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Getting from London to Glenfinnan took longer than getting from LA to London. She had only just made the six o’clock evening train from Queen Street Station, and when she finally arrived at a quarter to eleven at night, Rory was waiting for her. As usual there was little ceremony, he just nodded as she got off the train and followed him to his van.
‘So,’ he said, starting up the engine. ‘Are you planning to stay this time, or have you come up with a few more imaginary relatives to get you away from the place?’
‘I’m staying, you daft sod,’ she replied.
‘Charming as ever,’ he grinned quietly.
‘I’m too tired to be charming,’ she protested. ‘I’ve travelled halfway across the world, you know!’
‘Aye, and you canny expect anybody up here to know anything about foreign travel,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if any of us have ever moved out of the place, is it?’
‘What I meant,’ she said, ‘was that you of all people should understand!’
‘Well, sounds to me as if you’re maybe angry because you’re regretting being back. Is that not the case?’
‘I have never met anyone in my entire life who could twist things the way you do, Rory Macdonald!’ she shouted at him. ‘You know fine what I mean!’
A fresh fall of snow had coated the familiar landscape, making it glow in the dark, and in the silence the van tyres creaked through the snow. The headlights picked out the startled eyes of deer by the roadside, forced down from the hills by the cold to find food on lower ground. Beside her Rory grinned silently, pleased with himself for provoking a reaction from her. She looked at him, smiling, too, despite herself. She had disliked this annoying man at first sight and the years hadn’t changed him; no one could ever mistake Rory for an angel, winged or otherwise. He was just as annoying today as he had been way back then, yet somehow he had become inextricably linked with everything she thought of as ‘home’. She couldn’t explain how or why he had become so much a part of her life. He just had, that was all.
Part of the exhibition in the National Trust’s Glenfinnan Visitor’s Centre, showing ‘A Highlander of the ’45.’ I know better though, it’s really Rory Macdonald…
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BIRLINN BY MEG HENDERSON
A SCENT OF BLUEBELLS
Family prejudice forces a young couple to flee to Glasgow in World War One, where tragedy and deceit shapes their future. They called her Auld Nally – the local moneylender in one of Glasgow’s roughest areas, Inchcraig. But once she’d been Alice McInally from Belfast, beautiful and beloved by her childhood sweetheart. Though his family was Catholic and her Protestant, their families had been close for generations, and the young couple were too naïve to anticipate the angry opposition their marriage plans would unleash. Their only hope is to leave Ireland, knowing they will be cast out by their well-to-do families and can never go home again. But the couple’s dream of a bright future founders in the realities of war-torn Glasgow, and Alice ends up struggling to make ends meet in the only way she can. Somehow she must protect the children in her care, even if that means relying on the man Inchcraig knows as ‘him’, and living among people far from her background, people she comes to like and admire and doesn’t want to leave. Every day, though, she must live with a lie told many years ago with the best of intentions, a lie that could unravel and destroy everything, unless she can find the exact time to put it right…
CHASING ANGELS
Kathy Kelly, born in the heart of Glasgow’s East End, comes from a family torn apart by conflict. She grows up with a sharp wit and a quick temper, constantly challenging those who cross her: her reproving grandmother, Con, her hard-drinking father, even the local priest – Kathy takes no prisoners. But at least she copes, unlike her older brother Peter, who disappears as fast as he can. Kathy also escapes – to the Highlands. Here she finds work and a home with the Macdonalds, an eccentric, easy-going couple. But Con’s death drags Kathy back to Glasgow, where she is forced to look at things afresh, at past events and the people she knew so well – and begin the search for her missing brother, a search which will result in an extraordinary, devastating discovery.
THE LAST WANDERER
This rich and moving saga tells the story of Ina, Margo and Rose – grandmother, daughter and granddaughter – from the small fishing community of Acarsaid on the west coast of Scotland. Each has led a very different existence, but all three find themselves, despite their restless spirits, caught up in the life of the sea. Told with great understanding and infectious wit, The Last Wanderer is a fascinating story of the ups and downs, the laughs and tragedies of families bound together by an extraordinary shared history.
DAISY’S WARS
Growing up in a family whose only interest is her older sister, a precociously talented singer, Daisy learns early on how to cope with disappointment and rejection. Strikingly attractive, Daisy is determined to break free and live life on her own terms. Then a despicable act of violence gives her no choice but to leave home. The WAAFs want recruits and Daisy, full of anticipation and trepidation, signs up. Now she can be the person she’s always wanted to be – but who exactly is that? Through the dangers of the war, the raids, the heightened camaraderie, the emotional tension, Daisy comes to realise that she need not put up a front as a good-time girl or an ice-queen. But by then, it’s too late for the one pilot who almost broke through her reserve…
SECOND SIGHT
The moving story of a woman sending her pilot son away to fight in the Second World War – from one of Scotland’s bestselling, best-loved storytellers Nancy MacLeod’s great-great-grandfather brought his family to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia from Raasay, a tiny Scottish island, in the 1840s, in hope of a better life. They prospered in this new world, despite the harsh and unforgiving winters, but clung on to their old traditions and customs for comfort. Born at the beginning of a new century, Nancy has no patience with the old ways. She declares herself a Canadian and ignores the signs that she has inherited the family’s Second Sight. But when her brothers leave home to serve in the First World War, she experiences strange things that she neither understands nor wants to, so when she marries she moves far away from superstitious Cape Breton. Then the Second World War breaks and her eldest son, Calli, goes to England to pursue his dream of being a bomber Command pilot. Calli’s plane is shot down and his body never found. Nancy is unable to accept his death. She can still sense a feeling of life attached to him, a branch of the family tree that grows unstoppably while all hope seems lost. And Annie, a girl growing up in Glasgow, has always seen a man in the corner, a young pilot she doesn’t know but somehow feels a strange connection with…
Chasing Angels Page 34
