Page 39 of Fixing a Broken Heart at the Highland Repair Shop

As the alarm clocks sounded early on Monday morning in the mill house, the Cairngorms National Park was waking up to another day of late-summer dew.

An early wave of migrating swifts swept southwards across the clear sky, the first to answer nature’s message and seek out softer weather, knowing what was coming to the Highlands: cranreuch cold and all the spartan wonders of autumn at this elevation.

Planes criss-crossed high above them, meeting barely a cloud.

On late-season dawns like this, the sun is drowsy in its rising, the summer-warmed soil cooling with every passing hour as the worms dive deeper, crab-apples and russets fatten on their branches in the mellowing valley, and, as afternoon rain showers make their return, the Nithy waters swell a little fuller, flowing beneath the old mill house wheel.

Murray was up early, and sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a gigantic old fleece onesie Ally hadn’t laid eyes on in years. He was typing on his fancy tablet.

‘I didn’t know you were coming to the airport too?’ said Ally, dragging her case into the kitchen and pouring herself a coffee from Murray’s moka pot. Another of the perks of having him home; his expensive new coffee-making equipment and monsooned malabar beans.

‘I’m not. I’m finishing this funding application to expand the repair shop,’ he said.

‘But you worked on it all weekend too. You missed the skills share event.’

The event had run on early into Saturday evening, and when the locals had left, Ally had hosted Jo and Gus, Brodie and Luce, Mhairi and Jolyon, and all the other kids, for fish suppers with the McIntyres at the kitchen table.

Murray had been conspicuously quiet through that dinner, preferring to watch Batwheels cartoons with Jolyon on his tablet than chat with the grown-ups.

Murray stopped typing. ‘I’ve never been all that handy with repairing, you know that. At least I can do this. I’ll have it ready to send by lunch.’

Ally came round to look at the screen. Murray scrolled to let her glimpse every one of its forty pages. What she saw made her gasp.

‘When you said you were asking the council for some of their development money for an extension, I didn’t think you were planning on converting the whole place into a… what is that, an eco barn?’

‘Go big or go home, right? I’ve got the funding bid-writing experience, why not put it to good use? Make a watertight application?’

Murray was constructing an appeal for funding for not only another thirty feet of floor space at the back of the shed, expanding its wooden walls and adding, not a corrugated iron roof to the new part, but glazing, so the repair shed could rely more on natural light and less on electricity.

He’d also factored in costs for ‘planet-friendly’ wool insulation as well as solar thermal panels to cover the south-facing side of the old roof and things called ‘ground and air source heat pumps’, whatever they were, and a small wind turbine which, according to Murray’s plan, would go on the little drumlin at the deepest end of the McIntyre garden where, as kids, the twins would play ‘I capture the castle’ and Ally always had to be the knight and Murray always the lovely, bougie prince in the tower.

Murray was keen to explain. ‘With the bid comes my promise to spread carbon literacy using the repair shop’s new networks.

I’m proposing to hold monthly meetings at the shed on the topics of renewable energy, recycling, that kind of thing.

It’s all here, page eleven. And I’ve listed all the other repair sessions and social groups the shed will be hosting too. ’

Ally couldn’t help but be impressed. No wonder Murray had found work in Zurich straight out of college if he could write such compelling reasons for why people should part with their money to help good causes.

She held his shoulders in both hands as he sat over the screen. ‘Sure you’re not coming with me?’

It took him a moment to answer. ‘Like I said to Barbara, I feel like I’ve closed the door on that part of my life.’

‘You sure this isn’t just you hiding?’ Ally didn’t want to trample his feelings, so she stepped as gently as she could. ‘I know a lot about hiding from life. This feels like we’re swapping places. I don’t like to think of you getting stuck, like I was.’

Murray put his hand on his sister’s, lifting his eyes to hers. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

‘I can’t face him. And I don’t want to go back to being who I was over there.’

‘Which was?’

‘I don’t know, someone’s secret boyfriend. I can’t help thinking I did as well as I did because he was showing me preferential treatment over the others. Was that why I was getting picked for projects overseas, getting promoted?’

Ally hadn’t quite figured how much her brother had got into his own head about Andreas. He’d taken a bigger hit than she’d realised, and the awful thing was, she wasn’t going to be around to help him recover now.

‘No, you got to where you were because you’re smart and capable, and you can write about…’ she checked his screen ‘… renewable energy tariffs and ecological building systems like they’re remotely interesting.’

‘Oh, they are,’ he assured her.

‘See? You got the job because you care, and because you were qualified. You were sent all over the planet because you’re a safe pair of hands.’

The last kernel of envy that had made her compare herself unfavourably to her twin all this time disappeared within her. He’d earned his achievements in the same way she was about to go out there and show the world what she was made of and earn hers too.

‘I don’t know, sis,’ he said sadly, leaning his head onto her arm.

Murray patently didn’t believe her. He’d lost his self-belief and that little spark of egotism that had propelled him through his career. Now that it was extinguished, Ally missed it, even when it had been kind of annoying before.

She tousled his hair. One thing was for sure, she’d be cautious of Andreas Favre when she was over there. In fact, she hoped she wasn’t on his team at all. How could she resist telling him exactly what she thought of him? He’d slowly crushed her brother’s self-assurance. She could see that now.

‘Somebody needs to look after Mum and Dad,’ Murray added, consoling her.

‘Be sure to hide Dad’s cut-off jorts and vest when summer comes around again, OK?’

He laughed fondly. ‘Consider them gone.’

She leaned over her brother, hugging him, the top of his head under her jaw. He hugged back.

‘OK,’ she sighed after a long moment. ‘I’d better get going.’

‘Sure you’re going to be all right?’ he said, not letting go.

Ally knew he wasn’t talking about the flight or the transfers or finding her new apartment in a strange city or even meeting the two Swiss interns she’d be flat sharing with. He was talking about leaving Jamie.

Jamie had messaged her last night from Edinburgh, saying he’d passed the physical exam and smashed the recruitment day and how he was already missing her but he knew she could do it. She was to ‘have the BEST time’.

‘He’ll be fast asleep in his old bed right now.’

‘Doesn’t seem right,’ said her brother.

Again, she knew just what he was saying.

It didn’t seem right not to say a proper goodbye after all they’d been through.

It didn’t seem right that they’d never see each other again, that they were clearly more than compatible and frankly made for each other, and yet they were both set on separate paths.

‘It’s not right…’ said Ally.

‘…But it is OK,’ joined Murray, smiling at his sister setting him up for a Whitney joke even when she was feeling sorry for herself. ‘You’re going to make it anyway.’

Ally kissed the top of his head and released him. Reaching for her case, she felt the stretch of that invisible elastic that connected them, and not without some pain. ‘Facetime you at eight tonight?’ She was walking away.

‘Zurich time,’ he said, flashing her a glimpse of his ridiculously fancy wristwatch under his onesie sleeve.

‘Be seeing you,’ they both said at the same moment before she pulled open the door and stepped out onto the courtyard.

* * *

The door closed upon Murray, leaving him alone at the kitchen table, and he clamped his lips tight to stop himself from crying.

What the hell was he doing? He was swapping one kind of loneliness, as Andreas’s secret live-in lover in the lap of luxury in Switzerland, for another.

He looked around the empty kitchen, the sound of Ally’s steps retreating on the crunching gravel outside, and he tried to tell himself it would all work out somehow.

‘I’m doing the right thing,’ he said out loud. ‘Some Me Time. Helping Mum and Dad. Autumn and winter in the Highlands. Sorting out this bid. I’ve got this.’ And, entirely unconvinced and more than a little gloomy, he returned to his screen, forcing himself to get lost in his task once more.

Murray McIntyre was done with crying and he was well and truly done with chasing after cold, reserved men with nothing emotional to offer him.

* * *

Outside, Ally swiped to the boarding pass on her phone. Flight SW757 to Zurich. Her ticket out of here. She’d been dreaming of escape for so long that, now she held it in her hand, it was difficult to process.

Her parents waited for her by the open boot. They’d been watching the dawn and sharing a hug and a single cup of coffee in a travel mug.

On seeing her approach, McIntyre came for her case and hefted it into the back, before bringing down the boot door with a bang.

‘Ready?’ he said.