Where Have All the Boys Gone?(88)

Katie passed through the room—Olivia appeared and dragged them around her various London friends too, and they did get to meet Ewan McGregor, who was a delight, plus numerous slightly batty women who wanted to share with Katie their joy at finding Fairlish, as if they’d turned up to Battersea Dogs’ Home. The conversation levels were rising, punctuated by squeals of girlish laughter. It began to grate on Katie and so she followed Olivia and Louise outside onto the lawn.

Underfoot was still a morass, but the sun setting into the sea behind the hills was breathtaking. Katie stood for a while, enjoying the relative quiet after the noise and heat of the ballroom. Suddenly, she saw a strange, yet oddly familiar sight at the far end of the lawn. Seconds later she heard it—the mournful sound of bagpipes came floating up through the gloaming.

“Oh my God!” said Louise. “That’s Harry!”

Katie screwed up her eyes. Sure enough, looking very serious, there was Harry advancing towards the house, blowing a plaintive lament.

“It does sound like a cat,” she insisted.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” shouted Lachlan at the door in a surprisingly loud voice, “WE WILL NOW BE PIPED IN TO DINNER. PLEASE TAKE YOUR PARTNERS!”

Harry took the head of the queue at the door.

“I can’t believe he can blow that and walk at the same time,” said Louise. “Makes you wonder how talented he is in other areas.”

Behind them they could hear an anxious shuffling.

“What did he mean, partners?” asked Louise, but it became increasingly obvious, as couples, most notably the larger-breasted women with the scrawnier of the techies, started lining up behind Harry and following him in through the entrance to the tent.

“Ah,” said Olivia. She grabbed onto a very camp PR acquaintance of hers who’d come up from down South. “You’ll do.”

“Darling, with all these gorgeous hunks here, do you really have to limpet yourself onto me?” smiled the London chap.

“For five seconds I do. Be quiet, it’s bad for your karma to be impolite.”

Craig the Vet materialised at Louise’s elbow. “Um, would you like to, er, go in to dinner?”

Louise swallowed suddenly and sought Katie’s eye. Katie nodded furiously. Heck, the two of them could sort out geography later.

Louise, blushing, nodded her head, and Craig offered her his strong arm. She took it.

That left Katie on her own. She watched everyone else filing in two by two and tried not to mind. After all, she was working here, goddamit. Suddenly, she wished she had a clipboard. That would make her feel less awkward.

The sound of the pipes grew further and further away as the procession started to leave her behind. Smoothing down her skirts, she prepared to slip in at the back, when she became aware of somebody watching her from the other side of the line. She looked up through the pink and hazy sunlight. The person was wearing a plain grey kilt without a pattern and a plain white shirt and grey tie, and had a camera around his neck. He lifted his right hand very slowly and made a waving gesture.

“Hello, Iain,” murmured Katie.





Chapter Twenty


They waited, looking at each other until the line had gone in, and there was no one left outside the tent except a few of Kelpie’s scurrying army.

Iain came towards her, and Katie found herself instinctively taking a step or two back.

“You look . . . ravishing,” he said, as if he’d searched through all the words in the world and this was the only one that would do her justice.

“Uh-huh,” said Katie. She wanted to look calm and collected and dignified, but inside she was shaking, and all she could think of was to holler, Where did you go? You left me! You vanished! Why??? But she kept a grip on herself in an attempt to be rational. Her good intentions to give up Scottish men for ever had evaporated at seeing Iain in his gorgeous grey kilt, faster than 8Ace finding ￡1.49 behind a hedge.

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

“GREAT,” said Katie. She bit her lip.

“You know, I missed you when you went away . . . I thought . . .” Suddenly Iain looked quite hot in the face.

Classic avoidance technique, thought Katie.

“I mean, after . . .”

After what? Katie thought viciously. After you tried to fuck me, failed, and never contacted me again?

“After the time we spent together . . . I didn’t . . . I mean, when you didn’t want to see me, I quite understood . . .”

Katie swallowed hard. “What do you mean, I didn’t want to see you?”

“Well, I figured . . . you know, after the time . . . and then you fucked off back to London, I guessed that was that . . . I mean, I know what you girls are like.”

Katie folded her arms. “What? What are we like, Iain?”

“Well, you all sit around in coffee shops and tell each other how rubbish men are in bed, then you don’t see them any more, and that’s it.” Iain hung his head.

Katie stared at him. Surely he couldn’t be so dumb. “Iain . . . Iain, did you get everything you know about women from watching television?”

Iain shrugged. “No.”

“Iain.”

“Yes?”

Katie put a hand up over her eyes. “I went to London because I fell out with my boss, and because I felt the job was done, that was all. And you didn’t call, or get in touch, or anything.”