30 November
Dear Santa, I appreciate this is a busy time of year for you but if you could see your way to sending a few more customers to the Lochside Welcome, I'd be eternally grateful...
The person meant to be making a wish as she blew out her birthday cake candles was Evie, not me. But as this was her first birthday, I thought she'd be okay with me appropriating her request. And boy, did we need those customers... Today, however, would not be spent dwelling on non-existent punters. I pursed my lips. "Blow, Evie! Like this, one, two, three!"
Ah. Too late. The village's second youngest resident, Tamar McMillan, a year and a half older than Evie, sneaked up underneath the table, stuck his head up, blew with all his might and ducked back under again.
"Tamar!" The little scamp's mother barked at him. He ran from her, giggling. Evie wriggled in my arms, desperate to go after him. Evie loved Tamar. Her feelings weren't reciprocated. The last time Jolene and I took them swimming together, he did his best to duck her head under the water and keep it there.
"It's a phase he's going through," Jolene had said, "at least I hope so?"
I put Evie down and she scooted off on all fours—Tamar far more enticing than the prospect of cake.
As Evie was Lochalshie's youngest resident, everyone had assumed they were invited to her birthday celebration. Our house wouldn't have handled the numbers, so we hit on holding it in the Lochside Welcome, the hotel we part-owned with six others.
Jack had strewn the bar with the pink, silver and white bunting I had designed and helium balloons. The tables had been cleared away to make enough space for party games.
Xavier, the hotel's manager and head chef, had gone to town on the food. Brought up in Canada, he was unfamiliar with traditional British party food staples. Most of it made him shudder. But he'd stumbled on an old Nancy Spain cookbook from the 1960s. "Look at zees, Gaby! You slice cucumber up very thin and put it on ze whole salmon, so people think it is scales! Shall I do zis?"
When I pointed out children weren't always the biggest fans of salmon and many people in Lochalshie promised fish "gies me the dry boak" despite fish having been a natural part of the Scots diet for centuries, he pouted. Then cheered up when he read about the hedgehog—half of a grapefruit studded with cubes of cheese and pickled onions on cocktails sticks. I'd already worked my way through far too many of them, consoling myself that the pickled onions must count as one of your five a day.
The Lochside Welcome's signature pudding was a chocolate decadence dessert. Xavier had made the dessert Evie's birthday cake, levelling up the luxury with gold leaf—the gleam of it caught in the flickering flames of the candles.
He reappeared with a knife and sliced the cake into as many pieces as there were people—tricky, given the numbers. But job done, he, Jack and I handed the plates round.
Mhari, taking a break from her semi-official role as party photographer, sat down next to me and filched my cake.
"Hey!"
"Well, my slice was titchy. Cannae expect me to survive the rest of the afternoon on just a wee bittie o' cake."
"Can I see the pictures?"
"No. I need tae touch them up. 'Specially the ones of you."
Mhari, my Lochalshie self-described best friend, was an acquired taste.
"I got a cracking shot of Jack, though. Look."
Oh, wow. That one was going on our website for sure. A tough job being the wife of a man as delectable as Jack McAllan, but someone had to do it, right? Mhari had captured him as Xavier placed the cake in front of Evie—the candle flames illuminating the planes of his face, casting exaggerated shadows that only emphasised the similarity to the ancient statues of Greek gods. She must be using an enhanced colour filter too as the auburn red of his hair stood out in sharp relief.
"I got some o' the outside of the hotel too," she added, showing them to me. "Looks awfy Christmassy, eh?"
The lights outside the hotel were OTT, though we'd yet to get around to decorating the hotel's interior. Outside, a reindeer pulled a sleigh in the garden at the front next to an enormous tree dotted with star lights and a gobo that projected holly leaves and berries on the white walls of the hotel. The electricity bills had soared.
"It's Christmas made camper," I'd said when we'd set them up a few days before. Jack raised an eyebrow. "Can you make Christmas camper?"
Probably not, but with any luck, the Lochside Welcome's Christmas lights would be one of those displays people drove to from miles around to see, dropping in for a drink or some food while there were in the area.
My phone buzzed as it had been doing all day—people reacting to my pictures on Instagram or phoning to wish Evie a Happy Birthday.
The screen showed my mum calling again. She'd already phoned early this morning in tears because she couldn't be here for her only grandchild's first birthday. Great Yarmouth was too far away to make visits easy, and Mum's budget too limited for her to able to afford a trip here for Evie's birthday and Christmas.
"Mum, hello!" I switched the phone to FaceTime mode and showed her the birthday girl now sat on the floor tearing up birthday gift wrap.
"Your brother," she replied, "wants to apologise for not having posted Evie's birthday present and card on time."
Does it count as an apology when you overhear your mum standing behind your brother, hiss-whispering that he needs to say sorry, forgetting that a mobile phone makes all that background noise clear as a bell? If Dylan had either remembered Evie's birthday or it crossed his mind that as her uncle, he should buy her a card and a present, I'd eat my Christmas cracker hat.
Mum came back on the line. "I'm so looking forward to Christmas! What a wonderful celebration it will be this year when we are all together."
"Me too!" We blew each other kisses and hung up. Yes, Christmas shimmered on the horizon in all its glittery glory. But that familiar prickle of worry whenever I thought about the future started up. Worries about money took the shine off somewhat.
This year's summer had been a stinker. Lochalshie's weather gods had lulled me into a false sense of security since I'd upped and moved sticks to the north of Scotland. Warm, dry-ish summers, the odd autumn storm and cold but dry winters. Rain started in mid-May, stopped for a day or two in June and then continued the autumn when it turned sheet like and icy. The weather deterred everyone. We'd put up with endless cancellations and days on end when the numbers in the bar didn't overtake those working in the hotel.
Evie scuttled towards the fire, Jack swooping in to whisk her up as everyone cooed in admiration and remarked yet again on how similar they looked. It's a truth universally known to mothers... All a dad needs to do is hold his baby, jiggle her up and down a bit, and he qualifies as father of the year. Meanwhile, we women stir ourselves from sleep three hours earlier than we would like, spend our days running around after our tiny tyrants juggling a job at the same time and dealing with our extended family before flopping into bed at 10pm, exhausted. Two women sharing a bottle of wine watched him, transfixed. They nudged each other, open-mouthed. Snatches of their whispered conversation drifted over. "OMG! He can father my baby any day!" "Yeah! My ovaries have just exploded!"
Just as well I'd grown accustomed to such reactions. If Jack had been a sex god before Evie appeared on the scene, nowadays he was Zeus at the top of Olympus. Women tailed him, tongues hanging out. Even if I stood next to him, waving my left hand in the air. "Ring, fourth finger, placed on said hand by the gent you're ogling!"
"Mind and take plenty o' pics," Caroline, my mother-in-law, called out to Mhari. Jack, Evie balanced on his right hip, screwed up his face. Posing for photographs topped the list of things he hated.
Caroline joined me, waving a glass of wine at Evie, now pestering one of Laney Haggerty's ginormous Alsatians. Laney's dogs tolerated Evie to a remarkable extent, putting up with her tugging their tails and pulling their ears.
"It's good tae have a relaxed approach to parenting," Caroline said. "Evie will build up a good immune system wi' all the exposure she has tae filthy animals. She gets that wi' Mildred too, doesn't she?"
Mildred, our ancient moggie, had yet to forgive me for Evie's usurping her rightful place as Queen of Our House.
"How are the Christmas bookings coming on?" she asked. Caroline and her husband Ranald were part of the consortium that owned the hotel.
"Three reservations for lunch," I told Caroline. "And only two of the hotel's rooms booked. Any chance you might ask the spirits to intervene and persuade people to come?"
As a sideline, my mother-in-law doubled up as a psychic. Jack and I regarded Caroline's hobby as a load of old rubbish, but any help we could get with the hotel's success, we would take. Best to cover all bases.
"I'll ask them the next time we commune," Caroline said. She'd been faking the sideline so long she'd started to believe she truly had powers beyond the limits of rationality and logic. What harm could it do if she put forward a sincere request?
"Would you and Ranald mind having my mum and Nanna to stay on the 27th?" I asked. Our own celebrations would take place two days after Christmas once all the hotel guests had left. Last year's Christmas had been muted, thanks to Jack and I's zombie-like state as we adjusted to life as new parents. This year's family party would be epic.
"How long for?"
The abruptness startled me. Caroline never objected to hosting my mother and Nanna. The house where Jack and I lived only had two bedrooms. Too much of a squeeze for us to fit anyone else in there.
"Um... seven days? That way they can see in the New Year with us too?"
"I'll have tae ask Ranald," she replied. "He likes his privacy, mind. I'm gonnae get a bit more food and drink."
She had a point. Much as I loved them, inflicting Mum and Nanna on anyone for seven days was a big ask. If the worst came to the worst, there was a caravan park on the other side of the loch. It closed from October to April, but the owner let out caravans to people on the proviso they kept quiet about it.
Caroline stood up and made her way toward the buffet table, its legs groaning with the effort of holding up so much food. We'd barely scratched the surface.
Evie had fallen asleep snuggled into the Alsatian's stomach, the dog curled around her. Babies were lucky that way—able, like animals, to drop off whatever noise went on around them when they were tired enough.
Mhari crept over to take her photograph. She limited her insults to me. If I died tomorrow, I knew she would leap at the chance of being Evie's guardian.
Dring! The phone again. I hit the green answer button.
"Katya! How are you? I tried to get you earlier."
My best friend's voice sounded muffled. In the background, I heard wailing—her six-month-old. "I know. I've been a bit... busy. Sorry."
"Is something wrong?" The flatness in her tone rang alarm bells in my head.
"No, no!" Fake cheery. "Is Evie there so I can say happy birthday?"
"Fast asleep, I'm afraid. But the party has been lovely. I wish you and Dexter had been here. And your little one."
"Next year, I promise. And I'll try to make it up to Lochalshie soon. Maybe for Christmas. It would be nice to escape London. The capital's hell at this time of year."
The wailing started up in earnest. Katya let out a sigh. Often, we phoned each other late at night to swap tips on childcare. More often, they ended up as mini counselling sessions, both of us reassuring each other we were not as crap at motherhood as we suspected.
"You wanted Evie, though," Katya would say. "I didn't wan—oh, it's pointless to moan. And I do love the little wretch, really."
A lot of the time she sounded as if she was trying to reassure herself, rather than me.
"I better go," she said now. "I'll be in touch soon, okay? M'wah!"
I m'wahed back and hung up, placing my phone on the table. I'll try to make it up to Lochalshie, not we'll try to make it up. "Promise you'll tell me if anything is wrong?" I fired off the message and clapped my hands.
"Anyone for musical statues?"
One hour—and a lot of cheating—later, people gathered their coats. Outside, a downpour had the rain rattling off the windows. Thickly padded coats over multiple layers, woolly hats, scarves and gloves were the only way to muddle through the winter months here. Above the smell of pizzas cooking—another Lochside Welcome speciality—I caught the distinctive aroma of damp wool.
Caroline got to her feet, her movements unsteady. A believer in strict adherence to public health guidelines on safe drinking levels, she limited herself to one glass of wine most of the time. I'd spotted her necking a second one earlier.
"I better find Ranald and head home, Gaby," she told me, indicating vaguely behind her.
The party guests streamed out, everyone calling out cheery goodbyes. The door opening and closing let in brief blasts of icy air, forcing me out of the booth where I'd taken a seat to one nearer the fire. Jack scooped up the empty plates. Evie was still slumped on Laney's dog.
"I need to wake her up or she'll never sleep tonight," I said. He nodded, moving off to the kitchen, pausing next to the dog to gaze in raptures at his daughter.
Mhari, official photographer role finished for the day, took the seat opposite me.
"Something wrong wi' Katya?" she asked, attention half on me, the rest on her phone.
"Nothing at all!"
Mhari hadn't seen Katya, her erstwhile flatmate, for months. Katya made a point of never posting pictures of her child online. Mhari had cajoled, threatened and sucked up to me, desperate for me to share any pictures I had. So far, I'd held out—mostly because Katya threatened to kill me if I did.
"Didnae sound like nothing to me. D'ye ken what I thought? That bairn of hers—"
The phone rang again. My mum. She must be terribly upset about missing Evie's birthday.
"Hello, you!" I said, "I was just about to send you this gorgeous pic of Evie. She's curled up asleep on—"
"Gaby, love!" my mum burst out. "Your Nanna's in hospital! You need to come down here as soon as you can!"
AUTHOR'S NOTE - I've rewritten this chapter four times now (sorry if you thought it was a new chapter and have had to re-read) but I think I've finally got it to do what a first chapter is supposed to... Thanks for your patience, oh kind and much valued regular readers! :)