Wildflower Bay

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘I’m famous.’ Jinny did a little twirl on the spot, ending in a curtsy. ‘Autographs are available on request – oh my God, this is so amazing, can you believe it? Our salon, featured in a proper magazine like real hairstylists?’

  Isla shook her head, laughing. She peered over Shannon’s shoulder. They were all in there – and she was mentioned in the caption. Well, that was one in the eye for Kat Black and Chantelle. She wondered if they’d pick up the magazine over coffee in Edinburgh and notice. And – she gave a shiver of anticipation and nerves – the reunion was two days away. Well, that would be one in the eye for the mean girls from school. She crossed her fingers behind her back and sent up a little petition to Lily’s goddess of the Clootie Well: please let them pick up a copy of this week’s edition. Maybe she’d sneak up later and tie a wish to the tree, just in case.

  ‘This is literally the absolute best day of my life ever. I can’t believe it. I can die happy.’ Jinny hopped up and down.

  Shannon was still peering closely at the picture, as if she couldn’t quite take it in. ‘Can you imagine what Jessie’s going to say to this?’

  Isla looked up as the door rattled open and their first client of the day walked in. ‘I’ll give her a call later. Meanwhile, you two, we’ve got hair to do.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want me to put a nice colour in?’ Shannon spoke to Isla’s reflection. It was Saturday morning, they’d finished up early, and Isla was feeling so sick with nerves that she could barely speak. Her stomach was twisted in a knot.

  She shook her head.

  Shannon ran her hands through Isla’s wet hair. Jinny, meanwhile, was spinning round on the next chair, dithering over what Isla should wear, a prized copy of Hello! still close at hand. She’d been utterly delirious with glee for the past two days – every single client had been shown a copy, the newsagent had ordered in extras from the mainland, and Jinny was determined that Isla should take one with her to the reunion.

  ‘Just stick it in your bag, casual-like. And when they’re all, “So I’m manager of Marks and Spencer, what do you do?” you can just pull it out –’ she flicked it in the air, as if brandishing a sword – ‘and be like “Yeah well I’m in Hello! magazine actually, so stick that in yer pipe and smoke it.”’

  Isla, who could imagine Jinny turning up to her own school reunion in ten years’ time and doing just that – except, of course, that there wasn’t a soul on the island who didn’t already know about it – laughed. There was absolutely no way she’d do anything like that. To be honest, she was seriously contemplating backing out. She knew that both Helen and Amira wouldn’t take much persuading.

  ‘How about I make it a bit asymmetric?’ Shannon ran her hands down Isla’s hair, thoughtfully. ‘I mean, it’s in gorgeous condition and that, but it’s a wee bit . . .’

  ‘Safe?’ Jinny piped up, helpfully.

  Shannon pulled an awkward face. ‘Er, yeah.’

  Isla, who prided herself on her smooth, gleaming, neatly kept bob, grimaced at them in the mirror. They were probably right. ‘OK. Nothing majorly radical.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Shannon, picking up the scissors, ‘you’re safe with me.’

  Isla closed her eyes. It was true, she did feel confident in Shannon’s abilities. The younger girl had a real talent that had just needed to be brought out, and the last few weeks had done that. Isla had loved teaching her, and she’d been a brilliant pupil. How she was supposed to go back to being Jessie’s second-in-command, Isla couldn’t imagine – but Shannon adored island life, and wouldn’t want to move away.

  When she’d first arrived here on Auchenmor, the idea that someone would want to stay here voluntarily had been impossible for Isla to comprehend. As time had passed, though, and she’d grown used to island time – where things got done, but you had to allow at least twice as long as you would in the city, and nothing was in a hurry – the friendliness that had at first spooked her had come to seem reassuring. Now, when she popped to the florist for armfuls of gorgeous flowers to make the little flat more welcoming, she stood and chatted with Helen about what she’d brought over from the market. She popped to the greengrocer’s for fresh, locally grown vegetables instead of wilting bags of pre-packed salad from the supermarket, and pottered around the shops with Ruth, helping her with her shopping and stopping for tea and a bun on the way home.

  ‘Isla?’ Jinny placed a cup of coffee on the little ledge below the mirror. ‘You asleep?’

  ‘No.’ She looked up at the girls, who had paused for a moment to admire Shannon’s handiwork. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘About the school reunion? I can’t imagine being thirty.’ Jinny scrumpled up her face, looking in the mirror. ‘D’you think I’ll be wrinkly by then?’

  Shannon shot her a look. Isla rubbed between her eyes, where frown lines, product of years of concentrating hard as she cut hair, had begun to form.

  ‘Don’t listen to madam there,’ Shannon said, with uncharacteristic reassurance.

  ‘Ooh, no,’ said Jinny, backtracking. ‘I didn’t mean you are wrinkly, I just . . .’

  Isla laughed. ‘It’s fine. I wasn’t really thinking about the reunion – to be honest,’ she found herself confessing, ‘I feel a bit sick thinking about it.’

  Shannon made a couple of final adjustments before standing back with her scissors, head cocked to one side, mouth pursed thoughtfully. ‘Right, let’s dry this off and see what you think.’

  ‘You are looking gorgeous.’ Shannon sat back on her cutting stool, looking at Isla’s reflection in the mirror. She’d done a beautiful job of her hair, Isla had to admit. Jinny was desperate to do her make-up, but there was no way that it would survive the journey back to Edinburgh. It would have to wait, and she’d do it in her dad’s bathroom before Helen arrived to pick her up. She had the two o’clock ferry to catch if she was going to make it back to Edinburgh in time.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  With a final smoothing down of her hair, Isla slipped into the back of her dad’s cab.

  ‘Right then, Cinderella – let’s get you to this ball.’ He turned in his seat to smile at her before starting the taxi with a growl of the diesel engine. Isla strapped herself into the back seat, smoothing the belt over her black dress. She’d decided to go classic and understated, with her habitual black – a slash-necked dress which, she realized, looking down, rode up her thighs more than she expected when she was sitting down. She’d have to stay standing up the whole time, or tuck her legs under the table.

  She took a breath, trying to calm herself. Despite the perfect hair, the manicured nails, the expensive shoes and bag, she felt like she was ten again, heading off to the primary-school disco in a dress she thought was gorgeous. Closing her eyes, she remembered the scene. Allison and the gang had rounded on her, laughing and pointing, saying the frilly edge and pretty polka dots made her look like she’d come in her nightie.

  Oh, God. A tidal wave of last-minute panic hit. She looked down at her phone. It still wasn’t too late to pull out, to tell Helen that she couldn’t face it. They could go out for a girly dinner instead, catch up over a bottle of champagne . . . Isla paused for a moment, shaking her head, remembering the last time she’d mixed an Edinburgh night out with alcohol. No. There was no going back.

  The horn sounded as her dad pulled up outside Helen’s house. Amira, who was meeting them at the reunion, was the brave one. At least Helen and Isla would be walking in together. With a deep breath, Isla put her phone back in her bag and braced herself for the fray.

  ‘You look amazing!’ Isla moved her handbag, making space for Helen. She’d highlighted her huge, beautiful eyes with dark shadow and her hair was pinned up loosely, waving tendrils curling around her neck. Helen put an instinctive hand up, doubt flashing across her face.

  ‘So do you.’ Helen sat down, and they set off.

  They sat in nervous silence, both looking out of the window, the radio playing incongruously
cheerful tunes through the speakers. With a groan of the handbrake, the cab pulled up.

  ‘Right, girls –’ Isla’s dad had hopped out of the front seat and opened the door for them, like a chauffeur – ‘you both look cracking. Go in there and knock ’em dead.’

  The function suite of the Muirton Arms hotel looked like it hadn’t changed in the last fifteen years. A shiny silver plastic banner hung across the wooden door, emblazoned with the word ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘What are we congratulating?’ Helen, tugging at the hem of her skirt, looked at Isla and pulled a face.

  ‘Ourselves,’ Isla replied, taking another deep breath and trying to control the overwhelming urge to flee, ‘for making it here. We can leave any time.’

  ‘We can leave any time.’ Helen chanted the response.

  Inside, by the front door, a very blonde woman with her hair pinned up in a loose bun stood holding a sheet of name stickers.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I’m terrible with names and faces . . .’ She didn’t look up as she scribbled something on a clipboard. ‘I’ve no idea how Charlotte roped me in to working on the door.’

  Isla peered at the woman’s chest, trying to make out her name as Helen ran through the list, finding her name and sticking it to her chest. Who on earth was Tina?

  ‘Isla.’ Tina looked up at her with a smile of recognition. ‘Oh yes, I remember you, we sat next to each other in Chemistry.’

  Tina – Christina. Quiet as a mouse, hair to match, top of the class for science, kept herself to herself – this blonde, glamorous woman in teetering heels was Christina?

  Inside the function room there were balloons hanging from the light fittings, a tray of drinks sitting on the bar, and huddles of people standing awkwardly around. It looked like a middle-management conference had been relocated to an eighteenth birthday party. Half the men were in suits, the women balancing in unfamiliar heels. Helen reached across and took two glasses, handing one to Isla.

  ‘I know you said you weren’t drinking, but this is just in case.’

  Isla took the glass of wine and sniffed it, wincing. It smelt sour, the reek of alcohol making her eyes water.

  Helen continued. ‘Amira’s just texted, she’ll be here in a second. She decided she wasn’t coming in until we were definitely in the building.’

  ‘In case we chickened out?’ said Isla, raising her eyebrows in amusement.

  ‘Well, would you?’

  ‘Oh my God, Isla Brown!’ A voice from across the room sounded out like a foghorn.

  A gaggle of women spun round, the unmistakable Allison Graves at their centre. Isla felt her heart thudding, and her stomach turned over with panic.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Helen. ‘Brace for impact.’

  Isla felt her cheeks lift into an automatic rictus smile of recognition, and the pack moved in for the kill.

  ‘I saw you in Hello! magazine.’ Allison Graves, her hair still just as red, her wiry figure very definitely not just as wiry (she had a decidedly matronly bosom in her red lace dress), flapped her hands in amazement.

  ‘Aye, Kerry saw it as well,’ nodded one of the other women, who Isla recognized as Lynne, one of the old gang who’d routinely terrorized her. ‘Did you bring it with you? Isla, you could’ve given us a wee autograph, you’re famous.’

  Isla looked wildly at Helen, who was being embraced by someone in a navy-blue velvet tunic.

  ‘No idea,’ mouthed Helen, wide-eyed.

  ‘Not exactly famous,’ said Isla, virtually dumbstruck.

  ‘Last I heard from my mum was that you were working in that posh hairdresser’s up on Hanover Street.’ Allison clinked her glass against Isla’s with a grin of complicity. ‘No’ bad for a lassie from our wee town, eh?’ Allison turned to the others, nudging Isla with a beaming smile.

  Isla, completely floored, just nodded, and swallowed a mouthful of the disgusting wine.

  ‘Isla?’ Allison nudged her. ‘Anyway – I’m sorry, I was a right bitch to you when we were at school. Bygones, eh?’ And to seal the deal, Allison insisted on buying her a drink, admiring her outfit, and dragging Helen over to compare childbirth horror stories.

  Isla was completely derailed by the fact that everyone was so bloody nice and grown-up, and had so obviously moved on from the people they were at school: it was all, wasn’t it lovely to see such-and-such got married to that boy from the year below, and what a pity Malcolm couldn’t make it, but did you know he’s got an undertakers’ firm in Melbourne now?

  It was weird, but the moment of triumph just wasn’t there. There was no delicious revenge to be had, because everyone was older, fatter, greyer in places. Jinny would giggle at that. They were turning into their parents. And where the hell was Jamie? She’d been watching the door surreptitiously all the while, as she listened and nodded and made polite noises in the right places.

  She escaped to the loo for a moment to gather her thoughts and check her hair in the mirror – Shannon had been right, the cut was still classic, but the swing of the asymmetric style gave it a modern edge. She ran a comb through it quickly, and headed back outside. Amira, looking as surprised as Isla felt, waved a quick hello from across the room.

  ‘Isla Brown. How’re you doing?’ A bald man with a round face and a stomach to match turned round from the bar, a pint of beer in his hand.

  ‘Hi.’ Isla smiled vaguely, half-scanning the room over his head.

  ‘Dinna recognize me without the hair, eh?’ His voice was familiar. Isla felt a sudden lurch in her stomach.

  ‘Jamie?’

  He nodded, beaming. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Desperate for all the news, Shannon and Jinny were earlier for work on Tuesday morning than they’d ever been.

  ‘Morning!’ they chorused in unison.

  Jinny filled the kettle. ‘Just thought we’d make you a cup of coffee and you can tell us all the gossip from the weekend because we are absolutely dying to know what happened.’

  ‘I’ll tell all after work.’ Isla – who had spent the previous day walking across the beautiful Selkie Bay on the far side of the island and watching the seal colony bobbing about in the water, speaking to nobody – still wasn’t ready to talk. ‘Right now, I just want to act like it didn’t happen.’ Her tone was final.

  Shannon, wisely, kept her mouth shut. At five o’clock she flipped the closed sign over and locked the door before turning round, hands on hips, to face Isla.

  ‘So?’

  Jinny dried her hands on a towel and hopped up onto the desk, lips pursed in anticipation of gossip.

  Isla, surprising herself, said: ‘I don’t suppose you two fancy a drink?’

  Shannon and Jinny didn’t have to be asked twice. They grabbed their bags instantly and shot to the door in a Pavlovian manner at the mere mention of the words.

  ‘Right. Two ciders for us, one gin and tonic for you. It’s therapeutic. Don’t argue.’ said Shannon, seeing the expression on Isla’s face. Isla didn’t protest further. She took a large gulp and sat back, feeling the alcohol hitting her bloodstream almost instantly. She hadn’t eaten all day.

  ‘So what the hell happened?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Isla nursed the first drink of several, and began.

  ‘And then,’ she explained to Shannon and Jinny, who still saw almost everyone they’d gone to school with virtually every day, and for whom the idea of a school reunion was completely alien, ‘then, just when it couldn’t get worse, Jamie Duncan turned up.’

  ‘That’s the one you had a bit of a thing for, right?’ Jinny waved across for Shannon’s boyfriend Rab behind the bar to get them another round, and bring it over. This was far too important to miss.

  ‘Yes,’ groaned Isla.

  ‘AND?’ chorused Jinny and Shannon.

  ‘Oh God. I was trying to make an early escape – Helen was feeling the same as me, like we’d done our time and that was quite enough, thanks very much – when he launched himsel
f at me outside the ladies’ loos.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Jinny, breathlessly.

  Isla shook her head. ‘No.’

  All those years of daydreaming about the day her prince would come, and it hadn’t occurred to her that the years might not have been kind to Jamie Duncan – heartthrob of the estate, first boy to kiss a girl in year six, coolest boy in school with an earring when nobody else was allowed one. When the round-bellied, balding, leering, wedding-ring-wearing Jamie had pounced, having arrived late and clearly several pear ciders down, Isla had side-stepped deftly, leaving him swaying against a wall.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Shannon made vomiting motions.

  ‘Ewwww.’ Jinny pulled a face.

  ‘Yeah.’ Isla downed her third gin and tonic in a oner. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So, you can strike him off the list then,’ said Shannon, pragmatically. ‘You need to have a look at my copy of The Rules.’

  ‘The library’s copy, don’t you mean?’ said Jinny.

  ‘Shit, you’re right.’ Shannon frowned. ‘I got another overdue warning about it about three weeks ago.’

  ‘So what’s next?’

  ‘The Three Bells?’ Isla, slightly unsteadily, got to her feet. Jinny gave a squeal of excitement and led the way.

  Finn had only nipped in to the pub for a quick scampi and chips on the way home because he couldn’t face another microwave dinner for one. He’d bumped into Dave – who’d shamefacedly admitted he’d nipped in for a pint on foot on the way back from the estate office, just so he could avoid the hell that was bath and bedtime with his three small children – and they’d ended up making it two, and a long talk about what to do about staffing and long-range plans. It wasn’t even eight o’clock when the door of the pub opened with the distinctive clattering bang that suggested this wasn’t the first of the many island pubs that someone had visited that evening.

  ‘I think maybe you should have a Coke instead; just pace yourself a bit,’ said Jinny. He looked up to see her and Shannon from the salon, followed by Isla, who was slightly cross-eyed, and with her long limbs all over the place doing a passable impression of Bambi on ice.