Page 72 of Coming Home to Winter Island
Jess shrugs. ‘I’m just saying think about it. I bet he’d want you to do something with the money.’
‘Well, he’s doing just fine and that’s not going to be an option.’
Jess shrugs again and Hector coughs from the other room.
‘Come on, Hector. Come and hold this bag of drawing pins for me,’ I call. Right now, Hector not being around is the last thing I want to think about. I’ve only just found him, and I feel I’m only just finding me too. I don’t want that to stop.
‘We’ll put some music on,’ I say, and climb down from the chair. It’ll put us all in the right mood. This is supposed to be a celebration, after all.
Chapter Forty-three
By five to three, the house is looking amazing. My mum is pulling off rubber gloves, and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time she’s ever come into contact with a loo brush.
‘That Lachlan! He’s a hard taskmaster!’ she says, tossing the gloves into a cleaning bucket that Lachlan picks up and puts in the scullery. She shakes out her hair. It still doesn’t move.
‘Right, time for a drink, everyone,’ Lachlan says, pouring gin into glasses on a tray and carrying it into the living room where Hector and the others are.
‘Ah, Miss Rubes!’ Hector says, but he doesn’t stand as he usually does. He may have been asleep.
The rest of us gather around the roaring fire where he’s sitting. The dogs are dozing in front of it. The crackle from the logs is the only sound other than the tick of the clock. Slowly, very slowly, the big hand eases its way around to three o’clock. And as it hits the hour with a chime, I hold my breath.
The bell at the front door rings, making me jump, as usual. Hector looks up.
‘Visitors. Lovely,’ he says with a smile that seems to take all his energy.
‘Show time,’ says my mum. ‘Just like the old days.’
Chapter Forty-four
The dining room is buzzing. The whole of the island seems to have turned out, along with the residents from the care home, Fraser and his extended family and Jack Drummond and his business partners. The visitors have been on a tour of the distillery, and those that could manage it have taken a walk to see the seals. Lachlan has shown them a glimpse of the places we’ve gathered the botanicals from, the ingredients that give the gin its taste of wild and rugged island life. Now a record is playing, and everyone is enjoying the tea, having a really fun time by the looks of it.
‘All okay?’ I hear Lachlan’s voice behind me, making my nerve endings stand to attention.
I nod. ‘You?’ I ask.
‘Uh huh.’ He’s not looking at me but gazing out of the window across the lawn, as if he’s looking for someone. ‘Seems to be going well,’ he says. Isla is glancing over at him anxiously, and I have no idea what’s going on between them. I thought they’d sorted things out. Moved on. It would break Gordan’s heart if anything were to happen between them. Not to mention what it would do to mine.
I look at my mum, who’s holding a teapot and looking out of the big French doors along the back wall of the wood-panelled dining room.
‘You okay, Mum?’
‘Yes, darling. Just...you know, being back here. Makes me remember how I felt when I first fell in love with your dad. And sad, too, looking back at how things turned out. I should never have let it happen. I didn’t think about the consequences for him. Just took what I wanted at the time.’
‘It all makes sense now, though.’
‘What does?’
‘Dad. His funny ways. He’s just like Hector. I can see now that he longed to be back here, as if he’d left a part of him behind.’
Mum smiles and puts her spare arm around me, hugging me.
‘Your dad loved it here. Always did. That’s why it broke his heart to leave. He should have come back. I told him to. But he was too stubborn, just like Hector. Once they’ve decided on something, they stick to it and make sure it happens. Like someone else I know.’ She smiles at me and looks around the room. White tablecloths that I found in a suitcase cover every table we have in the place. ‘I’m really proud of you,’ she says, tears filling her made-up eyes.
‘I’m glad you came, Mum.’
‘So am I,’ she says. ‘Maybe I’m finally growing up. Maybe it’s time I stopped chasing the next exciting adventure, settled down a bit.’ She looks around the room. ‘You know, this place, with work...you could sell it on when Hector, y’know...’
‘Mum!’
