Page 24 of The Moon Sister
‘Hi, Tiggy.’ She smiled as she stepped through the front door. ‘I’m going down to Deanich Glen to take Chilly his lunch, so how about I introduce you to him?’
‘That would be great.’ I grabbed my outerwear. ‘Lead the way.’
Once Zara was strapped into the passenger seat next to me, we set off. The bitter wind of yesterday had died overnight and it was a pure, fresh sunny day. The snow glittered all around us as I steered the car down the slope, innocently blanketing the treacherous ice that lay beneath it. Zara gave me directions then chattered away about how boring last night’s dinner had been and how she was dreading going back to her school on the North Yorkshire moors after New Year.
‘Just ’cos generations of Kinnaird ancestors went there, doesn’t make it right for me. Isn’t it ridiculous that at sixteen you can legally get married, have sex and smoke, but at boarding school you still get treated like a ten-year-old, with lights out at nine thirty!’
‘It’s only eighteen months, Zara. It’ll pass in a flash, really.’
‘We’re not around that long on this earth, so why waste all that time – like, over five hundred and forty days, ’cos I counted – being somewhere I hate?’
I secretly agreed, but the sensible adult I’d become knew better than to say so. ‘Life is full of ridiculous rules, but there are also some good ones put in place to protect us all.’
‘Do you have a boyfriend, Tiggy?’ Zara asked me as she directed me across the little river and along a narrow wooden bridge, the water on the rocks below us frozen into incredible ice sculptures.
‘No. Do you?’
‘Sort of. I mean, there’s someone I really like at school.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Johnnie North. He’s really fit and all the girls in my year are in love with him. We’ve met each other a couple of times in the woods, shared some rollies. But . . . he’s a bad boy, you know?’
‘I do know, yes,’ I murmured, wondering why so many women were eternally drawn to the type of male who would use and abuse them, when the nice ones – and there were a lot of nice ones – sat on the sidelines watching and wondering why they couldn’t get a girl.
‘Actually, I don’t think he reallyisbad, he just likes to pretend he is so he looks cool in front of his mates. When we’ve been alone, we talk about really deep stuff,’ Zara continued. ‘He had a difficult childhood, y’know? Underneath, he’s really vulnerable and sensitive.’
I glanced at Zara’s dreamy expression and realised she’d just answered my question: every woman who fell for a bad guy thought that he wasn’t really bad at all, just misunderstood. Worst of all, they believed they were the only one who understood and, therefore, could save him . . .
‘We got really close last term, but all my mates say he’s just interested in getting into my pa—’ Zara stopped herself and had the grace to blush. ‘You know what I mean, Tiggy.’
‘Well, your mates might be right,’ I replied, amazed at Zara’s openness. At her age, I’d never have dreamt of talking about sex to a ‘grown-up’ – especially one I hardly knew. I drew Beryl to a careful halt and felt the tyres skid slightly on the frozen snow a few metres away from a log cabin tucked into a crevice. The mountains rose in an elegant arc around us, the isolation both eerie and spectacular. We climbed out and walked towards the cabin, the freezing air biting at every centimetre of my exposed flesh. I pulled my scarf up over my nose because it actually hurt my lungs to breathe the air.
‘Wow, it must be minus ten out here. How does Chilly survive?’
‘I s’pose he’s used to it. And now he’s got his cabin, he’s okay. You wait here,’ Zara said as she paused outside the door. ‘I’ll go in and tell him he has a visitor but that you’re not from the social services.’ She winked at me, then walked across the snow and disappeared through the front door of the cabin.
I studied it and saw that it was well constructed from sturdy pine logs, one piled up on the other like the older skiing lodges on the mountain slopes in Switzerland.
The door opened and Zara peered round it. ‘You can come in now,’ she called to me.
I walked across to Zara. Stepping inside, I was relieved at the blissful blast of warm, smoky air. My eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room – the only light came from a couple of oil lamps and the flickering of the flames in the woodburner. Zara grabbed my hand and led me a couple of steps towards a worn leather armchair set in front of the fire.
‘Chilly, this is my friend Tiggy.’
A pair of bright, nut-brown eyes peered at me from a face so wrinkled it resembled a road map of a sprawling capital city. I realised the strong smell of smoke wasn’t coming from the woodburner, but in fact from a long wooden pipe that hung from the diminutive man’s mouth. With not a hair on his head and his deeply leathery skin, he reminded me of an ancient monk.
‘Hello, Chilly,’ I said as I took another step towards him and offered out my hand. He didn’t offer his in return, only continued to stare at me. As he did so, my heart began to beat faster. I closed my eyes to steady myself and an image appeared in my mind’s eye; I was in a cave staring up into the eyes of a woman. She was whispering softly to me as smoke drifted across her face from somewhere nearby and I was coughing and coughing . . .
Then I realised Iwascoughing. I opened my eyes and staggered slightly, bringing myself back to reality. Zara caught my arm.
‘Are you okay, Tiggy? The air’s pretty rancid in here, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, my watering eyes fixed on Chilly’s. I couldn’t seem to drag them away, even though I wanted to.
Who are you to me . . . ?
I watched his lips move as he muttered something to me in a language I didn’t understand, then beckoned me forward with his bony finger until I stood only a few centimetres away from him.
