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“But she says you askedherlast night,” Frankie mutters, still looking out of the window.
“I didn’t! Her mum said she wanted to be a bridesmaid, and I said she could, just to keep the peace,” I insist, grateful for the radio station McTavish has switched on, which is drowning out our conversation. “You know how much she hates me. I just went along with it to try to make up for when we first met. You were always going to have the main role.”
“That’s the trouble with you, Emerald,” says Frankie. “Always trying to make people like you, even when they’re blatantly not worth the trouble. Why you can’t just be yourself and let them take you or leave you, I’ll never know.”
“Francesca’s right,” puts in Mum, who’s not even pretending not to be listening in. “Remember that time ye pretended to be Scarlett Scott?”
“What’s that?” asks Rose, twisting around in her seat. “Emerald pretended to be who?”
“No one,” I say quickly. “I didn’t pretend to be anyone. Mum’s just joking.”
Rose faces the front again, and I twirl my hair nervously around my finger. I’m not sure whether to be relieved that Jack obviously hasn’t shared the story of how we met with his sister, or disappointed to find that he clearly doesn’t talk about me nearly as much as Rose said he did.
Jack doesn’t talk about me.
Frankie isn’t talkingtome.
McTavish doesn’t seem to be talkingat all— which is so unlike him, it makes me worry what he’s not telling us all about his current problems.
There are so many secrets. And all of them somehow link back to Jack.
Right now, though, Frankie’s my biggest problem. I’m actually a bit surprised she’s as upset as she is. She’s never been much of a “girlie” girl — she’s always said weddings were ‘a stupid waste of money’, and that she’d never have one. And yet, here she is, squashed into the back seat in a bridesmaid’s dress she refused to take off, and an expression which suggests I’m going to have to do a lot of groveling for us to get past this.
I dutifully grovel all the way home, but Frankie’s only slightly less frosty by the time we drop her off, and as McTavish pulls up outside Jack’s house —ourhouse — I’m so strung out from the day I’ve just had that all I want to do is run myself a nice, hot bath, and relax in it for the next few hours.
Then I remember that tonight is the night my parents are coming round to meet Jack’s, and my dreams of a stress-free evening shatter abruptly into pieces.
“Thanks for driving us, McTavish,” I say as I pay him, Rose having conveniently disappeared as soon as the car came to a stop. “Sorry about… well, everything. Rose really is the worst.”
“Ach, she’s no’ so bad, really,” McTavish says. “I had a nice wee chat with her while you were trying on yer dresses. I think ye should give her a chance, Emerald. She just wants to feel like she’s part o’ things. I dinnae think she has a lot o’ friends somehow.”
I shake my head wearily.
Trust McTavish to always want to see the best in everyone.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I tell him. “Hey, you didn’t tell me what you meant, back in Inverness,” I add, suddenly remembering what I’d meant to ask him. “You said you’d stopped drinking because of something your dad said? What was it?”
“Och, it was nothin’ really,” McTavish says, shrugging. “It was just about my granda’.”
Great. Someone else with grandad issues. What is it with this place?
I look at him questioningly.
“What about your grandad?” I prompt.
McTavish looks at me warily.
“It was after ye asked me about that land,” he says. “The bit Jack’s building these cabins o’ his on.”
I nod, my stomach tying itself into a neat little knot of nerves as I wait for him to go on.
“I spoke to my da’ about it,” he goes on. “Just out o’ curiosity, like. He said the land did belong tae us back in the day. But, well, my granda’ lost it, apparently.”
“Lost it? I don’t understand?”
“Gambled it away when he was drunk, didn’t he?” shrugs McTavish, his eyes very blue in his tanned face as he leans out of the car window. “Lost it in a bet. Stupid auld codger.”
“Who did he bet?” I ask, not sure I want to hear the answer.
