Page 36 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

‘Who’s going to say what?’ said Jamie furtively, the worry on his face reflected back at him onscreen next to his sister’s, wearing a similar frown, inside her own little frame.

‘Maybe a Zoom call isn’t the best way to do this?’ Karolyn said.

‘I’ll start, shall I? Tell him it’s an intervention?’ he suggested.

She shifted uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa seat. ‘You can’t use the word intervention. He’ll run a mile. Just say we’ve been concerned… oh God, he’s coming now.’

Jamie watched as she broke into a smile. ‘Hi, Dad, come and sit down a minute.’ She patted the spot beside her. ‘Jamie’s here too.’

His dad lurched into shot, looking more than a little confused. He was still holding his newspaper and pint of semi-skimmed.

‘Aye? What’s all this in aid of?’ He obediently sat down, just as Jamie knew he would.

‘Well, we’re…’ Karolyn began, before tailing off. ‘We’ve been…’

‘This is an intervention,’ Jamie blurted like he was reading someone their rights.

‘Jamie!’ Karolyn protested.

‘A whit ?’ said Samuel Beaton, even more perplexed.

‘Listen, Dad,’ Jamie softened. ‘You know how I’m coming home on the ninth, just as soon as I complete my required volunteer hours here?’

‘I do, aye.’ He waited expectantly.

‘And you know how things have been…’ he paused so he could swallow, ‘since Mum passed?’

Samuel glanced from the screen to Karolyn then back to his son.

‘We’ve been talking, and it’s time a few things changed,’ Jamie went on bravely.

‘Moved on,’ suggested Karolyn, ‘a wee bit.’

Mr Beaton’s face remained hangdog. His eyes had the glisten of tears behind them.

‘ We’ve both made steps to move on with things,’ said Karolyn, doing what Jamie wished he could do and taking her dad’s arm. Their father had to surrender his shopping to the carpet at his feet so he could reciprocate and hold Karolyn.

‘I’ll be home soon enough,’ Jamie tried again, ‘and I want us to try talking to somebody.’

‘Talking? To who?’ their father croaked.

‘A bereavement counsellor,’ Karolyn clarified. ‘Jamie found her online.’

The news sank in. Mr Beaton cleared his throat. ‘You want me to talk to a strange woman, about your mum?’

‘We’ll all talk with her,’ Jamie put in. ‘Or, if it’s easier, you can do it on your own at first. But we thought we could all do with getting some of it out in the open.’

‘You did, did you?’ Still noncommittal and not impressed, Samuel shifted back on the sofa, just an inch but enough to show he wanted to get away.

‘It was Holiday that did it,’ said Karolyn.

‘And hearing Mum’s voice. Did you know Jamie’s been visiting all the Cairngorm tourist spots we went to when Mum was alive?

Some of them with his new friend, Ally!’ She turned wickedly laughing eyes on Jamie as she said this, and he fought hard to ignore his sister’s teasing.

He hadn’t talked much about how their date had gone, but Karolyn had always been able to read him like a kids’ picture book, so he hadn’t really needed to.

He’d mentioned that he’d left her a voice message as soon as he woke up on Saturday morning, to check things were still OK, and to re-iterate how happy he was for her getting her new job.

He worried he should have re-recorded the thing.

Had he sounded nervous? He’d been fine right up until the point he started to speak and the shaky, unsure feelings had hit him.

Was she regretting what had happened? Or was she annoyed about how they’d left things?

Bloody Finlay the ranger getting in the way of a proper, romantic goodbye.

They’d been so rushed. He just knew he was already making a big mess of this.

He hadn’t told his sister how he’d left the ball firmly in Ally’s court as to what happened next, and that had been days ago.

She’d replied with her own voice note message, just a few cheery-sounding words, telling him she was ‘super busy’ sorting things out for her trip and the skills share event which was, she’d been sorry to realise, the same day Jamie was planning on leaving town.

She said she hoped they’d ‘bump into each other soon’ and left it at that.

Deep down, he wasn’t entirely sure how anything much could happen next, given their circumstances.

How he wished he hadn’t wasted time avoiding the pull of her, heeding Edwyn’s vague warning, when they could have been spending the best summer of their lives together.

At least then, they might have had a solid foundation to leave things on before she flew away for a whole year.

As it was, she was unlikely to want to wait for him.

He’d done the only thing he could think of.

He’d celebrated her achievement, made sure she understood he was proud of her.

The last thing he wanted was to be the person spoiling her excitement about her new life, especially after everything she’d been through with her ex and all her insecurities about not being as worthy of as great a career as her twin.

She deserved this job and she deserved to be happy and carefree. He wasn’t going to be the stone dragging her down, not when she was finally taking flight.

Only now, it felt like he carried a great dragging weight in his chest, but if that’s what it took for Ally to launch into the life she wanted and needed, he’d bear it for her sake, even if it meant letting go of the very best thing to happen to him. He’d have to toughen up and take it.

‘What do you say, then, Dad?’ said Jamie, thinking he might actually cry, and not just because of the intervention. ‘It’s been a long time coming, but I think it’ll help you get some things… unstuck.’

Samuel Beaton hid his face. His hands sunk into his lap.

‘Don’t be upset, Dad. It’s OK. We’ll do it together,’ Karolyn soothed, her arm on his back.

Samuel’s shoulders bobbed. Was he crying?

Maybe this was a mistake? Maybe he wasn’t ready after all? Maybe he never would be?

Yet, when their father lifted his head they saw he’d been laughing. There was a gleam of pride in his eyes, a smile, beleaguered and harangued, but not defensive or upset as the siblings had feared.

‘You pair have cooked this up yourselves, have you?’ he said looking between his kids.

They nodded.

‘I could talk to someone,’ he said. ‘If you want me to.’

‘It’d do us good, I think,’ said Karolyn.

More silence followed, and the man put his arm around his daughter and kissed her forehead, looking at her like he couldn’t quite believe he had a grown-up woman for a child.

‘I…’ Samuel began, but his feelings took over.

A tear rolled down his cheek, and he didn’t swipe it away.

‘I had to be strong for you two. You were babies. Tiny wee things. And I hadnae a clue what to do with yous. Your mum, she always knew the right thing to do and say. Knew where everything was kept! I swear, it took me two weeks to find the loo rolls after she was gone! And I’m not proud of myself for having left so much to her, no, I’m not.

’ He shook his head, silently admonishing himself.

‘I learned as best I could. But there was so little time! No time for thinking or feeling anything. I had school concerts and the school run and chickenpox and all those bloody clucking mothers in the schoolyard who thought I couldn’t do it, but I did do it. ’

Jamie’s own tears fell, remembering his stoic hard-faced dad, determined to get it right, a man who never sat down for a second, he had the work of two parents to do and he’d be damned if he was going to let his Lucy Jayne down, even if he did occasionally forget how to do the softer side of things.

‘We know you did,’ Karolyn’s voice was barely there.

‘That day, when we picked up Holiday,’ Samuel smiled at the memory of it. ‘Something changed in me.’

Us too, Jamie wanted to say, but he couldn’t speak for the lump in his throat.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot, about your mum and us, and… all of it really, ever since.’

Karolyn nodded, swiping at her face. Her dad kissed her forehead again.

‘OK,’ their father said with a deep breath. ‘Let’s talk with this wummin. See if she can help us a bit.’ He wiped his nose. ‘It’ll be nice to talk about your mum. I’ve been remembering so many things about her recently…’

‘Me as well,’ Jamie managed to say.

‘Me too,’ Karolyn echoed.

‘There was this one time, she’d been determined to get you these wee Furby things for your Christmases,’ he said, some great, straining floodgate weakening.

‘And she needed to be in the queue for Jenner’s opening first thing in the morning.

She’d heard somehow they were coming back into stock in the toy department.

Well…’ his words tumbled on… ‘your mum insisted on being at their gates for six in the morning, camped out she did! Took a flask of coffee and a deckchair! And yet, she was the only person waiting when they opened at nine!’

‘But she got them,’ Karolyn said, smiling, remembering unwrapping the thing, while a new core memory unlocked in Jamie’s head.

‘That was the Christmas she wanted to try goose instead of turkey, and oh my goodness, you’ve never seen such a thing. It arrived from the butcher, feathers and all! And that’s why we have nut roast every Christmas, kids.’

He talked on while his children listened, adding in their own scant memories, even before the counsellor had been booked. This was good practice.

With the relief of releasing words unspoken for far too long, the Beaton family took another big step towards healing.