‘Do you love this guy?’
‘No!’
‘Do you love me?’
‘That is Very Unfair.’
‘You dragged me up here.’
‘You forced yourself on me!’
‘I did not! And…’ Louise pouted her bottom lip in a way Katie recognised both from primary school (natural) and secondary (fake and put on for boys and suggestible male teachers alike). ‘…I’m going through a difficult time. I thought you of all people would understand, seeing as it’s your sister that…’
Katie put her hands over her ears. ‘La la la, not listening! OK. Well, maybe there’ll be another man there for you to talk to.’
‘Are you serious? Are you really considering trying to get off with someone you might have to work against for the next eight months? Wow, you’re very brave.’
Katie hadn’t looked at it this way at all. In fact, ever since Iain had grasped her hand in his, her insides had been on something of a repeater track, like a scrambled record, which went ‘green eyes green eyes snog snog yum yikes snog snog green’, repeated ad infinitum. It didn’t really give her brain much room to process any other information. The practical consequences of the matter – that they were in a very small village, that he may well be married and that whatever the outcome she was almost certainly going to have to see him every day – had faded into the background of the insistent beat of her groin reminding her she hadn’t had sex for five months.
She pretended to give it serious consideration. ‘There are plenty of people who’ve slept with people they’ve worked with and it’s turned out great,’ she said decisively. ‘Don’t you think?’
Louise looked at her as if she was holding a dangerous animal. ‘Umm…’
‘Come on. What about…’ Alas, all that flooded Katie’s mind at that moment was the memory that Louise had met Max when she’d been briefly working at his office. Suddenly, she had a mental picture of her and Louise in fifty years’ time, with her still treading on eggshells all the time. It was a sad fact that Clara’s act had changed not only Katie and her relationship but Katie and Louise’s too. ‘Ouf,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ said Louise, changing the subject. ‘I hope you’re not wearing your pulling knickers.’
‘I didn’t even bring my pulling knickers,’ said Katie as they braced themselves against the wind outside the front door of Water Lane. ‘I just brought my thermal knickers.’
‘Maybe they find that sexy up here,’ said Louise. ‘Brrr.’
One would have thought, given the size of the town, that it would be easy to find one of its two pubs, but after stumbling up and down cobbled stairways for fifteen minutes in a howling gale, they had to concede this would not in fact be the case. Louise shouting ‘taxi’, and standing in the road with her hand up very quickly ceased to be amusing too. At last, panting and red-cheeked, they collapsed down a narrow stairway near the harbour and spotted a tiny doorway with light and heat and smoke exuding from the tiny open window. It looked immeasurably welcoming, and a ceramic statue of a mermaid adorned the wall, the centrepiece of a mosaic of pretty shells.
‘Ooh,’ said Louise, excited.
Katie tentatively pushed open the door into the hubbub of warmth and heat. At first it was hard to get her bearings. The pub was crammed with people, but actually it was little more than a small room. There was a roaring fire at one end, surrounded by strange-looking bellows and brass implements, red velvet stools on the wooden floor around old pitted tables, a dartboard that looked positively dangerous in such a tiny space and an old-fashioned bar, with golden bar taps gleaming, and large optics clinging to the back wall. Furious fiddle and whistle music was playing.
There were people everywhere, on every available seat, leaning against the bar, hovering around the fire. A couple of dogs dozed blissfully under bar stools.
There wasn’t a single woman there.
The room gradually fell silent as Katie and Louise hung by the door, taking it all in. There were tall men, short men, thin men, fat men. Rough-looking fishermen, with tattoos on their knuckles and salt in their hair. Intense-looking techie men with specs, rucksacked travellers. A couple of tweedy young bufton-tuftons at the bar who could have been (and were) the local laird having a pint with the local vet. Prosperous-looking farmers, furtive-looking labourers. Bald, ruddy country men, withered old men. Men everywhere.
Finally, after a long pause, Louise leaned over to Katie. ‘Is this my surprise party? Or heaven?’
‘Come in if you’re coming then,’ came a voice. ‘Don’t let the weather in noo.’
Somebody said something the girls couldn’t make out, and there came a hearty guffaw from the back. Stiffening, Katie eventually took a small step forward.
Behind the bar was the most extraordinary gentleman. He was precisely the height of the bar itself, with three tufts of hair, one on either side and one on the middle of his head, and his cheeks were ruddy. He looked like a garden gnome.
Space cleared at the bar for them instantly, and Katie and Louise had the uncomfortable experience of settling themselves gracefully on stools whilst being eagerly watched by every single person in the room. Katie had scanned as many faces as she dared without looking as if she was up for trade, but there was no sign of Iain. Surely if he was there he would have leaped up immediately anyway. She smoothed down her skirt, wondering if perhaps her prized Kenzo Japanese-style skirt was pushing it a bit for in here. Everyone else’s clothing appeared to have holes in it too, but not for fashionable reasons.
‘What can I get you lassies?’ asked the miniature barman. Katie had been going to order a vodka tonic, but didn’t want to put the barman in a difficult position vis-à-vis reaching the optics.
‘White wine please.’
‘Same for me please,’ said Louise.
‘Ah, foreigners,’ said the man, but not in an unfriendly way. He ducked behind the bar and started shifting through what sounded like many bottles and kegs. ‘Now…wine, wine, wine. I know we had it in here somewhere.’
‘I don’t know whether to be over the moon or scared shit-free,’ whispered Louise. ‘It’s like a cross between The Box of Delights and The Accused.’
‘Sssh!’ said Katie as the barman straightened up, beaming and holding up a sticky, dusty bottle of something so old its label had peeled off. It was less white wine than a kind of rusty yellow, and half empty, with a screw top. There was a crust around the top.
‘That looks lovely,’ said Katie politely.
‘Is that Feather’s sample bottle?’ came a masculine voice behind them. ‘Bloody been looking for that for months.’
The tiny publican’s eyes widened. ‘It is too, you know.’
A huge beefy hand reached over their heads and hit Louise on the ear.
‘Oww,’ said Louise. ‘Sorry, I forgot I had an invisible head.’
‘I’ve just stopped you drinking horse piss,’ said the voice. ‘I’d have thought you would have shown a bit more gratitude.’
The girls turned around on their stools. A tall, chunky man with a pink, florid face stood in front of them, in a ratty old tweed jacket.
‘Really?’ said Louise. ‘Or is that the worst chat-up line ever invented?’
The