A Debt of Honour – Episode 17
A Debt Of Honour
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- 1. A Debt of Honour – Episode 17
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They found the festival grounds easily and parked at the edge of the field.
Ellie was all for making a beeline to the ongoing performance, but Calum held her back.
“No. We pitch our tents and put them up in daylight, when we can easily sort any problems.”
Ellie dragged her tent bag reluctantly in his wake.
“But it’s one of my bands,” Ellie protested. “I want to hear them.”
“You can hear it from the top of the field while we’re putting up the tents,” Calum replied. “You could probably hear it from Stirling.”
He had his tent up while Ellie was still struggling to sort out the mess of billowing nylon cape and plastic supports.
“Well, is everything there?” Calum teased her.
“I can always sleep on the ground,” she said defiantly.
“You might have to.” He laughed. “Let me try.”
The rain came on as the gloom deepened and the bands were working the crowd into a frenzy.
“We’ll get soaked,” Calum warned.
“I don’t care,” Ellie replied, by now completely taken over by the music and the fervour of the fans.
Calum sighed.
“I’ll go back to the car and get our rain stuff.”
Ellie never saw him go, and scarcely noticed him return. Though she did spot the two wads of cotton wool he had stuffed into his ears.
She smiled inwardly.
“At around three thousand feet in the Cairngorm mountains, any rain carries an edge of ice,” Calum muttered to himself.
By midnight the performances were over, so they slogged back to their tents through a field which had become festival mud.
They reached the tents by the light of his torch.
Ellie looked up at Calum, a dim and long-suffering shape in the dark.
“Thanks for bringing me,” she said. “I loved every minute. You can take those ear plugs out now.”
On tiptoe, she kissed his cheek briefly, then ducked inside her tent.
In the dark she reached out and felt what was as good as a cold shower cascading down from one side of the roof.
Penny’s tent had sprung a leak.
“Rats!” she muttered.
The floor was too wet to even think of sleeping on it.
In the dark, wishing she had brought a torch, she fumbled to the other side.
Her sleeping bag, perched on her rucksack, seemed dry.
The rucksack, however, was sitting in a pool of water and held the dry clothes she was going to change into.
A few minutes later, she shivered in half-wet clothes outside Calum’s tent, her sleeping bag under her arm.
“Calum?” she called.
There was movement inside, then the sound of a zip opening.
His head appeared.
“My tent’s leaking,” she explained. “Is there room for two in yours?”
The door flap opened. Calum lit his torch, dimming the beam by cupping his hand over it.
“There’s just about enough room for you. Come on in.”
She crawled into the warmth.
In the glow from the torch, she saw him smiling.
Ellie spread out her sleeping bag and struggled into it.
The torch clicked off and darkness settled as rain pattered on the roof.
A lump in the ground made her wriggle into a more comfortable position.
Calum’s voice came quietly out of the dark.
“Should I put the cotton wool back in? Do you snore?”
Ellie swatted at him gently and felt him catch her arm, then his hand slid down to take hers.
There seemed to be a nice, natural fit.
Ellie’s last thought before drifting off to sleep was that it would be hard to get back to a normal friendship after this.