500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(18)
There was a loud knock on the door.
JOAN GAVE HER the list of appointments for the next day and the keys to the cottage.
“I have surgery,” she said. “You’ll be all right getting on, won’t you?”
Lissa wasn’t sure about this but nodded her head.
“Are you always this quiet?” said Joan. “You’re like that other English girl.”
“There’s another English girl?”
“Oh, we’re infested with them.”
“You’re English! Well, you sound English.”
Joan fixed her with a horrified glance. “I’m from Edinburgh! This is how we talk.”
Lissa couldn’t see why it could possibly matter whether you had an English accent and wondered whether saying something like that wasn’t rather . . . racist . . . but she tried to smile politely and listen to Joan’s directions, even as they vanished from her brain as soon as she found herself outside the white surgery.
CORMAC WOULDN’T HAVE been entirely surprised if his mum and her friends from the church community Zumba group had appeared there with nine boxes of Tunnock’s tea cakes; but, in fact, the apparition that greeted him was even less expected.
The most extraordinary person Cormac had ever seen was standing in the doorframe. Was larger than the doorframe, Cormac realized. At least six feet, with big, burly shoulders; a huge swath of beautiful shiny, long black hair braided around her head; a fully made-up face, including pink and yellow eye shadow and vast amounts of sticky pink lip gloss—all balanced over an extremely roomy pair of blue scrubs and a pair of pink glittery trainers.
“Hello!” said the voice with a broad Estuary accent. “Ooh! She didn’t say you were a fittie!”
Cormac considered himself a fairly easygoing character on the whole, but he wasn’t the least bit sure where to look.
“I’m Kim-Ange,” continued the creature, entering the room. “She didn’t tell you about me? I thought you guys were emailing each other.”
“I’ve . . . sent her one email,” said Cormac.
“I’m not surprised she wanted to keep you to herself!” said Kim-Ange. “We tried to look you up. You know your Facebook profile is absolute crap.”
“Aye . . . I don’t really do Facebook.”
“You don’t do Instagram either! And why not?”
Kim-Ange sat down on his bed in a familiar fashion, even as it creaked beneath her weight.
“Um . . . well, I see most of the people I want to see. And I don’t really see the point of it otherwise, unless you want to show off and all that.”
“That,” said Kim-Ange, “is annoyingly sensible. And misses out on the joy of showing off.”
Cormac shook his head.
“But you’ve heard of the internet? They have the internet in Scotland?”
“As long as we’ve positioned the ram’s horns in the right direction. So . . . you’re a nurse?”
“No, I just love the fabulous outfit,” said Kim-Ange, looking down at her dull scrubs in distaste.
“Which specialty?”
“Cardiology.”
“Oh, I bet you’re useful. Lot of . . .” Cormac had been about to say that there was a lot of heaving heavy people about, which there was, but realized just in time that this would not be the right thing to say, as Kim-Ange gave him a look.
“Because of my warm and empathetic manner?”
“Um, yes,” said Cormac, blushing bright red to the roots of his sandy hair.
It was just a glance. But Kim-Ange caught it. She was absolutely attuned to being able to figure out whether people were allies or not. Abuse from strangers she could handle—had to, every single day of her life. But sometimes it was nice just to make a friend. She had come in to invite him to a nurses’ drinks party. She almost changed her mind.
Cormac had never met anyone like her before. He’d never given anything much thought beyond what he knew. His stuttered hesitation and hastily constructed excuse about being tired were simply confusion on his part but were taken for something rather worse by Kim-Ange. She turned on her surprisingly dainty feet with a quick, tight smile and left the room, leaving Cormac with the horrible certainty that he’d been there five minutes and he’d already done something very, very wrong.
Chapter 22
If Kirrinfief had been a tiny bit bigger, Lissa would have gotten immediately lost, but not understanding Joan’s directions had given her a chance to wander a little.
There was a small stream at the village’s edge that fed into the loch, and down there she found another large, impressive house that formed the nursery (well, she assumed it was the nursery; children were screaming their heads off in the garden and chasing each other with sticks, so it was either the nursery or something she really didn’t want to get involved in at this stage) and a tiny redbrick school that looked incredibly cute; and along the road a little farther, out of the village altogether on a grassy verge, stood the cottage.
Okay. She knew what her job paid. Cormac got paid less than her because she got central London weighting. But even with that, and even living in subsidized accommodation—even with both those things—she could never, ever, ever afford a place of her own, certainly not one as beautiful as this.