Page 27 of Surprises on the Scottish Isle

‘That’s OK, isn’t it? Mhairi offered it to me until my house in Edinburgh is sold.’

‘Mhairi is the boss. It’s her boathouse to do with as she sees fit.’ He sounded churlish, but for pity’s sake, Tara was living only a stone’s throw away from him.

Tara flinched. ‘Hopefully it won’t take long, then I can be out of your hair.’

‘It’s fine,’ he lied. Then to try to make up for his appalling lack of manners, he said, ‘How do you like Coorie Castle?’

Her expression cleared, the wariness lifting a little. ‘It’s lovely. The craft centre is fabulous, and everyone is so friendly.’ She ground to a halt and Cal could easily guess what she was thinking – everyone excepthim.

He deserved that. ‘We’re like one big happy family.’

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

Another awkwardly long and uncomfortable silence followed as Cal scrabbled around for something to say. Tara appeared to be equally at a loss.

Eventually he said, ‘OK, then, I’d better get on. I just thought I’d introduce myself.’ He turned to leave, feeling flustered and embarrassed, and after the briefest of hesitations, he added, ‘I hope you’ll be happy here, Tara.’

Her muttered, ‘I doubt it,’ followed him outside.

Tara held herself rigid until Cal was out of sight, then she slumped against the counter and buried her face in her hands. She was shaking, her heart raced, and she badly needed a sit down and a shot of something alcoholic.

She hadn’t expected to see Calan Fraser ever again. She hadn’t wanted to. Yet here he was, slap bang in the middle of the new life she hoped to forge.

Pulling herself together, she hurried around the counter and locked the door, switching the lights off as she did so, before flipping the sign hanging in the window from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. The craft centre didn’t shut until five p.m., but no crafter was in their studio all day every day, she’d discovered, so she had no qualms about closing early.

She simply couldn’t face seeing anyone, and neither was she in the right frame of mind to do any more work today. The frame of mind she was in involved a bottle of wine and time to think. She needed to get her head around seeing Calan again, so she returned to the boathouse.

The wine was nicely chilled, but as Tara took it out of the fridge she wouldn’t have cared if it was as warm as a hot bath. She wasn’t going to drink it for enjoyment. She was hoping the alcohol would stop her hands shaking.

She briefly considered curling up on the sofa with the wine and staring out of the window, but the boathouse felt claustrophobic, and honestly, what was the point of staring at the view through glass when she could go outside and stare at it without any barrier?

She would have liked to sit on the edge of the jetty but felt she would be too exposed (the last thing she wanted was for Cal to spot her there) so she took her wine and a glass further along the shoreline until she was out of sight of the lane, and hunkered down amongst the rocks, leaning against one.

It was warm on her back, and the sun was still high in the sky. She tilted her head back to stare at the expanse of blue over her head, tears prickling.

Angrily she brushed them away. She refused to cry over that man again. She’d shed too many for him already, and he hadn’t deserved a single one. Shock vied with pain and anger. Tara didn’t know what she felt or how to deal with seeing him again, and as she sat there the memories that she’d tried so hard to keep down resurfaced in all their technicolour misery.

Calan Fraser had broken her heart. He’d been her first love (maybe heronlylove), and he’d almost destroyed her.Hewas the reason she hadn’t been able to complete the final year of her degree. It hadn’t seemed important any more. Nothing had. She’d never felt more alive, more in tune with her art, the city and the universe, than during the year of loving Cal.

After he’d broken up with her, it was as though her world had lost all colour, and she no longer felt alive. How could she when she was dead inside?

But the world hadn’t stopped turning and Tara’d had to do something. When she saw a ‘Staff Wanted’ notice in the window of a scruffy shop that was an Aladdin’s cave of tiny houses and every conceivable thing to go in them, she’d walked in off the street with no CV and little hope of getting the job.

No one had been more surprised than Tara when she’d found herself starting work there the very next day. She’d been even more surprised to discover how much she enjoyed it and, fascinated by the tiny items of furniture, she’d wanted to have a go at making her own miniatures for the inside of her first house. So, she’d taught herself – with loads of help from online videos and lots of trial and error. Discovering she had a talent for it had sealed her fate. Tara had been bitten by the doll’s house bug, but as a creator, not a collector.

Would she have found her calling – because that’s what she believed it to be – if she’d gone on to do the final year of her Fine Art course?

Probably not. But the knowledge didn’t change how she felt about Calan.

The love and adoration she’d felt for him had turned to bitterness and anger. If it hadn’t been for a photograph, Tara might have understood, although not accepted, his reasons for breaking up with her. Yes, they had been young – at twenty she’d been so naive and unworldly, despite believing she knew it all. Yes, it would have been difficult to continue their relationship with her in Glasgow and him an assistant manager on some godforsaken private estate north of Inverness. But he hadn’t even tried, despite her pleading with him to give it a go. He’d been adamant he wanted a clean break, and Tara hadn’t been able to do or say anything to change his mind.

She’d soon discovered the reason why, after compulsively stalking his sister on social media and seeing some photos of him at a wedding a mere seven months after he’d told Tara they were over.

The wedding had been his own.

Mhairi was poring over her accounts when Cal found her, glasses perched on the end of her nose as she squinted at the computer screen, pen in hand to scribble numbers on a pad, a big-buttoned calculator sitting next to it.

She scowled when she saw him. ‘Whoever invented spreadsheets deserves to burn in hell.’

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