He paused as the sound of a horn sounded from the forecourt and wiped a surreptitious tear from his wrinkled cheek. ‘Enough. I’ll be getting maudlin. But don’t you be risking things by waiting too long, lass.’
No. She wouldn’t.
All she had to do was say yes, she thought as she drove her cargo of Angus and Susie and Rosie in her baby seat-and Spike in a trailer in the rear-to the fair.
Jake was already there. Alice and Penelope whooped up to them the minute they arrived, big with all the news of girls who’d been deprived of their favourite people for a whole two days.
They talked, Jake chatted and joked with Angus and Susie, but all the time Kirsty knew Jake was watching her.
No, she thought. It was different. He wasn’t watching her. He was just…with her.
She had to take this leap. She loved him. All she had to do was say yes.
But she stood apart a little. Part of this extended family but not quite taking this final step. Not quite.
Angus played his part in style. That choked her up. The bagpipes started, reaching a crescendo of drums and music that could have come straight from a grey Scottish gloaming. And then there was Angus’s speech, full of wry humour, pulling in each and every one of the people present.
He truly was the laird, Kirsty thought, her eyes misting with love for the old man. His speech was hardly marred by his need for oxygen and the cylinder was inconspicuous behind him.
How long did he have?
Pulmonary fibrosis was a killer. Soon…soon.
Not now. She glanced up and Jake’s eyes were on her. She met his look full on.
Soon.
The pumpkin judging was early on the agenda. At the appointed hour Kirsty and Jake brought the trailer round and hauled in a few hands to help tug Spike onto the judging dais.
There were yells of appreciation.
‘He has to win,’ Kirsty said.
‘Thanks to Dr McMahon and her magic medication,’ Jake said, grinning.
‘Is an IV line illegal in pumpkin circles? Like doping in sport?’
‘We cut the stalk away,’ Jake said. ‘The evidence is rotting in Angus’s compost patch. And I doubt they’ve invented a urine test for pumpkins.’
And then there was another cry of awe and they turned-to see another pumpkin being hauled across the judging area.
A huge pumpkin. Vast!
Bigger than Spike?
‘Whose…?’ Kirsty breathed, and a head bobbed up from behind the pumpkin and beamed.
Ben Boyce.
‘Hi,’ he said, and he looked at Angus and his beam darned near split his face.
‘You-you…’ For a moment Kirsty thought Angus was heading for apoplexy. She moved toward him, but Angus’s face was recovering his colour, turning the healthy red of true indignation. ‘You traitor!’
‘Why traitor?’ Ben said-all innocence. ‘I grew my pumpkin in my back yard and you grew yours in yours. What’s the harm in that?’
‘You helped with my pumpkin!’
‘So I did,’ Ben said. His wife was firmly tucked by his side and he was walking with a step that was almost sprightly, totally at odds with the gnarled appearance of his arthritis-affected bones. ‘It wouldn’t have been sporting not to have helped.’ He beamed again as his pumpkin was hoisted onto the scales. ‘Her name’s Fatso, by the way,’ he told them. ‘And she’s a better doer than Spike. Thirstier.’
Angus gasped. ‘You don’t meant to tell me you used IV lines.’
‘Of course we did,’ Ben said. ‘When you started using them I got some medical advice. We watched Doc McMahon do yours and my Maggie’s a nurse. We owe you a vote of thanks, Doc,’ he told Kirsty, who choked.
Unnoticed-or maybe noticed but unobtrusive-Jake’s arm came around her waist.
‘Fatso will have to win,’ Susie was saying. She lifted Rosie out of her baby sling and perched her small, wrinkled person on top of the pumpkin. Cameras went wild. ‘Oh, Angus, do you mind very much?’
Angus was glowering at his friend. ‘Of course I mind,’ he barked at Ben. ‘Whippersnapper. That’s eight out of twenty times you’ll be beating me. You wait until next year!’
Next year.
Kirsty blinked. This from a man who just weeks ago had intended to die.
‘It’s a date, then,’ Ben said. ‘Same time next year, Angus Douglas, and it’s a bottle of your best Scotch against one of Maggie’s fruit cakes that I’ll beat you again.’
‘Done.’
General laughter. Angus slapped his friend on the back and they headed to the refreshment rooms-probably for one of Angus’s whiskies.
Laughter being the best medicine?
Tomorrow being the best medicine.
‘It’s time for the mother-daughter sack race,’ someone announced over the loudspeaker.
Jake’s hand dropped from her waist.
He moved over to where Alice and Penelope were admiring the pumpkins. ‘Let’s go find a lemonade, girls,’ he told them.
All around them women were sorting themselves into groups. Kirsty watched for a few minutes. This seemed to be a general mother-daughter sack race, the only rule being that mothers and daughters had to be in the same sack.
The sacks were piled high, a huge assortment of weird-sized sacks.
The mother-daughter combinations were extraordinary.
There were ancient mothers with almost-as-ancient daughters. One mother had three daughters. One mother had five daughters! Mavis was there, Kirsty saw in astonishment. She’d been wheeled along in a wheelchair. Now someone was frantically cutting holes in a sack for her wheelchair, and Barbara was preparing to climb in with her. There was also Barbara’s daughter and two more grandkids Kirsty hadn’t seen before.
‘Hey, I can do that,’ Susie said. She’d come in her wheelchair-only because she still needed a walking stick and she couldn’t carry Rosie or stay upright very long without it. ‘I’m a mother, and if Mavis can do it, so can I.’
‘Yahoo!’ someone yelled-it was Mrs Grey from the post office, wielding a vast pair of scissors. She picked up a sack and prepared to chop wheel holes. ‘You and Rosie’ll knock ’em dead, girl.’
Susie and Rosie would race.
Mother and daughter.
Kirsty went to help-and then she paused. There were lots of people helping Susie.
She looked across the fairground and saw Jake retreating.
He was leaving. He was taking his girls to the lemonade stall so Penelope and Alice would ask no questions.
Questions like why didn’t they have a mother?
He wouldn’t push, she thought. He had a twin by each hand, gripping hard, and the slumping of the girls’ shoulders said they were aware of what was happening and they hated it.
If she called out…
Could she?
Why not? Why on earth not?
The rest of her life started now.
‘Alice,’ she yelled. ‘Penelope!’
They turned. They all turned.
Alice and Penelope looked hopeful.
‘Do you girls want to come in a sack with me?’ she yelled-and every person there knew exactly what she was saying. Every person in the fairground knew their local doctor, and almost every one of them wished for exactly this.
Jake was standing motionless. Expressionless. She dared give him no more than a fleeting glance but in that
