sort everything out here,’ he offers, carrying my many bags to the Land Rover. I laugh when I see he’s left it sitting outside his house with the key in the ignition.
‘What?’ he says with a shrug. ‘We all do it. You’re not in London now, remember.’
We unload everything at Keeper’s Cottage. ‘Thanks for a wonderful time,’ I say. ‘It was great to be out on the water.’
‘No bother. Glad you enjoyed it.’ He turns to go.
‘Davy,’ I call after him, ‘would you like to come over for supper tomorrow night? We could share these?’ I hold up the carrier bag.
‘That’d be grand,’ he says. ‘Thanks, Lexie. See you then.’
‘See you,’ I agree.
And as I start to hang up our coats and hats and put away the gloves that we didn’t need, I begin to sing the song that we entertained the seals with earlier while Daisy keeps time with a cup of juice.
Flora, 1940
The sun was slow to set in the days of high summer, seeming scarcely to dip below the western horizon an hour or so from midnight before it reappeared in the east in the early morning hours. In the evenings, when they’d been released from their duties, Flora, Alec and Ruaridh would take their trout rods and climb into the hills to fish. Their catch provided a welcome addition to the rations, both at the scrubbed pine table in the kitchen of Keeper’s Cottage and on the polished mahogany one in the dining room of Ardtuath House.
From the hills above Aultbea and Mellon Charles, they could glimpse the constant buzz of activity on Loch Ewe, where ships moved ponderously like a huge grey shoal and their tenders sped in between them like the insects that skated over the surface of the lochan where they fished. They preferred to turn their backs on the busyness of the naval manoeuvres, though, and watch the calm waters cupped within the folds of the hills, where white water lilies drifted among the reflections of the clouds, hiding brown trout beneath the broad pads of their leaves. The three of them would set down their packs beside the old bothy and then spread out, each finding their preferred spot on the bank of the lochan from which to cast. Little was said, apart from the occasional quiet comment when a fish was landed. The song of the skylarks and the plaintive cries of the curlews from the moor above them filled the summer evenings with their music.
On one such evening, Flora was just about to cast her last fly into the deeper corner of the little loch where the rushes grew tallest, when she was surprised by Corry, Sir Charles’s spaniel, who came bouncing through the starry sphagnum moss that grew thick on the hummocks of the hill surrounding the lochan.
‘Hello, boy.’ She bent down to stroke his silky ears and he wagged his whole body enthusiastically. ‘Where’s your master?’
A moment later the laird appeared, carrying his own fishing rod. ‘Aha, I see you lot got here before me. Have you caught all the good ones already?’ Sir Charles’s deep baritone reverberated in the evening air, silencing the larks. He strode across to where Flora stood, her catch laid out on the mossy bank. ‘Not a bad evening’s work, Miss Gordon. I see you’ve managed to beat the boys.’ Two of her three trout were larger than the single fish that Ruaridh and Alec had each caught.
She smiled and nodded. ‘Alec will bring those two back to the big house. They should make a nice supper for you all.’
Sir Charles scarcely acknowledged her remark, turning towards his son. ‘Pack your things away now and get on back to the house. Your mother is fretting because we have the Urquharts arriving tomorrow for the weekend. We’ve a day’s fishing planned for them and the Kingsley-Scotts invited to dinner afterwards. Take her those trout – she’ll be glad of them – and see what you can do to help. You know how short-handed we are these days. Although I certainly don’t intend to let standards slip, just because there’s a war on.’
At the mention of the Kingsley-Scotts, Flora stiffened slightly, shooting a quick glance at Alec. He hadn’t mentioned that they’d be there. She wondered whether Diana would be coming with her parents. She put her catch into the willow creel and handed it to Alec, not quite meeting his eye.
‘Here,’ he demurred, trying to give her back the three smaller fish, ‘you