Keepsakes from the Cottage by the Loch (Loch Cameron #6)

Chapter 4

FOUR

There is a knock on the door and Tara opens it. It’s her birthday, and a party is bubbling behind her, in the bar of the Inn which is closed for the night for its usual adult patrons.

She is eleven and all her friends from school are there, ready to watch a movie and eat popcorn. Dotty and Eric, her mum and dad, have strewn the bar with balloons and paper streamers, and there’s a chocolate fountain, mountainous bowls of crisps and plates of sausage rolls and pastry cheese twists and a huge Victoria sponge cake with jam and buttercream filling, which is Tara’s favourite.

She has been waiting to start the movie because Ramsay isn’t there yet, and Ramsay is her best friend. Even though she has been distracted with everyone else being there and the stack of presents they’ve brought for her, the later it gets and Ramsay doesn’t arrive, she wonders where he is and why he is so late to her birthday party. Surely, he wouldn’t just not come, when he’s been as excited as her about it? When they have been best friends since either of them can remember?

When she hears the knock, she dances to the door, knowing that it will be him. She is relieved that her movie can start and that she can sit next to him and share popcorn like they always do. Relieved that Ramsay will hold her drink for her and that, at some point, she will comfortably nestle her head into his shoulder or lean against him, his body as familiar to her as her own. None of their friends make fun of them for the way they are together. Everyone knows that Tara and Ramsay are two halves of the same coin. They are the interlocking hearts of the pendant that is his gift to her, this birthday. She is not embarrassed when she opens it, later, because she knows that all her friends secretly want someone to share a locket with.

When she opens the door, Ramsay stands with his hands in his pockets, looking down. There is a smear of blood under his nose and across his cheek, and his eye looks swollen. He is standing unsteadily, not putting weight on his right foot. Happy Birthday, Tara-boo, he says, smiling weakly and handing her a beautifully wrapped box. Sorry I’m late.

Tara runs to get Dotty, who takes one look at Ramsay propped up in the doorway and hauls him inside to the bathroom at the back of the bar. What happened to you? Dotty asks him, making him sit on one of the toilet seats and wetting a wad of balled up toilet paper under the cold tap and wiping his face clean. Tara, go to the freezer and get a bag of peas for his eye. That’s goin’ tae come up black and blue.

Tara doesn’t want to leave Ramsay, but she does as her mother asks. She runs to the kitchen off the back of the bar where her mother usually makes food for customers and plunges her hands into the long chest freezer. The cold makes her hands numb. In the dream, she remembers that sensation so clearly. Her heart is as numb with fear as her hands are. Who would do this to Ramsay?

When she gets back to the bathroom, Dotty takes the frozen peas and makes Ramsay hold them over his eye. He’ll be all right, hen, she reassures Tara. Go back to your friends an’ we’ll be there the now .

I want to stay, Tara says, feeling tears well up in her eyes. Who did this to you? she asks Ramsay, but he shakes his head. It was my fault, he says, avoiding her eyes. I was wrappin’ up your pressie and the noise of the sticky tape and the paper was interruptin’ the football. I’m sorry I was late.

Tara and Dotty exchange glances, but there is something in Dotty’s face that tells her that her mother already knows what this means. If Tara is honest, then she knows that Ramsay’s dad isn’t like her parents. There have been many times that she has called for Ramsay – never been invited in – and heard harsh words. She has never seen Ramsay’s dad hug or kiss him or give him a kind word. His mum is long gone; she hardly remembers her at all, and Ramsay never mentions her.

Get away with ye, Dotty ruffles Tara’s hair kindly. He’ll be right as rain in a wee bit. Start the film an’ I’ll bring Ramsay in a couple of minutes.

Tara doesn’t want to leave him, but she obeys her mum because Dotty has that look in her eye. When Ramsay slides into the seat next to her on the leather sofa in the TV room in the bar later, he doesn’t say anything, but takes her hand and squeezes it.

Open your pressie, he whispers, and, as the film plays, she opens the carefully wrapped box and takes out the silver necklace with half a heart hanging on it. You’ve got half, I’ve got half, he whispers, helping her fasten it around her neck.

They never mention that night again, but after that, Dotty makes a point of asking Ramsay over for dinner and at the weekends and the school holidays. Eventually, Dotty and Eric put aside one of the guest rooms for Ramsay and he moves in.

As she wakes, Tara can still feel Ramsay’s hand in hers, and him squeezing her fingers. She feels a hot tear roll down her cheek.

She hadn’t thought about that night for years, but as she woke, Tara felt the pain of the memory wash over her like a wave. No doubt, it was because she had spent the night in her old room, in her childhood bed, surrounded by her old dancing trophies and outfits, her stuffies and the posters of her favourite teen bands that her parents hadn’t taken down, and she’d never got around to changing when she’d visited. There was something in her that didn’t want to get rid of those reminders of her childhood and her teenage years.

If Tara was completely honest, she knew where that reluctance came from. And the dream had put her right back in that emotion: it was Ramsay that she didn’t want to forget, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself because he’d hurt her so badly when he’d disappeared.

They’d won those trophies together. She could remember each competition she’d worn her different kilts and socks to, in the various different colours: violet, blue, pink, red. In the Highland Dance competitions, girls wore tartan kilts and matching socks with a tailored, solid colour matching jacket to dance in. They were special dance costumes as opposed to the traditional kilts that featured clan tartans or tartans inspired by particular places or locations. Tara knew that there was still a box of laced dance shoes at the bottom of the dark wardrobe in the corner of the room, and a folder containing all the certificates she’d earned at dance class, at competitions and awards ceremonies and dance-offs.

Tara and Ramsay had loved dancing together. They’d started when they were small, with Dotty teaching them some of the jumps and the toe taps of the Reel and the Fling in the Inn’s garden, and, then, at primary school, they’d all learned the Gay Gordons and the Pride of Erin Waltz. Even at a young age, they’d both showed an aptitude for it, and they’d started dancing in their spare time, just for fun.

When they were eight, Dotty and Eric had taken them to the Highland Gathering up in Dunoon, and both of them had spent the entire day watching the dancing competition. Eric had tried to take them around and show them the different attractions and activities – the caber toss, the pipers, the heavy bar – but Ramsay and Tara had only wanted to gawp at the colourful dancers, jumping and landing and twirling so precisely.

After that day, Tara had demanded that she and Ramsay go to a class. Eric had taken them both, every Monday night: there wasn’t a teacher in Loch Cameron, so he’d driven them over to Loch Awe every week. Because she was a child, Tara had never stopped to think who had paid for Ramsay’s classes, or why his parents had never driven them over. She hadn’t questioned any of it, because she was a child who was loved, and whose parents had supported her in whatever she had wanted to do.

Part of the reason that Tara never let herself think about Ramsay, or even come back to Loch Cameron for very long, was because of that bank of joyful memories. It seemed odd to think that way, but she knew that if she opened the door to it, it would drown her.

She hadn’t danced since Ramsay left Loch Cameron so unexpectedly. She could have continued – competed as an individual, or joined a group of other girls competing in the Highland Reel. But, she hadn’t. She’d shut away all of her dancing, just like the dance shoes that were packed away carefully in that box at the bottom of the wardrobe. Because it was too painful without Ramsay. Yes, Tara loved dancing. But it was something she’d never done without him, and it had always just felt wrong to consider doing it on her own.

It wasn’t just the dancing that she’d lost, though. It was joy that Tara had had taken away from her: it was the sense of home, of rightness, of completion, that she had always had with Ramsay. They truly had been the two hearts in the pendant that all her teenage friends had envied.

She had never even questioned it when they had been best friends for all those years, and when they had become lovers, and when Ramsay had proposed to her up on Queen’s Point. It was just right . Tara had accepted and loved Ramsay and who they were together, without question. Her fingers went to the two halves of the pendant around her neck and fitted them together, tracing the interlocking edges with her fingers.

All my heart belongs to you now, he’d said, when he’d given his half to her: the night he’d proposed. She’d never taken it off, even after he’d left, disappeared, broken her heart.

Just as when Eric had driven them to dance classes in Loch Awe every Monday, and because both of her parents had been good to her and loved her, Tara had never known what it was not to have her needs met. But, now, with the tears streaming down her cheeks as she lay in her childhood bed, looking at her posters of bands she no longer listened to and the spines of books she had forgotten the story within, with her fist curled around the interlocking hearts, she knew that she had never known how lucky she was.