Chapter Two

      There were only three other people on the train. The rolling stock seemed to be pre-war, and big clouds of dust had risen from the seats when she put her bag down. One couple of old men were talking a language she didn’t understand, didn’t recognise from anywhere, despite her year travelling. It seemed to consist mostly of Bs and Vs and sounded as though they were singing.

      It wasn’t them that captured Katie’s attention however; further down the carriage was a woman stroking the nose of what Katie had assumed to be a poodle. She had had to check herself to see if she was sleeping (it had been a very long journey) when she heard the poodle baa.

      Katie turned her head and stared out of the window. She couldn’t believe she had travelled so far and was still in the same country – well, on the same island. Instead of small mean houses and grey buildings filling her window, there were dramatic hills soaring steeply up on either side of the track. The hills were dark colours, greens and purples and blues. It looked cold and austere, with occasional shafts of sunlight breaking through and the occasional flash of something bouncing through the undergrowth – rabbits, probably.

      Katie shifted uncomfortably. She still couldn’t believe she’d applied for this job. It may as well be the rainforest out here. Olivia had thrown her hands in the air when she realised Katie had never even visited Scotland before.

      ‘Not even once? To take some crappy show to the Edinburgh Festival? School trip to the Burrell Collection? Horrible school holiday where it rained all the time and you lost your Pacamac, your sandwich lunch and your virginity all on the same day?’

      Katie looked at her curiously.

      ‘Not that that ever happened to me. Or anyone I know,’ continued Olivia quickly. ‘But that’s not the point. How can you have been to India and not to Scotland?’

      ‘Have you been to Northern Ireland?’

      ‘That’s not the point either. And I’m not the one who’s got an interview in a country I know nothing about. Which, by the way, you’re not taking, as I need you on the margarita toothpaste account. Where are you going to change your money? Are these interview people going to sort out your working visa?’

      Katie’s eyes widened. ‘I need a…?’

      Olivia put up her hands. ‘Oh God. This is going to go horribly, horribly wrong and we, your faithful, lonely, overworked, underpaid London spinster friends are going to have to find time in our packed schedules to pick up the pieces when it’s over. In about a month.’

      She’d been right about the money though, Katie thought, feeling for her coat pocket. She didn’t even know pound notes still existed.

      The letter had been brief.

      Dear Ms Watson,

      You are invited to an interview at Fairlish Forestry Commission at 4.30 p.m. Tuesday April 20th. You will be picked up at the railway station. Travelling expenses may be claimed.

      Yours faithfully,

      Harry Barr

      Katie had pored over this letter a hundred times, trying to read between the lines, of which there weren’t many, admittedly. Was she expected to stay overnight (given the length of the journey, she couldn’t really see any other way, barring a helicopter airlift)? Was she expected to find out lots of information on the commission by herself? She’d done as much crash-course research on national parks as she could manage, but she was very nervous that her obvious lack of experience would tumble out as soon as she opened her mouth. Then there was her Southern accent, which had made her few friends the four times she’d had to buy herself a connecting ticket on the journey so far.

      She smoothed out her wrinkled Tara Jarmon interview suit. This was probably an enormous mistake too. She should have probably worn rubber overalls and a Barbour. No, forget probably – there was no place here for anything but wellingtons. Where was she anyway? The train had already stopped at lots of stations that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere – Dundonnell, Gairloch – which seemed to be nothing more than platforms, with miles of scenery around them.

      The few people that were left on the train got off, including the woman with the sheep, until it was just Katie, her briefcase, a headful of terms like ‘judicious pruning’ and ‘sustainable development’ that she didn’t understand, and a slowly mounting sense of panic.

      The tiny train cut through a huge oversized valley and gradually slowed to a halt. There was one weather-beaten sign that said ‘Fairlish – Fhearlis’. Shocked out of her reverie, Katie jumped to her feet and stumbled about, as if the train were going to carry on without her.

      The station confirmed her worst fears. She did a 360-degree turn. Above the purple mountains, a black cloud was ominously moving across the sky, and there was no building at the station at all; it was simply a halt, a platform in the air.

      ‘Bollocks,’ said Katie out loud – there was no one to hear her, just some enormous birds circling silently in the air above.

      There was a torn old timetable on the side of the platform, but she didn’t have the energy to look at it. She felt tired, grubby from the journey, starving hungry, and as far away from London as she’d ever been in her life – certainly a lot further away than she had felt on her year off in Goa, which had been full of Brits, Kiwis, Aussies and South Africans. This place was full of nothing at all, and she didn’t know what to do. For a second she let herself remember the wide-open spaces and hot colours of India. She’d felt so free there.

      There was a rumbling noise above her. Katie looked up. The birds had fled. Instead, the cloud had hit the side of the mountain. A few spits turned into a deluge. Katie’s blue peacoat, of which she’d been rather proud, was no match for it at all. Within thirty seconds it was soaked through.

      ‘Shit!’ she yelled, staring straight at the sky. This was the stupidest waste of a day’s annual leave she’d ever had in her life, applying for this stupid job on a whim, just because she had been upset.

      The rain showed no signs of letting up, as she stared into the horizon, but she thought she saw something else move; a white dot, far in the distance. She stared at it hard, blinking away the water from her eyelashes. The white dot got bigger. Hugging her arms around herself, she stepped forward and squinted. The white dot resolved itself into a moving shape, then a car, then a Land-Rover. She kept her eyes on it as it bumped over the undergrowth towards her, windscreen wipers going furiously. After what seemed like ages, it finally drew up in front of the platform, and she slowly went down the wooden staircase to meet it.

      The engine stopped and a man leaned over, opened the passenger door and beckoned her over. Katie wasn’t sure what to do. This person could be anyone. On the other hand, he could be the person coming to pick her up. After all, how many murderous rapists would pass by a deserted local station in the rain on the off chance that there might be a nervous young city girl hanging around? On the other hand, maybe the whole advertisement had been a trick to get someone here. On the other hand, that was a lot of trouble to go to if you were an unhinged murderous rapist, down to the headed notepaper and everything. And that was a whole lot of hands anyway. This stupid mugging had upset everything.

      Katie dropped her head and peered into the front of the car doubtfully.

      ‘Get in,’ said a voice crossly.