Where Have All the Boys Gone?(30)

Startled, Katie’s head reared up, and she found herself staring straight into the green eyes of Iain Kinross.

“Huh . . . hi,” she stuttered. “Imagine running into you again.”

“Hi,” he said. “Sorry—you’re from London, right?”

She nodded, taking a gulp of water.

“Yeah, well, you should know you bump into absolutely everyone you know in a village every day.”

She nodded.

“So it’s not really that much of a coincidence.”

“OK. Doesn’t that get a bit annoying, seeing everyone all the time?”

“It depends on who you see. Listen, are you hungry?”

Katie glanced meaningfully at her plate, and grinned at him. “I’m actually eating right now. What do you think I’m doing here, in a restaurant, with a plate of food in front of me, and a knife and fork in my hands and, you know, a napkin and stuff?”

“Och, you haven’t touched it!”

Katie realised that, having skipped lunch out in the Land-Rover with Harry, she was in fact hungry—just not hungry for badly mashed potatoes and stringy, cold mince.

“Well . . .”

“It’s just . . . a friend of mine runs this little restaurant up country. And usually they’re booked for months in advance, but they’ve just had a late cancellation. So Shuggie called me as man about town and asked if I’d like to go and eat there . . . They’ve been paid, but he doesn’t want to see the food go to waste . . .”

“What kind of restaurant?” asked Katie, slightly suspicious.

“Its specialties are cold mince and tatties,” said Iain, a bit peevishly. “Look, it’s a nice place. Do you want to come or not? Craig says he’s busy and on some kind of a promise.”

Katie weighed up the potential excitements of a night at Mrs. McClockerty’s, looked once more at her greasy plate and made a decision.

“Yes please,” she said.

FOR SOME REASON (probably because she was influenced by Harry’s evil mind control), she’d subconsciously expected Iain to have a sports car, but he didn’t, of course. He had a nice little new Golf, tidy, like men’s cars tend to be. Katie could have started a landfill in the Punto. She thought of his desk. Why were men’s cars tidy and the rest of their lives such disasters?

Owls twittered in the woods as they headed out of town. Iain didn’t talk, but concentrated on driving fast, and rather well in fact, around the sharp country corners of the roads, the hedgerows reaching out to featherbrush the windows. Katie felt strangely excited. Going out to a mysterious dinner in the middle of the country with a mysterious young gentleman . . . OK, Iain wasn’t mysterious in the slightest, but somehow he looked different in the dying light, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. She glanced down at his left hand on the gear stick, dark hairs prickling out from under his leather watchstrap. Her own neck hair prickled in response and she found it hard to contain a grin.

“Where’s this place then?”

Iain didn’t look at her, but also grinned. “How likely are you to have heard of it?”

“Is it Edinburgh?”

“No.”

“OK then, not at all.”

“It’s on Mars,” said Iain.

Outside, a cloud of birds rose from the hedgerow and raced the car across the fields.

“I really have to stop getting into cars with strange men,” said Katie.

“God yeah—one of them might feed you for free,” replied Iain. “I thought you PRs were meant to see the best side of everything.”

“That’s a very common misconception,” said Katie, settling back in her seat. “Are we there yet?”

Iain ignored her, leaned forwards and turned on the CD player. Instantly, a plaintive violin struck up, and a beautiful voice started singing about two lovers who were getting on great then suddenly both got drowned in a big river on a stormy night. It was unexpectedly involving, and Katie found herself sniffing as the car tore down a tiny twisting lane leading to the sea. The car came to a gentle halt on a gravel driveway in front of a small grey turreted house that looked austere, outlined against a darkening grey sea.

“Is this Skibo?” asked Katie curiously.

Iain rolled his eyes. “No.”

Her feet crunched on the gravel. There was only one other car—and they had been a good half hour driving there, and hadn’t passed one town. She felt sorry for Iain’s friend, probably putting all his life savings into this chilly house so he could run a stupid restaurant in the middle of nowhere. She shivered; it was absolutely freezing too.

“Quite a view, huh?” said Iain. A small vegetable garden ran down to a cliff then stopped abruptly. Beyond was nothing but sea and sky. It was sublime, like falling off the end of the world.

Katie nodded to stop her teeth from chattering. The wind was going right through her.

Iain noticed and smiled. “God, you really are a softy southerner, aren’t you?”

“It’s nearly APRIL,” she said. “Spring!”

“Och, you get snow up here until June.”

“June?”

He nodded.

“Can I borrow your car? I just have to quickly drive to Spain.”

“Well, you’d better have some dinner first—it’s a long way.”