It felt like I’d only been asleep a few hours when someone shook me awake again.
‘Kitty. Wake up.’
‘Jack?’ I mumbled. I opened my eyes to find him standing by my four-poster bed in the en-suite room Chrissy had got ready for me. ‘Why aren’t you in the van?’
‘Came to show you something.’
‘Show me something?’ I blinked sleepily. ‘What time’s it?’
‘4 a.m.’
‘4 a.m.!’ I jerked fully awake and sat up. ‘Why the hell are you waking me up at four in the morning?’
‘Shhh. You’ll wake my parents,’ he whispered. ‘And I told you. Something I need to show you.’ He handed me a thick fleece. ‘Get that on and come with me. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep after.’
‘So come on, what is it?’ I muttered, grumpily pulling on the fleece over my pyjamas. Christmas Day aside, I really wasn’t a morning person. Or at least, not a four-in-the-morning person.
‘It’s a surprise. Something worth interrupting your beauty sleep for, I promise.’
‘Not that I—’
‘Not that you need any.’ He grinned. ‘Way ahead of you.’
Curiosity eating through my drowsiness, I shoved my feet into a pair of crocs and, as quietly as possible, followed Jack down the stairs.
‘I feel like a teenager sneaking out when I’ve been grounded,’ I whispered.
‘Good,’ he whispered back. ‘You’ve spent all your life trying to be a good girl, Kitty Clayton. Now I’m making it my mission to teach you a bit of rebellion.’
‘Where are we going then? Drug-fuelled rave? Orgy?’
‘Nah, much better than that.’ He unlocked the front door and slid out. ‘Follow me.’
I tiptoed over the huge lawn after him, past the camper towards a dense cluster of trees that marked the far end of his parents’ land. Jack took my hand and led me into the dark patch of wood.
Thick foliage quickly eclipsed the watery dawn light and I had to pick my steps carefully to avoid tripping. There was no sound but the crunch of twigs under our feet and the trees, whispering their secrets together in Tree Scottish. Which I imagined was something like ‘Oooh, have you seen that oak at number three? She’s only gone and got herself some lah-di-dah new ivy. And just turned 412 last Tuesday. Would you look at her, all climbing plants and no knickers?’
I giggled.
‘What?’ Jack said.
‘Nothing. Just laughing at tree gossip.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re some weird girl, you know that?’
‘What if I step on a badger, Jack?’ I whispered, tiptoeing carefully after him.
‘You won’t step on a badger.’
‘You don’t know. I might do. I bet there’s buckets of badgers in here.’
‘All right, if you step on one it’ll gnaw your leg off with its big, sharp badger teeth then drag the rest of you home to feed its flesh-starved badger babies.’
‘Comforting. Ta.’
When we eventually emerged, blinking, into the open, I couldn’t help gasping. I sucked my breath in sharply through my front teeth then let it out again in a low whistle of appreciation.
It was the loch. Loch Rusky, right there just half a mile from his parents’ house. And it was every bit as beautiful as he’d described it to me when he’d triggered my dormant wanderlust, the day after we’d delivered the puppies.
There’d been an overnight fall of rain and delicate wisps like fish scales streaked the sky, lavender-tinted where the rising sun touched their tops. They were bright against deep blue, and the lake… God, it was incredible. Perfect glass, the fish-scale clouds within its still waters just as bright and clear as their twins above. A handful of colourful fishing boats dotted the surface, and a thin film of mist hovered over the water where it met the far shore. A playful early-morning dragonfly darted around us, his tail shimmering emerald.
‘Jack…’ I whispered. He’d been right. It had kicked the breath out of me.
He moved behind me so he could put his arms around my waist. ‘So?’ he murmured close to my ear. ‘Better than it looks in any travel guide, am I right?’
‘Much better.’
For a while we gazed at the mirror loch in silence. Jack’s arms were still around my waist, and I could feel his hot breath on my neck.
It occurred to me that wasn’t quite right for employer and employee. Laurel very rarely used to hug me on the banks of lochs at sunrise. Still, it felt wonderful.
‘Worth waking up for?’ Jack asked after a bit.
‘Definitely.’
‘And fighting off those herds of vicious Scottish badgers?’
I smiled. ‘What, waving claymores and shouting “freedom”?’
‘Ah, those’d be your sellout Hollywood badgers. The others don’t truck with them.’
‘It’s gorgeous, Jack,’ I murmured, my gaze fixed on the glittering water. ‘Really.’
‘I knew you’d think so,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘If you don’t see the loch at sunrise, it’s a trip wasted.’ He nodded towards the little boats. ‘Plus the place’ll be overrun with daytrippers and anglers in a few hours, which tends to take the shine off.’
‘Lucky sods.’ I thought back to sunny days with Dad, sitting on the bank of a lake or canal clutching our sandwiches while we waited for that all-important twitch on the line. ‘There’s nothing like the peace of a day’s fishing.’
‘What, you fish?’ he said, sounding surprised.
‘I used to, when my dad was alive. We’d pack the car and head up to Aunty Julia’s, see what we could catch in the lake.’ I sighed. ‘They were the happiest times in my childhood, when it was just us three.’
‘Your mam didn’t go?’
‘Never. She hated me fishing. It was the one thing I remember my dad standing up to her about, insisting he was taking me whether she liked it or not.’ I smiled. ‘She thought it was dreadfully unladylike. She was obsessed with teaching me to be more ladylike.’
‘How did that go?’
I shrugged. ‘Well I can open a Heineken bottle with my teeth.’
He laughed. ‘So you and your Aunty Julia are pretty close then?’
‘Yeah.’ I blinked back a tear. ‘At least, we were. Before.’
‘You know, she was probably only doing what she thought was best for you,’ Jack said gently. ‘You were in a real state that day. She must’ve been worried.’
‘I trusted her. I trusted her and she let me down.’ I lost the battle, the little tear meandering down my cheek. ‘Dad would’ve never done that.’
‘Why don’t you call her?’
‘I can’t. Not yet.’
‘Okay,’ he said, in the same gentle tone. ‘But you’re running out of family, Kit.’
That was certainly true. Dad, Mum, Aunty Julia… all out of my life, one way or another.
Dad had been dead a year now, and it still hurt every day when I woke up and remembered again that he was gone. Yes, Aunty Julia’s betrayal was still sore, but Jack was right: she probably had believed she was acting in my best interests. Did I really want to cut Dad’s only sister out of my life forever?
‘I’ll think it over,’ I said at last.
‘That’s the spirit,’ Jack said, giving me a squeeze. ‘So do you want to do some fishing while we’re here? I’m up for giving it a try, if you think you can be patient enough to teach me.’
I glanced over my shoulder to squint at him. ‘Hang on. Isn’t your next release Tilly and Billy Go Fishing?’
‘Glad to see you’ve been doing your PA homework.’
‘You wrote a book about it and you’ve never even tried it?’
‘Nope. And don’t spread it around, but I’ve also never pirated on the high seas, gone up in a hot air balloon, grown a sunflower or met Father Christmas. I use this little thing called imagination.’
‘Fraud.’
‘Says the former travel guide editor who’s never been further than Blackpool,’ he said, smiling. ‘So how about it then, Kit? My dad’ll know where we can hire equipment and get an angling permit, no problem.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just… these days I kind of feel bad for the fish,’ I said, fiddling sheepishly with the zip of my fleece. ‘Their little faces gaping at me.’
He laughed. ‘And yet you’d eat bacon sandwiches from now till Doomsday if you could get away with it.’
‘I know, I’m an enormous hypocrite. The bacon doesn’t look at me accusingly, that’s all.’
‘Was thinking we’d throw them back anyway. That’s okay, isn’t it? They can have a long, happy fish life and tell all their friends about the angler that got away.’ He held his hand up high above his head. ‘This big, he was.’
‘Well, it’s not just that,’ I said, flushing. ‘I haven’t fished since my dad died.’
I just couldn’t imagine casting a line without that familiar, smiling figure next to me. It didn’t seem right.
I wondered if Dad could see me, wherever he was. What he’d think of my life right now. Things could have been so different for me if Grant Clayton had still been a part of my world.
But he wasn’t. One day with no warning, he’d gone; left me at the mercy of Mum and Ethan, in the midst of plans for a wedding I’d never been sure I wanted. It felt like half the fight had gone out of me, the day he died.
‘Oh. Okay,’ Jack said gently. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise it was something special for the two of you.’
‘That’s all right. It was a nice idea, just… well, maybe another time. I’m not ready yet.’
‘What was he like, your dad? Tell me about him.’
‘He was a pain in the backside. A relentless tease, a terrible joke-teller. Forever embarrassing me in front of my friends, just because he thought it was funny.’ I sighed. ‘Best dad in the world.’
‘Would he like me?’
I turned to face him. ‘He’d probably tell you you need a haircut,’ I said, smiling at the scruffy curls. ‘You would’ve won him round though. You’d make him laugh.’
‘Miss him, don’t you?’
‘Course I do.’ I paused. ‘Only…’
‘Only what?’
‘I worry, sometimes. That I don’t miss him as much as I should.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well… okay, do you remember that band Atomic Kitten?’
‘Er, yeah, vaguely,’ Jack said, looking puzzled at the abrupt change in conversation topic. ‘Why?’
I stared down at my crocs, drops of dew settling on the pink rubber and trickling through the holes to tickle my bare feet. ‘I used to love them when I was a kid. Had all their albums, posters plastering my bedroom walls…’
‘Lots of little girls did, didn’t they?’
‘Yeah, they were pretty massive back in primary. And then when I grew up… it’s like I forgot they ever existed. Completely forgot this huge obsession I’d had. It was only when I was clearing some old stuff out and found the CDs that it all came flooding back.’
I glanced up. Jack was looking at me, his eyes soft.
‘And you’re worried that’s what’ll happen with your dad?’
‘Sort of. It feels like every day, I forget something else about him. And when I’ve forgotten it, it’s like it never existed. Like another little piece of him’s disappeared.’ I blinked back a tear. ‘When Dad died, I didn’t think there could be anything more painful than that. But it’s the little, gradual death in my memories that’s worse. The pain that’s there every day.’
‘Come here.’
Jack pulled me against his comforting chest and I relaxed in his arms. His arms were a great place to be. More and more lately, I’d been idly daydreaming about how it might feel to move into them permanently. Memories of my life with Ethan felt almost like a dream – one that, I constantly reminded myself, had no power now to hurt me.
‘Do you ever feel like that?’ I whispered.
‘About Soph?’ He hesitated. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘It’s… I don’t know, it’s the opposite, somehow. Every trick of speech, the way she’d fiddle with her hair when she was nervous or walk on the insole of her shoe, her laugh, her scent… I remember it all, in excruciating detail.’ He shuddered. ‘It’s horrible actually.’
‘You wouldn’t want to forget her, would you?’
‘No, of course I wouldn’t. But even now, I can be walking down the street and do a double take because someone’s wearing the same perfume or got their hair up the same way. For a split-second, every time, I think it’s her. It’s her, she’s here and everything’s okay. And then it hurts like hell when it hits me all over again that I failed her. That’s she’s still gone, and I… that I couldn’t stop that.’
‘It isn’t your fault, you know.’
‘I know. Rationally, logically, I know. But that doesn’t make it stop.’
‘Survivor’s guilt, they call that, don’t they? My grief counsellor helped me through mine.’
‘It’s not the surviving. It’s the fact I saw it happen and I couldn’t save her life.’ He winced in pain. ‘Feel like my brain needs bleaching.’
Poor damaged Jack. I squeezed him tight, pressing my cheek to his chest. Chrissy had sounded so sure, the night before, that emotionally he was ready to move on, but I couldn’t help suspecting that might be a mother’s wishful thinking. Who knew if he’d ever get over the wife he lost enough to properly move on – to make space for someone else?
Or, not someone else. Me. If Jack fell in love a second time, I couldn’t bear it to be with anyone but me.
‘Thanks for being with me, Kit,’ he mumbled into my hair.