Page 10 of The Scottish Island Inn

The feel of his body so close to hers, the security and warmth of being in his arms, even momentarily, was destabilising. The smell of him – she’d forgotten all of it, or, at least, had made herself forget. But as soon as he was within such close proximity, it all came flooding back.

‘No… it’s okay…’ Sorrel didn’t quite know what to say. ‘I… Never mind.’

‘What?’

‘No, it’s just… it’s weird, seeing you again,’ she confessed. ‘I didn’t expect to.’

‘It’s weird for me too, Sorrel.’ He looked down at his feet, and then his hazel eyes flickered to hers. ‘Not weird. Like a dream.’ His look was so charged with emotion that it startled her. She glanced away, not knowing how to hold his gaze. Not knowing what to do with the emotion that she found there.

Tam stepped backwards, clearing his throat.

‘Well, we should…’ He gestured towards a door to one side of the kitchen that led down to the basement.

‘Yes. Absolutely.’

We are pretending that everything is normal, she thought. We are pretending that this isn’t weird, unsettling, and that there aren’t feelings all over the place.

She followed him as he opened the door and led her down the steps.

SIX

‘Hm,’ she replied. ‘This is quite bad, isn’t it?’ The walls of the basement were bare brick in a deep brownish red, but the colour was darker on most of the wall apart from the top, where the bricks were lighter. She stared at the wide crack running from top to bottom.

‘It’s not great, no,’ Tam admitted. ‘But hopefully it can be fixed.’

‘Is this the main problem?’ Sorrel knelt down and touched the bottom of the crack lightly with her fingertip.

‘There are other cracks. But the main issue is that when the burn started flooding the last few years, because of the heavy rains, the foundations down here in the basement were destroyed.’ Tam sighed. ‘Not the only property nearby that has this problem, sadly,’ he added.

Sorrel knew the burn, which was another word for small river. Its Gaelic name was Abhainn a’ Chaisteil, meaning river of the castle. It ran through the land near to Balhennie Castle and flowed into the loch. The burn ran along the side of the Inn’s garden and went past the house. Not far away: yards, that was all. She’d played in it as a child in the summer. Befriended families of ducks; listened to their officious quacking in the mornings as she stood at the kitchen sink, helping with the washing-up.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said, feeling awful that she didn’t. There was so much that she’d missed by being away.

‘No way for you to know unless you were here. The Laird brought in a team from somewhere to dig in an overflow. That was last year, so we hope that we won’t get any more flooding now. Not in the same way,’ Tam said.

Being in the same space as the man she had once loved so deeply, without warning, without expecting to ever see him again, was strangely heartbreaking. Her chest ached with a deep sadness; she couldn’t have predicted that she would feel so sad, being with Tam Blackwood, and yet so happy to see him. But the sadness was for all the years that had gone where she hadn’t seen him every day. It was a loss, and even though her eyes roamed his face, finding reassurance in every familiar feature, she realised that being with Tam was like walking a once-familiar landscape. It was lovely to be back in a place that she never thought she would revisit, but her heart ached because she knew that she had lost the map to it. Lost access to that private place of joy that was Tam: his heart, his thoughts, his body.

This time two days ago, if anyone had asked her if she thought she would ever see Tam again, she would have said no. Yet, now, here they were, talking about flooding and damp and subsidence as if nothing had happened. When, in fact, so much had happened that it was impossible to know how to talk about it.

‘How long would something like this have been here without anyone knowing?’ Sorrel looked up at Tam. His eyes met hers, and she felt the old, familiar electricity between them.

She had always loved Tam’s eyes. They were hazel, unusual in that they held beautiful specks of green, like hidden emeralds. Treasures that the casual glance would miss. His lashes were long, giving his eyes a soft look. He was dark-haired; he wore it shaggy, to his shoulders, with a beard. He hadn’t had one when she’d seen him last, but it suited him.

Sorrel looked away. She couldn’t bear to look at him for too long. He was beautiful, and with every passing second, she was kicking herself for ever letting him go.

But dear god, he was a beauty.

He’d always been tall and wide in the shoulders, but ten years had given him a solidity he hadn’t had before. He’d filled out, as people said. A man’s body now, not a young man’s rangy frame. He looked like he had heft. Like he could put her over his shoulder and carry her, fireman-style.

He’s not yours to ogle, she rebuked herself. But she hadn’t been ogling. She had been… appreciating. Appreciating someone she had once loved, like a blind woman gently tracing the face of a lover she once knew. ‘Years. Hard to say how many, but the flooding started about nine, ten years ago. About the time you…’ he broke off, looking uncomfortable. ‘You know.’

‘When I left,’ she finished the sentence for him.

‘Yeah.’ He nodded, chewing his lip.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. That, at least, needed to be said. ‘That I left, and that I never… you know. I never said anything to you.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said, but it was a reflex. A conversational filler.