Once the national papers hit the shops, an emergency town meeting was called. Kirsty wasn’t surprised. The town hadn’t had this much publicity since that hermit guy had blown himself up while making homemade bombs in the hills outside town. The television crews had raved on about how he was a terrorist. The town had ignored them. Everyone knew Jimmy used the bombs to blast fish out of the loch. The town had been trying to stop him for years. The man was too blooming stupid to fish with a rod. Anyway, the meeting was called and with a sigh, Kirsty closed up shop, wrapped her pea-green woollen coat tight around her and headed to the Presbyterian Church hall—the only place in Invertary big enough to hold everyone. And everyone would definitely come.
The hall was packed by the time she’d walked up the main street to where the church stood on the corner of Dewar Street. It was cold in the hall. Fortunately someone had thought to turn up early and get the ancient heaters going—probably Caroline. It was exactly the kind of thing she would think of. Kirsty waved to her friend as she grabbed a seat in the middle of the room. As usual, the front rows and the back rows had filled first. It was always the same. The folk who wanted to call out during the meeting sat in the front and those who wanted to sleep through it sat in the back. The normal people got the middle. She noted her mother and the rest of the women from Knit Or Die were in their usual spot at the front. They’d brought flasks of tea and sandwiches along with them.
There was a lectern set up at the front of the room. Dougal stood behind it, flicking through his notes. Behind him sat Caroline, the head teacher of the local high school who was the unofficial town treasurer and the Presbyterian vicar. The vicar was rumoured to be 120 and wasn’t past hitting you with his cane if you annoyed him. As Dougal cleared his throat and leaned towards the microphone, Lake squeezed into the free chair beside her. Kirsty smiled politely, but felt her heartbeat speed up. Damn man was hardwired into her system.
“As unofficial town mayor, I call this meeting to order,” Dougal’s voice boomed.
Lake leaned towards her, making her skin prickle with awareness.
“Why isn’t he the official mayor?” he asked.
“We had a vote once, but no one turned up. Everyone figured that Dougal would win. Seemed pointless to vote when he’s doing the job anyway.”
Lake shook his head.
“You’ll all have seen the headlines,” Dougal said. His voice echoed around the room. “Andrew. Screen,” he bellowed.
“While you’re at it, Andrew, turn down the volume on Dougal,” said Reverend Morrison.
The young guy in charge of audio-visuals pressed some buttons and a photo of The Scotsman’s front page appeared on the wall.
“This is what we need to deal with,” Dougal said at a more normal level. He tugged his green tartan waistcoat over his belly and pointed at the wall. “We’re attracting a lot of attention and we need to put it to good use—before we become a national laughing stock.”
Kirsty cringed as she read the headline: InverTARTY, the sexy side of Highland living.
“I think it’s great,” said Lake.
“You would,” whispered Kirsty.
“Now,” Dougal said. “The unofficial town council has had a talk about this and we think that it’s best to take it in good humour. If we kick up a fuss, it will make us look like we’re small-minded. Instead we think that we should capitalise on it and use the publicity to get more people into town for our famous market.”
“I’m guessing the market is only famous in Invertary,” Lake whispered in her ear.
Kirsty narrowed her eyes at him.
“Caroline?” Dougal bellowed, although she was right beside him.
Caroline walked to the lectern, her back ramrod straight as usual. She was wearing another grey suit. Kirsty made a mental note to buy her something colourful for Christmas—if the shop made enough money by then for her to buy presents.
“The market website has received a lot more hits than usual,” Caroline was saying. “Accommodation at the Scottie Dog is now full and Mrs Granger’s Bed and Breakfast only has one bed left. The campsite has reported that people are planning to bring their caravans.”
“Can we at least agree to tell anyone with a tent to get lost this year?” someone shouted.
Lake nudged Kirsty with his elbow.
“Someone almost died of hypothermia when they camped out last year,” she told him.
“Amateurs,” he said.
“There will be no camping this year,” Caroline said firmly. “A dead tourist wouldn’t be good for business.”
“No kidding,” muttered Lake.
Kirsty ignored him.
“What we need,” continued Caroline, “is for more houses to open up as temporary B+B’s. Raise your hand if you’re interested and someone will come around, inspect the place and give you an official certificate.”
She pointed at the boy on audio-visuals and a copy of the certificate appeared on the wall. It said: Official accommodation approved by the unofficial Invertary council. Kirsty could feel Lake’s shoulders shake beside her as he laughed silently.
“We’ve also decided to advertise the market a little more aggressively in the next few weeks,” Caroline said. “Needless to say, Kirsty’s fashion show will now be the headline event and everything will revolve around it.” She glanced at her notes. “The show will take place on the last weekend of the market. That’s the Saturday before Christmas.”
Kirsty felt a flush of pure joy. One minute she had no money for advertising and the next the town was going to pay for it. Then Lake stood up.
“As half of the ‘tarty’ in ‘InverTARTY’,” he said in that lazy drawl of his, “I think it’s only fair that all of the lingerie shops in town get to take part in the fashion show.”
Caroline’s cheeks turned pink as she realised she’d let the cat out of the bag.
“No,” shouted Kirsty. “It’s my show.”
She shot to her feet beside Lake and appealed to the room.
“I planned it. I’ve been working on it and it wouldn’t be fair for Lake to take part. He can do his own thing.”
There weren’t as many nodding heads as she would have liked.
“Well,” he said with a smile, “I planned an opening, I paid for it and I worked on it, but that didn’t stop you elbowing in—did it?”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it,” she told him.
He pushed his hands into his jeans pocket as he, she assumed, tried to look all cuddly and non-threatening.
“Come on, people,” Kirsty said. “You’re not seriously thinking he should be a part of the runway show?”
“If you think about it,” said Dougal, “he was the one who invited the national press. We wouldn’t even be having this meeting if it wasn’t for him.”
“You wouldn’t be worried about being called InverTARTY either,” she pointed out.
“Still,” Dougal said. “It will bring a lot of business to the town.”
Now everybody was nodding and mumbling agreement. Kirsty’s mum stood up.
“I think Kirsty has enough clout to attract attention on her own. We don’t need the other shop. After all, she was a very famous lingerie model in her own right,” she said, and Knit or Die whooped in agreement.
Kirsty smiled smugly at Lake.
“This isn’t about who’s most famous,” Lake said. “It’s about being fair.” The devil appealed to Caroline. “Do you think it’s fair that only one lingerie shop gets to have a fashion show during the market?” he asked, all fake innocence.
The women of Knit Or Die groaned. Everyone knew that you never questioned whether Caroline was being fair or not. She prided herself on her sense of fairness—that and her high moral standards.
“Oh,” Caroline said, and gave Kirsty a pained look.
Don’t you dare, Kirsty told Caroline by telepathy.
“If you put it like that,” Caroline said, “I guess it should be both shops.”
That blasted tele
pathy never worked. Caroline mouthed “sorry” at Kirsty.
“Fine, he can have a show, but he can’t have mine.” Kirsty folded her arms and took a step away from Lake, crowding out the person beside her.
“Actually I have an idea about the show,” Lake said.
Kirsty threw up her hands in despair.
“Are you trying to kill me here?” she demanded.
He smiled sweetly.
“I thought, same show, same night,” he carried on. “We can have a lingerie competition, make people vote for their favourite runway show, we can call it Battle Of The Bras.”
The crowd went wild. They loved every sick word falling from his lips. Kirsty scowled at him.
“You came up with that on the spur of the moment?” she said to him as everyone spoke at once around her.
He smiled with fake innocence. Little bells went off in Kirsty’s head.
“You already knew about the show,” she said. “Who told you?”
“No one.”
And then it clicked.
“You broke into my place, didn’t you? You messed with my website and saw my plans on the desk.”
“Me?” He pointed at himself in mock innocence.
“You’re going to pay for that,” she told him.
He just grinned.
“Pipe down,” Dougal boomed over the crowd.
There was a sort of silence. It felt like the room was humming.
“We have a decision,” Dougal said. “We’re going with Lake’s idea. A double show. Battle Of The Bras.” He pointed at the two of them. “But keep it clean,” he ordered.
“Or you’ll answer to me,” the vicar said, and waved his stick.
“Wait a minute,” piped up Morag McKay.
There was a very loud collective groan that made her sneer.
“What about the fact these two are dragging the good name of this town through the dirt with their licentious behaviour and public nudity?”
Everyone gawked at her. Dougal shook his head.
“Put your hand up if you care about anything Morag just said,” he asked the room.
Morag and her cronies raised their hands. Dougal hit the lectern with his gavel.
“It’s official, Morag,” he told her. “No one gives a flying fig about your complaint.”
Morag huffed so hard you could practically see the steam rising from her head.
“Now, back to the matter in hand. Kirsty? What are we doing about models?”
Kirsty dragged her eyes away from Lake. She was trying to maim him with a glare.
“We’ll need to have auditions,” she told Dougal.
“Joint auditions,” piped in Lake.
“Get lost,” said Kirsty.
“Behave yourselves,” shouted the vicar.
“I’ll be in charge of the auditions,” Caroline said at last. “You two can turn up and you can both pick. I’ll work out a fair system for that to happen.”
Kirsty grumbled under her breath about having a best friend who was so interested in being fair that she stabbed you in the back. Lake chuckled again.
“Meeting adjourned,” Dougal bellowed before anyone could say anything else. “There’s a special at the pub, tonight only, cheap chips if anyone is interested.”
With that the hall cleared pretty quickly. Kirsty glared at Lake as he exited with the rest of them. She made her way to her traitorous best friend.
“I’m sorry,” Caroline said before Kirsty could open her mouth.
“I know,” Kirsty said with frustration. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so honest and set on being fair.”
“I’m sorry,” Caroline said again.
Kirsty knew she was genuinely upset about the whole thing. She pulled her friend into a hug.
“You can make up for it by making sure I get all the best models,” she said.
“Ah,” Caroline hedged.
“You know,” Kirsty said as she linked arms with her friend and they left the hall together, “one of these days you’re going to be in a situation where you have to choose between what’s right and what’s fair and your mind will explode.”
“Thankfully, what’s right and what’s fair are usually the same thing,” Caroline said.
Kirsty wasn’t so sure. It may have been fair for Lake to take part in the show, but it sure as heck wasn’t right. The women joined the crowd, walking through the cold, dark town to the pub. Chips on special weren’t to be missed.
“Are you going to audition for the fashion show?” Alastair asked Rainne as they left the meeting.
“Don’t be daft,” Rainne scoffed. “I don’t think anyone wants to see me parade around in my underwear.”
“I do,” he said in a voice that made her insides turn to custard.
He reached for her hand as they walked into the cold night air. The streets were dark, but dry. There hadn’t been rain in Invertary in over a week and that was practically a record in the Highlands. Rainne smiled. She could get used to this wee town. Alastair pulled her along into the high street and down towards the waterfront, following the crowd.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“Pub. Chips.”
And his mates.
“I think I’ll turn in early,” Rainne said.
Alastair stopped walking and stood in front of her. He looked at her so long that she lowered her eyes in shame.
“Everybody loves you, Rainbow,” he said softly. “You don’t need to be worried.”
“They think I’m cradle snatching,” she mumbled.
Alastair put a finger under her chin to tilt her head upwards.
“No. They don’t.”
He leaned towards her and kissed the tip of her nose, then kissed her lips gently.
“Don’t be a sissy,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Let’s go get some chips, and I may even let you win a game of snooker.”
How could she say no to those laughing eyes? With a deep sigh, she nodded and let him drag her along to the pub.
The place was packed. It seemed almost everyone who was at the meeting had taken Dougal up on his offer of cut-price chips. As they wove through the crowd towards the back room, Rainne could tell that people were genuinely excited about the fashion show. All around her she heard snippets of plans for the market. One woman was going to make knitted tea cosies with an underwear theme. Another thought painting a board with two people in their underwear, then cutting out the faces so that people could stand behind and get their photos taken was a great idea. She heard about people renaming their prized jam as InverTARTY, Strawberry Kiss. There was someone who planned to print T-shirts with Lake and Kirsty’s faces on them and someone who thought throwing a pyjama party in the pub was a good idea. It boggled her mind. The whole town was throwing themselves behind the lingerie shops. She hadn’t seen support like that since living in the commune. She didn’t know it was possible in “the real world”, as Lake kept calling it.
Rainne tensed when she heard Alastair call out to his friends. This was a disaster waiting to happen. She knew for a fact that a few of his crowd were barely eighteen. That was almost a decade younger than she was. Rainne took a deep breath, plastered a fake smile on her face and waited for the inevitable odd looks that they would give her. She was, after all, the old woman dating Alastair.
When Alastair introduced her, Rainne was surprised to see that their smiles seemed genuine. She shrugged out of her old green duffle coat and squeezed into the bench seat beside two young blond girls who were obviously twins.
“I’m Megan and that’s Claire,” said one of them.
Rainne smiled politely, then didn’t know what else to say. It occurred to her that if this was a new commune she’d just joined, people would be asking her loads of questions by now on her philosophy of life. Here, in a pub with a bunch of teenagers, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to talk about. The twins exchanged a look. Rainne tried to pretend she was invisible. She shrank back into her chair and lowered her he
ad, hoping her hair would hide her face.
“You own the lingerie shop, don’t you?” Megan said.
Rainne felt herself tense even further.
“My brother owns it really,” she said.
“But it’s your shop, right?” Claire said.
Rainne tried to figure out if there was some ulterior motive to their questions, but all she could see were two shiny, young faces smiling at her.
“Kind of,” she said. “Lake owns it, I manage it. Or I was supposed to before he came to town and took over.”
She held her breath, waiting to see if she’d said too much.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Megan said while Claire nodded. “See that guy over at the bar?”
Rainne spotted the guy they meant instantly. He was an older, bigger version of the two girls, only with dark hair instead of blond.
“He’s our brother, ten years older,” Megan said.
“And he’s the town’s police force,” said Claire.
“Can you imagine?” Megan said, all wide-eyed and indignant. “Not only is he watching every move we make, but he can arrest us for it. Our own brother.”
“He won’t leave us alone for a minute,” Claire said.
“He says he’s worried we’ll go wild and embarrass him.” Megan rolled her eyes.
“Like the jumper he’s wearing isn’t embarrassment enough,” Claire said as she growled at her brother.
He seemed aware that they were watching him. He pointed at his eyes with two fingers, then at them. His jumper had a knitted reindeer on it with a red bobble nose. Rainne smiled.
“See?” Megan huffed. “It’s humiliating to be related to that. Mum makes those jumpers for us every year, but none of us wear them.”
“Except the idiot,” said Claire.
Rainne couldn’t help laughing.
“You think you’ve got problems,” she said as she found herself relaxing. “My brother is ex-special forces and is trying to run the shop like a boot camp. We have strategy meetings. We get assigned tasks. He even calls his efforts a ‘campaign’ and refers to making a profit as ‘winning the war’.”
“At least he looks yummy in a tux,” Claire said wistfully.
“Oooh, yuck,” said Rainne and made a disgusted face, which made the girls giggle.
As Rainne reached for her drink, she found she had actually relaxed and was enjoying herself. She caught Alastair’s eye from across the table and felt her insides tingle as his look seemed to caress her. She flushed as she sipped her drink and the devil winked.
“Looks like it isn’t just Lake who’s yummy,” cooed Claire.
As Rainne blushed the girls giggled good-naturedly and Alastair grinned widely.
“Alastair has got that look cats get when you give them cream,” Megan said. “And you’re the cream,” she told Rainne, in case there was any confusion.
“I’ve never seen him like this,” Claire said in a lowered voice. “He’s really mad about you.”
Rainne felt herself stiffen as she waited for them to warn “the old lady” off their friend. Instead Megan leaned across the table and squeezed her hand.
“You are so lucky,” she said. “I wish some guy would look at me like that.”
Rainne didn’t quite know what to say.
“If they did,” she said at last, “your brother would pop them in jail.”
“That is so true,” Claire said as they laughed. “Hear that, Meg? We’re doomed to be single.”
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” Megan said gloomily.
“Hey, Alastair,” Claire called. “I like this one. She’s a keeper.”
Rainne felt her face burn red.
Alastair looked at her intensely as he slowly sipped his beer.
“I know,” he said at last. “I intend to keep her.”
The girls fanned themselves as Rainne stared back at Alastair. There was no turning away. She was keeping her boy too.
CHAPTER TEN