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

Chapter 8

EIGHT

‘You are joking! ’ Carla sounded like she was standing in the middle of a motorway. ‘After all this time?’

‘I know. It’s crazy. We honestly thought he might have died or something. It was that abrupt of an end.’ Tara was sitting on a bench on Queen’s Point, a lovely promontory of rock that overlooked Loch Cameron, on the phone to Carla. There were several whitewashed cottages on the Point, all with their doors and window frames painted in blue or sometimes green. The cottages were generally looked after, and the cottage gardens were abundant with flowers of all kinds, it being the height of summer.

‘Dear lord. Are you all right?’ Carla asked, sounding concerned.

‘I guess. It’s weird. Do you mind if I don’t talk about it right now?’

‘Sure. Here if you need me, when you do want to,’ her flatmate said.

‘Thanks. Tell me about Berlin.’ Tara watched as a fishing boat chugged lazily across the loch below.

‘Hotel’s nice. Glad I booked it, otherwise we’d have been staying in a hostel with no internal plumbing,’ Carla began. ‘It actually backs onto the Berlin Zoo, so you can have your breakfast and watch the giraffes. Quite trippy.’

‘That sounds fun, although I don’t really approve of zoos.’ Tara smiled, glad to hear her friend’s voice. She’d been feeling out of sorts since running into Ramsay, and it was good to talk to someone other than her mum and dad about it.

‘No, well, you’re right, of course. But, when in Rome.’ Tara could practically hear Carla shrug. ‘So, how did he look? Ramsay?’

‘ Carla .’

‘Ah, come on. Otherwise I’ll have to tell you all about me and Craig, and I really don’t want to,’ Carla said with a sigh.

‘He looked… like a bigger, more buff and manly version of himself, if you must know. But, otherwise, exactly the same,’ Tara said. ‘What about you and Craig? I thought Craig only had eyes for me. That he was going to be horribly disappointed that I didn’t come to Berlin.’

‘Hmm. Well, it turns out that Craig and I got on quite well on the plane,’ Carla said. ‘The flight was just long enough for me to get just tipsy enough to…’

‘To what?’

‘Fancy him a bit,’ Carla muttered. ‘Sorry, if it’s noisy here it’s because I’m standing by Checkpoint Charlie, and there are all these bloody tourists everywhere.’

‘You’re a tourist.’

‘Fair point. So, Ramsay looks good, does he?’ Carla asked, innocently.

‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. I wasn’t really looking. It was all a bit of a shock.’

‘You should get it on with him again. He’s the love of your life.’

‘Carla. I am not going to get it on with Ramsay Fraser. He broke my heart.’

‘Eh. You’re always going to get your heart broken at some point anyway. Might as well get some nookie while you’re at it.’

‘What a way to look at it.’ Tara suppressed a laugh. ‘And don’t think I’ve forgotten what you just said about Craig. What did you do?’

‘Oh, what haven’t I done, at this point? Those PE boys have a lot of stamina, it turns out.’

‘Carla!’

‘What? Look, if you were here, then you’d have taken me to all the museums and we’d have found the most darling little restaurants and, I don’t know, probably gone boating on a lake or something innocent and lovely. But, you’re not here, and you’ve left me in Berlin for a week with a group of unhinged, alcoholic Drama and French teachers, and one actually quite hot PE bod. What else am I going to do?’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.’ Tara sighed, looking over the loch. ‘It’s weird being back. I keep coming to places like where I am now, and reliving the past. And my mum’s driving me mad. I mean, I love her, but she’s hard work, as a patient. She hates not being able to run around and do all her jobs, and be in charge. Mind you, she’s still bossing us around from her bed.’

‘She sounds brilliant. Props to your mum,’ Carla said. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go. But try not to be too hard on yourself, okay? You’re back in your home town and living with your parents for six weeks, so it’s basically going to be like visiting for Christmas, but on crack. Plus, you’ve run into the love of your life that you thought was dead or disappeared or whatever, and that’s playing games with your mind. So, basically, just take it a day at a time, okay?’

‘Okay. Thanks. I’m sorry I’m not in Berlin.’

‘I’m sorry too, babe. But, to be fair, I am now having a lot of sex. So, swings and roundabouts. Speak soon. Love you. ’

‘Love you too.’ Tara ended the call, and put her phone in her pocket.

She gazed out over the loch, and took in a deep breath of fresh, cool air. She’d forgotten how good the air was here; Dotty had always said that the air in Loch Cameron was a tonic.

Talking to Carla had been a tonic ; it had been good to hear her friend’s voice. Since arriving in Loch Cameron, rather than feeling that she was reconnecting to her roots, Tara had felt unmoored from the normality she knew. What she knew was her school, her flat, Carla, the nights out at the pub with the St Clare’s Massive. She wasn’t part of Loch Cameron anymore, and hadn’t been for a long time. Meeting Ramsay again had just made her feel even stranger, as if the last ten years hadn’t happened at all. And, it had brought back the guilt she’d felt every day for the past ten years. That she had been the reason he had disappeared in the first place. She still didn’t know if what she’d done had caused it, and the thought weighed heavily on her.

Still, there was something about the land here that she had forgotten. There were her special places – out of the way nooks and crannies where she had used to come, alone, with a book, when she had wanted some time alone. The oak trees on Queen’s Point; the little beach at the edge of the loch.

Yes, it felt strange and disconnected to be back in Loch Cameron and transported away suddenly from her ordinary life. Yet, the land itself was familiar, and she was grateful for the comfort that she found in its quiet shade, in its clean air and the soft trees that sighed in the breeze. This was what felt like home, and it was a peace she’d forgotten for a very long time.