Where Have All the Boys Gone?(83)

“What’s he doing?” she whispered to Harry.

“Puirt-a-beul,” he whispered back. “Mouth music. It’s kind of traditional music around here—if you don’t have an instrument and want to dance.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Katie. And it was; unearthly, weirdly melodic, and yet without any tune Katie could discern.

“Well then,” said Harry, and put out his arm.

“You are joking,” said Katie.

“Of course I’m not joking,” said Harry. “We’ll start with a very simple Gay Gordons. Then you can teach some other people. It’s an absolute nonsense to have a party if nobody can dance. Come here.”

Katie giggled nervously.

“Here! I mean it!” He’d put his arms up, oddly, to the right. “OK. I have one arm around your shoulders, and one in your nearest hand.”

Katie stood under his arm obediently.

“OK, now we’re going to go forwards for four, backwards for four, then do the same thing again. Does that make sense?”

“Absolutely none at all.”

“Derek!”

Derek subtly changed rhythm and counted them in with a one, two, three, four.

Katie was still giggling as Harry led her forward, then, deftly, flipped, so his arm was still around her, but suddenly they were travelling backwards.

“How did that just happen?” she asked.

“Shh. And—KICK!” and they both kicked their feet out in front. “Good! And again, one, two, three, flip . . .”

This time she managed it.

“And, now, twirl under my arm.”

“Twirl?”

“Yes. Four times. Go!”

Hopelessly, Katie spiralled under his arm, as Derek slowed down to accommodate her.

“And . . .”

Then Harry swept her into his arms and, leading strongly, galloped around with her in a speedy waltz. Her new fifties’ Topshop skirt floated out behind her in the summer morning and she felt as if she was flying.

“And again!” said Harry, and they started over, and by the fourth or fifth time, she’d got the dance figured out, with all her turns in the right place, keeping time to Derek’s mouth music; but neither of them wanted to stop dancing, so they kept it up, under the morning sun, and then he taught her another one, and Derek kept singing and they danced until they were exhausted, and forgot about the mounds of paperwork, and the work they had to do, and the threats hanging over their heads, for as long as the sun shone.

AT ELEVEN, IAIN came past to try and catch Katie, who he’d heard was back in town, but he saw them dancing, and reckoned she didn’t really want to be disturbed.

THE WEATHER HAD broken just as they were dancing—as Harry was trying to show Katie a Dashing White Sergeant, without the benefit of the four other dancers tactically required. Katie didn’t care, however, and was so proud of the fact that she’d mastered the little twiddly step she’d always associated with Hogmanay girls in sashes who could hop over swords, she refused to stop. Soaking, they’d continued, with Derek retreating inside, until, laughing and entirely out of breath, they’d finally admitted defeat and fallen inside, drenched and giggly.

RAIN STILL SEEMED absolutely committed to dogging their every move. Despite not being over the moon about how it looked in the budget, Katie had gone ahead and approved for internal heaters. It might be a midsummer night’s ball, but they really didn’t want people getting hypothermia on their watch. Hello magazine was coming, as were many of the newspapers, so they’d decided to keep the death rate as low as possible. She’d never worked so hard in her life, chivvying, begging, making fifteen million phone calls an hour. Her clipboard was working overtime. Actually, she was loving it. Working so hard kept her mind off everything, and she didn’t think there was a single person in town she didn’t know now. And she was good at it. She juggled the newspaper access with one hand, the napkin orders in another, and the techies’ amazing MIDGE-AWAY invention, a terrifying fan-like contraption designed to blow away insects, with a third.

Kelpie, with Margaret’s help, had been amazing, popping in and out of the office with different menus for them to try. They’d settled on Scotch broth, lobster and smoked salmon paella, and Eton Mess, which wasn’t particularly Scottish but was particularly easy for Kelpie to make with the vast pile of broken meringue cases she stored out at the back of the bakery. She was using them, she explained, to relieve her tension at all the English women crabbing about her shop and demanding cappuccinos and carrot cake, because if she hit another one, they were going to put that stupid ankle tag back on her, and that wasnae going to happen for anyone.

And Mrs McClockerty was baking a large cake with “NO TO GOLF” printed on it, which would be available at auction for anyone who didn’t want one of the local men wrapped in a sheet. Even Katie’s to-do lists were being exhausted.

Olivia was flying up to Inverness and taking a helicopter to Fairlish. Katie and Louise had not the slightest idea of where to put her up, but Katie was thinking of seeing if Margaret had any rooms in her lovely place. Thinking of that made her think of Iain, which made her feel sad, but defiant. The local paper had been great, but the media buzz around the whole thing had been building by the day and she’d spent all day and half the night on the telephone to the national papers—cameras and journalists (all female) were flooding in by the day, from as far away as Canada and Japan, where they seemed to find the idea of the village without any women terribly hilarious. Katie did try to get them to mention the golf course, but that didn’t seem to have quite the appeal, and by the day before, they had already arrived in town, extremely grumpy at, a) the lack of suitable accommodation, and b) the sheer numbers of women thronging the streets every day, making it hard to get a decent shot of men looking glum and lonely, particularly as the techies had enormous grins plastered all over their faces, and all the farmers had vanished.