Page 31 of The Boathouse By the Loch

‘Yes, I remember.’

Jake didn’t doubt that; small towns had long memories.

‘You’re Rosemary’s boy.’ Mr Gillespie’s eyes danced around Jake.

‘I remember your mother bringing you into this shop while she was shopping.’ He paused. ‘You’ve been away a while.’

Jake looked at him quizzically; it was a strange way of looking at things. It made it sound as though Jake had just returned from a trip rather than having been gone twenty-five years, apart from his annual holiday. It made Jake feel strangely homesick, but not, as he would have expected, for England. ‘I live in London now.’

‘I would never have guessed.’ The corner of Mr Gillespie’s mouth twitched.

Jake gave him a sideways glance as he picked the sledgehammer off the counter. It felt satisfyingly heavy, like he could do some serious damage – just what he wanted.

‘Are you coming back – to live perhaps?’

‘Maybe,’ Jake frowned. Where had that come from? He had absolutely no intention of returning to live there. So, what the hell had he said that for? Jake walked to the door, pondering the question.

‘It’s what I’ve been telling them all along.’

Jake stopped short of the door. He turned to look at the old man. ‘Telling who?’

‘The young ones like yourself who leave for the bright lights of the big cities. I tell them that they’ll come back. They always come back. Can’t help themselves. You see, it’s the place – The Highlands – it haunts you. When you leave, your soul doesn’t want to go with you; it wants to stay here with the mountains and the lochs. There’s no place in the world like it.’

Jake stood by the door in contemplative silence, broken by Mr Gillespie beating a fist on the counter. ‘It’s those damn weekenders,’ he said vehemently, ‘stealing the houses from our children. Means they can’t come back, doesn’t it? You should count yourself lucky, son. Never sell, lad. Never sell. Keep it for your children.’

‘I have no children,’ Jake said stiffly. He opened the door.

‘Yes – I remember now,’ Mr Gillespie spoke softly. ‘It was your wife that had that terrible accident up there last Christmas.’

Jake nodded.

‘An unfortunate set of circumstances.’

‘Yes.’ Jake agreed that it was. Last year had been exceptional, both in terms of snowfall and the potentially dangerous conditions it had brought about, one of which Jake was now well-acquainted with – overhangs; snow and ice hanging precariously over precipices, waiting to be dislodged, creating mini-avalanches to bury alive unsuspecting skiers passing underneath. And they would not have become those unsuspecting skiers if it hadn’t been for Eleanor’s bizarre decision to lead them all off-piste. Marcus may have mentioned skiing off-piste, but nobody would have expected Eleanor to take him seriously. Not for nothing was skiing off-piste considered a hazardous pursuit; in some circumstances, it was illegal. But in Scotland, under normal conditions, it would have been fine. That unfortunate set of circumstances would haunt Jake for the rest of his life.

Jake looked at the sledgehammer in his hands. It was time to face up to what had happened and put it behind him.

Chapter 13

‘Are you alright, son?’

Jake’s breathing was shallow; he was about to exit the shop, but he was having a problem catching his breath.

‘Yes, of course. I’m fine, Mr Gillespie – really.’ He knew he didn’t sound fine, each word spoken in between laboured breaths.

In the beginning, he had thought he’d developed asthma. He’d never suffered from it before, but apparently it was possible to get adult onset of the condition. Thorough medical tests had revealed it wasn’t asthma, pneumonia, a bronchial infection or anything of a physical nature; it was all in his mind. A psychological problem, Jake wasn’t pleased to hear, manifesting itself in panic attacks triggered by confined spaces and a very specific memory of an event. If he avoided the triggers, he avoided situations like now. But sometimes there was no way of avoiding enclosed spaces, like the lifts at the school where he worked. Instead, Jake had learned to control it.

But this wasn’t one of those situations. The shop floor was spacious. He wasn’t confined. So what had brought it on? Jake suddenly had a brainwave. It wasn’t the actual physical spaces that brought on anxiety attacks, but the memory they elicited. He’dlearned to control thinking about it, and at school in those lifts, he was too busy with work to think of anything else.

Here was the proof. He wasn’t even in an enclosed space, but he was thinking of what had happened on that mountain.

‘Do you need to sit down?’ Mr Gillespie appeared from behind the counter, carrying a stool.

Jake held up his hand. ‘No, really. I’ll be alright.’ He stood by the door, holding the door handle, steadying himself, Mr Gillespie hovering nearby with the stool at the ready. The less Jake thought about the memory, the more he improved.

In the beginning, this had been next to impossible, as his every waking hour had been consumed by that one event. What he had come to realise was that he needed two things: time and distance. He needed plenty of both. He had created distance – emotional distance – by leaving the firm and trying to divorce himself from the family. He had created physical distance – the easy part – by remaining right where he was in London; as far away from Scotland as possible.

The time issue was the tricky part. He had needed a job, and he’d needed it to be one that would keep him on mental high alert, with no time to think, to reflect, to question, to argue, to rage with his tormentor – the past. Becoming a teacher had fitted the bill perfectly. Not only did he expend all his energies on acquiring the new skills needed to become a teacher – it could be tough working in an inner-city school – he also had a mentor and a class of students he could not fail by not being one hundred per cent dedicated to his job.

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