500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(14)

Lissa managed a wan smile. “I’m sure he’ll be perfectly nice.”

“Oh, you’re sure. You’re sure, are you? I don’t even want a boy on this floor.” She sniffed noisily, and Lissa gave her a hug.

“Thanks, Kim-Ange,” she said.

“The sacrifices I make! You’ll miss me every day!”

“I will miss you every day,” promised Lissa, and meant it.





Chapter 18


Lissa looked at the paperwork again, carefully, anxiously, so terrified she’d get something wrong. She was taking on the caseload of one Cormac MacPherson, who was also lending her his home.

They each had a secure NHS log-in that they could exchange patient data on, only with each other, so they could achieve continuity of care, and would be expected to debrief every day for three months. They also had to write a weekly report for HR—apparently, she discovered, they were guinea pigs for the entire scheme. At the bottom of the first page, Juan had added, “Good luck, Lissa—I think this will be a wonderful experience.”

Lissa was not thinking this. Not at all. She felt banished, pied off, reduced to being put out of sight out of mind, as if she’d gone crazy and needed to be hidden out of the way. She loved London; it was the air she breathed. The idea of being stuck out in the country was ridiculous.

She’d googled Cormac MacPherson, but his Facebook page was private and gave absolutely nothing away. He didn’t seem to be on the internet much, which was strange enough in this day and age. She’d spent more time looking at Kirrinfief on Google Earth. It was tiny!

She’d never spent much time in the country; London was all she’d ever known. She’d never been to Scotland at all.

But Lissa needed—absolutely, desperately needed—the insomnia to stop, as well as the nightmares from when she finally drifted off into a shallow, tainted half-sleep. During the day she felt grit under her eyelids, and she could not control her breath when she saw a bunch of lads on the street or heard a shout or, worst of all, a car backfiring or accelerating. If going to this godforsaken place would help her get over that, then it was worth a shot. She would have vastly preferred to be at her granny’s in Antigua, but that wasn’t an option the NHS was notably keen on offering her. So the wild north it was.





Chapter 19


Cormac was, he rapidly realized, somehow just too big for London. He’d played rugby for the army, and it had never really left him. It wasn’t just that he was tall, although he was—there were plenty of big-looking people; aye, there were plenty of people, full stop. More people, surely, he thought, than were strictly necessary or even viable. More people than you could figure out had gotten crammed into these hot, sticky streets that smelled of food and smoke and choking exhaust fumes. Didn’t they notice how revolting the air was? Maybe not. London clung to you, put greasy fingerprints all over you.

The nurses’ home was a tall, peeling eight-story building situated outside of a tube by a roundabout in what Cormac would learn to call South London.

There didn’t appear to be any automatically obvious way to get through the roundabout, which was, on closer examination, actually two roundabouts, each with four lanes of traffic. The air was a haze. Cormac thought back to what he had imagined he’d find the first time he came to London. It had definitely involved lots of parks with swans in them. And also, Buckingham Palace.

He sighed and tried several times to reach the block through subway passages lined with people asleep on flattened cardboard boxes, in filthy sleeping bags, and finally made it to Nightingale House. The glass was security protected. He rang the bell, and a large man saw him from inside and buzzed him in.

“Hi,” said Cormac nervously. “I’m the secondment for . . .” For a split second he forgot her name. “Alyssa Westcott? I’m taking over her room?”

The man stared at him, unperturbed, then ran his finger down a grubby list of printed names.

“Neh,” he said.

Cormac looked to the side, then tried again. “I’m not Alyssa,” he said. “I’m Cormac MacPherson.”

There was another very long pause.

“Yeh,” said the man, lifting a heavy finger from the page and sighing deeply.

“So, youse having a good day?” said Cormac cheerily.

The man looked at him, humphing as he got out of his chair—which creaked alarmingly—and stretched up to a long line of keys.

“I just got down on the sleeper. Didn’t think I’d sleep much, but actually it was great . . .” Cormac left space at the end of his sentence, but the man wasn’t responding. This was very odd.

In Kirrinfief, if you went up to Inverness for the afternoon that would provoke a fairly long conversation in the grocers about what you’d seen and whom you’d met and whether you’d been to the big cinema, which had something called a Nando’s. Going on the sleeper was a next-level adventure; it would have involved the input and discussion of anyone in the shop. The train had narrowly avoided a crash about three years ago and people still talked about it.

By contrast, this man didn’t respond at all, as if Cormac weren’t there or hadn’t said anything.

“So, anyway. It’s . . . Well, this place looks interesting . . .” Cormac was stuttering on, but in an increasingly confused fashion. He felt like a dog wagging his tail and getting roundly ignored. He was just making conversation, that was all, what people did. What was this guy’s problem?