Page 78 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

Essie truly does not want to go and meet the boys for supper after her little display that afternoon, but it is either that or not see Connor again till goodness knows when, so she drives them both to the End of the World quietly, wearing a plain black dress. It would probably be good if Shelby sees her with Connor anyway, so she snuggles under his arm. The look on Shelby’s face makes it perfectly obvious that Shelby thinks she is instead anindustrial-strength slutbag, but there is not much that can be done about that.

She is determined to be on her best behaviour. She has been distracted, that’s all. By stupid cowboys and the joys of working on the new build. But she knows what she really wants. She wants to get back to Edinburgh. With her sweet boyfriend and a real career, not dabbling about with grouting. Although she did have fun when Wee Jim let her use the power hose. But no. She needs to get back . . .

She hoists up her bra as a distraction and lets her hair hang loose around her shoulders the way Connor likes it, even though it is eminently impractical on a windy evening and it is, frankly, always a windy evening on the winding sea lane to Shelby’s bar.

The boys are in the corner, already well into the rough red wine, telling Connor wild stories about shots fired and derring-do and the size of the stag that got away as he nods appreciatively. She appears to have been forgiven for her intervention, and it turns out Dwight was a crack shot – well, he would be; she assumes his parents taught him to shoot on the back of a horse – and everyone’s freezer will be stocked through the summer.Dwight is still wearing his cowboy hat, but nobody seems to be taking the piss out of him any more; in fact Tris is asking him again about the cottages in all seriousness. It doesn’t make any sense; Tris always makes a point of only going after big money.

‘So who are you going to sell them on to when you’re done?’ he’s asking.

Dwight shrugs. ‘Whoever wants one.’

Tris shakes his head. ‘No. That’s not what you want. You need to slap some nice grey paint everywhere, get some pictures done, make sure it hits the smart Edinburgh estate agents. Or even London, place as pretty as this.’

‘He’s not allowed,’ says Essie, firmly, interjecting. ‘They must go to a local family. That’s the whole point of the codicil.’

Tris sniffs. ‘Oh, come on, think big. Yokels,’ he says. ‘That’s easily sorted. You just form a shell company, make sure it has a local address so you adhere enough to the codicil they won’t check. Then you borrow money off the shell company, you own the company, then the company can rent it to whoever it likes. Bob’s your uncle. You make a fortune.’ He looks around the bar. ‘Completely under-utilised, the Highlands of Scotland. People up here don’t even realise what they have.’

Essie wonders if he knows something. Maybe there’s going to be some huge redevelopment and he wants to get in on the ground. Maybe there’s been a new oil field discovered, just over their heads.

Dwight looks completely bamboozled. ‘Wouldn’t that be illegal?’ he says, looking at Essie.

‘No,’ says Essie. ‘Not technically. But it’s . . . not very ethical.’

‘As opposed to all the other ethical ways of making money there are,’ says Tris, rolling his eyes. ‘You know, Essie can’t shoot a deer but she can certainly get round the tax regulations, can’t you, love? Her job is basically persuading people to do stuff like this. Or should I say, her ex-job.’

‘Yeah, enough, Tris,’ says Essie. She is already letting him wind her up, exactly what she told herself not to let happen. ‘Is something happening around here?’

Tris shrugs smugly. ‘Wouldn’t mention it in here if I did,’ he says, and Essie realises that the knitting circle are in the corner of the pub, faces keen to know more. ‘But there may well be a fortune in it.’

Dwight rubs the back of his neck, already brown this early in the year.

‘How much . . . how much is a fortune, though?’ says Dwight. Essie finds she is incredibly annoyed for the second time today about something she has, truly, no reason to be annoyed about.

Connor sees her face. ‘What’s up with you?’ he teases. ‘You look really bothered.’

‘I am bothered,’ she says. ‘It’s not right, if he’s up here planning things without local people being informed.’

‘So you’re “local people”?’ teases Connor.

‘Yes. No,’ says Essie, taking a slurp of her wine crossly. ‘But I’m from here.’

‘It’s money,’ Connor says simply, as he had earlier. ‘Money just does what it does.’

‘Well, maybe sometimes it shouldn’t.’

‘I know, I know: we should all still be ploughing our own gardens and bartering spades.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ says Essie.

‘I know, but you know how these things work.’

‘How things work in Edinburgh.’

‘Ha, youaresounding local.’

Essie just gives him a look, and he laughs, trying to mollify her. ‘Essie, you realise . . . the money people like us make . . . you realise it funds the whole of Scotland? Every hospital? Every pensioner? Every school place?’

She does, of course, know this. ‘Yes, but we’re meant to be ethical!’

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