He grinned, reaching under the counter and plonking an Isle of Siskin travel mug next to the till. ‘A fair few thirsty people walk through those doors. After waiting around for Connell, eight quid for a mug with a free tea or coffee thrown in and everyone’s a winner.’
‘And to think I thought offering thirty pence off if customers bring their own mug was innovative.’
The free doughnuts seemed less of a generous offer, now. I got my phone out to pay, then remembered that, with no broadband data, I’d need to dig out my bank card.
‘Right then, Billy-boy,’ Barnie called. ‘Last customer served, time to get this scooter on the road.’
I turned to check and saw that we did appear to be the only people left. The final car had gone.
‘I don’t suppose there’s a car-hire place?’
What kind of airport didn’t have a car rental?
Barnie took off his blue cap, ran a hand through his blond curls before donning a red one, and ambled over to the bike-hire stand.
‘At your service, madam. How can Barnie’s Bikes help you today?’
9
Twenty minutes later, I was wobbling along the main road into Port Cathan while cursing my stupid need to help random strangers in airports, lottery tickets, the suitcase-rucksack, which I now suspected Blessing had topped up with rocks, Lander’s cows and most of all my hare-brained idea to jump on an aeroplane without bothering to takea single dayto book somewhere to stay, or research how to get around the island, or anything at all whatsoever.
I tried being mad at Pip for helping me get here, instead of talking me out of it, but that was a lot harder than being cross at a random bunch of cows.
Every few minutes, a vehicle rumbled past, one driver hollering at the ‘mainlander’ hogging the narrow lane.
When a few minutes later the road started to curve upwards in what appeared to be a gentle slope, but felt to my burning thighs like the side of a mountain, I gave up, levering my stiffening limbs off the bike.
Barnie had assured me that Port Cathan was three miles away, ‘Eighteen minutes if you’re not a regular cyclist. Twenty, max, if you’re massively unfit.’
I checked the time. It was eight-fifteen. The longest twenty-five minutes of my life, and no village in sight. The urge to keep going, with the hope that at the end of this hell I’d find a comfortable bed, a shower and a hot meal, battled with the exhaustion dragging at every bone in my body, and the fear that when I arrived at the village things might somehow get even worse.
I settled the argument by awarding myself a five-minute break, wheeling the bike off the road and sinking onto the damp, grassy verge.
Leaning back on my hands, I closed my eyes and once again became aware that I was somewhere utterlyother.
More birdsong, a distant lowing that I decided must be Lander’s herd on their way home and, of course, the gentle rhythm of waves breaking.
Opening my eyes, I caught the first hints of evening pink and gold shimmering around the sun, now hovering above the field beyond the road. I guessed at least an hour until it set, but the air carried the coolness of a summer night, and the light had softened with the lengthening shadows. I hauled myself up and did a full three-sixty, taking in the fields on either side, one full of half-grown wheat, the other a grassy meadow. A few hundred metres back from the road sat a stone farmhouse, surrounded by a large barn and several outbuildings, all encircled with a white fence. Up ahead, a small thicket prevented me from seeing how far the road still stretched, but the treetops almost glowed beneath the waning rays.
A rabbit suddenly scampered out from the hedgerow, bolted across the road and disappeared into the wheat. I spied a bird of prey circling over the far side of the meadow.
This place was beautiful.
I sank back onto the verge, the weariness of a very long day prompting me to consider finding a soft patch of grass, wrappingmyself up in my new clothes and sleeping there, when a truck came chugging out of the thicket and down the hill.
I attempted to adopt the pose of a non-lost tourist who knew what she was doing, but it came to a stop anyway.
And, in what might possibly have been the best moment of my life so far, the door opened and Pip sprang out.
‘Hey.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets, squinting due to the sun being behind me.
‘Hi.’
‘You decided to cycle from the airport?’ he asked, his tone uncertain. Because clearly for the sweat-soaked, dishevelled woman now slumped by the side of a near-deserted road, cycling three miles uphill with a wheeled rucksack was not a wise decision.
‘The bus never turned up. The road was blocked with cows.’
He grimaced. ‘Why Big Lander trusts his eejit grandson with live animals is one of the island’s great mysteries.’
