Page 48 of Coming Home to Winter Island
‘But you sang.’ He smiles.
‘That was...different,’ I say. And a voice says:You didn’t have to think about it.
I close my eyes and breathe in again, this time from my buttocks, so the smell and the feeling fill my whole body. But just as my lips begin to part, my eyes ping open, and once again I am full of fear. It’s like getting stuck in the tree, only this time there’s no one to tell me how to get out of it. Not like at the healing retreat. They’ll be able to tell me how, I know it.
‘Okay, well, if we’re not singing, let’s get these pine needles back,’ Lachlan says briskly. ‘We’ll freeze these until we’ve got the other ingredients. I’ve started making trial batches of the mash, the clear spirit, and I’ve looked up the measurements of the dried ingredients online. So once we have the rest, we can get started.’
‘Yes, and now we know that Hector can remember them, we should be up and running in no time.’
‘Agreed,’ he says. ‘Teach Mhor gin is on its way back!’ and he nods at me.
‘I couldn’t have worked out how to use the still,’ I say. ‘You did that.’
‘But you worked out how to find the recipe,’ he says.
‘And Hector had it all along.’
‘Teamwork. You, me and Hector.’ He smiles.
‘Teamwork.’ I find myself smiling back. ‘Hang on,’ I say, and I pull out my phone and photograph him in the tree. Then I photograph the other treetops and a sprig of pine in Lachlan’s big hand. ‘We’ll put it on the crowdfunding page.’
‘Okay, come on then, lots to do.’ He starts to climb down the tree. ‘Need a hand?’ he calls up.
‘No, I think I’m okay,’ I say, and smile, and then miss a branch and bounce off the next two. ‘I’m fine. Really fine.’
I may have misjudged it and bounced a bit, but I am fine, I think, and kick myself for not having attempted to sing when I felt I could at the top of the tree. It might have been a bit croaky, but like Lachlan said, who was there to hear it? Maybe I just need to remember the scent of the pine trees a little more often.
We gather up Hector from where he’s been dozing, and pile him and the dogs back into the Land Rover, fired up to find the rest of the ingredients. Teach Mhor gin is back on!
Chapter Twenty-six
‘Ready to go live?’ I ask.
‘Yup! Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Lachlan says with raised eyebrows.
This is it. We’re bringing Teach Mhor gin back to the big hoose. And something inside me is suddenly really excited at the prospect. We’ve spent the last three days, getting set up to ‘go live’; together we’ve written the copy for the crowdfunding page and Lachlan has worked down at the distillery, getting the mash right, the basic clear alcohol to add the ingredients to and checking we have all the dried ingredients that Hector listed. And Lachlan has apparently seen Isla and Gordan at the café and talked to them about bottles and labels for the gin. Why we couldn’t have gone to the pub all together I have no idea!
‘Let’s just run over what we’ve got here,’ I say, sitting at the kitchen table with my back to the range, which is slowly warming me. The overhead lighting is weak this evening.
‘Hang on,’ says Lachlan. He puts a large storm candle on the table and lights it. The kitchen suddenly feels as welcoming and warm as anywhere I’ve been. Like it’s put its arms around me in a huge hug. I look at the screen again and try and concentrate on the job in hand.
‘“Have your own piece of Scottish history! We need investors to bring back Teach Mhor gin. You get an exclusive edition bottle of gin and an invitation to a special tea party on Winter Island to celebrate reaching our target”,’ I read from the screen. ‘You sure about this?’
‘Why not?’ He shrugs. ‘Invite them here. We’ll lay on scones and shortbread, like we discussed, and gin from the distillery to celebrate getting the financing we need to get the still up and running and the first batch out. After that, well, it’s up to the new owners how they run things.’
‘Okay, so a distillery tour and tea party here on the island. We need the funds to secure Hector’s place, so we should aim for Candlemas,’ I say, chewing my bottom lip. I need to leave here. We all do.
‘Candlemas it is!’ says Lachlan with gusto.
‘Are you sure we can do this? We need to find the other ingredients, make test batches and get it all made and bottled before then.’
‘Well if I’m not mistaken, you’ve not got a lot else going on, have you? Other than going to your healing retreat at some point.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve nothing else on.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Everyone back home thinks I’m at the retreat right now, on voice rest and with no electronic devices.’
‘Let’s hope you get your money back,’ he says.
‘And my singing voice. If I can’t sing again, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll have lost the lot.’
