Barely a moment after a dessert of peach and strawberry crumble with vanilla ice cream had been polished off, the four newest arrivals rose from the table and disappeared to their respective rooms, claiming travel fatigue. Left behind, the five remaining friends finally breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Would you rather have an incurable disease that caused you pain every day for the rest of your life, or live with that woman?” asked Cheryl.
“Looks like Karl Marx has already chosen the answer to that one,” said Frank.
After helping to clear up, they followed Frank’s suggestion and headed to the main living room to enjoy a glass of one of the bottles of Taiwanese single malt whisky he and Johnny had bought at the airport duty free. And for the first time that evening, everything felt like old times. Sitting around the open fire, red-faced from the heat and the alcohol, they polished off two bottles, the rest of the night becoming a blur of catch-ups and memories and laughter.
* * * *
The next morning, Trevor woke with a gasp in a strange bed, in a darkened bedroom, to the sound of someone trying too hard to open and close cupboards quietly in the kitchen next door. His heart raced instantly, bringing on a pounding headache from a hangover he absolutely deserved, relieved only slightly by the chill air of the bedroom. Not as arctic as the frostiness that had hung over the dinner table the evening before, but just as sobering.
At barely seven in the morning, instead of trying to fall back to sleep, he decided to get up and shower. While towel-drying his hair and brushing his teeth, he checked his fully charged phone to find a strong Wi-Fi signal.
Right then he heard soft tapping.
At first he wondered if the sound had something to do with the old plumbing, before realising the knocking was coming from his bedroom. Back inside the dim room, standing barefoot on the warm floor, he stared at the door and waited. Once again the rapping noise came, but from the window, not the door. When he pulled the curtains aside, he gasped and stepped back when he discovered the smiling face of Rudy Mortimer filling the frame. Unlatching the pane, Trevor allowed a frozen breeze of air to invade the room.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asked.
“Needed to drop off a basket of goodies. Instructions from Mother. Then I was going for an early morning stroll. Wondered if you fancied joining me? Show you some of the sights around the moor?”
“Early riser, eh? Is that a habit?”
“Och, no, not really,” said Rudy, his smile slipping. “Just don’t sleep much these days.”
Trevor might have been mistaken, but that tiny admission appeared to carry a whole depth of personal pain.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you go round to the kitchen. I can hear Mrs M starting to fix breakfast, and I know she’ll be delighted to see you. Grab a mug of tea, and pour me one—milk with one sugar—and I’ll be out in five. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Rudy, blowing into his hands. “Going to snow today.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s not a question, Trev. I’m telling you, it’s going to snow.”
“When every weather person in the country says there’s going to be no snow across the British Isles, Rudy Mortimer begs to differ. Is this some Scottish myth, like when the cows lie down in the field with their legs in the air, farmers know it’s going to rain?”
“If a cow’s lying on its back with its legs in the air, Trev, in my experience it’s probably dead. No, I’m talking about snow. Lots of snow. You wait and see.”
“Okay, I believe you. Now bugger off so that I can put some trousers on.”
Rudy’s laughter lit up the morning and was almost worth having let the sub-zero air into the bedroom.
When Trevor entered the kitchen togged out in a thick woollen jumper and jeans, Rudy was sitting at the kitchen table with Mrs M, the two of them chatting happily. Rudy appeared so at home there, maybe because this had been his home from time to time. Midway through talking to Mrs M about the basket of goodies he had left—a local brand of Dundee cake and a bottle of whisky, the sight of which made Trevor nauseous—Rudy looked up and held out a mug to Trevor before offering another of his knee-trembling smiles.
“What time will you be back?” asked Mrs M.
Trevor turned to Rudy and shrugged.
“Around nine-thirty, if that’s okay, Mrs Madison,” said Rudy.
“Fine. As long as you agree to call me Brenda.”
“Of course. I wanted to show Trevor the moors before the weather turns.”
“Weather turns? What do you mean?” she asked, turning to the unblemished sunshine outside the kitchen window. “It’s going to be a beautiful day today.”
“That’s what I told him,” said Trevor. “There’s not a cloud in sight.”
