Jenny Colgan - Where Have All the Boys Gone?

Alongside the chap there was a tallish, angular young girl, with a sulky expression and a face that was quite possibly rather beautiful, if it were not crowned by a ridiculous pie-crust, olde-world elasticated bonnet and a murderous expression.

‘Aw, caawww-feee?’ she said, shaking her hand in the same stupid gesture Louise had used. ‘Ah dunno. Mr MacKenzie, dweez sell CAAWWW-FEEE?’

Mr MacKenzie looked at the two girls with some sympathy. ‘Don’t be stupid, Kelpie,’ he said. ‘Serve theys.’

Kelpie gave the all-purpose teenage tut and walked over to a silver pot in the corner, slopping out two measures of instant into polystyrene cups before adding half a pint of milk and two sugars to each without asking them.

‘Anything else for you girls?’ said Mr MacKenzie pleasantly. ‘Macaroni pie?’

‘Let me just check my Atkins list,’ said Louise. Katie kicked her.

‘Umm.’

Nothing in the case laid out in front of them looked in the least bit familiar. There were pale brown slabs of what might have been fudge, only harder, lots of circular pies with holes poked in the middle of them which seemed, on closer examination, to hold anything from rhubarb to mince. There were gigantic, mutant sausage rolls and what may or may not have been very flat Cornish pasties. But both girls were starving. Suddenly Katie’s eyes alighted on the scones.

‘Two…um, of those please.’ She couldn’t remember how to pronounce the word. Was it scawn or scoone?

‘The macaroons?’

‘No, um, the…’

‘French cake?’

What on earth was a French cake?

‘The scoones,’ said Louise. Katie winced. There was a pause, then everyone in the shop started laughing.

‘Of course,’ said the man serving, who had a kind face. ‘Would that be a roosin scoone or a choose scoone?’

Maybe not that kind.

Louise and Katie found a bench in a tiny sliver of public park overlooking the harbour. The boats were coming back in, even though it was only ten in the morning. They looked beautiful and timeless, their jaunty red and green painted hulls outlined against the dark blue water. Katie was throwing most of her (delicious) scone to the cawing seagulls.

‘Now I’ve got to find some complete stranger and try and intimidate them.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Louise. ‘A great change from your usual job. Of finding complete strangers and licking their arses until they buy something.’

‘That is not what PR is about,’ said Katie. ‘Except in, you know, the specifics.’

Louise kicked her heels. ‘What do you think people do around here for fun?’

‘Torture the foreigners,’ said Katie. She nodded her head towards the baker’s. Kelpie was heading over their way with two cronies. She had shaken off her ridiculous pie-crust hat to reveal a thick head of wavy hair with four or five rainbow-hued colours streaked through it, and taken out a packet of cigarettes. Even from fifty feet away, it was clear that she was doing an impression of Katie and Louise.

‘We’re big news around these here parts,’ said Katie. ‘I think we’d better make ourselves scarce, before we get bullied by a pile of twelve-year-olds. I’m going to find this Iain Kinross character. Sounds like some anal old baldie geezer who sits in his bedsit writing angry letters to the Daily Mail. He’ll be putty in my hands.’

The three girls had seen them now; Kelpie was pointing them out. They were screaming with laughter in an over-exaggerated way.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Louise. ‘Not without me. They’ll flay me alive.’

‘They’re harmless,’ said Katie as they both got up from the bench and started to back away.

‘I don’t care,’ said Louise. ‘Take me with you, please.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Of course you can! Just say I’m your…PA.’

‘I’m not paying you.’

‘Oh my God, you’re a true Scottish person already,’ said Louise.

‘I’d like a SSSCCCCOOOOOOOONNNNE,’ came from the other side of the park, carried on the wind.

‘OK,’ said Katie. ‘But you’d better keep your mouth shut.’

‘A SSSCCCCOOOOOOOONNNNE!’

It took them a while to find the offices of the West Highland Times, situated up a tiny alleyway off the main street of old grey stone buildings, which hosted a post office, a fishmongers, a kind of broom handle/vacuum cleaner bits and bobs type of place, a Woolworths and sixteen shops selling pet rocks and commemorative teaspoons. They looked very quiet at this time of year.

The small oak door was set into a peculiar turret on the edge of a house made of a particularly windworn granite. It was studded with large dark bolts, and only a tiny brass plaque set low on the left-hand side identified it. There didn’t appear to be a bell, so, taking the initiative, Katie bowed her head and crept up the spiral staircase. Louise, whispering crossly under her breath at the exercise involved, followed her.

A little old man with grey hair sat at the top in a small room with an open door leading into the main body of the building. Katie could glimpse computers, typewriters and masses of paper beyond, and hear the regular dins and telephone calls of a newsroom.

They were not greeted with a welcoming smile.

‘Did ye’s no knock?’

Louise screwed up her face. Was no one going to be friendly to them around here?

‘Sorry?’ said Katie politely. ‘Hello there. I’m from the Forestry Commission. I’d like to see Iain Kinross please.’

‘He’s busy.’

‘How do you know?’ said Louise.

‘Shut up Louise,’ said Katie, and motioned to her friend to sit in a chair, awkwardly positioned around the curve of the wall.

‘I’m sure he won’t be too busy to see me,’ said Katie. She’d dealt with tougher hacks than this. ‘Could you tell him I’ve come from Harry Barr’s office?’

‘In that case, he’s busy for ever,’ said the man.

Katie heard a snort come from Louise. ‘I’ve got for ever,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll just stand here and wait until he comes out. Or in.’

‘You cannae do that,’ said the man. ‘I’ll…I’ll call security.’

‘Unless your security’s name is Kelpie, you’re not going to scare me with that,’ said Katie. ‘My name is Katie Watson and I’ve come from the Forestry Commission. Please just tell him I’m here.’

The man looked at her, then turned back to his computer. ‘He’s busy,’ he muttered in the tone of somebody feeling they definitely weren’t being paid enough to take this kind of abuse.

‘Yes, busy slagging off my employer,’ said Katie. ‘Let me see him!’

‘No!’

The door to the newsroom finally banged open.

‘Archie, Archie, can ah no get a wee bit of peace and quiet in here?’ said an amused-sounding voice. ‘I’m never going to win my Pulitzer with this racket, am I?’

Katie looked up. The owner of the voice, with its gentle Highland burr, was tall with green eyes, untidy curly brown hair and a mouth that looked as though it was permanently teetering on the edge of a grin. He turned to face them.

‘What can I do for you? Let me tell you, if it’s for prize cattle, you’re swing out o’ luck.’

The man on the desk gave Katie a look which clearly read ‘I am now going to hate you for ever.’

‘I heifer feeling you’re not going to like it,’ said Katie, pushing past the now incandescently annoyed assistant.

The green-eyed man opened his arms in a gesture of surrender. ‘What about your friend?’ he said, looking over at Louise. Louise flashed him a beaming smile.

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Katie, storming into the room beyond. Then she stopped suddenly. What she’d imagined to be a full and busy newsroom was really quite small, about fifteen feet long. There were three desks, one empty, one containing another very old man talking quietly down the phone, and one clearly belonging to the man beside her. In the corner was an old-fashioned record player, playing, at full volume, a sound effects track of typing, telephoning, shouting…