Page 29 of A Recipe for Love
‘You don’t have those?’
‘I was living in Spain a week ago.’
Flinty nodded. ‘But the rest of your stuff must be somewhere?’
‘I’ve got all my stuff with me.’
‘Just that wee baggy you brought from the airport? Well aren’t you one for travelling light?’
Why carry more than you needed?
‘You’ll not be able to get those in the village, mind. Not new. We might be able to find you something to borrow for the time being. What size feet do you have?’
‘Five.’
Flinty nodded. ‘Well that shouldn’t be too hard. Hugh might be able to order you something in. Or you can wait ’til you can get to an outdoor shop.’
‘So where’s the nearest?’
‘From here? That’d probably be Portree, over on Skye.’
Skye. A tune jangled in Bella’s head.Over the sea to Skye…‘Isn’t that an island?’
‘It is.’
‘So the nearest clothes shop is on a different land mass?’ Bella was rapidly redrawing her mental picture of Lowbridge village.
‘Aye, but you can drive all the way since they opened the bridge at Lochalsh. Or we could ask in the village if anyone’s taking a boat over. There’s usually a couple who do each week. They might take you along.’
‘What sort of boat?’ Bella had images of hardy Highland trawlermen pissing themselves at the wee English lassie’s lack of sea legs.
Flinty glanced at her. ‘A boat boat. Don’t worry. You’re not going to have to row over there. They all have motors.’
A boat trip sounded like overkill given that she’d probably be back in Edinburgh with its pavements and shops and restaurants and general lack of insanity in a couple of weeks. ‘If I could borrow something for now then?’
‘Aye. I thought that’d be best.’
Flinty drove the narrow country lanes like a racing driver in a hurry. Once they were over the road bridge, Bella realised she hadn’t got close to the village on her aborted walk. The road widened slightly and they started to meet the occasional car coming the other way. All of which pulled into the side of the road to let Flinty past. The local drivers had clearly learned that if you didn’t get out of her way, it would only end worse for you.
Finally they started to come into what Bella assumed was the village, and then they kept driving, through a cluster of small stone-built cottages and along the shoreline, where a shallow shingle beach gave way to dark blue water. Bella leaned forward to stare at the view. Across the water was more land, an island or a headland jutting out into the sea. Everything was sparkling in shades of blue and green. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Aye.’ Flinty nodded. ‘We’re very lucky.’ She drove on towards a strung-out row of newer houses. At what looked to be the very last of these, Flinty stopped the car and pulled in on a patch of gravel and mud to the side of the road. ‘Here we are then,’ she announced.
Where they were didn’t look like anything very much. They’d stopped outside a white painted detached house. There were piles of wood, and bags of compost on the driveway. Flinty marched past those. Bella followed and finally saw where they were heading. Above what she had taken to be the garage, and what the original builder had definitely intended to be the garage, was a hand-painted sign that read, ‘Lowbridge Village Store’. And under that someone had enthusiastically written, ‘If we don’t have it, we will get it. Ask us for anything!’
Given that the whole shop took up the space previously allocated to a mid-sized family car, that seemed like an ambitious promise. She followed Flinty up the gravelled driveway. As well as the bags of logs and compost, there were newspapers, a bucket of flower bouquets, a station for returning and refilling gas bottles and a table stacked with potted plants and a handwritten sign declaring, ‘From Mrs Allen. 50p each or £1 for 3. Proceeds go to the Community Hall fund. Money in the tin please!’
The shopkeeper had stacked their stock high outside, but the inside of the store was like another world. Whoever ran the place was surely part Time Lord, because there was no logical way this amount of stuff could fit inside a garage without at least a dash of Tardis-style ‘bigger on the inside’ magic going on. Flinty was briskly filling a basket with fresh fruit and veg, meat from the fridge, and bread from the basket next to the cash desk.
Bella followed her around, trying not to knock over any of the ceiling-high teetering displays.
‘We need cleaning stuff,’ said Flinty. ‘Washing up liquid and bathroom spray.’
There was no cleaning aisle. There were no aisles. There was simply stuff. Mountains and mountains of stuff.
‘Come on.’
Bella trotted after her guide again, right to the back of the garage, and then behind what was obviously the last display. ‘Where are you going?’
