‘Are you OK, Ruthie?’ I called, wincing.
She ignored me, which I took to be a positive sign. If she’d been hurt in any way, we’dallhave heard about it.
Finlay carried on with his tutorial. ‘And to turn the kayak, it’s like this.’
He started wheeling around in a circular movement and we all followed suit with varying degrees of success. Eventually, we all got the hang of it and followed Finlay out towards the end of the pier. My arms were already aching and I was worried about Ruthie, who was groaning dramatically and stabbing at the water with ineffectual movements.
‘So, we’re on the largest lake – by surface area – in the whole of Great Britain,’ said Aidan, skimming effortlessly along beside me. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat and meanwhile I was stressed out to the max, not least about trying not to fall in.
‘At its deepest point it’s 190 metres deep.’
‘190 metres!’ I said, looking down into the blackness of the water and wishing I hadn’t. It suddenly looked much eerier than it had from the shore.
‘The loch and the national park you can see all around us – the Trossachs – has around four million visitors per year.’
‘Wow, that’s more than I’d expected,’ I said, checking over my shoulder for Ruthie. ‘Nearly there!’ I called to her.
‘Do you want some facts about kayaking?’ asked Aidan.
I frowned at him. ‘How do you know all of this?’
He shrugged. ‘I like travelling. And when I’m travelling, I try to fully immerse myself in a place. Find out everything about it. The history, the geography, the culture, the food, you name it.’
‘And you retain all of that information?’
He laughed. ‘Most of it.’
‘I totally want you on my team next time I do a Zoom quiz night.’
‘With pleasure. What’s your specialist subject?’
I thought about it for a second. ‘I’m not bad on literature.’
Aidan looked impressed. ‘I know nothing about books, so sounds like we’d make an excellent team.’
The thought of us working together on something was not unpleasant.
‘So, go on then, give me some kayaking info. If I don’t have some decent facts to feed Ruthie, she will not be happy.’
‘Well, I’m no expert, but I do know that the word “kayak” originates from the Greenlandic word “qajaq”.’
I widened my eyes. ‘I didn’t even know Greenlandic was a language, never mind that other thing you said!’
‘It means hunter’s boat,’ he told me, slowing down so that I could catch him up.
‘You’re good,’ I said, impressed.
We’d made it to the end of the pier and when I looked back at the shore, it seemed much further away than it had the other way around. I couldn’t even make out Tim’s facial expressions, let alone hear him barking orders, which was probably a good thing at this point. I was on my own, then.
I let Lou take the lead with setting up the shot, she was much bossier than I was and everyone listened to her. Annoyingly, as Ruthie flailed around getting into position, she flung up a torrent of water that – of course – landed mainly over me. I tried not to look fazed, but all I could think about was that now I was going to have to go over my hair with the straighteners before dinner. As I touched it lightly, I could feel it going springy beneath my fingertips. And it didn’t help that Aidan was looking all groomed yet perfectly rugged like something out of a Burberry ad while I was a frizzy-haired, pretty much make-up-free mess in an M&S anorak. I was hardly going to make an impression on him looking like this. Which surprised me, because the minute I found someone attractive I usually panicked and backed off immediately. It was a self-preservation technique I’d learned over the years because I was sick of falling for men who couldn’t have cared less about me. As I caught Aidan’s eye, though, I realised something with a mixture of fear and excitement: there was something different about him; something that made menotwant to back off.
Chapter Ten
To give Rosamund her due, the restaurant was lovely. It was nestled on a tiny street just around the corner from the hotel and the walls were the sort of gorgeous deep slate-blue I’d like to paint my home one day. Once Nick and I moved out of the apartment he’d bought for himself when he split up with Sophia, that was. It was a pretty apartment in one of those mansion blocks St John’s Wood was famous for, and it was definitely bigger than the studio flat I had been living in. But still, it felt like his, not ours. And all the walls were white.
We hung our coats on a stand and followed a waiter to our table. The lighting was low (just how I liked it) and the vibe was young, trendy and casual. Rosamund had on three strings of huge, shiny (presumably real) pearls which she’d placed conspicuously over a black silk blouse. The look was finished off by diamond earrings that looked so heavy I was concerned for the welfare of her lobes. As usual, I felt like the bargain-basement member of the family. Even Daisy had let me down this time in her chic and flowy boho dress, most likely from Anthropologie – another shop I was perennially walking into and promptly walking out of when I saw the price tags.
We were already two drinks in when our mains came. I’d found this menu much more user-friendly than the one in the hotel restaurant – for a start there was an English translationfor each dish. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated languages and when I travelled, I liked to get to know the basics: hello, goodbye, thank you, please, where is the bathroom? That sort of thing. But you couldn’t know every item on a menu, could you? And there was always the possibility – in Italy, but elsewhere in the world, too – that I could end up eating something I’d rather not. I knew they were big on rabbit here, for example, and had purposely looked the word up so that I could avoid it:coniglia(feminine) andconiglio(masculine). Which one you used when it came to a menu, I had no idea, and since I had no intention of eating a meal that used to be a living, breathing fluffy bunny, it really didn’t matter.