can swim. Loves the water but has no fear, which is always a bit of a worry.’
She was standing looking at him, and he almost felt her shrugging off whatever it was that had bothered her earlier, although when he really looked at her, he saw the pain in her eyes.
‘Someone you knew drowned?’ he guessed, then regretted the casual question when all the colour left her face.
But she didn’t flinch, tilting her chin so she could look him in the eyes.
‘My sister—she was only two. It was a long time ago, but you don’t forget.’
He reached out and touched her arm.
‘I’m so sorry, I really am. I shouldn’t have persisted.’
She rallied now, shrugging off the memories.
‘That’s okay, you weren’t to know. Things happen. But you can understand why I’m a wee bit obsessive about children learning to swim.’
‘Of course you are.’ He squeezed her arm where he was holding it, feeling her bones beneath the flesh. ‘Well, be assured Hamish will be fine in the water. We’re quite near the beach, I believe.’
Her smile caught him by surprise, as did his gut’s reaction to it.
‘Quite near the beach? You really were thrown straight in the deep end,’ she said. ‘You haven’t had time to work out your surroundings at all.’
Then, as if their previous conversation had never happened, she looked up at the sky, where the sun was heading slowly towards the west.
‘With daylight saving, it’ll still be light for a while. What if I pile you and Hamish and Juanita into my car and we do a quick tour of the neighbourhood. We can have a swim and finish with fish and chips at the beach—if Hamish is allowed to eat fish and chips.’
She was being neighbourly, possibly to banish memories his careless question had provoked, but the offer told him more about Kate Armstrong than she’d probably intended it to. She was the kind of person who would always put herself out for others. She’d had no need to go back into Mrs Stamford’s room that morning, but had known the other woman was in deep emotional pain and had decided to make one more attempt to help her.
Now she was offering to drive his little family to the beach.
She should have children! A giving person like Kate would be a wonderful mother. Angus remembered a book he’d read on parenting that explained no matter how hard a father tried he could never fully replace a mother. Something to do with wiring…
If Hamish had a mother, would that let Angus off the hook? Allow him to feel less, not exactly guilty, but disquieted about his interaction with his son?
He shook his head as if to shake away the notion. He was fine as a father, spent time with Hamish, did whatever he could for him…
‘Well?’ Kate demanded, and Angus pulled himself together.
‘We’d be delighted, and thanks to his early upbringing Hamish loves fish and chips. It’s practically a staple diet back home in Scotland.’
What was she doing? Was she mad, getting more involved with her neighbours instead of less? Kate left him at his gate and strode ahead, then found Hamish and a woman who must be Juanita sitting on her yellow sofa.
‘I thought I told you the backyard was for adventures,’ she scolded Hamish, although she softened the words with a smile.
‘This isna an adventure,’ he told her, four-year-old scorn scorching the words. ‘I’m with Juanita. We’re waiting for you to come home so I can—’
‘Introduce me,’ the woman said, standing and holding out her hand to Kate. ‘I am Juanita Cortez.’
She was a solid, olive-skinned woman of about fifty, Kate guessed as she introduced herself, and asked Juanita how she was settling in.
‘We are nearly there,’ Juanita replied. ‘Angus has sorted a kindergarten for Hamish and I’ve found an organisation for ex-pat Americans that meets once a month, and another place where I can go to play bridge, so I will soon meet plenty of people.’
‘Well done you,’ Kate responded, admiring the other woman’s nous in getting organised, but she was watching Hamish as she spoke, watching Angus swing his son into the air before depositing him on his shoulders, normal father stuff but somehow Angus was never looking at the little boy.
Not directly.
Seeing them together, so unalike, Kate wondered if Hamish looked like his mother, and therefore was too painful a reminder…
Oh, dear!
‘Come on,’ Angus said, ‘let’s get changed. Kate’s taking us to the beach.’
‘Are you, Kate? Are you really?’ the little boy perched on Angus’s shoulders demanded.
Stupid, this is stupid getting more involved with them, but something in the anxious young eyes made her reply immediately.
‘Of course. Get your swimmers, or whatever you Yanks and Scots call swimming costumes and meet me at the shed in my backyard in half an hour.’ Kate turned back to Juanita. ‘You’ll join us.’
Juanita looked far less interested in a trip to the beach than Hamish had been.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to stay at home. I need to send some emails to my family to let them know we’ve arrived and are settling in, then I must make some phone calls about the ex-pat organisation and bridge club.’
As Angus and Hamish had disappeared into their house, Kate assumed this would be okay with him, so she nodded to Juanita and hurried inside herself, worrying again because a swim was just what she needed to wash away the tension of the day. But on the other hand, letting Angus McDowell see her lily-white body in a swimsuit, especially on a beach full of bronzed bathing beauties, was a very embarrassing idea.
As if he cared what she looked like in a swimming costume, the common-sense half of her brain told her, though the sensible admonition wasn’t strong enough to stop a rather wistful sigh.
She changed into her swimming costume, pulled shorts and a T-shirt over it, then dug through the kitchen junk drawer in search of the car keys. She used the car so rarely, the keys got buried under spare change, receipts and reminder notices from the library—even an apple core, today, although how that had got in there, Kate had no idea.
Then out the back door, locking it, and casting a quick glance at her pots to check if they needed watering. Later—she’d do that later, because excited voices from the far end of her backyard told her Angus and Hamish had arrived.
‘We came down the lane,’ Angus explained, ‘although I’ve found the gate between the properties. I just haven’t had time to hack through the jungle to release it.’
It’s because he’s got this outer carapace of an easygoing man that I feel as if I’ve known him for ever, Kate decided as she unlocked the shed and turned on a light, revealing her father’s ancient old car. But all he lets people see is
