Page 14 of Highland Games
Zoe took them from him and raised an eyebrow. ‘Dare I ask where you got these, Jamie?’
The colour rose in his cheeks. ‘I, er, borrowed them from Mum.’
Zoe clapped her hand over her mouth as a shocked giggle burst out. ‘And when were you going to give them back?’
He blushed fiercely. ‘You can’t say anything.’
‘James Robert MacDougall, I can’t believe you went rummaging around in your mum’s underwear drawer and stole her stockings!’
‘Promise you won’t tell?’ he pleaded, sounding more and more like the little boy he once was.
Zoe laughed and put her hand to her chest. ‘I promise. Hand on my heart, hope to die.’
Jamie joined in with ‘stick a needle in my eye.’
They both smiled at the memories from long ago and Jamie deposited the fleeces on the porch.
‘I’ll tackle the door. There’s no way I’m stuffing my mum’s tights.’
For the next hour, they worked companionably together, Jamie unpicking one side of plastic sheeting and stuffing the inside before re-fixing it back, Zoe filling the tights along with a length of wood inside to keep the shape and the doorstop anchored to the floor. There was plenty of wool left over, so they went around the door and window frames, plugging any obvious gaps. As they worked, Zoe snapped photos; the contrast between the wool and the wood, Jamie’s hands as he worked, his profile against the open door with the loch in the distance behind. Focusing on the beauty in the small details helped give the bigger picture a rosier glow.
She then followed him out, and drove up the road until she found a phone signal, spending a happy hour on Instagram, editing the images from the day. It was so beautiful here, even when it rained. She had messaged Sam who demanded to know why she was being ‘chased by weird looking cows’, and who the ‘Scottie hottie’ Jamie was. Zoe promised she would collect all the hotties in Kinloch for a non-specific day in the future when she was brave enough to come for a visit.
After speaking to Sam, Zoe rang home, sensing her mother’s unease and worry crackling down the line, then returned to the cabin, to make herself more pasta for tea. As she ate, she wondered how she could run a small fridge. If she didn’t get some vegetables into her diet soon, she was sure her mum would sense it and drive all the way up to force-feed her broccoli.
Without a TV or the Internet, and with her Kindle low on battery, there was nothing left to do in the long evening. She spent a couple of hours moving the old table around the cabin, balancing on it to clean the log walls of their prehistoric cobwebs, then rearranged her meagre possessions. She placed the bird’s nest pride of place on top of one of the plastic boxes outside her tent door. Snuggled in her sleeping bag, under the twinkling of the battery-powered fairy lights she’d clipped inside the tent, she smiled. The unpleasantness with Rory seemed far away.
6
Zoe was not a morning person. It was at least an hour after waking before she was able to pass as a fully functioning human being, and the process had to involve a cup of tea. With her new front door up and running, she hadn’t zipped her tent shut, and when the pale morning light hit her face she lay there, eye mask still on, checking all limbs were intact before she found the energy to move. It was ten minutes before she removed her mask and earplugs. She lay, gathering together her waking consciousness ready to deal with the day, listening to the birds outside.
There was another noise though, a scrabbling, scratching noise, closer to her. She corralled her brain into waking up, but no logical explanation came to mind. The noise was coming from right outside the tent. She opened her eyes looking at the plastic box with the bird’s nest on top. Half-awake, her mind still not yet fully switched on, she stared at the nest. She felt detached, as if watching a TV show, as a cute little head poked out, with big round ears and whiskers. It looked at her, licking its paws, bringing them down over its face to clean it. It was so comfortable, so at ease in its surroundings, that Zoe could only stare. It looked like a cross between a fluffy hamster and a mouse. Was it some sort of rat?
Finishing its morning ablutions, it tentatively ventured out of the nest. It was large, with big, floppy ears, a glossy chocolate brown coat and fluffy white underbelly. The half-awake part of Zoe was telling her she should at least be screaming by now. The half-asleep part was telling her how utterly adorable it was.
Before her conscious mind could assert itself enough to create motor function, the creature had jumped out of the nest, off the box and onto Zoe’s pillow, where it curled up next to her and fell asleep.
Was she still dreaming? She gingerly lifted her arm and gently stroked the soft warm body beside her. It opened its eyes, and nudged against her hand, as if wanting more attention. A half-laugh caught in her throat as she sat up, running her fingers over the silky fur. It was kind of rat shaped, but there was no way it was wild.
‘Good morning to you,’ she whispered. ‘Why do I feel you’re here to stay?’
Zoe took lots of pictures of her new friend while she made breakfast, as if recording the event made it somehow real rather than the invention of a scrambled mind. It was remarkably domesticated and ridiculously cute, sniffing the front of her phone as she snapped away. It wanted to be wherever Zoe was, and its favourite place was sitting on her shoulder, playing with her hair.
She had always wanted a pet as a child, but it had never happened. First her mother was ill, then they lost their house. Zoe stopped asking at that point, but would spend hours outside, trying to coax birds and squirrels into being her friend.
She wasn’t so enamoured of her unexpected pet that she forgot it needed a toilet. She ripped up paper and placed it in the bird’s nest, clapping like a proud parent when the creature she’d decided was a rat, immediately got the message.
‘If you’re going to stay then you need a home for when I’m not here,’ she solemnly informed her new friend. ‘Let’s find a pet shop this morning.’
Zoe emptied a small plastic box she was using for storage and lined it with a towel to make a temporary home for the rat. She then took it, the bird’s nest as a portable toilet, and her bag to the library in Kinloch. Ratty was asleep by the time she arrived, so she left him in the truck and went inside.
Sitting at a desk, she posted her latest photos to Instagram, including the ones from the morning, imagining the reaction that Sam would have to the rat. She charged her phones, Kindle and power packs, and continued her cabin renovation research.
Each time she added another line to her spreadsheet her heart sank. Why was it so expensive to renovate a cabin? Even the most basic essentials were going to max her out. The roof was the biggest unknown. If it needed a complete replacement it would make the whole project unworkable. She also had ongoing storage costs for her furniture and non-essential belongings. She didn’t want to pick everything up only to put it in a house with a leaking roof.
She sat back, staring into the middle distance. She needed to see the roof, find out how bad it really was. But first, she either had to donate the rat to a pet shop or commit to looking after it. She gathered up her belongings and grinned. Life in Kinloch was proving far from boring.
Zoe stood outside the only pet shop in a fifty-mile radius and tried not to giggle. The Time is MEOW! the sign pronounced, the windows full of fluffy little balls of cuteness; there wasn’t an old or ugly creature in view. The interior was a pungent mix of animal feed and sawdust, softened by the warm greetings of an older couple. Their clothes were utilitarian, in nondescript browns and greens that hid a multitude of animal sins.
