Scotlander, page 7
‘Anyone got smelling salts?’ shouted another one of their group, in a loud Australian accent. ‘Pretty sure they would’ve used those back in the day.’
‘I think they’re called spirits of ammonia,’ said another woman, whose accent Willa couldn’t place.
‘It’s 999 here,’ said a blonde woman in an English accent she’d heard before when she’d binge-watched the British baking show. ‘My daughter, Jules, is ringing them.’
‘There’ll be volunteer first responders here at the airport,’ Finlay said. ‘Perhaps one of you can find an emergency phone and ring them?’
Willa opened her mouth to panic scream that she didn’t want volunteer first responders, she wanted a team of crack surgeons, when she remembered that her father and brother were both volunteer firemen and that, when it came to a crisis, you really didn’t care who showed up, so long as someone did. Preferably in a uniform.
To be fair, she was feeling strangely safe and secure with Finlay in charge.
His eyes were even more amazing up close. A beautiful blue-grey that spoke to a depth of character she instantly wanted to explore. He’d seen things and done things and had learnt from them. Quite the contrast to her world of film stars who had called upon people like Gabe to sort out their mistakes, no matter how frequently they committed them.
He exuded calm, assured control. Exactly the way you’d want someone to be in a crisis. His voice alone felt like having warm caramel poured down her spine. A bit too arousing at a moment when she shouldn’t be finding anything erotic apart from Gabe, who still managed to look breathtakingly beautiful even though he was bleeding and possibly never going to be able to use his brain again.
All of which sent her heart rate rocketing, as if she was a carnival goldfish accidentally dropped from its clear baggie on to the dusty ground, desperately trying to take deep, gulping breaths, none of them successfully filling her lungs with the requisite oxygen.
‘Hey.’ Finlay’s voice broke through her panic. ‘You’re alright. Breathe steady now. C’mon. There you are. Look at me. Right into my eyes. We don’t want the two of you in an ambulance now, do we? Steady now. That’s it, lass. One . . . two . . . nice and slow . . . three . . . That’s it . . . steady now.’
Finlay was putting her into a trance. A strong, capable man-in-a-crisis-rising-to-the-occasion trance. The emotional equivalent of a perfectly grilled cheese sandwich and steaming mug of tomato soup.
It was a brand new sensation to feel so . . . focused upon. As if he really cared whether or not she launched into a full-blown panic attack. Especially with Gabe breathing his last between them. She was usually the capable one. The type of girl who, at best, received a pat on the shoulder and a ‘You’re alright, aren’t ya, Wills?’
If he was secretly hypnotising her to quack like a duck, she was strangely fine with that.
His eyes cut away from hers.
One of the Japanese tourists was waving to him to move out of the way so she could sit next to Gabe and have her picture taken. A near dead, very hot Latino in a kilt wasn’t one of your everyday sights, but . . . really?
Finlay, still holding the compress, rose up to his knees, and with a fluid, authoritative air said to the gathering crowd, ‘Alright, everyone, let’s give the poor man some space.’ To Willa, he said, ‘Press down on this for me, would you?’ His eyes sought hers. ‘Do you think you can do that, Willa?’
Uhhh. Was he serious?
‘You just hold it down, not too hard, alright?’
Clearly, he was.
And in the time it would take a normal person to say, ‘Sure thing!’, a red mist descended.
Sure. She may have been on the brink of a panic attack a moment ago, but of all the things Willa hated most in life, being patronised was top of the list. Not because she was paranoid about her intellect – she was fine with her level of brain power. But being spoken to as if she couldn’t follow a set of simple instructions was an instant trigger, transporting her back to her childhood. A lifetime really, of her family speaking to her as if she was unable to differentiate between Real World Problems and Fictional Problems predicated on the basis that she liked television.
Now, she didn’t have it on excellent authority that belittling her was Finn’s main goal. (He seemed like a Finn now. If he could speak to her using toddler words, she could give him a nickname.) Maybe he thought she was overtired. Perhaps he could sense the headache creeping in courtesy of too many in-flight beverages. Or maybe, because it certainly had sounded that way, he did think she was stupid.
Whatever his motives they no longer factored. Shunting every single pleasant thing she’d thought about him did. And really, now that she thought about it? He reminded her just a little bit too much of home.
‘Yeah,’ she answered tersely. ‘I think I can just about rustle up the ability to hold a cloth.’
He stared at her with an intensity she couldn’t identify, then gave a particularly irritating fair-enough shrug, got up, ushered away the tourists and asked the rest of the group to form a protective luggage shield around Gabe. As they gathered round, the fifty-something blonde woman from their group approached and introduced herself as Jennifer. She untwisted her beautiful shawl-wrappy thing from her shoulders and tucked it over Willa’s shoulders with a practised motherly pat. ‘For your maiden modesty,’ she whispered kindly.
Willa’s cheeks turned scarlet. Her boobs had escaped again. And with fabulous timing. Right in the middle of her self-righteous snippery to Finn.
Awesome. Just what she wanted. An assured place in the Top Ten Idiot Americans list.
‘Should we put honey or something on the wound?’ asked the young woman sporting some amazing rainbow-coloured hair. ‘I think that’s what Claire would’ve done.’
‘Claire?’ Willa asked, rather than ‘honey?’ Which would have been the more pertinent question.
‘You know. Claire of Jamie and Claire in Outlander?’ prompted Jennifer.
She caught Finlay giving her another one of those, are-you-sure-there’s-a-brain-in-your-head looks.
Asshole.
‘I’m in training to become a white witch,’ said rainbow-hair girl, then stuck out her hand. ‘Jules.’
Willa, one hand very ably holding the blood-soaked handkerchief to Gabe’s forehead, took her proffered hand and shook it. Were they really were going to take this particular moment to play What Would Claire Do? Before she could ask, Jules looked up and said, ‘Oh cool! Paramedics.’
By the time the ambulance crew left, the sun had set, Gabe had regained consciousness, the cut on his forehead had been stitched and they’d all been given a sombre lecture on how to identify signs of a concussion.
Willa had also had time for her blood to heat up to boiling point. How could she have missed Finn’s very obvious I’m better than you aura? Jetlag. Clearly. Nothing to do with the fact he was so good-looking her entire reproductive system had been liquified into hot sauce.
Because she was obviously a deeply mature woman above engaging in petty squabbles, she used her lifelong love of Grey’s Anatomy to ask the paramedics some additional, I already know this but I’m asking for the benefit of the group type questions about subdural haematomas so that Finn knew she was well aware of the gravity of the situation and also to make it clear her vocabulary was polysyllabic even under duress, thank you very much.
‘Alright, everyone.’ Finn made a follow-me gesture, meeting everyone’s eyes apart from hers. ‘Now that you’ve all enjoyed the delights of Glasgow International, let’s get you up the road to Balcraigie, shall we?’
Exhaustion overtook her as the group trooped like jolly little ducklings behind Finlay’s broad stretch of shoulders towards the car park. The only thing that kept her from turning round and running back to the terminal, demanding entry on to the plane she’d just disembarked, was her promise to her bestie.
That, and the lure of Balcraigie Castle. Which, Finn informed them, was pronounced Bal-creg-ie.
When they checked in, she was going to order room service, take an insanely long bubble bath with whatever lush amenities were there and try her best to wash Finn out of her hair. Since he was the driver, they’d most likely never see him again and that suited her to a tee. Then, with any luck, everyone would develop a full-blown case of amnesia, and she and Gabe could start tomorrow afresh. Including Jennifer, who gratefully accepted her shawl back after Willa unearthed her new coat from her suitcase. Gabe had been right. It was cold here.
After passing a number of executive-style minivans with blacked-out windows, Finn stopped in front of a very battered-looking, moss green Land Rover Discovery with . . . oh dear god . . . a canvas-covered back that was going to be no protection against the increasingly chilly weather.
He held his hand out. ‘Here we are, then.’
Willa tugged her new winter coat round her and shivered.
It was the kind of vehicle that, had it been in better condition, would have been used to drive the queen around her Scottish estate when she went hunting. In its current state, she doubted a sheep would see it as a cosy alternative to standing, say, unprotected on a barren moor in the middle of a blizzard.
When he opened up the back, a tumble of orange twine, straw and other mystery items fell out. Suffice it to say, nothing about this vehicle screamed Property of the Laird. Then again, if they were being truly immersive, she supposed, Finn would’ve shown up on a horse.
To her surprise, everyone else in the group thought the vehicle was absolutely wonderful.
Beneath the cheery cries of ‘So authentic,’ and ‘I feel like I’m in another country,’ and a giggled, ‘You are in another country,’ Finn got to work.
‘Right!’ he said, his tongue sexily running over his Rs and landing on his Ts like they were popping candy. ‘If you hand me your luggage, I’ll just pop everyone’s bags on to the roof rack, okay?’
His eyes skidded across the group, giving everyone an encouraging smile until they landed on Willa, at which point his rather beautiful mouth turned in on itself and he looked away.
McBastard.
‘Wow!’ said Jeff, still glowing from his extensive photoshoot with the Japanese tourists who, it turned out, were also booked on an Outlander tour. ‘This old jalopy looks like she’s been through a few generations.’
Willa caught a look of surprise in Finlay’s eyes and a softening in his voice as he ran his hand along the side of it with a soft, ‘Yes. Well. A couple. It was my father’s.’
The group ooo-ed and ahhh-ed and, using Finlay’s big hand as a ballast, climbed into the back. Finlay said nothing more about it, but Willa was certain she’d heard what no one else had. He didn’t have his father any more and more than anything, he desperately wished he did.
She closed the fissure of warmth trying to creep through her Ice Queen act. The last thing she wanted was a legitimate reason to empathise with Mr McTall Dark and Handsome.
Three hours into the drive, Willa learnt that the six strangers she was jammed together with made up the entire group. She also learnt more about them than she knew about people she had worked with for years (excluding Finn, who was silently and fastidiously focusing on his driving. Gabe, also in the front, was oblivious to it all. He was sleeping like a baby beneath a tartan picnic blanket with Jeff’s neck pillow as buffering against any further bumps to his head).
Snippets of their conversation hung in the air like wish lists.
Men in kilts who did housekeeping.
Men in kilts who were strippers.
Men in kilts who would defend your honour no matter how vile the enemy.
There were many fantasies about men in kilts.
One of whom was sitting among them. Baltimore Jeff, who gave a detailed explanation about his kilt’s warrior tartan (of the McSnood clan), was married to Arizona Rosa. They were late forty-somethings who lived in Tucson, which, they announced with pride, had an excellent selection of burrito bars and about a dozen of Rosa’s nieces and nephews. At the apex of his career as a structural engineer (‘Jeff can put his hands to anything and come up with magic!’) and hers as a glassblower, they devoted their out-of-work hours to their passions in the following order:
1) Their shared tantric sex needs
2) Renaissance faires
3) Outlander
They’d married late, ‘missed the children boat’, but had found one another. Soulmates brought together at the Sherwood Forest Faire in Texas. Rosa had been fleeing a group of masked bandits when Jeff had scooped her up on to the back of his horse as if she’d been made of air ‘and that was that’. He was, to this day, her knight in shining armour.
Jennifer and Jules Brookland were a mother-daughter pair from the south coast of England. Jennifer looked, in her own words, ‘completely mumsy despite Jules’s many attempts to do something hip’ with her but was hoping this trip would give her some inspiration. Jules had a unicorn-coloured mane of hair, was a loud and proud lesbian but open to pansexuality, and had studied medieval history at Bristol. They were the best of friends, superfans of both the Outlander books and the show, and had been saving all year for this – Jennifer from her job at a local Tesco and Jules from her job as an assistant outreach officer at a bakery founded and run by women who’d been through the prison system (and, no, Jules had not been arrested unless you counted the numerous Extinction Rebellion marches when she’d been corralled into police vans to clear the streets). They both wrote fan fiction and were beside themselves with excitement.
Then there was Fenella O’Callahan and ChiChi Orakwe, friends from an online Outlander study group who’d met in real life for the first time at Glasgow airport.
ChiChi was originally from Nigeria but had relocated to England to study first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. She was in the throes of completing a PhD in astrophysics.
‘What’s your thesis?’ asked Jeff, completely enthralled.
‘Time travel?’ Rosa asked, dropping a wink to the group.
‘In a way,’ ChiChi replied. ‘I’m looking at supersymmetry and its relationship to observation. I’ve been focusing on the constraints imposed on dark matter and statistical issues.’
‘I can help you make that short and sweet,’ quipped Jules with a laugh.
‘How do you mean?’ ChiChi asked in her lovely lilting accent.
Jules clapped her hands together, then placed them on the tops of her thighs. ‘Well, how about this?’ She changed her voice to sound lofty. ‘For centuries men have gathered the statistics and as such, they are men-centric. Ergo . . . skewed. Ergo? Wrong. The end.’ She grinned at the group and they all, including ChiChi laughed, saying she’d save a fortune on printer ink if she chose that approach.
Fenella was Australian born and bred to ‘an Aussie-Irish dad and Thai mum’. She’d grown up on her dad’s family’s cattle station ‘back in the ass-end of nowhere’. She said her goal was to leave Balcraigie with a ring on her finger. ‘I plan on taking advantage of Gretna Green’s loose marital laws.’
‘Outrageously exploitative laws, you mean,’ said Jules with a huff. ‘What sort of heathen country passes a law saying it’s okay to marry twelve-year-old girls? Oh, wait – would that be a country with men in charge?’
ChiChi raised her hand. ‘Actually, I think you’ll find underage marriage is still prevalent in a number—’ she began just as Jennifer launched into a detailed explanation about how the law in Scotland had changed some time ago and, if Fenella was serious, she’d have to register an intent to wed straight away because Scotland required fifteen days’ notice. To which Jules, horrified, asked, ‘Mum? Why would you know something like that?’
Jennifer said nothing more on the matter.
‘And what about you, honey?’ Rosa cut in before the awkward silence grew too long. She gave Willa a little pat on the knee. ‘What brings you to Scotland?’
This was the part of these getting-to-know-you sessions that always sent Willa into a panic. She didn’t like people to know things about her. Not because she had a collection of skeletons waiting to tumble out of the closet or anything, it was more . . . at twenty-nine years of age, she still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure who she was. In LA no one cared, they just wanted to know what you did, so . . . up until now she was what she did: an entertainment news producer. But here, far away from the studios and junkets and floodlights criss-crossing the sky at yet another premiere, she found it impossible to describe herself.
One solitary word fell into her head with a thunk.
Lost.
It was a start. But how else to describe herself? Shameless? She’d already flashed this group her boobs, nearly killed her maybe/maybe not lawfully intended and acted like a show-off with her subdural haematomas after Finn had unwittingly flicked her please-don’t-talk-down-to-me switches.
She definitely wasn’t going to admit she was here because of her and Val’s ongoing feud about whether or not being an Outlander superfan was a waste of valuable time. Now, more than ever, Willa wished she could pull the spent calendar pages out of the trash so they could boxset binge together. Something, anything, to get back those precious hours she should have spent with Val. She’d never get a do-over for that decision and, frankly, deserved the shame that came with it.
‘Well . . . erm,’ she stuttered, glancing up at the front of the vehicle where Gabe was still asleep. To her surprise, Finn’s eyes were flicking up to the rear-view mirror as if he too wanted to hear why she was here.
She looked away and announced lightly, if not a tiny bit dishonestly, ‘It was a gift.’
‘From your boyfriend?’ Jennifer gave her a saucy wink. Or it might’ve been a bit of straw caught in her eye. It was hard to tell because it was getting really dark in the back of the jeep.
‘Are you going to have a shag fest under the Scottish stars like Jamie and Claire?’ Fenella asked in a really loud stage whisper before Willa could explain that not only was Gabe not her boyfriend, but he was also unlikely to speak to her again now that she had scarred him for life. Sure, the chunk of thick, ebony hair they’d had to shave off would grow back, but if he ever went bald? There’d be a scar and she the reason for it.
‘I think they’re called spirits of ammonia,’ said another woman, whose accent Willa couldn’t place.
‘It’s 999 here,’ said a blonde woman in an English accent she’d heard before when she’d binge-watched the British baking show. ‘My daughter, Jules, is ringing them.’
‘There’ll be volunteer first responders here at the airport,’ Finlay said. ‘Perhaps one of you can find an emergency phone and ring them?’
Willa opened her mouth to panic scream that she didn’t want volunteer first responders, she wanted a team of crack surgeons, when she remembered that her father and brother were both volunteer firemen and that, when it came to a crisis, you really didn’t care who showed up, so long as someone did. Preferably in a uniform.
To be fair, she was feeling strangely safe and secure with Finlay in charge.
His eyes were even more amazing up close. A beautiful blue-grey that spoke to a depth of character she instantly wanted to explore. He’d seen things and done things and had learnt from them. Quite the contrast to her world of film stars who had called upon people like Gabe to sort out their mistakes, no matter how frequently they committed them.
He exuded calm, assured control. Exactly the way you’d want someone to be in a crisis. His voice alone felt like having warm caramel poured down her spine. A bit too arousing at a moment when she shouldn’t be finding anything erotic apart from Gabe, who still managed to look breathtakingly beautiful even though he was bleeding and possibly never going to be able to use his brain again.
All of which sent her heart rate rocketing, as if she was a carnival goldfish accidentally dropped from its clear baggie on to the dusty ground, desperately trying to take deep, gulping breaths, none of them successfully filling her lungs with the requisite oxygen.
‘Hey.’ Finlay’s voice broke through her panic. ‘You’re alright. Breathe steady now. C’mon. There you are. Look at me. Right into my eyes. We don’t want the two of you in an ambulance now, do we? Steady now. That’s it, lass. One . . . two . . . nice and slow . . . three . . . That’s it . . . steady now.’
Finlay was putting her into a trance. A strong, capable man-in-a-crisis-rising-to-the-occasion trance. The emotional equivalent of a perfectly grilled cheese sandwich and steaming mug of tomato soup.
It was a brand new sensation to feel so . . . focused upon. As if he really cared whether or not she launched into a full-blown panic attack. Especially with Gabe breathing his last between them. She was usually the capable one. The type of girl who, at best, received a pat on the shoulder and a ‘You’re alright, aren’t ya, Wills?’
If he was secretly hypnotising her to quack like a duck, she was strangely fine with that.
His eyes cut away from hers.
One of the Japanese tourists was waving to him to move out of the way so she could sit next to Gabe and have her picture taken. A near dead, very hot Latino in a kilt wasn’t one of your everyday sights, but . . . really?
Finlay, still holding the compress, rose up to his knees, and with a fluid, authoritative air said to the gathering crowd, ‘Alright, everyone, let’s give the poor man some space.’ To Willa, he said, ‘Press down on this for me, would you?’ His eyes sought hers. ‘Do you think you can do that, Willa?’
Uhhh. Was he serious?
‘You just hold it down, not too hard, alright?’
Clearly, he was.
And in the time it would take a normal person to say, ‘Sure thing!’, a red mist descended.
Sure. She may have been on the brink of a panic attack a moment ago, but of all the things Willa hated most in life, being patronised was top of the list. Not because she was paranoid about her intellect – she was fine with her level of brain power. But being spoken to as if she couldn’t follow a set of simple instructions was an instant trigger, transporting her back to her childhood. A lifetime really, of her family speaking to her as if she was unable to differentiate between Real World Problems and Fictional Problems predicated on the basis that she liked television.
Now, she didn’t have it on excellent authority that belittling her was Finn’s main goal. (He seemed like a Finn now. If he could speak to her using toddler words, she could give him a nickname.) Maybe he thought she was overtired. Perhaps he could sense the headache creeping in courtesy of too many in-flight beverages. Or maybe, because it certainly had sounded that way, he did think she was stupid.
Whatever his motives they no longer factored. Shunting every single pleasant thing she’d thought about him did. And really, now that she thought about it? He reminded her just a little bit too much of home.
‘Yeah,’ she answered tersely. ‘I think I can just about rustle up the ability to hold a cloth.’
He stared at her with an intensity she couldn’t identify, then gave a particularly irritating fair-enough shrug, got up, ushered away the tourists and asked the rest of the group to form a protective luggage shield around Gabe. As they gathered round, the fifty-something blonde woman from their group approached and introduced herself as Jennifer. She untwisted her beautiful shawl-wrappy thing from her shoulders and tucked it over Willa’s shoulders with a practised motherly pat. ‘For your maiden modesty,’ she whispered kindly.
Willa’s cheeks turned scarlet. Her boobs had escaped again. And with fabulous timing. Right in the middle of her self-righteous snippery to Finn.
Awesome. Just what she wanted. An assured place in the Top Ten Idiot Americans list.
‘Should we put honey or something on the wound?’ asked the young woman sporting some amazing rainbow-coloured hair. ‘I think that’s what Claire would’ve done.’
‘Claire?’ Willa asked, rather than ‘honey?’ Which would have been the more pertinent question.
‘You know. Claire of Jamie and Claire in Outlander?’ prompted Jennifer.
She caught Finlay giving her another one of those, are-you-sure-there’s-a-brain-in-your-head looks.
Asshole.
‘I’m in training to become a white witch,’ said rainbow-hair girl, then stuck out her hand. ‘Jules.’
Willa, one hand very ably holding the blood-soaked handkerchief to Gabe’s forehead, took her proffered hand and shook it. Were they really were going to take this particular moment to play What Would Claire Do? Before she could ask, Jules looked up and said, ‘Oh cool! Paramedics.’
By the time the ambulance crew left, the sun had set, Gabe had regained consciousness, the cut on his forehead had been stitched and they’d all been given a sombre lecture on how to identify signs of a concussion.
Willa had also had time for her blood to heat up to boiling point. How could she have missed Finn’s very obvious I’m better than you aura? Jetlag. Clearly. Nothing to do with the fact he was so good-looking her entire reproductive system had been liquified into hot sauce.
Because she was obviously a deeply mature woman above engaging in petty squabbles, she used her lifelong love of Grey’s Anatomy to ask the paramedics some additional, I already know this but I’m asking for the benefit of the group type questions about subdural haematomas so that Finn knew she was well aware of the gravity of the situation and also to make it clear her vocabulary was polysyllabic even under duress, thank you very much.
‘Alright, everyone.’ Finn made a follow-me gesture, meeting everyone’s eyes apart from hers. ‘Now that you’ve all enjoyed the delights of Glasgow International, let’s get you up the road to Balcraigie, shall we?’
Exhaustion overtook her as the group trooped like jolly little ducklings behind Finlay’s broad stretch of shoulders towards the car park. The only thing that kept her from turning round and running back to the terminal, demanding entry on to the plane she’d just disembarked, was her promise to her bestie.
That, and the lure of Balcraigie Castle. Which, Finn informed them, was pronounced Bal-creg-ie.
When they checked in, she was going to order room service, take an insanely long bubble bath with whatever lush amenities were there and try her best to wash Finn out of her hair. Since he was the driver, they’d most likely never see him again and that suited her to a tee. Then, with any luck, everyone would develop a full-blown case of amnesia, and she and Gabe could start tomorrow afresh. Including Jennifer, who gratefully accepted her shawl back after Willa unearthed her new coat from her suitcase. Gabe had been right. It was cold here.
After passing a number of executive-style minivans with blacked-out windows, Finn stopped in front of a very battered-looking, moss green Land Rover Discovery with . . . oh dear god . . . a canvas-covered back that was going to be no protection against the increasingly chilly weather.
He held his hand out. ‘Here we are, then.’
Willa tugged her new winter coat round her and shivered.
It was the kind of vehicle that, had it been in better condition, would have been used to drive the queen around her Scottish estate when she went hunting. In its current state, she doubted a sheep would see it as a cosy alternative to standing, say, unprotected on a barren moor in the middle of a blizzard.
When he opened up the back, a tumble of orange twine, straw and other mystery items fell out. Suffice it to say, nothing about this vehicle screamed Property of the Laird. Then again, if they were being truly immersive, she supposed, Finn would’ve shown up on a horse.
To her surprise, everyone else in the group thought the vehicle was absolutely wonderful.
Beneath the cheery cries of ‘So authentic,’ and ‘I feel like I’m in another country,’ and a giggled, ‘You are in another country,’ Finn got to work.
‘Right!’ he said, his tongue sexily running over his Rs and landing on his Ts like they were popping candy. ‘If you hand me your luggage, I’ll just pop everyone’s bags on to the roof rack, okay?’
His eyes skidded across the group, giving everyone an encouraging smile until they landed on Willa, at which point his rather beautiful mouth turned in on itself and he looked away.
McBastard.
‘Wow!’ said Jeff, still glowing from his extensive photoshoot with the Japanese tourists who, it turned out, were also booked on an Outlander tour. ‘This old jalopy looks like she’s been through a few generations.’
Willa caught a look of surprise in Finlay’s eyes and a softening in his voice as he ran his hand along the side of it with a soft, ‘Yes. Well. A couple. It was my father’s.’
The group ooo-ed and ahhh-ed and, using Finlay’s big hand as a ballast, climbed into the back. Finlay said nothing more about it, but Willa was certain she’d heard what no one else had. He didn’t have his father any more and more than anything, he desperately wished he did.
She closed the fissure of warmth trying to creep through her Ice Queen act. The last thing she wanted was a legitimate reason to empathise with Mr McTall Dark and Handsome.
Three hours into the drive, Willa learnt that the six strangers she was jammed together with made up the entire group. She also learnt more about them than she knew about people she had worked with for years (excluding Finn, who was silently and fastidiously focusing on his driving. Gabe, also in the front, was oblivious to it all. He was sleeping like a baby beneath a tartan picnic blanket with Jeff’s neck pillow as buffering against any further bumps to his head).
Snippets of their conversation hung in the air like wish lists.
Men in kilts who did housekeeping.
Men in kilts who were strippers.
Men in kilts who would defend your honour no matter how vile the enemy.
There were many fantasies about men in kilts.
One of whom was sitting among them. Baltimore Jeff, who gave a detailed explanation about his kilt’s warrior tartan (of the McSnood clan), was married to Arizona Rosa. They were late forty-somethings who lived in Tucson, which, they announced with pride, had an excellent selection of burrito bars and about a dozen of Rosa’s nieces and nephews. At the apex of his career as a structural engineer (‘Jeff can put his hands to anything and come up with magic!’) and hers as a glassblower, they devoted their out-of-work hours to their passions in the following order:
1) Their shared tantric sex needs
2) Renaissance faires
3) Outlander
They’d married late, ‘missed the children boat’, but had found one another. Soulmates brought together at the Sherwood Forest Faire in Texas. Rosa had been fleeing a group of masked bandits when Jeff had scooped her up on to the back of his horse as if she’d been made of air ‘and that was that’. He was, to this day, her knight in shining armour.
Jennifer and Jules Brookland were a mother-daughter pair from the south coast of England. Jennifer looked, in her own words, ‘completely mumsy despite Jules’s many attempts to do something hip’ with her but was hoping this trip would give her some inspiration. Jules had a unicorn-coloured mane of hair, was a loud and proud lesbian but open to pansexuality, and had studied medieval history at Bristol. They were the best of friends, superfans of both the Outlander books and the show, and had been saving all year for this – Jennifer from her job at a local Tesco and Jules from her job as an assistant outreach officer at a bakery founded and run by women who’d been through the prison system (and, no, Jules had not been arrested unless you counted the numerous Extinction Rebellion marches when she’d been corralled into police vans to clear the streets). They both wrote fan fiction and were beside themselves with excitement.
Then there was Fenella O’Callahan and ChiChi Orakwe, friends from an online Outlander study group who’d met in real life for the first time at Glasgow airport.
ChiChi was originally from Nigeria but had relocated to England to study first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. She was in the throes of completing a PhD in astrophysics.
‘What’s your thesis?’ asked Jeff, completely enthralled.
‘Time travel?’ Rosa asked, dropping a wink to the group.
‘In a way,’ ChiChi replied. ‘I’m looking at supersymmetry and its relationship to observation. I’ve been focusing on the constraints imposed on dark matter and statistical issues.’
‘I can help you make that short and sweet,’ quipped Jules with a laugh.
‘How do you mean?’ ChiChi asked in her lovely lilting accent.
Jules clapped her hands together, then placed them on the tops of her thighs. ‘Well, how about this?’ She changed her voice to sound lofty. ‘For centuries men have gathered the statistics and as such, they are men-centric. Ergo . . . skewed. Ergo? Wrong. The end.’ She grinned at the group and they all, including ChiChi laughed, saying she’d save a fortune on printer ink if she chose that approach.
Fenella was Australian born and bred to ‘an Aussie-Irish dad and Thai mum’. She’d grown up on her dad’s family’s cattle station ‘back in the ass-end of nowhere’. She said her goal was to leave Balcraigie with a ring on her finger. ‘I plan on taking advantage of Gretna Green’s loose marital laws.’
‘Outrageously exploitative laws, you mean,’ said Jules with a huff. ‘What sort of heathen country passes a law saying it’s okay to marry twelve-year-old girls? Oh, wait – would that be a country with men in charge?’
ChiChi raised her hand. ‘Actually, I think you’ll find underage marriage is still prevalent in a number—’ she began just as Jennifer launched into a detailed explanation about how the law in Scotland had changed some time ago and, if Fenella was serious, she’d have to register an intent to wed straight away because Scotland required fifteen days’ notice. To which Jules, horrified, asked, ‘Mum? Why would you know something like that?’
Jennifer said nothing more on the matter.
‘And what about you, honey?’ Rosa cut in before the awkward silence grew too long. She gave Willa a little pat on the knee. ‘What brings you to Scotland?’
This was the part of these getting-to-know-you sessions that always sent Willa into a panic. She didn’t like people to know things about her. Not because she had a collection of skeletons waiting to tumble out of the closet or anything, it was more . . . at twenty-nine years of age, she still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure who she was. In LA no one cared, they just wanted to know what you did, so . . . up until now she was what she did: an entertainment news producer. But here, far away from the studios and junkets and floodlights criss-crossing the sky at yet another premiere, she found it impossible to describe herself.
One solitary word fell into her head with a thunk.
Lost.
It was a start. But how else to describe herself? Shameless? She’d already flashed this group her boobs, nearly killed her maybe/maybe not lawfully intended and acted like a show-off with her subdural haematomas after Finn had unwittingly flicked her please-don’t-talk-down-to-me switches.
She definitely wasn’t going to admit she was here because of her and Val’s ongoing feud about whether or not being an Outlander superfan was a waste of valuable time. Now, more than ever, Willa wished she could pull the spent calendar pages out of the trash so they could boxset binge together. Something, anything, to get back those precious hours she should have spent with Val. She’d never get a do-over for that decision and, frankly, deserved the shame that came with it.
‘Well . . . erm,’ she stuttered, glancing up at the front of the vehicle where Gabe was still asleep. To her surprise, Finn’s eyes were flicking up to the rear-view mirror as if he too wanted to hear why she was here.
She looked away and announced lightly, if not a tiny bit dishonestly, ‘It was a gift.’
‘From your boyfriend?’ Jennifer gave her a saucy wink. Or it might’ve been a bit of straw caught in her eye. It was hard to tell because it was getting really dark in the back of the jeep.
‘Are you going to have a shag fest under the Scottish stars like Jamie and Claire?’ Fenella asked in a really loud stage whisper before Willa could explain that not only was Gabe not her boyfriend, but he was also unlikely to speak to her again now that she had scarred him for life. Sure, the chunk of thick, ebony hair they’d had to shave off would grow back, but if he ever went bald? There’d be a scar and she the reason for it.
