Page 3 of The Castle in the Bay

‘Oi!’ a voice yelled. A scream and a clatter followed. He spun around and rammed his glasses on to see a woman on the ground with a bike on top of her. A bag of chips had scattered across the road and seagulls descended on them, cackling and shrieking.

‘Are you alright?’ Monty crouched by the woman, ducking as a gull almost scalped him.

She moved slowly. Dressed only in tight black shorts and a cropped black exercise top, she’d probably grazed a lot of skin.

‘What on earth were you doing?’ She winced as she sat up. Her shoulder and upper arm were grey and dusty. She brushed at the mess, revealing red skin that looked chaffed and sore.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ Monty said. ‘I didn’t look.’

‘That much is obvious.’

‘Can I help you at all? Call an ambulance?’

‘An ambulance?’ She raised an eyebrow, like she suspected him of losing his mind.

Her dark blue eyes bored into him from under her cycle helmet, and his stomach did a weird little flip. He really had an incredible knack for making an idiot of himself. If the ground would please just open up and take him away. She glowered at him and shook her head, then turned away and lifted her bike.

‘Should I help you with that?’ he asked.

‘No thanks. Just look where you’re going in future. And clear off.’ She shooed the gulls as soon as she was on her feet. Montykept his distance, not sure if it was her or the gulls he wanted to be furthest away from. ‘That’s all my chips gone,’ she muttered.

‘I’m happy to replace them.’

‘It's fine.’ She mounted her bike again.

‘Are you definitely ok to—’

She pushed the pedals and whizzed off. ‘Tourists,’ she muttered before she cycled out of earshot, her long tawny brown ponytail swishing in the wind behind her with a somewhat dismissive air.

Monty closed his eyes and drew in a breath. Ok. That wasn’t the best start to his holiday, but hopefully she’d be ok and he wouldn’t see her again. So, no harm done.

Chapter Two

Iona

Iona McKenzie stood on the bike to pedal up the hill.Nearly at the top.The view over the emerald sea was glorious on hot days like this, but sweat was making her crop top and shorts stick to her back. To cap it all, the skin on her shoulder and arm smarted. Not to mention the pain in her ankle from the bike landing on her when that idiot had walked into her.

People like him were what made island life so irritating. Yeah, yeah, she knew tourists were a necessary part of the economy and her business, but some of the stuff they did was full-on mental and drove her nuts. Maybe she didn’t have the right to complain. She wasn’t an islander, born and bred. Still, she’d come here with a view to live and work, and amazingly for her, she’d stuck it out. Tourists who came to contribute to local businesses and respect the environment were fine. That man in the town, however? Well, maybe he was contributing somehow, just not to her sanity. He certainly looked like he had money – if that shirt was anything to go by – but would he survive five minutes here dressed like that? Maybe she shouldn’t have swerved and tried to miss him. She could just have powered on and knocked him down the hill into the sea.

The idea made her smirk, though she wasn’t really that mean. The scrapes and bruises were aching reminders of his lunacy, that was all. They’d soon pass. Iona didn’t let pain bother her for long. She was always getting something in her line of work, but when someone else caused it, it annoyed her.

She reached An Grianan, the farm where she lodged, and swung her leg off the bike, freewheeling on one pedal to the door of the shed. Taking off her cycle helmet was a relief, and she shook her long wavy hair free from its ponytail, tossing back her head and letting the breeze whisper cool air across her hot forehead. She needed a shower, and she should probably put something on her shoulder and arm, though the pain was already subsiding, and would soon be forgotten completely. All her life, she’d been like this – quick to move from one thing to another. As a child, she’d been overactive, bouncing off walls, running everywhere, banging her head, scraping her knees and picking herself up to do it all again – pretty much driving her parents insane with worry at what damage she might do to herself next. But hey, she was still here to tell the tale.

Once her bike was safely away, she crossed the yard at the back of the farmhouse, where a few chickens pecked about, and went to the backdoor.

‘Hi Iona,’ a soft voice said as she entered the kitchen.

‘Hi Eilidh.’ Iona ruffled the little girl’s head. ‘What are you up to?’

Eilidh lifted a pen from the paper she was drawing on as though it was obvious. ‘Drawing a butterfly.’

‘Don’t you want to play outside on a day like this?’ Iona crossed to the cupboard and took out a glass, filling it to the brim with water.

‘I got too hot.’

‘Yeah, I can understand that.’ Iona plonked herself down at the table. The door from the hall creaked open and Catriona Griffin, Eilidh’s mum, came in with a pile of laundry.

‘You’re back.’ Catriona dumped the laundry on an empty chair with a sigh and stroked her luscious long hair into a ponytail. Iona marvelled at Catriona, who, at twenty-six, was two years younger than her, but still seemed more mature and together. How did she do it? Perhaps it was because she’d had a child already, or maybe she just had more sense. She was always hard at work – an old head on young shoulders, who also happened to look amazing despite constantly having her nose to the grindstone. Iona herself was blessed with height, a good figure and strong bone structure, but she didn’t even manage a tumbled-out-of-bed look well – she generally felt messy and not well put together.

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