No Place Like Home by Jane Renshaw (the best electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

matter the time of day, the restaurant was empty, or close to it.

‘Aye, but what does he care?’ said Isla. ‘It’s just a wee hobby for the man. They’re rolling in it.’

Oh, well. If the restaurant was going under, maybe Bram shouldn’t bring up the pâté de foie gras thing. Or should he? The place might limp on for months. Years, even, given that it seemed it was just a vanity project. Yes. He definitely needed to print out some stuff about how cruel the foie gras production process was, how they force-fed the poor birds, and give it to Andrew to peruse at his leisure.

‘The Taylors seem like perfectly nice people,’ he said stoutly.

The women blinked at him.

‘Well of course they do,’ said Mhairi at last. ‘Of course they’re all over you, rich bastards from London? No offence!’

Five minutes later and Bram was desperately thinking of excuses to leave. Maybe he could say Fraser had texted them and there was some sort of problem with the kids? Actually, it was possible Phoebe hadn’t settled. He excused himself and went outside, past the smokers to a quiet corner of the car park to make the call.

‘Aye, Bram, everything’s hunky-dory, don’t you worry, pal,’ said Fraser. ‘I’ve not even had a beer. Stone-cold sober, I am.’

‘Right. Well, that’s great. Thank you for doing this, Fraser. I just wondered how Phoebe was? She’s not been settling at night, since Bertie…’

‘The wee princess is off to the Land of Nod. Sleeping like a baby.’

‘Really?’

‘Nice cup of cocoa and a digestive, and she was out like a light. That’s what Mum always gave us before we went to bed – cup of cocoa and a digestive. And yes, before you ask, she brushed her teeth afterwards.’

Wow. It seemed Fraser had hidden depths.

‘Brilliant, fantastic. You’re obviously a natural.’

‘Aye, don’t be hanging up the frilly apron just yet, Bram! Hey, you enjoy yourselves, right, and don’t worry about us.’

He wasn’t a bad guy, really.

‘Thanks, Fraser. We really appreciate it.’

Back in the bar, Kirsty was lurching around with Mhairi and Isla, out on their own in the middle of the floor, trying to dance to ‘Loch Lomond’ by Runrig, a horrendous – in Bram’s opinion – rock treatment of a lovely traditional Scottish air. Her hair had come out of her braids and she looked like a wild woman, swaying about barefoot, the two barflies hardly believing their luck, eyes out on stalks. Willie the barman, in contrast, was regarding the spectacle with a jaundiced expression.

She was just letting off steam.

She needed to let off steam.

Being back here, being home, would have been hard enough for Kirsty even without all the dramas of the last few days. It wasn’t like this was going to be a regular thing. It wasn’t like she was going to want to meet up with ‘the gang’ and get off-her-face drunk on a regular basis.

Was it?

7

Bram was an early riser, so at least he was up and about when the doorbell rang at 7:10 the next morning. At first he didn’t recognise the diminutive man standing on the verandah dressed in a green knitted hat, red jacket and green trousers, a wicker basket tucked over his arm. He looked like a character in one of the fairy tales Bram used to read to Phoebe, and it took a moment before he recognised Willie the barman.

Willie raised an eyebrow a millimetre. ‘Mushrooms.’

‘Uh–’

‘I thought you wanted some tips on foraging for mushrooms.’

‘Yes! Yes, I did! Come in, Willie, come in. Good of you to call by.’

‘I was coming this way anyway. I’ll not come in.’

‘Okay. Let me just leave a note for the slug-a-beds and get on my boots, and I’ll be right with you.’

Bram wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table, adding ‘Pick-me-up in fridge.’ He didn’t use the words ‘hangover cure’ in case the kids read it.

Kirsty was going to have one hell of a hangover when she eventually surfaced. Bram had zapped up his tried-and-tested cure and put it in the fridge to chill – apple juice, cranberry juice, prickly pear extract, ginger and Siberian ginseng. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to make it.

Willie strode out in front, leading Bram across the paddock to the wood. At the tree to which two of the notices were stapled, Willie stopped, staring at Phoebe’s.

‘My daughter has quite an imagination,’ Bram felt he should clarify.

Willie just nodded, striding off into the wood.

‘Chanterelle,’ he said, a couple of minutes later, pointing to a cluster of trumpet-shaped mushrooms by the side of the path, the colour of rich egg yolks.

‘Wow, really?’ Bram stooped to peer at them. ‘I’ve only ever seen the dried variety. These look nothing like them.’

‘Taste nothing like them. Slightly sweet, bit like a savoury apricot.’ Willie cupped a hand gently under the largest one and twisted it out of the earth, brushing a couple of strands of moss off the ribs on its tapering sides. ‘Smells of apricots too.’ He held it to Bram’s nose.

‘Mm! It really does!’

‘Of course, the false chanterelle, Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, also has a fruity smell. Easy to confuse the two, but the gills of the true chanterelle are false gills, and the gills of the false chanterelle are true gills.’

Christ. ‘Okay.’

‘And the flesh of a true chanterelle is pale when you cut into it.’ He picked another one and plunged a dirty fingernail into it, ripping it apart to show Bram the dense white flesh inside. ‘But get them mixed up and…’ He sucked his teeth.

‘False chanterelle is poisonous?’

‘Oh, aye. Wouldn’t kill you, mind. Just cramps, diarrhoea, vomiting. Aye. The chanterelle is a good one for the amateur because it can’t be confused with anything actually fatal.’ Willie picked another half dozen chanterelles, and then straightened, but when Bram bent to do likewise, he said, ‘Never take too many from the same clump. We want them to come back next year, don’t we?’

So on they went, Bram’s basket still empty. ‘Maybe