by Annie O'Neil
He shook his head. ‘Nah. It’s crazy over there this time of year. I probably won’t hear for a day or two unless I pull some strings.’ He caught her gaze, then added, as if she was checking his professionalism, ‘Which I might if she doesn’t improve over the next couple of days. But I was thinking more along the lines of getting her out of the house while she’s off school.’
Audrey rubbed her hands together and pointed towards the pub. Being somewhere warm to have this conversation was definitely going to help her brain work a bit better. ‘I thought she had schoolwork to do?’
‘She does,’ Cooper said. ‘But what kid do you know who can fill an entire day with schoolwork at home?’
Audrey threw him a smile. ‘None.’
‘Exactly.’ He pulled open the door to the Puffin’s entryway. The foyer was already filled with winter coats and a few pairs of work boots. ‘I was thinking maybe we could get her down here.’
‘What? The pub?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Although having a job probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either. It’d give her a sense of pride. Of accomplishment.’
Audrey nodded, adding yet another square to the Cooper quilt. It sounded as though he’d once done the same thing.
‘I was thinking more of getting her down to the church hall.’
‘Why? So Dr Anstruther can keep an eye on her?’
Cooper threw a wave in the direction of the evergreen-swagged bar, where a man and a woman were busy pulling pints for a row of men in ferry uniforms. He called out to them that they’d be eating dinner and would get drinks in a minute.
‘I was thinking more of getting her a job on the Nativity. The fact that Dr Anstruther would be there is a bonus,’ he admitted. ‘And a helpful precautionary measure. He’s known her since she was a baby. Either way, I’m sure they could do with an extra pair of hands, seeing as half the island are needing costumes.’
Audrey laughed. ‘If I didn’t know better, I would think you have some sort of vested interest in the Nativity.’
Something dark flashed through his eyes. Ouch. Looked as if she was back on touchy territory. Best to let him fill in the blanks.
As they silently worked their way across the thick wooden floor, worn with age, towards a table near the inglenook fireplace, Audrey noted the dip and then the rise of hushed murmurs as they passed the bar. A memory of the islanders taking bets on Cooper’s staying power came back to her. Could that be what they were talking about? His lack of Santa suit could definitely sway things in the ‘leave’ direction.
Cooper strode on as if he’d heard and seen nothing.
The pub, clearly a good two or three hundred years old, managed to have a solid, spacious feeling about it. It was just over half full, and conversation, now that it had returned to normal, was buzzing, but not overloud. The mismatched chairs had sheepskin throws or wool blankets on them, and if Audrey wasn’t mistaken she was pretty certain that the ferry men sitting at the bar were in their stockinged feet.
It felt as warm and welcoming as the church hall did. Apart, of course, from the whispering.
Cooper held a chair out for her as if he’d been doing it for years. Ridiculous, she knew, but she blushed. When her ex had done it, it had felt showy. As if he wanted the whole world to know what a gentleman he was, rather than being simply content to do something kind for his fiancée.
For Cooper, being considerate seemed second nature. His grandmother? Or that heart of gold she suspected was lurking beneath the gruff exterior he was now sporting?
‘We should have a word with the woman in charge of costumes,’ Cooper said, pointing out the chalkboard menu on the wall as he did.
‘What makes you think it’s a woman?’ Audrey teased, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
‘It’s always been a woman,’ Cooper said, his eyes scanning the drinks menu he’d pulled out from between the salt and pepper shakers.
She bristled. How was she meant to know who was in charge of Nativity costumes on an island five hundred miles away from her home? Former home, anyway. Her indignation grew. Cooper was acting as if Audrey should know it was the natural order of things. Men on lights. Women on costumes.
Heart surgeons cheated. Nurses discovered their fiancés didn’t really care if the wedding was on or off.
Unable to stop herself, she fuzzed her lips and rolled her eyes. ‘Typical male.’
‘Oh?’ Cooper countered, a hint of a smile playing upon his lips. ‘There’s such a thing as a “typical male”? Who is this “typical” heterogametic, then?’
Audrey froze for a minute, then flopped back against the fluffy sheepskin on her chair. It was a good question, actually. One to which she didn’t have an instant answer. A few days ago she’d wanted to believe they were all like her ex. It had made travelling the high road by herself a bit easier. But...even though Cooper was all sorts of shades of grey...she could tell he was more light than darkness.
‘Fine. You got me. I’m trying to tar you all with the same brush.’
‘It’s a dangerous way to go through life.’
Though the smile remained in place, his voice was weighted with warning. He clearly felt he’d been tarred with too broad a brush at some juncture.
‘Do you mean presuming everyone’s the same?’
‘Exactly.’
The light in his eyes could’ve been from the fire, but Audrey was pretty certain they were lit from within.
A woman wearing a Puffin Inn apron bustled up to their table. ‘Can I get you two anything to drink? A lovely bottle of seasonal red to share between you—? Oh! Cooper. Hi, there. Sorry. I didn’t...um... I’m ever so sorry about your gran. I was at the funeral, but I had to get back here after, and as there wasn’t a wake—’
‘No bother,’ Cooper cut in, giving her a curt nod before looking at Audrey. ‘Wine? Soft drink?’
‘Hot chocolate,’ she said.
‘What? With your food?’ The woman laughed, then gave Cooper a scolding look. ‘Have you not got the heating system working in that Jeep yet? Dr Anstruther told me it was on the blink a few weeks back.’
Cooper shook his head, but offered no explanation.
‘Bring it down to my Billy’s place and he’ll get it working for you in no time.’
Cooper glanced at her sharply.
‘Cooper,’ the woman said gently, ‘he’s not the same lad you knew back then. He’s a father now. A husband. He’s changed a lot.’
Cooper made an indecipherable noise, then said brightly, ‘I’ll have a Coke, if that’s all right. Audrey? Do you know what you’d like to eat?’
‘I can recommend the chicken and mushroom pie,’ the woman said to Audrey. ‘It’s actually Cooper’s gran’s recipe. Absolutely brilliant. Isn’t it, Coop? Gertie’s chicken and mushroom pie. You must be half made of it, you ate it so much as a lad.’
Cooper kept his eyes fixed to the menu chalkboard and said nothing.
Audrey gave the woman a smile, then said, ‘I’ll have the pie. It sounds great.’
Cooper briskly asked for steak and chips, looked at Audrey, and then, clearly dissatisfied with his behaviour, reached out and touched the woman’s arm before she left. ‘Thanks, Fiona. I’ll give Billy a ring tomorrow, okay?’
Fiona gave him a smile and a nod, then said their meals would be just a few minutes.
After she’d gone a silence fell over the table, until their drinks were brought over by a young man. ‘Here ya are, Coop. Nice to see you back in the Puffin. Mum says to tell you the offer still stands.’
Cooper lifted his chin in acknowledgement, then raised his pint glass to the woman behind the bar. ‘I’ll let her know, son. Ta.’
‘So?’ Audrey said after she’d taken a sip of her hot chocolate. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘About all the
se mysterious conversations.’
He opened his mouth, clearly about to shut her down, then took a swig of his drink and looked her in the eye. ‘I’ve got what you might call a chequered past here on Bourtree.’
‘In what way?’
‘Just about every way you could imagine.’
‘What? Were you the town ruffian?’
‘Nope.’ He shook his head and took another drink. ‘Billy was.’
‘What? Nice Billy who’s married to our waitress?’
‘He used to beat the proverbial hell out of me back in the day,’ Cooper said.
You could see the admission was a big one. No man liked to admit they’d been at the wrong end of a fist.
‘I’m so sorry, Coop.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘But I don’t understand why—’
He cut her off. ‘My parents were the island drunks. When you were their kid no one let you forget about the footsteps you were going to follow in.’
‘You don’t have a drink problem.’
‘No. It’s the one thing I have to thank them for. I’ve known first-hand for a long time what alcohol dependency does to a person.’ Cooper took another gulp of his soft drink, ran his fingers through his thick hair, then looked her straight in the eye. ‘You want the whole story?’
‘Only if you want to tell it.’
Her answer clearly caught him by surprise, and that surprise softened him. Took away a layer of the defensiveness he was cloaked in. Enough so that he began to talk.
‘My parents should never have been parents...’ he began.
He went on to tell her about their romance at school. Swift, fiery, culminating in a pregnancy—his sister Shona.
‘They thought it sounded “fun” to have a baby or two, and then figured out it was more responsibility than fun, so they basically dumped us on my gran. She was my dad’s mother, and she said she’d be damned if she’d see the bairns of her son be neglected.’
‘What about your mum’s parents?’
‘They kicked her out when they found out she was pregnant. They’d never had much time for her anyway.’
‘In what way?’
He lifted an imaginary bottle of wine and glugged it down.
‘Oh.’
‘Exactly. They moved to Glasgow years back. Before I was born. More pubs to choose from.’
‘So, did you grow up living with your gran or your parents?’
‘Both. Sort of. My parents never had enough money to have a place of their own so we all lived at my gran’s. When they were around.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There wasn’t much work for them on the island—not with their reputations. They came back every now and again, when they got their hands on some cash.’
‘So...where are they now?’
‘Dead.’
The hot chocolate churned uncomfortably round Audrey’s stomach. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He sounded as if he meant it. ‘They’d come back for my thirteenth birthday and left as soon as the candles went out on the cake Gran had made me. They got hammered, went for a drive around the island, forgot to turn on the bend where the island ends and—splash—they ended up in the sea.’
‘Oh, Cooper.’ Audrey covered her mouth with her hands.
‘Honestly, Audrey...’ Cooper waved his hand between them, as if he’d just told her he’d ripped his favourite shirt but had bought a new one, so it was fine. ‘I’ve moved on. It’s not the problem.’
Audrey stayed silent.
‘I owe everything I am today to my grandmother.’ His mouth quirked into a crooked smile. ‘The good parts, anyway.’
‘You must miss her.’
His expression darkened. ‘I don’t deserve to.’
‘Why not? You obviously loved her very much.’
‘I didn’t show it.’
She and her father had never been hugely demonstrative. It had been more...built in. A given.
‘Sometimes love is something you just know. It doesn’t need big showy gestures.’
Big showy gestures like the ones Rafael had been prone to. Funny how she only now realised the huge bouquets of flowers and flashy outfits he had had delivered to her at work had always made her squirm rather than make her feel genuinely cherished.
‘Audrey...’ Cooper reached across and took both of her hands in his, as if he was imploring her to truly hear what he was saying. ‘I wasn’t here when Gran died. She told me she was sick. I told her she’d be fine, that she was tough as old boots, and then took another double shift. Then another. I told her I’d come on the weekend. Then I didn’t. That’s what I’ve done for the past fifteen years—constantly telling her I’d be there for her and not making good on my word. This time I well and truly failed her and there is nothing I can do to make up for it.’
Oh.
‘I should’ve been on the next ferry out of Glasgow.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
‘I knew her cold had turned into a cough. I knew she was eighty. I knew it was winter. I knew I had a hospital full of elderly folk suffering from “wee colds” that had turned into pneumonia—which, in some cases, would kill them.’
* * *
Cooper pulled his hands away from Audrey’s. The warm comfort of them was more than he deserved. ‘Nothing you say can absolve me. I left the one woman who properly cared for me to die alone.’
‘Is that what happened?’
Shards of unbearable pain lanced through his chest. ‘Yes.’ It was the first time he’d admitted it out loud. ‘Dr Anstruther had been checking in on her once a day. As had a couple of neighbours.’
‘Had she rung them?’
‘No, I had.’
‘So you were looking after her the best you could. It sounds as though you were needed at the hospital.’
‘Audrey. You’re not getting it.’ His voice thickened with emotion, but he ploughed on, punctuating each of his sentences with a sound rap on the table with his fist. ‘I was needed here. My gran died by herself. There was no one holding her hand. No one making her breathing any easier. No one to tell her how much they appreciated the sacrifices she’d made. Telling her how very much she was lo—’
He cut himself off as a lorry’s worth of emotion bashed him in the chest. Crying over his biggest mistake in life wasn’t going to bring his grandmother back. Nothing would.
‘She may have had a gruff demeanour, but she was the heart of this island. There are signs of her everywhere.’
As if on cue, a beautiful piece of chicken and mushroom pie arrived and was slid in front of Audrey. It was a generous portion, covered in golden pastry. Tiny mushroom-shaped pastry pieces floated in a glossy gravy that pooled around a fluffy mountain of mashed potato. Exactly the way she’d served it to him countless times as a boy. It had been his absolute favourite dish.
In contrast, Cooper’s plate was simply what it said on the tin. A steak and some chips. His should’ve looked the better dish. A more expensive cut of meat. Golden, crunchy, perfectly made chips. A small piece of parsley on top. But somehow the meal he’d chosen didn’t come close to matching the lashings of generosity and love he automatically endowed the chicken pie with.
‘Want some?’ Audrey asked, loading a mouthful of the gravy-rich pie onto her fork.
‘No, don’t worry.’
‘Go on,’ she urged, moving the fork towards his lips. ‘I think you’ve earned it.’
He didn’t know why, but deep in his heart he knew Audrey wasn’t telling him he’d done a good day’s work. She was saying that, despite his flaws, she admired him. That somehow, despite everything, his grandmother had understood he’d been running away from his demons, not from her.
Eyes connected to Audrey’s, he accepted the pie. As he did so something pure
and intense passed between them. Something vital that gave him the first kernel of belief that one day he might be able to forgive himself. Make some proper changes in his life. Starting with a show of gratitude for the woman who’d raised him.
As if reading his mind, Audrey asked, ‘Did you plan on having a wake some day?’
‘That’s what Fiona was on about. The wake. They offered to let me have it here.’
‘A wake is for the other people who loved her. It sounds as though there’d be quite a showing.’
‘I don’t know... I just wouldn’t want it to turn morose. She would’ve hated people weeping and bemoaning her loss.’ She would’ve set them all to work if that sort of carry-on began. The thought made him smile. Almost.
Audrey gave a half-shrug. ‘My parents have both passed away and I found that their wakes were an amazing way to remember all the good things.’
He flinched. His parents’ wake had been a disaster. Barely anyone had shown up. It had been him and his gran and a pile of sandwiches no one ate, plus a few neighbours who had popped in more for his gran than for him.
The fact they could’ve killed someone else as easily as they’d killed themselves had riled the islanders. If ever there was a group of people who looked after one another it was the people of Bourtree. Okay, but it wasn’t as if everyone here was sainted. People were people. Some were kind, some less so, and—
He looked across the pub and saw Fiona greeting her husband Billy as he doled out waves and handshakes to the lads at the bar. He said something and they all laughed. Years back the same boys would’ve hunched over their pints and hoped he wouldn’t notice them.
Cooper added ‘ability to change’ to the list of attributes a human could possess. Even him. But it had to come from inside. Not from a Santa suit.
‘Want some more?’ Audrey looked down at her plate, then coloured, realising she’d eaten the whole thing. ‘Sorry.’ She winced, her shoulders creeping up to her ears as she did so.
Cooper smiled, resisting the urge to run a finger along her jawline. There was something about her that got to him. In a good way. Sure, she’d come off the ferry all bristly and elf-resistant...but he could see how meeting a stubble-faced doctor in a Santa suit who dipped in and out of a good mood would’ve appeared pretty strange. Especially considering she was suffering her own piece of heartache.
