‘We were just saying that we couldn’t recognise the car, thinking it must be some incomer. And look at this bonny wee lass, the pride and joy of her granny – may her dear, departed soul rest in peace.’ Bridie Macdonald bustles towards us, her flow of words washing over me like a wave. When she finally pauses to draw breath, she recoils slightly, nostrils aquiver, as the rich smell that has escaped from Daisy’s nappy reaches her.
‘Hello, Bridie.’ I nod a vague greeting towards the others, too, a blur of faces assembled by the till, too harassed to be able to single out individuals among the group. I juggle Daisy on to my shoulder, reach for a basket and begin to trawl the cramped aisles of the shop for what I need. Bridie follows close on my heels, asking a stream of questions and clucking distractions at Daisy who’s started screaming again.
I answer as civilly as I can manage. ‘Yes, I’m back. Yes, it has been far too long. Yes, I’m afraid she’s not very presentable after a day in the car. I’ve just stopped in to pick up these few bits and pieces, and then I’ll get her up to the cottage and sort her out.’
I chuck in some tea and biscuits, my progress hampered by Daisy’s squirming, Bridie’s questions and a cluster of shrimping nets on bamboo poles that I knock over as I try to manoeuvre past them to reach for a pint of milk.
‘No, I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying. No, I’ve no particular plans at the moment. No, I’m still not singing again. Yes, I’ll need to do some clearing out of Mum’s things. That’s a very kind offer, but I’ll probably be able to manage on my own, thank you. No, I’ve no particular plans to sell Keeper’s Cottage just yet.’
Bordering on desperation now, I throw a few more items into my basket – four shrivelled carrots and a tattered leek, and then a bottle of tonic water. I search for a lemon but there are none, save the ones made of bright yellow squeezy plastic. There are no potatoes left either, so I grab a packet of Smash and, because I am already beyond cooking anything from scratch, a tinned steak and kidney pie.
Finally, I reach the till. The assembled group there has been in no hurry to move on, happy to let Bridie ask her questions and to listen with interest to my answers. Their judgement hovers above my head like a sparrowhawk intent on its prey. I set the basket down and adjust my grip on my soggy, smelly daughter, thankful that she’s fallen quiet at last. When I glance over my shoulder I realise that her silence is a result of the chocolate buttons Bridie is feeding her, which Daisy is dribbling down the back of my suede jacket. I bought this jacket in another lifetime, when I had money and a lifestyle that went with such luxurious garb. Now I wear it because I can’t afford to buy anything more practical. I’m aware how it must look, though. Like its owner, this jacket doesn’t belong here.
I smile at Morag behind the till. The group of women watch, assessing each item as Morag rings it up and then packs it into a cardboard box, emblazoned with a logo, which reminds me . . . ‘Oh, and a bottle of gin, too, please.’
She reaches one down from the shelf behind her and I carefully avoid catching the eye of any of the other women. Their unspoken judgement hangs even more heavily in the air. I pay and then look up at last with a defiant smile at the assembled company.
‘Hello, Lexie,’ says a blonde-haired young woman with a pushchair, from which an immaculately dressed toddler, just a little older than Daisy, watches the scene with wide blue eyes. It takes me a second to recognise her.
‘Elspeth? Hi. It’s good to see you. And you have a wee one too now?’
We were friends at school, but lost touch when I moved south.
She nods. But makes no further attempt at conversation.
Awkwardly, I bend to gather up the cardboard box of groceries, balancing the weight of Daisy in my other arm. She smiles beatifically at Bridie, Morag, Elspeth and the other womenfolk, her cheeks flushed, her eyelashes spiky with her recent tears.
‘Here,’ says Bridie, ‘let me give you a hand with that.’
She tries to take the box of groceries from me, but I shake my head. If she sees that my car is packed to the roof with my worldly belongings it’ll be a dead giveaway: as well as clearly doing a very poor job of raising my fatherless child, she’ll know that I have slunk back to Ardtuath, homeless, my tail between my legs, my career in tatters, several months too late to care for my poor abandoned mother in the last days of her life.
‘Don’t worry, I can manage. If you could maybe just open the door for me? Thanks.’
As I balance the box on the bonnet of the car and dig in my bag for my keys, the tinned pie topples and clatters on to the tarmac. Behind the window of the shop, several faces turn in our direction.
I open the door and bundle Daisy into her car seat. Not surprisingly, she makes her thoughts on this outrage known at the top of her lungs. I wrestle the straps over her flailing arms without a word because if I open my mouth I’m not sure I’ll be able to restrain myself either from swearing loud and long or bursting into tears.
I turn to pick up the pie from the road. But Elspeth stands there, her big-eyed baby gazing up at me inscrutably from her pushchair.
‘Here,’ she says, holding out the dented tin.
‘Thanks. Not much of a supper, but it’ll have to do for tonight.’ My embarrassment and shame make me babble nervously.
Elspeth nods, glancing through the windows of the car, taking in the box of kitchen stuff and the desk lamp that are wedged against the glass. She looks as if she’s about to say something, then thinks better of it and turns her pushchair around. ‘Be seeing you.’
‘Yeah.’ I stand there lamely for a moment, watching as she wheels her fragrant, neatly dressed baby back along the road, turning in at the gate of one of the houses that overlook the harbour before manoeuvring the pushchair through its yellow-painted front door.
Then I ease my stiff limbs back into the driver’s seat and take a deep breath before turning the key in the ignition. ‘Right then, Daisy,’ I say, as cheerfully as I can, hoping she doesn’t hear the wobble in my voice, ‘Keeper’s Cottage, here we come.’
The sound of knocking awakens me the next morning. After being up into the small hours, the pair of us had at long last collapsed and fallen into a deep, deep sleep before the dawn began to suffuse the sky beyond the hills.
Our disrupted night owed a good deal to Daisy’s refusal to go to sleep in the silent and unfamiliar darkness: she’d been used to the background hum of traffic and the glow of a light-polluted city diluting the blackness to the colour of weak orange squash, tucked into her own cot in her own bedroom. By the time I’d changed her and fed her, waiting for the immersion heater to warm the water enough for a shallow bath, and then got her ready for bed, she was wide awake, enjoying the novelty of the tiny cottage filled with my mother’s things. To prevent her from wreaking destruction among the ornaments and photos that cluttered the sitting room, I attempted to remove the lid from the battered pie tin at the same time as juggling Daisy on my hip.
After wrestling for several minutes with the ancient tin opener and the dented metal encasing my supper, and having ripped a gash in my finger that dripped bright blood everywhere, eventually I admitted defeat. Wrapping a wad of loo paper around my wound, I turned off the oven and poured myself a gin and tonic instead. Then I took Daisy through to the bedroom and made up the bed, an awkward job with my injured hand. Someone must have been in, as the mattress had been stripped and the linens laundered and stacked back neatly in the airing cupboard.