Sealed With a Kiss (17 page)

‘Well, if it’s Roddy you’re after, it’d be pointless working on a plot to make him realize what he’s missing by snogging me,’ he said, with a rueful grin.
‘I think we’ve already covered that one.’

Kate cringed, remembering the expression on Roderick’s face. Somehow she suspected he wasn’t the sort to respond to that sort of game-playing, in any case.

‘So what do I do?’

‘Nothing at the moment. You need to carry on working, get out, have some fun, let him see you’re not bothered.’ Finn took a final swig of tea.

‘I can’t see how that’ll work.’

‘You’re a gorgeous girl, Kate, and I’m not going to tread on anyone’s toes.’ Finn answered her dubious look. ‘We had a great night last night, but it was a
wee bit of fun. If you’re serious about Roddy, you go for it.’

‘You don’t think he’ll have written me off after this morning?’ She felt a tiny glimmer of hope. Finn and Roderick had been friends since childhood – surely he had
some idea how his friend thought?

‘I think he’s the opposite of me. There’s a lot more going on under the surface. I’m more your what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of bloke.’ He stood up, stretching.
‘It might surprise you to hear that I’m universally regarded as being the island’s agony uncle. Trust me. I know my stuff. There’s not much I haven’t seen.’

‘Okay, I’ll give you till Christmas.’ Unconvinced, Kate gathered the tea things and took them back to the kitchen.

Kate wasn’t working. She spent the day skulking around miserably, having a hot bath (after fixing the temperamental water heater, again), eating chocolate and watching
Bridget Jones’s Diary
on DVD. It wasn’t the same without Emma, and it wasn’t half as much fun finding herself in the part of Bridget, with Roderick as the gorgeous Darcy.
Susan was too busy juggling small people to come and keep her company, and Kate didn’t have the energy to deal with an excited Jamie, who was spending all his waking hours planning his
Christmas list.

For the first time since she’d been on the island, Kate felt lonely, and miserable.

She hit Send, and waited for Emma’s response.

Kate sent the two-word response to Emma and closed her eyes, lying back on the rug by the fire.

Despite herself, Kate smiled.

Willow leapt onto Kate’s lap, so she accidentally sent the message.

Kate rolled onto her back and lay for a long time, staring at the ceiling.

‘So, all that’s left to do is the bunkhouse.’ Closing the door of the holiday cottage, Kate hugged the clipboard to her chest for comfort. The atmosphere was
almost as chilly as the weather.

Having been left without Roderick’s backup, she’d found herself far more involved in the cottage renovations than she’d expected. With Jean’s comforting support in the
background, she’d chosen colour schemes and furnishings that she would have picked, had she been decorating her own cottage from scratch. The wooden floors had been polished and the dated
kitchen cupboards replaced with wooden cabinets in muted shades of grey. The trouble was that returning to her cottage, alone, was becoming less and less appealing. Where it had seemed comfortingly
untidy, it now felt lonely, set apart from the cosy group of cottages up the lane. Having thrown herself into work, Kate had seen her own decorating plans fall by the wayside. She felt alone,
despite her new friends, and thoughts of escaping back to Cambridge were sneaking into her mind at inopportune moments.

‘Thank you, Kate,’ said Roderick stiffly, jingling his car keys. ‘You’ve done a wonderful job, hasn’t she, Jean?’

‘That she has.’ Jean reached across and gave Kate’s arm a little squeeze. ‘Shall we christen it with a cup of tea? I’ve got everything we need in the
car.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Roderick quickly, just as Kate’s mouth was also opening to make an excuse. ‘I need to get back.’

Jean looked at the two of them, but said nothing. She’d heard all about the situation with Finn. He was prone to popping in to warm himself over the Aga with a cup of tea when he was
working on the estate. Typical of men, there was no atmosphere between him and Roderick, but Jean thought that Roderick was behaving like a spoilt child, expecting to put down a toy, leave it for a
month, then return to find it in exactly the same place. Smiling to herself at what the ever-more independent Kate would think about being called a toy, she decided to make herself a cup of tea,
even if nobody else wanted one.

Kate marched away from the house, throwing her clipboard onto the back seat of her car, and changed her shoes for wellington boots. It was a bitter December day and the wind was whipping in from
the Atlantic. She wrapped her scarf round her nose and pulled on a hat.

‘Sorry, darling, you can’t come down to Selkie Bay, you’ll be eaten alive,’ she said to Willow, closing her into her dog cage.

Locking the car, she clambered over the rocks and down onto the long, deserted beach. In the distance she could see the grey mounds. Even now she couldn’t quite make out if they were
stones or seals, but the familiar banana shape of one gave it away. Sitting down on a rocky ledge, she pulled her binoculars out of her pocket.

I have binoculars. It’s official, thought Kate, I’m a seal nerd. She scanned the beach. Since the first day that Roderick had spent time teaching her all about the seals’
behaviour, she’d loved coming to Selkie Bay with a flask of coffee, her hands warm in fingerless gloves.

A group of three seal pups were exploring a rock pool, watched from a distance by their mothers, who floated, noses above the water, in the waves. Kate watched them sniffing each other, biting
and ducking. All of their play was vital, teaching the pups how to survive in the wilds of the winter sea. She sat observing them until her legs were stiff with cold and her cheeks were frozen by
the wind.

As she stood to leave, slowly unfolding her legs, Kate saw something hurtling across the beach. It was a tiny dog, heading straight for a group of seals with their pups.

‘Blossom! Come back here!’

Kate wheeled round, hearing a familiar voice carrying on the wind. Sandra, dressed in a pair of floral wellingtons, a very clean Barbour and a pair of immaculate moleskin trousers, was
speed-walking towards her.

‘Call her away from the seals – she’ll scare them,’ yelled Kate desperately.

‘Blossom! Blossom, come here at once!’ Sandra squawked, but the terrier wasn’t listening. Kate was running forward onto the beach, calling the dog, groping in her pockets for
the treats she used when training Willow.

‘Come! Blossom, come!’ Kate called again in a singsong voice, and the dog stopped barking, turning to her with an ear cocked. It was hard to be heard with the wind whipping past, but
she shouted desperately, and finally the terrier cantered up the beach towards her, sitting down and taking a treat as if she deserved it.

Sandra was ranting at the dog, and at Kate, but it was falling on deaf ears. She hadn’t noticed, but Kate was staring out to the edge of the water. Dozens of seals were dragging themselves
over the rocks to escape the threat. Tears stung her eyes. The seals were rushing, not looking where they were going on the rocky shoreline. Kate remembered Roderick’s explanation of the
damage that could be caused to their fins and their undersides as a result. She turned to Sandra in fury.

‘Why did you let her off the lead here? Don’t you know dogs aren’t allowed on the beach when the seals are hauled out?’

‘She’s not my dog,’ snapped Sandra defensively.

Kate shook her head, too upset to speak. She stood silently and watched the last few seals slip into the safety of the waves. Sandra slunk off, taking the disgruntled Blossom with her.

The best thing to do with seals is leave them to it, Kate could imagine Roderick saying. She stood for a few moments, watching as the shape of Sandra grew smaller as she scuttled up the beach.
The tiny speck climbed into her car and drove off.

‘Stupid humans,’ said Kate out loud. She turned and headed for the car, and her little dog, safely locked away out of reach of the seals.

Back at the cottage that night, Kate slept badly. She lay awake watching the digital numbers on her alarm clock as they slipped from 2.00, to 3.00, to 4.00. When she finally
succumbed to sleep, she dreamed of seals, and of Roderick telling her off for letting Willow chase them. Her alarm dragged her awake at half-past seven. Heavy-legged with exhaustion, she stumbled
downstairs, letting Willow out into the garden. As the spaniel explored the latest delicious smells, Kate boiled the kettle.

‘I’m putting a lot of faith in this cup of coffee,’ she said as the puppy came back and leapt into her arms, snuggling up like a wriggling hot-water bottle. ‘Maybe just
five minutes in bed, and then we’ll get up properly. Come on, Willow.’

Kate was dreaming again. Roderick was there, and Willow was in her arms.

‘I’m sorry for being such a pompous arse,’ he smiled.

In the dream Kate was effortlessly chic, legs clad in black jeans that weren’t covered in dog fur, in a beautifully ironed and expensive-looking shirt, and her hair was smooth and
immaculate. She swished her dream hair, which was salon-thick and glossy.

‘I forgive you,’ said Dream Kate, magnanimously.

Roderick bent down, and licked her face lovingly.

‘Ugh. Ugh! Willow – ugh, stop it!’

Sensing that her mistress had dozed off, Willow had decided to wake her with an impromptu face-washing session.

‘Bleargh! Dog breath.’

All traces of dog slobber gone, and at least some of the tiredness washed away in a scalding hot shower, Kate whistled to Willow and decided to walk the five minutes up to Duntarvie House. She
had some final preparations to make before the arrival of the first cottage residents, and Jean had instructed her to come armed with plans for the Hogmanay ceilidh. Unfortunately Kate’s only
experience of ceilidhs had been of drunken whirling and looking up men’s kilts at university. She’d managed to gloss over that fact with Jean, who was fizzing with excitement in a most
uncharacteristic manner. She was spending most of her time looking at kilt catalogues, and trying to persuade Kate that she should wear traditional Highland dress to the party.

‘Morning.’ Clipped, brusque and incredibly irritating, Roderick opened the door to the house.

‘Just about.’ Kate smothered a yawn. She bent down, unclipping Willow, who hurtled through the hall to find Roderick’s dogs. She skittered on the parquet floor and disappeared
out of sight. Roderick smiled at Willow fondly, then shook himself.

‘Right, Kate, we need to discuss the practicalities of this cottage let.’

All we ever discuss now are practicalities, thought Kate. ‘Yes, we do. And I need to talk to Jean about New Year’s Eve.’

‘Hogmanay,’ he reminded her, with a tiny ghost of a smile.

‘It’s the same thing,’ snapped Kate.

‘It most certainly is not, as you’ll see.’

‘I’m not sure I will. I’m going home for Christmas, and I’m not sure I’ll come back before New Year.’ Ha, thought Kate, I’m going to call it that, to
piss him off.

‘But you have to!’ The words burst out of Roderick’s mouth. He reined himself in, taking a sharp intake of breath. ‘You can’t miss your first ceilidh here at the
house. Jean would be devastated.’

‘Would she?’ said Kate, non-committally.

‘Kate, you’re here. Wonderful,’ exclaimed Jean, as they walked into the kitchen.

Oh God, thought Kate. Jean was armed with more bloody kilt brochures and a slightly manic air.

‘I ordered some snippets, so we could see which colours suited you.’ She brandished a handful of hairy tartan at Kate. ‘Now, come over here to the mirror and we can have a
look.’

‘But I’m not Scottish. And my surname is Jarvis.’

Jean beamed.

‘Aha, but that’s the beauty of tartan. Your name comes under the Stirling District clan.’ She reached forward, holding the piece of itchy material against Kate’s cheek
and turning her to the mirror. ‘Now look at that. That yellow looks an absolute treat with your pale skin.’

Speechless, Kate looked at herself in the mirror. The material made her look ghostly white, and her freckles stood out as if each one had been painted on. Oh, help! And Jean was looking at her
with anticipation and glee.