“Well, he didn’t stop me.”
Eiley shook her head in amusement, then refocused her attention on the shop and all she still had to do before shepicked up Saffron. “Let me finish this display, and then I’ll clear some space for your books!”
“Wait!” Harper stopped her, shoving her phone into Eiley’s hands. “Can you take some pictures of me and my baby for Instagram first?”
Eiley chuckled, more than eager to capture Harper’s joy as she smiled for the camera, the bookshelves and the watery sunlight providing a perfect backdrop. She grew slightlylesseager when, twenty pictures in, Harper still had new poses up her sleeve – but she didn’t say so. If her family was happy, then Eiley was happy.
Mostly.
2
“To Harper,” chimed Eiley and her family as they clinked their glasses together. Harper, Fraser, Mum, and her younger sister Cam and sister-in-law Sorcha completed the toast. Andy, the local B&B owner and Fraser’s best friend, had also joined them, looking suave in a waistcoat that they’d already confessed had been nabbed from the inn’s lost and found stash.
The final rays of setting sun poured through the trees and over their table as they sipped the drinks under fairy lights. Turloch Corner Tavern, Belbarrow’s oldest – and only – pub, sat on the river that ran through the town, and the fine weather allowed them to enjoy the autumn-burnished view in all its glory. Beyond the stone bridge, the water’s current sent fallen leaves meandering into the distance before disappearing into the shadows of the woodland. Eiley smiled to think of all the times she and the children had played Pooh Sticks there, Brook finding twigs for Sky to throw over the edge like the caring big brother he was.
As the sky darkened, Eiley shivered, admiring the view of the water wheel attached to the tearoom across the road. As much as she wanted to bask in the lull of the day’s end, shelonged for pyjamas. Her mum clearly had, too, which was why she’d already left as soon as dessert was over, offering to take the kids with her. Eiley should have been grateful for that as well, but mostly, she just felt incompetent, an imposter in her own life. Mum helped her out too much. Everybody did.
“May you become a bestselling millionaire so that you can give us all your dosh,” Andy added over their pint of cider.
Eiley’s giggle was lost under everyone else’s peals. She was always the quietest at the table, the one with the least to say, and it felt painfully obvious to her in moments like this. She didn’t know why. She loved these people, and she belonged here as much as everyone else, but sometimes she felt like she had nothing much to offer. Truth be told, she had already been thinking of going home. Before 7 p.m.
“It’s getting a wee bit chilly out here.” Cam pulled her leather jacket on. She looked lovely tonight. Like Fraser, her hair was a rich auburn, choppy fringe falling just over her brows and bright blue eyes lined with smoky makeup. She and Sorcha had two children together, Archie and Isla, the former not much older than Saffron, but somehow Cam never looked half as exhausted as Eiley.
“Aye, shall we head in?” Sorcha linked her arm through Cam’s. Eiley focused on her wine glass. She was a little coupled out tonight, honestly. It wasn’t just her family, either. She’d had two elderly men visit the bookshop this afternoon, as loved up as teenagers. On the benches across, town organiser Dot was on a date with her new fella, Keith. It was like the world had decided to show her just how single she was. Like everyone had found their match but her.
Which was fine, she reminded herself. She was glad to be single. Until the kids went to sleep and the flat went quiet, and she had nobody to talk to about her day. Nobody to hold her.
Not that Finlay had ever really done that, either. She couldn’t miss something that had never existed for her, could she?
She stuffed it all down again, using the wine as her aid, and followed the group back into the tavern. As always, plenty of locals flitted about inside, enjoying Graeme’s pub dinners and socialising while the green pitch of an old football game flashed on the TV behind. The place smelled like musk, ale, and rich gravy, the same as it always had. That was one of the things she loved about Belbarrow: even ifshefelt different, her surroundings never changed. She might not have found her other half, but she could always rely on the town’s steady constant.
They settled into a booth in the corner where they were less likely to be disturbed by the drunk group of thirty-something men playing darts, Eiley happily nestling into the seat closest to the peeling, textured-paint walls.
“So, what’s this surprise you mentioned?” Harper asked Fraser, batting her lashes – as though she needed to win him over. He was wrapped around her finger and they all knew it.
Fraser looked over to Cam, prompting her with lifted brows. Cam grinned, first at Harper and then at Eiley. “Well, I think us girls have earned a mini getaway, haven’t we?”
“Oh my god. Where to?” Harper hopped up in her seat. “Turkey? Spain? Greece? Please, say it’s Greece!”
Eiley gulped. She wished she could be as excited, but only dread rose in her gut. She might have been doing better, butshe was a homebody through and through, and the idea of having to go somewhere, anywhere, left her muscles roiling with tension.
Cam winced. “Okay, I don’t know how much money you think I have, but no. Try somewhere more local.”
“Cam, I love you” – Harper took Cam’s hand across the table – “but I’ve stood in every rainy, cold Scottish town-slash-city imaginable this year, selling Fraser’s work at markets until time has lost all meaning and fingers all feeling.”
Fraser grunted into his pint glass. “And didn’t we enjoy that quality time together, sunshine?”
“There will be no cold and rain, because we’ll be indoors.” Cam took out her phone and flashed both Harper and Eiley an image of a grand Victorian manor house overlooking a smooth loch shore.
Eiley perked up; it was like something out of a regency novel, elegant, with gorgeously green gardens and ivy crawling up the traditional stone exterior. “We’re stayingthere?”
Cam nodded. “A fancy spa hotel on Loch Fyne. Alice told me about it a few weeks ago, and it sounded heavenly. We need a pamper, don’t we?”
Harper was back to being ecstatic, feet stamping beneath the table so that the mostly drained drinks atop it clattered with the movement. “All of us?”
“Just you three, thank god,” Sorcha said, motioning between Harper, Cam, and Eiley. Her golden nose ring glinted in the light, glossy black ponytail cascading over one shoulder. “I couldn’t think of anything worse than strangers touching me.”
Eiley didn’t really like the sound of that, either, although she was still fixed on the beautiful building. It was instinct to protest: “But the kids—”
