Page 14 of One for the Road
At first, I’d avoided returning it because then I’d have to talk to her. Then I’d planned to leave it on her doorstep, which I’d quickly nixed because Iwouldn’tget to talk to her. Wouldn’t get to see her cheeks turn pink when she opened it.
Living in my head was a real trip right now.
Amidst all the indecision, I’d just abandoned the box on my kitchen table where I could stare at it.
I stepped out my front door, holding it out, making no move to step closer. Added, just to be a dick, “I’m not your postman, y’know.”
She walked across the grass completely barefoot. My attention dropped to her multi-coloured toenails as she took the package. “Sorry, I asked Cliff to stop delivering my stuff to your place. I’m starting to think he does it on pur— It’s open!”
“It came to my house. I assumed it was mine.”
“Oh, really?” A bulldozer wouldn’t have been able to drag my attention away as she peeked inside, then quickly flattened the box across her chest. “You ordered somethingin a pink box from a place called ‘Oh, Honey’?” The words on her lips were enough to make me shudder.
“Maybe.” I raised an eyebrow and, finally, her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink.
“Did you look inside?”
“No.” And because I couldn’t resist taunting her, just a little, I stepped close enough to smell the sugar on her skin, and said, “Have apleasurableday, Isla.” Then like a coward, I bailed faster than a med student asked to draw ABGs.
“Oh my god, you did!” She hurled the words at my back as I climbed into my car. “It’s a crime to open someone else’s mail, Alistair Macabe. You could face prison time.” But I’d already turned on the engine.
3
Alistair
Mal: Can April drink coffee?
Alistair: Decaff to be on the safe side.
Mal: What about eggs?
Alistair: You know all this stuff is googleable, right?
Mal: Why would I google it when I have you?
The list of things I hated about Kinleith was long, thorough and, yeah, a little petty:
It was too green.
People said “Good morning” and expected me to reciprocate.
There was no supermarket, so I had to get my wheatgrass supplements posted to me.
Too many sheep. They looked at me like they knew all my secrets.
Conversations usually opened with “You’re Jim Macabe’s boy.”
Worst of all: the tourists.
On a good day during the summer months, it still took me a full thirty minutes to drive the five miles from Kestral Cove on the outskirts of Kinleith to the medical practice. It was located along the main road to the ferry port in Armadale, and there were days, like today, where the traffic backed up with rented four-wheel drives and camper vans as far as the eye could see.
I passed countless families content to park up their vehicles and eat breakfast right there on the roadside. “Don’t mind me,” I said with a grunt, narrowly avoiding a people carrier an idiot had parked half on a cattle grate.
By the time I pulled into the surgery’s small car park, I was stressed, nearly late and a little sweaty.
“You’re early today!” I called as my colleague, Dr Amy Redford, climbed out of her own car. “Miss the traffic or just trying to get ahead for once?”
Pulling a chunky set of keys from her bag, she marched straight past me, a Brown’s coffee cup clasped in her free hand. Her blonde, poker-straight hair bobbing in some kind of oversized bun thing. “Good morning to you too, Dr Macabe. Just thought I’d arrive before your patients start complaining about your bedside manner again.” Keys jangling, she unlocked the door, pushing it open with her hip. The smell of antiseptic filled my nose, and I breathed it in. Despite my desperation to escape this hellhole, it scratched my brain in a way nothing else did. I imagined it was to me what warm bread was to others, the smell of home.
