‘Well, what’s your great plan then, Miss Whoever-you-are?’
Katie didn’t know, but given the atmosphere of outright hostility, she was on Iain Kinross’s side pretty much already. ‘Let me go and talk to him,’ she said, trying to sound professional.
‘Exactly. Bit of the old eyelash-fluttering. See, Derek, I told you a lassie would help things around here.’
‘Of course, boss.’
‘They’re like Mr Burns and Smithers.’
Katie had run into Louise with comparative ease, given that there were only three streets in Fairlish, and only one person on any of them.
‘Great,’ said Louise. ‘I’m starving. Let’s cut our losses and run. We could be in Glasgow in five hours, and it rocks.’
‘I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,’ said Katie, looking around her. ‘Do you know, Starbucks would clean up around here.’
‘Who from? Mrs Miggin’s pie shop?’ Louise pointed to a little bakers-cum-teashop. It still had the original round glass panes in its tiny windows, and was painted pink. It looked cosy and welcoming, with condensation fogging up the glass. ‘Why isn’t it that easy? They can take the high road, and we’ll take the low road, and we’ll be shopping at LK Bennett’s before them.’
The heavy bakery doors clanged as they walked in. The shop was hot, steamy and full of old men chattering away in a musical brogue. Everyone fell silent immediately. Katie and Louise were about the same height as most of them.
‘Do you sell coffee?’ Louise asked the friendly-looking red-haired chap behind the counter, which would have been fine if she hadn’t felt the need to over-enunciate in a very posh-sounding way while making the international signal for coffee by shaking imaginary beans in her hand, and looking a bit of a Gareth Hunt in the process.
Alongside the chap there was a tallish, angular young girl, with a sulky expression and a face that was quite possibly rather beautiful, if it were not crowned by a ridiculous pie-crust, olde-world elasticated bonnet and a murderous expression.
‘Aw, caawww-feee?’ she said, shaking her hand in the same stupid gesture Louise had used. ‘Ah dunno. Mr MacKenzie, dweez sell CAAWWW-FEEE?’
Mr MacKenzie looked at the two girls with some sympathy. ‘Don’t be stupid, Kelpie,’ he said. ‘Serve theys.’
Kelpie gave the all-purpose teenage tut and walked over to a silver pot in the corner, slopping out two measures of instant into polystyrene cups before adding half a pint of milk and two sugars to each without asking them.
‘Anything else for you girls?’ said Mr MacKenzie pleasantly. ‘Macaroni pie?’
‘Let me just check my Atkins list,’ said Louise. Katie kicked her.
‘Umm.’
Nothing in the case laid out in front of them looked in the least bit familiar. There were pale brown slabs of what might have been fudge, only harder, lots of circular pies with holes poked in the middle of them which seemed, on closer examination, to hold anything from rhubarb to mince. There were gigantic, mutant sausage rolls and what may or may not have been very flat Cornish pasties. But both girls were starving. Suddenly Katie’s eyes alighted on the scones.
‘Two…um, of those please.’ She couldn’t remember how to pronounce the word. Was it scawn or scoone?
‘The macaroons?’
‘No, um, the…’
‘French cake?’
What on earth was a French cake?
‘The scoones,’ said Louise. Katie winced. There was a pause, then everyone in the shop started laughing.
‘Of course,’ said the man serving, who had a kind face. ‘Would that be a roosin scoone or a choose scoone?’
Maybe not that kind.
Louise and Katie found a bench in a tiny sliver of public park overlooking the harbour. The boats were coming back in, even though it was only ten in the morning. They looked beautiful and timeless, their jaunty red and green painted hulls outlined against the dark blue water. Katie was throwing most of her (delicious) scone to the cawing seagulls.
‘Now I’ve got to find some complete stranger and try and intimidate them.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Louise. ‘A great change from your usual job. Of finding complete strangers and licking their arses until they buy something.’
‘That is not what PR is about,’ said Katie. ‘Except in, you know, the specifics.’
Louise kicked her heels. ‘What do you think people do around here for fun?’
‘Torture the foreigners,’ said Katie. She nodded her head towards the baker’s. Kelpie was heading over their way with two cronies. She had shaken off her ridiculous pie-crust hat to reveal a thick head of wavy hair with four or five rainbow-hued colours streaked through it, and taken out a packet of cigarettes. Even from fifty feet away, it was clear that she was doing an impression of Katie and Louise.
‘We’re big news around these here parts,’ said Katie. ‘I think we’d better make ourselves scarce, before we get bullied by a pile of twelve-year-olds. I’m going to find this Iain Kinross character. Sounds like some anal old baldie geezer who sits in his bedsit writing angry letters to the Daily Mail. He’ll be putty in my hands.’
The three girls had seen them now; Kelpie was pointing them out. They were screaming with laughter in an over-exaggerated way.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Louise. ‘Not without me. They’ll flay me alive.’
‘They’re harmless,’ said Katie as they both got up from the bench and started to back away.
‘I don’t care,’ said Louise. ‘Take me with you, please.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Of course you can! Just say I’m your…PA.’
‘I’m not paying you.’
‘Oh my God, you’re a true Scottish person already,’ said Louise.
‘I’d like a SSSCCCCOOOOOOOONNNNE,’ came from the other side of the park, carried on the wind.
‘OK,’ said Katie. ‘But you’d better keep your mouth shut.’
‘A SSSCCCCOOOOOOOONNNNE!’
It took them a while to find the offices of the West Highland Times, situated up a tiny alleyway off the main street of old grey stone buildings, which hosted a post office, a fishmongers, a kind of broom handle/vacuum cleaner bits and bobs type of place, a Woolworths and sixteen shops selling pet rocks and commemorative teaspoons. They looked very quiet at this time of year.
The small oak door was set into a peculiar turret on the edge of a house made of a particularly windworn granite. It was studded with large dark bolts, and only a tiny brass plaque set low on the left-hand side identified it. There didn’t appear to be a bell, so, taking the initiative, Katie bowed her head and crept up the spiral staircase. Louise, whispering crossly under her breath at the exercise involved, followed her.
A little old man with grey hair sat at the top in a small room with an open door leading into the main body of the building. Katie could glimpse computers, typewriters and masses of paper beyond, and hear the regular dins and telephone calls of a newsroom.
They were not greeted with a welcoming smile.
‘Did ye’s no knock?’
Louise screwed up her face. Was no one going to be friendly to them around here?
‘Sorry?’ said Katie politely.