music (this was a total lie; she would have been completely offended).
Maybe I’ll give it a shot, she said.
Don’t put yourself out, came back.
Lissa smiled. For a moment she found herself thinking maybe she could tease him later when she saw him . . . And then she remembered that he was in London and she was here and this was a professional work placement, and she rolled her eyes and went to look at her very limited wardrobe and do her best.
JAKE WAS INCREDIBLY pleased Lissa was coming out with him, even if it did mean bad haircuts for the rest of his life. And Cormac was good enough, listening to Jake’s boasting, not to mention that he had had a little something to do with it. And he didn’t tell Jake, or even himself, how much, in fact, he maybe would have liked to have been there too.
Tentatively, Lissa texted Zoe. It was really awkward, trying to make a new friend. She felt like she was fourteen and asking out a boy, and more or less expected not to hear from her. Instead Zoe immediately texted her back and said why didn’t she come and get dressed up at the house. Ramsay could drive them there, seeing as he wasn’t going, for the male-female ratio was already hopelessly skewed, which meant he wouldn’t get five minutes with his girlfriend without her being asked to dance all the time. Plus, he had a deep and abiding horror of having to stand around in front of everyone from the village, who would undoubtedly have much to gossip either to or about him.
Also, he had to bend over so hard to hear anyone it gave him a sore back, and the only person he liked to dance with was Zoe, because she was so little he could pick her up and stick her legs around his waist, then carry her straight home, something that he assumed would be rather frowned upon by other people.
Chapter 44
“Where is your happy face?!” demanded Kim-Ange loudly as she ran into Cormac that evening in the old battered lift.
“Ach,” said Cormac. “It’s the village dance coming up. Was just thinking about it.”
“Ha, God, I can’t imagine Lissa going to something like that.”
“She is going!” said Cormac. “I made her!”
“Seriously? LISSA?”
“Yes.”
“At a village dance?!” Kim-Ange burst out into a peal of loud laughter.
“It’s not that weird,” said Cormac.
Kim-Ange shook her head. “I know. It’s just . . . until she’s had a few, Lissa’s not much of a dancer. She’s far too shy.”
Cormac blinked at this. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lissa might be shy. She didn’t seem shy to him. Of course, they’d never been face-to-face.
They made their way through the dingy common room. Kim-Ange looked around it.
“Well,” she said, “why don’t we have a village dance?”
Cormac gave her some side-eye.
“We could have it here! They let people use it if you book it. Get some music, you can teach people to dance. Sell tickets. They can set up a bar.”
“Who’d come to a ceilidh in a nurses’ home?”
“Every drunk Scotsman in London! And there are a lot of them.”
Cormac thought about it. “I suppose I could design a poster.”
“Give me some,” said Kim-Ange. “I’ll take them up to the hospital.”
THE RESPONSE WAS absolutely extraordinary and immediate, partly because on the whole when Kim-Ange suggested you do something, it was normally easier just to do it. They sold out all their tickets, and Cormac had enough money to hire a small ceilidh band with a caller to tell people what to do and to stock the small bar with additional Tunnock’s tea cakes and caramel wafers.
Kim-Ange took over the decor and, amazingly, with a few meters of tartan cloth and ribbon and a vast amount of Ikea twinkle lights, transformed the scuffed hall and battered old tables into something rather magical. From seven P.M., hordes began pouring in. Cormac had absolutely no idea there were so many Scots in London. Although most of them were from Glasgow and Edinburgh, he still found it comforting to be surrounded by familiar voices, red hair, freckles, loud laughter, and the sound of people calling each other “tubes” and “bawbags.”
But there were also all the nurses who lived there, who came from everywhere—all over the world. One after another they came up to him, giggling and pleased, often telling him what their local dances were like.
The band set up in the corner, and the caller was absolutely excellent, marshaled