She said goodbye to the drop-in centre in the middle of May, and since then, when she wasn’t working out in the garden, she had been planning her project. She had good people now lined up to help, a whole raft of ideas for fund-raising and promotion. The next step was to find some suitable land and buy it.
Later that day she and Stuart intended to tell everyone about the plan, but for now they had a barbecue to organize.
∗
James and Derek arrived back from the shop with enough drink to launch the Queen Mary and a carrier bag full of different cheeses.
‘Why so much cheese?’ Laura asked James. ‘Is this some sort of secret vice you want to tell me about?’
He laughed, his soft brown eyes crinkling up at the corners. Laura liked him so much – perhaps at first it was just because he had made Meggie radiant and youthful again, but now she found him a pleasure to be around. He was calm and steady, chatty enough not to be dull company, but not the pushy kind who likes to take centrestage.
He was an unlikely policeman really; he looked the part – brawny, tall and fit – but he was gentle, his voice as soft as his eyes. A deep-thinking man, kind and sensitive.
‘You’ve got me banged to rights,’ he said. ‘I just love all kinds of cheese, so when I’m faced with a huge selection I have to have some of each.’
‘But so much of each one?’ Laura laughed. ‘We’ll be eating it for weeks.’
‘I’m the same about beer,’ Derek chimed in. ‘Got to taste every single kind, and my God, there’s a lot of Scottish beers to choose from.’
‘Well, go easy on it today, we don’t want you falling in the loch,’ she said. Her brother-in-law was a party animal. Fifteen stone of noise, laughter, jokes and fun. He could be relied on to keep the party going into the early hours. Laura often thought he should have been a publican, but in fact he was a personnel officer in an insurance company. Ivy claimed he had to suppress his real personality all week and that was why he broke out at weekends and on holiday.
‘Maybe I should put on a life jacket just in case,’ he laughed, then, looking out at his boys in the boat, he remarked how well they were rowing now. ‘Your Stuart’s a good’un,’ he said. ‘The boys really like him.’
As Laura prepared some salads later in the kitchen she thought of that remark of Derek’s. Stuart had got the boys to bring the boat in now, and he’d organized them into helping him set up a trestle table for the food, and now they were lighting the barbecue. It wasn’t just children who liked Stuart, it was everyone, and that made it so easy for her. She thought he wouldn’t get along with the people who worked alongside her at the drop-in centre, for they were in the main oddballs, earnest, very left wing and opinionated. But he had, even if he did laugh at some of their ideas later. He could converse just as easily with the rich barristers and Harley Street surgeons who had holiday homes around here as he could with bricklayers and plumbers at the pub.
Not a day went past without her offering up a little prayer of thanks that he came back into her life and gave her all this.
She looked around her beautiful kitchen, ran her fingers along the silky-smooth drawers and reminded herself it was all his work. Whatever she wanted, whether it was a high rail to hang pans on, a special rack for herbs and spices, wardrobes or bookshelves, he did it, with love.
It was laughable really that she’d once gauged a man’s love for her by the monetary value of his gifts. Stuart didn’t go in for lavish gestures like jewellery, but what he gave her was far more valuable – his time, skill and care.
Looking down the garden, she could see him now presiding over the barbecue. He’d built that too with bricks left from the house, on the same spot she’d lit the fire the first time she came here. He was wearing khaki shorts and a check shirt, and his legs, though thin and, as he always said, ‘unsuitable for kilt wearing’, were as brown as conkers.
They’d kept the old bench by the jetty, and they often sat out there at night watching the sun set over the loch. Somehow she knew they’d still be here together in another twenty or thirty years, just like the old couple who’d lived here before. Still in love with each other.
She had just got all the salads ready to take outside and Meggie and Ivy had been in to collect plates, cutlery and sauces, when Stuart came in, bringing her a glass of wine.
‘I was just coming out,’ she said, but took an appreciative gulp of it.
He came closer and hooked her hair back behind one of her ears. ‘Marty me, Laura?’ he said.
She giggled in surprise. ‘What brought that on?’
‘Because I’ve got everything a man could wish for, except I can’t call you my wife. I’d like to, it makes a public statement about how I feel about you.’
Laura had quite often been a little embarrassed when talking to people about Stuart. Calling him her boyfriend sounded so juvenile; partner sounded so businesslike. She knew Stuart referred to her as ‘my lady’, which was lovely, but there was no equivalent expression to use for a man.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Will you?’
She flung her arms around him. ‘Yes, oh yes,’ she said gleefully. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better.’
‘That’s a relief,’ he said and kissed her tenderly.
‘Why is it a relief?’ she asked after the kiss.
‘Well, I told Derek to buy some champagne when he was at the shop. He asked why and I said we might have something special to celebrate later. What a chump I’d look if you’d said no.’
Laura laughed and hugged him. ‘Only a complete fool would turn you down. So let’s take these salads out, check the boys aren’t burning the steaks, and when there’s a lull in the jollity we’ll tell everyone.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
Laura looked at those kind grey eyes and smiling mouth and saw again the hesitant, rather shy, much younger man she’d fallen in love with two decades earlier.
‘Two hundred per cent sure,’ she said. ‘And we’ll grow old and doddery here together. But right now it’s party time!’
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Acknowledgements
Faith
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Epilogue
Faith Page 58
