Page 120 of Carry Me Home

Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe I was the thing holding her back – the constant reminder of Peter, of grief, of everything she couldn’t move past. Maybe leaving was the kindest thing I could have done for her.

Maybe Scotland is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

The flat is fine.

Two bedrooms, which Cara and I have been sticking to, sharing the main living areas, but sleeping separately. A bit like uni digs again I suppose. Clean. Modern. A view of the car park from the kitchen window and the distant suggestion of hills if I lean at the right angle. The letting agent called it ‘compact and efficient’, which is estate agent for small but not terrible.

It’s nothing like the surgery flat in Sea Salt Bay. No creaking floorboards. No harbour through the glass. The windows seal properly, which means no draught, which means no salt smell, which means I sleep in a silence so complete it wakes me at three in the morning wondering what’s wrong.

I’ve been here three weeks and it still doesn’t feel like home.

The practice, at least, is impressive.

Modern facilities. Digital X-ray. A proper surgical suite with decent lighting and equipment Dad would have wept over. Cara’s built well here – the client list is solid, the systems are clean, and the referral network is better than anything I had in Cornwall. Mixed practice, like she promised. Dogs and cats in the morning, farm calls in the afternoon.

And the farm calls are good. I’ll give Scotland that. Yesterday I drove twenty minutes to a hill farm to check on a pregnant Highland cow and the view from the yard – the loch, the mountains, the cloud shadows moving across the bracken – stopped me for a moment. Just a moment. I stood there with my arm in a cow and thought: This could work.

Then I got back in the car and drove past a lavender field and the colour hit me like a fist.

‘You’re settling in,’ Cara says over coffee. We’re in the staff room – clean, bright, nothing like the cramped back office at Dad’s surgery. ‘The Hendersons specifically requested you for their next appointment. Said you had a good way with Monty.’

‘Monty’s a Labrador. Labradors love everyone.’

‘Monty bit the last locum.’

‘Then maybe I’m just less edible.’

She laughs. It’s a nice laugh. Easy. Uncomplicated.

‘Do you fancy going out for dinner tonight?’ she asks. ‘Some vet friends of mine, Dean and Ellie, are driving up from Inverness, and there’s a couple from the village, Layla and Ross. He’s a solicitor. She runs the bookshop. You’ll like them.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Leave at half seven?’

‘I’ll be ready.’

The restaurant is in the village – one of those gastropub conversions with exposed beams and a menu that uses words like ‘jus’ and ‘reduction’. The hills roll away outside the windows, grey-green under the grey sky, stretching towards mountains I still can’t name.

Dean and Ellie are already there when we arrive. Ellie hugs me like we’re old friends, even though I’ve never met her in my life. Dean shakes my hand, asks about the practice, tells a long story about a horse he treated last week that ends with him covered in something he refuses to identify.

Layla and Ross arrive ten minutes later. She’s small, dark-haired, talks with her hands. He’s tall and quiet and watches everything with a solicitor’s careful attention.

‘So you’re the famous Tom,’ Layla says, sliding into her seat. ‘Cara’s told us all about you.’

‘Has she?’

‘All good things.’ She grins. ‘Mostly. There was that story about the goat⁠—’

‘We agreed never to mention the goat,’ Cara says quickly.

‘Did we? I don’t remember agreeing to that.’

They bicker like old friends. I watch, smile in the right places, try to track the references I don’t have context for.

‘How are you finding it up here?’ Ross asks. He’s got the gruff Scottish burr that I haven’t quite tuned in to yet, and I am slightly concerned I never will. ‘Quite a change from Cornwall, I imagine.’

‘It’s different.’