by Annie O'Neil
Cooper and the veteran GP exchanged a charged look. ‘Not this time of year, darlin’,’ Finlay offered, then repeated his apologies.
He promised to speak to all the relevant tradesmen tonight, to see what could be done, but in the meantime... He and his wife had put their house on the market, and had most of their things in storage in advance of his retirement, so there wasn’t a room for her there...
* * *
Cooper had half tuned out as his brain was heading down a very narrow tunnel. He’d known Finlay was going to hang up his hat, but now that he was talking about actually having put things in storage and literally preparing to up stakes it was like a bucket of icy cold North Sea water on his face.
There was a job for life if he wanted it, here on Bourtree Castle. Was this what he wanted? To stay here for ever? To have the folk of Bourtree growing accustomed to him dressing as Santa as he did his rounds each Christmas? As the Easter bunny in spring?
Or, to really boil it down to its purest essence, did he want the people of Bourtree to think of him as a doctor they could rely on to stay?
When he tuned back in Finlay was rattling off the number of folk who had come back from the mainland to stay with family, drop presents off in case the ferries were grounded owing to bad weather, make Christmas cakes with grans, bird houses with grandads... The list seemed to go on for ever.
Cooper stopped the flow of excuses in the only way he knew how. ‘She can stay with me, Finlay.’
It was a step closer towards ‘getting to know you’ than he would’ve preferred, but he was hardly going to leave Audrey here on the High Street with her fingers crossed that someone would offer her a room for the night.
‘Um...“she” is right here,’ Audrey said, about an octave higher than she normally spoke, air quotes hanging in the wintry air. ‘And “she” will not be staying with you. Now, Finlay, are you sure there’s—?’
‘There’s nowhere else, dearie,’ Finlay said sorrowfully. ‘Not this time of year. We’re such a small population at the best of times, what with folk seeking their fortunes elsewhere.’ His eyes flicked briefly to Cooper’s, but there was no malice in his words, just acceptance. ‘Cooper’s offer is a good one. I’d take it. Now, if you two’ll excuse me, Emily’s going to have my head if I don’t get down the church hall sharpish. Coop, shall we meet up at the usual time to discuss what to do about the surgery? The reception area’s fine—it’s my room that’s the potential problem.’
‘Fine. Put it out of your head for tonight. As you say, it’ll be a problem solved tomorrow. Now...’ Cooper turned his attention to Audrey as Finlay headed off towards the church. ‘Don’t look so worried. It’s not a smelly bachelor pad. It’s more...’
He saw her eyes narrow suspiciously as he sought the perfect word to describe his grandmother’s house.
‘More what?’
‘You’ll see,’ he said, tossing in a smile to reassure her that it wasn’t bad...it was just...well...she’d see.
* * *
‘Gosh. It’s...wow...um... Your grandmother’s sense of style is... I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Cooper smiled at Audrey’s understated response to his grandmother’s house. He probably should’ve warned her. Or given her a pair of sunglasses before he flicked on the overhead lights.
Opening the front door each night was such a bittersweet experience it was strangely helpful, having Audrey here. Most of the girlfriends he’d had would’ve smirked and made snarky comments about the doilies and the abundance of crocheted bric-a-brac. It was partly why he’d never brought anyone to Bourtree. No chance he’d subject his gran to their sneers.
But Audrey was different. She seemed delighted by it. Though she hadn’t found the perfect words to describe it, he got the sense that she felt as though she’d been allowed to see something special. And, as nearly everything in here had been made by his grandmother, it was.
He took off his coat and made a show of shaking the down into submission as he watched Audrey absorb just how much his grandmother had loved using the woollen mill’s bin-ends, whether or not they matched. Her ethos had been the brighter the better. Every day needed a bit of sunshine, according to her, and for nine months of the year in Bourtree? You weren’t going to get it from the sky.
Audrey took a step into the lounge and ran her hand along the knitted—or crocheted?—blanket that was draped over the back of the tartan-patterned sofa. ‘Did she make all of this?’
She sounded impressed.
‘Sure did.’ It was good to be able to feel a puff of pride about her, the woman who’d raised him when his mum and dad had proved utterly inept at parenting.
He scanned the room along with Audrey. His gran had made each and every blanket, cushion cover, tatted picture frame. To be honest, she’d taken her love of household needlework to an entirely different level. He’d was quite certain every bairn on the island had been swaddled in one of his gran’s blankets at one juncture or another. And then, of course, there were the doilies. Dozens of the things. On every armrest...under every china figure. The figures were women, mostly in period dress, their china skirts caught in an invisible breeze as their bonnets dangled from their fingers.
‘No Christmas tree?’ asked Audrey.
‘Nope,’ Cooper said, a bit too briskly for someone wearing a Santa suit. ‘Believe it or not, I’m not usually in the habit of decorating for Christmas.’
‘But it isn’t about you, is it? Shouldn’t it be about what your grandmother’s routine is—?’
‘Was,’ he quietly corrected, rawly aware of how wrong it felt to describe someone as full of life as his gran in the past tense.
Audrey turned and touched his arm. ‘Oh, Cooper, I’m so sorry. I suppose I should’ve put two and two together, but we were so busy—’
‘Bickering?’ Cooper finished for her.
‘No, not bickering.’ Audrey looked around the small lounge again, as if hoping to find the right word. ‘We were...figuring one another out. And please do accept my condolences about your grandmother. Was it recent?’
‘Just over a week back,’ he said, a harsh sting of emotion scraping his throat as he fought against admitting that he should’ve been here and hadn’t been. He could’ve been here. He’d done ten days on the trot at the hospital and had been owed a few days off. Weeks, really. But had he taken them?
Of course not.
Winter was always busy in the A&E and, as usual, there had been no one for him to go home to, so he’d signed up for a double shift after a quick call to his gran, to remind her to make sure there was more lemon and honey than whisky in her hot toddy. As if she’d needed reminding. She knew what too much booze did to a person.
‘It must be tough, being here with all these memories.’ His eyes snapped to Audrey’s. Was she telling him something?
‘Is that what you’re doing?’ he asked. ‘Dodging memories?’
Any warmth that had bloomed between them vanished. ‘No,’ she said crisply. ‘I prefer to focus on making new ones.’
So that was a yes, then.
He thought of the way her thumb kept creeping towards her bare ring finger. Not that he’d been wondering about her availability. Much...
‘If you don’t mind, Cooper, I’d like to see my room. It’s been a long day.’
‘Of course. Sorry.’
He did the short tour from the centre of the house, pointing out where everything was. Lounge, kitchen, dining room... His room upstairs. His gran’s at the far end of the corridor, leading out to the back garden, the dining room opposite it.
‘This looks like it was her knitting room rather than her dining room,’ Audrey commented.
Cooper resisted taking the statement as a barb. He and his gran hadn’t sat down for a proper meal in the dining room in well over a decade. On the rare occasions when he’d come home he’d insi
sted on taking her out to the Puffin. A meagre thanks for all she’d sacrificed to keep him on the straight and narrow.
The money he would give now to have one more meal with her the way they’d used to...kitting out the table as if the Queen herself were coming for tea.
‘Why not?’ his gran had used to quip as she pulled out a crystal tumbler for his soft drink. ‘You never know which moment will be your last, so best to make all of them special.’
He’d used to think that comment had been about his parents. He supposed the difference was that theirs had been an accident waiting to happen with the way they drank. His gran’s death had been preventable, and it was on him that it hadn’t been prevented.
He showed Audrey into his sister’s old room. It was kitted out in soft yellow and cream colours. Apart from a picture of the two of them, from when they were kids, it could easily have been a room in any B&B. His grandmother’s room had the nicer view, but it was far too soon to turn it into anything other than a place to reflect on the ways he could improve himself.
‘Oh, it’s much more...um...neutral in here,’ Audrey said.
Cooper shrugged. ‘My sister always preferred to blend in.’
Audrey cocked her head to the side, interested. ‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’
Cooper shrugged. ‘She’s a few years older than me and she moved to New Zealand years back.’ They’d both been ‘surprises’ to his parents. Unwelcome ones.
‘Did she come back for the funeral?’
No. She hadn’t. Like him, she’d found growing up as a child of the island’s two lushes complicated. She had a family of her own now. A happy life. Kept herself to herself. As if he, too, was part of her complicated history. Fight or flight. They’d both chosen the latter. Unfortunately in different directions.
‘Long trip.’
‘I suppose it is,’ she said, with a hit of compassion warming those dark eyes of hers.
He waited for the inevitable follow-up comment. Lord knew he’d received enough of them as he’d shaken everyone’s hand at the end of Gertie’s funeral. ‘Not good enough for your sister, are we? Your gran gave you two bairns everything she had. The least Shona could’ve done was fly up to pay her respects.’
Cooper had pointed out that the biggest floral tribute had been from his sister, but absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder in the islanders’ eyes. It chipped away at the loyalty they believed you owed them.
He pointed at the fireplace at the far end of the room. ‘There is central heating, but it’s not brilliant. If you like, you can light the fire.’
‘Oh, I’ve never had a fire in my bedroom before.’ Audrey’s eyes glittered with excitement.
‘Grand. If the weather drops, as it’s meant to, we’ll need all the wood fires going. But don’t worry—you won’t have to blast your way through the wood pile or anything.’
‘Why?’
Because chopping wood had been about the only way he’d kept his sanity over the past fortnight. As if physically pounding out his sorrows would eventually bring him peace.
‘That’s my job.’
* * *
Audrey instantly stood up straighter, irritation replacing the glee of having her own wood fire. ‘I suppose you think I can’t chop wood because I’m a girl?’
‘I wouldn’t dare suggest such a thing,’ Cooper said, the corners of his mouth twitching ever so slightly.
Oh, he wanted to annoy her, did he? Job done, pal. That showed her what softening her stiff resolve to dislike him would do. Catch her out at the first opportunity. Well, she wasn’t having Cooper suffer from the delusion that she was a poor helpless girl unable to fend for herself for a moment longer.
‘I bet you think I’d freeze to death by the end of the week if left to my own devices.’ She balled her hands into fists, waiting for him to confirm her comment.
Rafael would certainly have said as much. What she’d initially seen as gentlemanly behaviour, she was now beginning to see for what it was: good old-fashioned sexism. She’d been in charge of the fluffier things in their relationship, like their wedding. Rafael had been in charge of everything else.
It had been more subtle than that, of course. But the fact she’d been so blind to the effortless shift her life had taken back to the nineteen-fifties made her want to show hindsight exactly how firm a grip she had on her future.
If Cooper wanted to wear the ‘Me Man, You Woman’ mantel he’d have a fight on his hands. Even if she didn’t have the remotest clue how to chop wood... Surely she could take a stab at it? It wasn’t brain surgery. In the same way that changing a patient’s dressing required a deft touch, she suspected wood-chopping had its own art.
An art she might be terrible at. Oh, crumbs. Why had she started an argument she didn’t know if she could win?
The hint of humour had disappeared from Cooper’s features and been replaced by earnest entreaty. ‘I’d never suggest you couldn’t do something because you’re a woman. And not just because my grandmother’s ghost would give short shrift to that.’
Audrey tried to imagine a gran ghost appearing and chasing Cooper out of the house. She smiled.
‘What?’ he asked warily, as if he, too, could see the image.
‘I don’t have the slightest idea how to chop wood,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Oh?’
He looked surprised, but not shocked. Nor did he look disappointed. It struck her how conditioned she’d become to holding her breath whenever she’d admitted something to Rafael—something she didn’t know how to do. Had she really wanted to be a part of such a marriage? A lifetime of feeling anxious about being herself?
Cooper leant against the doorframe. ‘Want me to teach you?’
Wow. That fell into the realm of ‘not remotely expected’. ‘Yes!’
‘Is that a real yes, or a yes just to prove a point?’
There wasn’t any attitude accompanying his question. It was just a question—plain and simple.
‘I think I’d like to learn how to chop wood,’ Audrey said.
‘We can do some next time we hit a bit of daylight, if you like,’ he said, flicking his thumb towards what she imagined was the back garden.
‘Sure. Sounds good.’
They shared a smile that lit a small flame of hope in her. Not just for herself, but for her working relationship with Cooper. He may have some far-out ideas about seasonal ‘uniforms’, and he ping-ponged from grumpy to genuinely caring at the drop of a hat, but maybe this interchange was a sign they wouldn’t spend the next five weeks bickering after all.
A swirl of something she didn’t want to acknowledge whirled round her belly, teasing at areas she’d thought would never show signs of life again.
Interesting.
And not a little bit scary.
Cooper put his hand out and gave hers a solid shake. ‘I’m looking forward to you taking over that part of the household workload.’
There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it, and a shot of electricity running up her arm as his hand shifted away from hers just a little more slowly than in your average handshake. As if he’d felt the same spray of energy running between them.
He cleared his throat and abruptly pushed himself up and away from the doorframe, giving his hands a brisk rub. ‘Right, then, lassie. I know it seems early, but I’m away off to my bed. Are you hungry or anything?’
She shook her head. ‘Those fish and chips were amazing. And huge.’
‘Best in Scotland,’ he said, a charming hint of pride ribboning round the statement. His eyes met hers, then flicked away. ‘Right, so... Can I get you a tea or a hot chocolate for a nightcap?’
She shook her head. She didn’t want to put him to any more trouble than she already had. ‘I’m fine. A hot shower and bed will do me just fine.’
‘Right you are, t
hen.’ He tipped an invisible cap and bade her goodnight.
She sat down on the bed, enjoying a little bounce when she discovered it was covered in inviting layers of handstitched quilts. She wished she could’ve met Cooper’s gran. She must never have had an idle moment. Or been short of a lesson to share.
Her own childhood had been lovely, but a little bit lonely. It had pretty much just been her and her dad. He’d done the best he could to keep her happy and engaged, but she’d always envied other children who came from huge extended families, and had genuinely been looking forward to starting a family of her own with Rafael.
Which did beg the question... Had it been the family she’d wanted rather than the man? Perhaps she’d forgiven him all his controlling quirks because she’d had her eyes on a different prize. Children to laugh and play with. A family life that she herself had never had.
Whatever... That had been then, and a family was so off her radar right now it wasn’t worth the energy even to think about it. She was a blank slate, waiting to discover what her real goals and dreams were.
So she’d lost a lying, cheating fiancé? There were worse things in life. Like losing a dearly loved grandmother. Seeing how Cooper was struggling with his emotions in the wake of losing Gertie...it touched her.
She looked round the room again and smiled. If, beneath the gruff exterior and the Santa suit, Cooper was anything like his gran, she was pretty sure there was a heart of gold buried beneath that red jacket of his.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘IT’S NOT LOOKING GOOD, is it?’
Audrey, Finlay and Cooper all looked up at the large hole in the surgery’s main examination room ceiling while Cooper aimed his heavy-duty torch around the area.
‘Looks like a nice kitchen,’ Audrey said dryly.
‘Oh, it is,’ Finlay agreed, a bit more earnestly than he should have considering there was a metre-wide sinkhole in the centre of it. ‘Very.’
