Highland Fling

by Emma Baird

  “Ah,” her voice too breezy. “I’ve been doing a little research. Um, so the site Ts & Cs. Once you sign up, you have to go through with it unless you’ve got something life-threatening. Or you die. You agreed to them, didn’t you?”

  “No-one ever reads the T&Cs!” I exclaim, and two of my pint-drinking audience nod their heads sagely.

  “But the good news is!”

  I brace myself. People always do that when they are about to deliver not-so-good news.

  “You can take anti-histamines. They’ll help with the cat allergy. And Vitamin C too.”

  “Where do I get anti-histamines from?” My pint drinking audience leans forward. Katya’s answer must interest them too.

  “A GP can prescribe them for you. Take a couple, and you’ll be right as rain. And I will come to visit you as soon as. Gotta go, bye!”

  One of the pint drinkers—a heavy-set guy whose shaggy hairstyle matches the dog sitting at his table—gets to his feet. “Aye, lass,” he shouts at me. “Anti-histamines will sort out the cat allergy nae problem. Get the strongest ones ye can. When ah first got wee Scottie here, ah used to sneeze something terrible. And look at me now!”

  He points a finger at his chest and grins. I’m not one hundred percent sure he is the picture of health he supposes. He’s scarlet-faced, and that pint of beer went down in record time.

  “Where’s the GP surgery?” I ask, and he grins.

  “Just doon the High Street. Ask for Doctor McLatchie. She’ll sort you oot.”

  I wave thanks at him and open the gate, turning in the direction he pointed. I’ve only taken four steps when the guffaws behind grind me to a halt.

  “It’s half five on a Friday, hen!” the words sing out. “The doctor’s surgery isnae open now. But if you wait till Monday, you can see her then!”

  As I stomp back into the house, the laughter continues far longer than it should. It wasn’t that funny.

  Inside, I shut the door, and the sneezing starts up again. How am I going to last until Monday? My mum and Katya have always said I’m too impulsive. Here’s the proof. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, my head pounding, my nose and eyes itching furiously, no internet connection, a risk I might get sacked and no-one to talk to. And yes, I thought I was okay about Ryan—the guy I’ve been with for the last ten years. Ha, my silly self told my conscious. All I need to do is take myself far away from Ryan, and our lives together and I’ll be fine. My subconscious mocks me now. It knew better all along.

  As for Jack McAllan? That almost makes me laugh. I imagined... I know what the silly yesterday me thought. As I packed my car, I had daft dreams where I walked down the street of my new town and bumped into Jack stroke Jamie, and just like Outlander, he fell in love with me at first sight.

  I couldn’t be further from the truth, could I?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Monday morning arrives, and I am waiting outside Dr McLatchie’s surgery ten minutes before she is due to open at nine am. I’d spent the weekend sneezing, not sleeping and making tearful phone calls to Katya and my mum, all of which I had to do outside in the howling wind. Friday’s fine weather had lulled me into thinking all those stories people told about how much it rained in Scotland are an exaggeration.

  They aren’t.

  I discovered too that the more you try to flee a cat, the more they see it as a come-on. Everywhere I went, Ms Mena followed me—even into the toilet. I tried shutting doors, but she howled her head off. Have you any idea how disconcerting it is to sit on the loo while a cat watches you without blinking? I blushed as I imagined her having conversations with the other cats in the neighbourhood:

  “Uses excessive amounts of toilet paper, let me tell you! And nowhere near regular enough...”

  The doctor pulls up in her car outside the surgery at quarter past nine. A Volvo estate screeches to a halt in front of me, barely missing the kerb. The door is flung open, and a woman pokes her head out.

  “Sorry I’m late! Sheep on the road. You know what it’s like around here.”

  I nod, then shake my head. No, I have no idea. But she isn’t listening, anyway. She pushes past me, keys jangling, and opens the door. The surgery looks nothing like any GP’s surgery I’ve ever been in. If you’d walked up and down the street and someone said to you afterwards, “Where’s the GP in Lochalshie?” you’d have said, “I haven’t a clue! I just walked past a lot of houses.” The surgery is one, a neatly painted door and windows and a tiny sign outside that says Dr McLatchie & Partners. I have my suspicions that the partners do not exist. When I follow her in, past the small waiting area, I spot only one room with a doctor’s name on it off the hallway.

  She opens the door, telling me to take a seat and fill in the form asking me general health questions. I park myself on the chair. They seem to favour informality here. There is no desk, or hard-backed chair—just two armchairs, a coffee table and a laptop, and scales in the corner.

  Sheet filled in, I hand it over. The doctor prods her laptop, and it opens. She pushes herself back into her armchair, folds her arms and smiles at me, fuchsia pink lips stretching across her face in a smile that looks vaguely familiar.

  “Well! I’ve never seen you before. Have ye come from a big city?”

  I shake my head and watched her face fall. She leans forward and picks up a notepad and pen.

  “Ah well, never mind! What’s your problem? Have ye got...?” She takes the pen and points at my crotch. I cross my legs and shake my head furiously.

  “Aw! So, no problems down below. That’s a shame. I was hoping because ye were an outsider, ye’d have all kinds of—”

  “No, no,” I blurt, eager to stop this flight of thought, “I’m very allergic to cats. Do you have anything that can help?”

  The doctor steeples her hands together and regards me seriously. Then, she bursts out laughing.

  “Are ye... the wee lassie.”

  She laughs so much, I can barely make out a word she says. “So, you’re the wee one who... ha ha ha... went tae Kirsty’s hoose... wish I’d been there!... and then had tae stand outside on Friday night because her cat was making you sneeze that hard?”

  When I nod, the mirth grips her so tightly it takes her five minutes to recover. I sit back, rub my eyes and let out a fake but ferocious sneeze. That was a hint; less than subtle body language to say I am in pain.

  “And ye’ve broken up from your boyfriend?”

  The question is so left-field, I agree straight away. What does that have to do with anything? Great Yarmouth is hardly the Great Metropolis, but I’ve never experienced nosiness on this scale. And how is my previous love life connected to crazy sneezing?

  “Stand on the scales!” she barks, and I obey, twisting my face to top of the room so I don’t see the result. Again, the connection to an allergic reaction is lost on me, but who knows? Repeated sneezes might do funny things to your body weight.

  “Ye’re only 54 kilos!” I hear rustling as the doctor flicks through a book. “It says here ye’re allowed to be 56-62kgs! Are ye one of those anorexics?”

  “Er, no. I inherited my mother’s fantastic genes. But can we get back to my real problem?”

  “Aye, the sneezing. Did ye know that’s where that nursery rhyme comes from—the ring a ring roses one?”

  I shrug. “No.”

  “Sneezing was one symptom of the plague. The ring o’ roses described the rash people would get, then they’d sneeze, and the bit about we all fall down is where they died. Sometimes only a day after the rash appeared. It’s a pity that—”

  She breaks off, quelled by the look I give her. What medical training school taught her appropriate bedside manner is to tell your patient she might have the early symptoms of Bubonic plague?

  “Ah well. Too good to be true. All I deal with here are colds and the odd ankle sprain when some short-sighted farmer stands in a rabbit hole. I live in hope that something exciting will walk through my door.”

  She sounds so disgruntle
d, it almost makes me wish I had turned up with a condition more intriguing than a severe allergy. Almost. When she presses print on her computer and out pops a neat prescription for what she promises are the world’s strongest anti-histamines, I have to sit on my hands to stop myself snatching it off her.

  I should try to spend as much time as possible outside, the doctor adds. And it would be a good idea to vacuum the place from top to bottom every day.

  Good grief. If Ryan could hear that, he’d curl his top lip and tut. One of our recurring rows was about the housework. Ryan had weird ideas that women should do all the domestic stuff, so I’d pointedly not do it a lot of the time to prove to him housekeeping wasn’t an inbuilt gene.

  “Anything else I can help ye with?” Dr McLatchie asks, the fevered look back on her face. “Are ye feeling suicidal because of your boyfriend dumping you?”

  “I dumped him!” I say, indignant, though her question makes me pause. There might have been a lot of tears over the weekend where I wept and wailed about being on my own, but killing myself isn’t on the agenda. I shake my head and marvel once more at the way her face droops when I say no. Then, I remember the work dilemma.

  “Is there such a thing as an internet cafe around here?” I ask. “It’s just that Kirsty’s house doesn’t seem to have any connection and I need the internet so I can work.”

  “Aye, that bit of the village has been having problems recently. Your neighbour at number 12 has complained to the phone companies endlessly about their lack of masts. The poor guy’s got tae keep up his Tinder account. He cannae swipe left, right or centre if he’s got nae access can he?”

  “What?” I passed my new neighbour this morning out in his garden digging up weeds. He didn’t look a day under ninety.

  “I know,” the doctor shrugs. “You’d think a plea from a helpless old man would make them sort it, wouldn’t ye? But listen, you can use Jack’s house. He’s no’ there a lot of the time, so he willnae mind. I go there when I do my Skype calls to the patients that cannae come into the surgery.”

  “Jack?” I say, willing there to be more than one man by that name in the village.

  “Aye, Jack McAllan. He was the one who let you into Kirsty’s house the other day. Even though you were more than three hours late.”

  “Two and a half!” Is nothing sacred around here?

  She rustles around in an enormous handbag and pulls out a key attached to a tartan keyring which says ‘Highland Tours’.

  “Here’s the spare key. If you go there now, you’ll get in, and you can see where you can put your iMac.”

  Disregarding that she also knows what kind of hardware I have, I stutter “But, but, but..” I mean, shouldn’t I ask the not very friendly, super rude Jack first if I can use his house? And did it have to be him? Isn’t there someone else in the village who also has super-fast broadband?

  “Off ye go,” the doctor stands up, shoo-ing me out with her hands. “Ye can drop in at the pharmacy on your way to the house and then pick up your medication on the way back.” At the surgery door, she points right. “The pharmacy’s the second to last building and Jack’s house is the one after that. Best of luck to ye.”

  She doesn’t go back inside when I leave either, so I have no choice but to follow her instructions. The pharmacy assistant—and again, the chemist shop looked more like someone’s home from the outside, the door opening into a carpeted room, armchairs and wooden shelves stocked with toiletries that I suspect are older than me—takes the prescription and tells me to come back in ten minutes.

  On the street, I can’t help feeling net curtains twitch in all the houses round about. And what if, please no, Jack is in? It will hardly help change his opinion if he discovers me letting myself into his home. I mean, what if he is...

  Gabrielle Amelia Richardson. My mum’s voice again. Take your thoughts out of the gutter and stop imagining him coming out of his bathroom, wearing only a white towel wrapped around his lower half. Amazing how, having never seen this impressive sight, my mind has made the image bright, colourful and very detailed. I’ve even given imaginary Jack a tattoo on his left arm which moves when he flexes his substantial biceps.

  Thankfully—disappointingly—the house is empty as Dr McLatchie had promised. His home, a neatly terraced house, is the end building on the street, so it takes up twice the space of the others. It is on two levels, with a room added in the attic. While it doesn’t sit right on the loch as Kirsty’s house does, the view is better as this part of the loch nestles half in and half out of trees and mountains. I’d expected his home to feel very masculine—all black leather chairs, state-of-the-art connected speakers, laminate flooring and that kind of thing, but I am wrong. ‘Cosy’ is the right word instead, It’s a place that makes you want to take your shoes off and snuggle up in a chair as soon as you come in. Thick, woolly carpet in a moss green shade covers the hallway and the living room, while wallpapered walls in blue, grey and silver remind you of the sea. He has a lot of paintings too, oil landscapes that feature lochs, glens and hills I assume are inspired by the surrounding area.

  All the furniture in his front room, including a large sofa that allowed its occupants to stare out of the window, faces towards the front of the house, He’s also put a desk close by, which will make the ideal spot for my iMac if I can discipline myself not to spend my entire day gazing at the loch. Working potential assessed, my nosiness instinct (perhaps triggered by the doctor’s own rampant curiosity) kicks in. Shouldn’t I have a little look around to try to work this guy out? You know, check out what he has in his fridge and if any photos are hanging in the kitchen? Pictures that might show him arm-in-arm with a woman? Or a man. I am open-minded.

  The fridge check proves frustrating. I find people’s food choices revealing. If he had margarine rather than butter, I’d go off him for sure. Or suppose a bar of chocolate lurked in in there with only one or two squares missing? Proof positive he and I are incompatible. Friday’s brief conversation showed we already are, but people who have the willpower to eat one bit of chocolate at a time—who are these alien-beings?

  In the upstairs hallway, however, I find a far more thought provoking oil painting. Every other picture is a landscape. This one is a portrait of a young woman. My age, I guess. She looks over her shoulder in an ‘oh you surprised me’ way. The artist has used tiny splodges of the thick paint to create the sitter’s skin tone. The artists has done it so skilfully, the skin appears uniform and alive with colour and life. Light blue eyes dance and sparkle and thick blonde hair ripple from a perfect widow’s peak down past her shoulders and reaching almost to her waist. An ex-girlfriend, perhaps? I snap a photo of it on my phone, deciding I’ll send the picture to Katya. Between us, we’ll be able to find out who the mystery woman is.

  Back at the chemist shop, the pharmacy assistant taps her watch as soon as I walk in. “That was twenty minutes, no’ ten. Did you enjoy your wee nosey around his house then?”

  “No! I was trying to work out the best position for my iMac so I could avoid the glare of sunlight.” Honestly. Is there nothing these people don’t know about me? I add, Remember. They are always watching you. Take care, to the ever-growing pile of notes to self.

  “Aye? If you say so.” She hands over my paper bag, and I snap it from her fingers and walk out with my nose in the air. My gesture goes wrong anyway. I trip over the raised edge of the door frame on the way out, and the pharmacist assistant’s guffaws follow me all the way back to Kirsty’s house.

  Luckily, the antihistamines work their magic in no time. By Monday afternoon, I’ve stopped sneezing and feel well enough to set up the iMac in Jack’s house. I open the door warily, worried again that he might be in and will object to a stranger letting herself into his home and setting up her computer quite the thing. But once more, the place is empty. When I switch the iMac on and type in the Wi-Fi password, I am able to connect to Bespoke Design’s remote access desktop straight away, and I email Melissa promising her I
’ll start on the website product page template Blissful Beauty needs tomorrow. At least something works.

  I drop in on the local shop after I leave. I’d made its acquaintance over the weekend when I’d stocked up on orange juice as per Katya’s recommendations and blasted smoked salmon. Little Ms Mena now refuses to eat anything else, even though Kirsty’s instructions promised she isn’t a fussy eater. Not only that, the little shop stocks two different brands of smoked salmon, one expensive and the other you’ve got to be kidding pricey. Guess which one the little furry wretch prefers?

  “How are ye, Gaby?” Lochalshie General Store’s manager now thinks himself on first-name terms with me, which isn’t surprising given how much money I’ve now spent in there. And as advertised, there is nothing this shop doesn’t sell. The building has a high ceiling of which the manager has taken advantage by putting shelves all the way to the top. You can buy clothes, mainly raincoats and wellie boots, fishing gear, buckets and spades, deck chairs, insect repellent, every single foodstuff known to man and woman, wine, beer and champagne, make-up, books, bakery and more. When more than one person is in the store, the space closes in you as the aisles in the shop are only wide enough for one.

  “Fine,” I say, “orange juice and another two packets of this stuff please.”

  The manager, Jamal, moves to the fridge and pulls out a packet of chicken breasts. “Try these instead,” he says. “They’re a lot cheaper. You dinnae want that cat getting ideas above her station.”

  Too late for that, but I take them anyway. They come in at five pence cheaper than the expensive smoked salmon. When I stare at him, wondering if chicken has suddenly developed rare breed status, Jamal tells me they come from the farm next to the village, so they’re free-range and organic. I’d have preferred the chlorinated, mass-produced variety for the cat, thank you very much.

  Back in the house and Ms Mena fed, I jump out of my skin when a shrill bell sounds out before working out it’s the 1930s style phone on the table next to the kitchen area. I pick up the receiver warily. I knew no one who had a landline any more.