IT GREAT? I could hardly believe it when Maggie at the post office told me Ross McGregor is back on the island.’ Jessie was bubbling with excitement, full of the news that was the talk of the village. ‘I wonder if he’ll decide to stay?’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely.’ Katie was listening to her sister with half an ear while she busied herself getting ready for a trip to the mainland. She’d spent the last half-hour checking her overnight bag for last-minute essentials. ‘I wonder if I’ll need a special dress for the evening? It’s only a two-day conference after all.’ She frowned, thinking it through. ‘Perhaps I’ll take a cocktail dress just to be on the safe side.’
‘Aren’t you thrilled, though, Katie?’ Jessie’s grey eyes were shining with enthusiasm, making her look like an excited teenager.
Katie glanced at her, holding up a simple black dress that was adorned with an embroidered pattern of silver thread at one side of the bodice. ‘Excited…why? It’s just a conference about using video technology for health services. There’ll be a few speeches and some hands-on use of the equipment, but nothing too spectacular, I imagine. Except for the castle where it’s being held, of course.’ She paused to dwell on that for a moment or two. ‘Now, that could be really interesting. It looks out over the loch.’
Jessie threw up her hands in a gesture of impatience. ‘Honestly, Katie, you’re so single-minded. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? I’m talking about Ross—I’m so happy he’s back. I’ve only managed to see him for a day or so each time he’s been home over the last few years, but I’ve heard all sorts of things about him while he’s been away. I wonder if he’ll drop by McAskie’s Bar one evening? It would be so good to meet up with him again.’
Katie laid the dress inside the bag and closed the zipper. ‘I’m not so sure it would be wise to get involved with him,’ she cautioned. ‘You’re not teenagers any more, and he could break your heart if you give him half a chance. Besides, he’s only here for as long as it takes to sort out the business with Finn, and he’ll walk away from us without even looking back, the same as he did before.’
‘I’m not talking about getting involved with him.’ Jessie shook her head, her silky black hair settling in a neat bob just below her ears. She was a beautiful young woman, with a perfect oval face, a peaches-and-cream complexion and full, well-shaped lips. She had the figure to go with all that, too. Being curvaceous and good-natured, she was every man’s dream girl.
‘Anyway, he didn’t have much choice about leaving,’ she said, her face taking on a drawn, anxious expression. ‘The way things were for him at home, and with all the village against him—I don’t blame him for wanting to go.’
Katie’s mouth made a flat line as she thought back to that awful time. It still bothered her, all these years later, what had happened that fateful night. Ross had met up with Jessie at the Old Brewery, a secret get-together, by all accounts, because her parents had made it clear they were dead set against either of their daughters seeing him.
Nothing had happened between them, Jessie had insisted afterwards—that hadn’t been the intention when she’d asked him along. She’d dared him to go there with her, flouting all the rules. At fifteen, she’d been a bit wild and reckless, seeking adventure, and Ross must have seemed like the ideal partner in crime. She’d known the place was unsafe, and that had been the thrill, until it had all ended in tragedy.
Ross had suffered a terrible accident there but only after he had somehow managed to set fire to one of the outhouses.
What could have possessed him to behave in such a way that afterwards his only recourse had been to leave the village where he had grown up? There had been talk of a drifter hanging about the place, and it had been suggested that maybe he had started the fire, but no one had really believed that. Ross was the one they’d had in their sights. There had been no actual proof against him, but everyone had laid the blame at his door.
Katie still had trouble squaring it in her mind. He’d always been reckless, but causing a fire was something beyond the pale, even for him, surely?
‘No,’ she murmured, bringing her mind back to Jessie, ‘but you know how you felt when he went away. You were devastated. You sobbed for days and moped about the house for weeks, as I recall.’ Katie guessed it had probably been guilt that had made her sister react that way, but she knew that even now Jessie was impulsive, with a tendency to let her heart rule her head.
‘Only because it was so tragic, him having to leave. Besides, I was only fifteen, then.’ Her sister’s voice faltered and she started to flounce out of the room. ‘I’m older now, and much more sensible.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Katie picked up the holdall and followed her downstairs. ‘I’m just saying you don’t owe him anything. You don’t have to make up to him for what happened in the past.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt.’
‘That’s not going to happen, Katie. Ross and I are just friends, nothing more. You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘Well, okay, I’ll try.’ Katie looked around the neat, farmhouse kitchen, ticking off a list of last-minute jobs in her head. ‘If the roof man phones while I’m away, will you remember to make a note of the day he’ll be coming to do the work?’
‘I will.’
‘And try to persuade him we need the work done like…yesterday.’
‘I will.’
‘And don’t let young Jack from next door do any weeding in the garden without supervision—he pulled up some of the aubrietia from the rockery last time I let him loose in there.’
‘I won’t.’ Jessie laughed. ‘You can trust me. I’ll look after the place while you’re off gallivanting.’ She picked up a slice of toast left over from breakfast, slathered it with butter and bit into it. ‘It’s good of you to let me stay here, Katie. I thought everything was done and dusted once I’d signed the papers for my house, but I didn’t realise it would take so long for everyone in the chain of buyers to move out of their own properties, or that I’d need to get my extension finished before I could move in.’
‘You know I love having you here. Don’t worry about it.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Now, I must get a move on or I’ll miss the ferry.’
‘And I have to make tracks or Mum will wonder why the café hasn’t been opened up, and there’ll be a queue forming outside the gift shop.’
Katie gave her younger sister a hug. ‘Take care. I’ll be back before you know it.’ Sometimes she envied her sister her simple life, working on their parents’ country estate, a picturesque, rambling old house and gardens, nestled in a verdant stretch of forest, where people came to spend a day out while they soaked up the island’s historic heritage.
Ross had always been conscious of the wide differences in their backgrounds, but it hadn’t mattered to Katie. They’d mixed with the village children throughout their school lives, and it had seemed to her then that there were no class boundaries. They had just been children, spending their summers scrumping in the apple orchards or fishing with nets in the nearby burn.
That had been when she’d first been aware of Ross, when she’d paddled barefoot in the cool, running water and he’d shown her how to chase the fish into the shallows and then trap them in her net. He’d helped her transfer them to a jam jar filled with water, and he’d laughed when she’d insisted on tipping them back into the stream before they’d set off for home.
She shook the thoughts from her head and set off a few minutes later for the ferry port. She took the bus, looking out of the window at the beautiful wooded hills and low mountains in the distance. Soon the blue sweep of the coastline came into view, and she readied herself for the next lap of her journey.
It would be a blustery crossing, she guessed, for although the sun managed to filter through the clouds every now and again on this late August day, the wind was already stirring,