Skinner's festival

65

The Mallard's Eighty-shilling ale was pouring at its best. The village clock showed 6:15 pm as they arrived back in Gullane.

Their hike, and the excitement of their sudden, spontaneous, sunwashed coupling on the deserted beach, had left them with a raging thirst, which they slaked with two pints each of Scottish Brewers' finest product, They gave some thought to dining in the bar, but eventually! they agreed that the evening was too good to be spent indoors.'

And so, instead, they went back to their cottage and barbecued i two thick steaks in the garden, with potatoes baking in foil in the red-hot coals, and sliced onions sizzling on the grid. They ate as hungrily as they had made love in the sand, washing down the succulent meat with good red Valdepenas, and finishing off with a whole pineapple quartered and soaked in Cassis.

Then, all their appetites satisfied, they sat in the garden and watched the day go down in the west – and with it, their brief break from the dangers which had so recently overwhelmed their lives.

'Will they ever stop, Bob?' Sarah asked him suddenly.

'Yes, love. They'll stop, when they've got what they want. And that isn't Scottish independence, or any of that crap. I don't believe that any more. They've got us tear-arsing around all over Edinburgh, and that's what they've been out to achieve all along.

It's all being done with a purpose in mind, though I've no idea at all of what that could be. When I do know, that's when they'll stop. Because I'll stop them.' I The hard determination in his voice made her suddenly afraid again, just as she had felt in the Park, over the body of young Macgregor.

'Darling, promise me one thing. Please. That when you do meet up with these people, you'll take care. Of yourself. Inside and out.'

He looked at her in silence. 224; 'There's someone in you that I don't know. It's like there's a closet inside you with something awful and dangerous inside: a real bogeyman. I'm just terribly afraid that if he ever really gets out, he could take you over.'

She held his gaze until his eyes dropped.

Aye, my love,' he said with a deep sigh. 'I know the man you mean. I've met him. And I've no wish to encounter him again either. But I have to say that if I'm ever in that kind of danger again, I hope he's still around. Because one thing about my alter ego: he doesn't half get the business done!'