There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 20
There's Always Tomorrow by Mark Neilson
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- 1. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 20
Since the Kinneff trip, he had almost backed away, as if he, too, felt that their relationship could spiral out of control, push their friendship too hard and too quickly, and risk losing it.
When he hadn’t turned up at her door the next day with a new adventure, part of her had been disappointed.
She had loved the bridal measuring stick in St Cyrus, and the story of the minister’s wife smuggling out the Crown Jewels under the noses of Cromwell’s besieging army.
They were stories Larry said he had learned from his grandfather, in the days when the farm cottages had no television and people entertained themselves with the tales passed down from generation to generation.
Equally, part of her had been relieved.
He was too much fun to be with, and she sensed it would be too easy to become dependent on him to bring light and laughter into her darker moments.
What he had said made quiet sense: the past can become a cage if you let it happen.
In the same way she had let her own grief and guilt turn her own past into a cage.
He had shown her a way out. Did she have the courage to take it yet?
She heard him whistling as he worked on the window, then Lorna reappeared at her side with two buckets of water and an array of scrubbing brushes and dusters tucked beneath her arms.
Lorna sneezed.
“Is he finished yet?” she demanded.
Wullie straightened from the pile of dust he had carefully swept into the centre of the shop’s floor.
“Just counting the spiders,” he said with a wry smile.
“Right, Wullie,” Lorna said briskly a while later. “Where’s the best place to find a supermarket and some charity shops? Stonehaven?”
Wullie removed his old hat and scratched his hair.
“No. Best wi’ Montrose. It’s got supermarkets and about half a dozen charity shops. Or there were, last time I was there.”
“When was that? Back when the dragon lady was in the library?”
He grinned.
“No’ quite. About four, maybe five years ago.”
Lorna smiled.
“Can I ask you to abandon the garden this afternoon and help me carry stuff from the shops to the car?”
“Ye can ask,” Wullie replied. “I might even agree. What sort of stuff?”
“There’s one way to find out,” Lorna said, chalking up a rare score for herself.
She let Wullie guide her to the supermarket at the edge of the Montrose Back Basin, the big inland sea where changing tides leave sandbanks and mudflats – a haven for rare birds.
It was on her list of things to do once she bought herself a decent pair of binoculars.
“Better with tinned foods,” she murmured, filling her trolley with basics, then moving on to the fresh vegetable counters to load up with small bags of potatoes and greens.
Wullie watched her.
“That should keep you going until the weekend,” he finally said.
“They’re not for me. It’s stock for the shop,” Lorna explained. “Can we risk bread?”
“No,” he replied. “Unless ye want tae risk eating it.”
He looked unhappily at the filled trolley.
“Who’s payin’ for all this?” he demanded.
“I am,” Lorna declared.
Wullie looked unhappier than ever.
“What if it doesnae sell?”
“Then you’re on vegetable soup and tinned mince instead of tea for the next six months.”
He shook his head.
“Lorna, lass,” he muttered. “Ye cannae be takin’ all the risk on your own shoulders.”
She smiled to herself. It was the first time he had called her by her given name. By any name.
And it had been many years since anyone had called her “lass”.