning his folded arms on his knees and his head on his arms, blazing eyes fixed upon her, would bring her to blurt out the question.

Do you think we’re a good match? She kept the words inside.

‘Ally, I’m… glad I met you,’ Jamie said, and Ally got the impression it was only one tenth of the words he really wanted to say. She’d take it though. She felt the same.

‘All my life, I’ve liked to take things apart to see how they work,’ Ally found herself musing aloud, eyes on his. ‘Even when I was a kid. And after I found myself stuck at home and left behind, and ever since breaking up with Gray, I’ve done the same thing with people. Looking for the fault.’

He was steadily observing her in the firelight, the bothy walls shadowy and indistinct around them, only ghostly whiteness beyond the glass.

‘I did it with you as well,’ she confessed. ‘I wanted to think you were bad, that day we met. And then, later, I wanted to think you had a girlfriend…’

‘What?’

‘I did!’ she confessed, laughing. ‘I saw you with your sister and I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I just didn’t want to think you could be this…’ She gestured to him with her hand, taking in his whole body. He waited with his eyes widening. ‘This… good.’

‘All to keep me at arm’s length?’ he anticipated.

‘Exactly. I’ve had faulty instincts. I’ve not known how to read people, like Gray. And after him, I’ve assumed ill intentions even when there were none, all because I’d stopped trusting myself, stopped trusting other people. I wanted to find fault wherever I looked.’

‘But you came running to me when you needed help, so what does that say? Your instincts might be better than you think.’

She heard the words, let them seep in, but she wasn’t really thinking any more.

If she did, she’d have to think about him leaving soon, and how she had so much work to do helping the repair shop evolve into its next form.

She had friends to work on cherishing and sharing with.

She had a messed-up brother who’d fallen right off the career ladder and landed with a bump back home and had been hiding out in his bedroom ever since: so many people to help and things to fix.

Right at that moment however, there was only this man in front of her and a warm fire and the feeling of being lost in a cloud with real life on pause, and all she wanted to do was kiss him and see if it really was as good as she remembered.