Chapter 3: Strip the Willow
You'd lied to your sister about a lot of things in thirty years. Who broke the conservatory window. Who ate the last Tunnock's. Whether her fringe looked nice in 2009. But you'd never once managed to lie to her face, and you didn't try now.
You told her everything. Soap stood by the window in a T-shirt and kilt socks and nothing else below the waist but a pair of boxers, very red in the face, and occasionally contributed details like "The beach in Pembrokeshire was her idea, I'd have said Arbroath."
When you'd finished, Kirsty sat down on the end of the bed and looked at the two of you for a long time.
"Mum's going to murder you," she said.
"I know."
"Gran's going to murder you, bury you, dig you up, and murder you again."
"I know."
"And I'm going to have to keep this a secret," Kirsty said, "on my wedding day, the most important day of my life, which you've made about you, which is so incredibly on brand I can't even be angry." She stood up and handed you the garment bag. Your bridesmaid's dress. Then she stopped in front of Soap, put her hands on her hips, and looked him up and down.
"I watched you with Gran last night," she said. "She asked you about your mam. You told her the truth, didn't you?"
Soap swallowed. "Aye."
"And you held her arm on the stairs. And you danced with Auntie Morag, and nobody dances with Auntie Morag." Kirsty narrowed her eyes. "And you looked at my sister across the dinner table like she'd hung the moon. Every time she wasn't looking. I counted. I had a lot of time, Euan's dad was talking about drainage."
You stared at her. Soap stared at the carpet.
"Just so you both know," Kirsty said, at the door, "I've seen fake. I went out with a man for a year who was fake. That's not what that is." She pointed at Soap. "Don't make me sorry I didn't tell Mum. Be at the church at two. Wear the kilt."
The door shut.
The silence after was so loud you could hear the loch.
"She's very..." Soap started.
"She is."
"Right," he said. He didn't look up. "Good. Grand. I'll go for a run."
"Your hamstring..."
He was already gone.
The wedding was beautiful. You'd known it would be: Kirsty had planned it like a military operation, and the little church at Kenmore was full of white heather and late roses, and Euan cried before she'd even got halfway down the aisle. You stood at the front in pale green silk and held her bouquet and didn't look at the fourth pew more than every thirty seconds.
He'd come back from his run red-faced and silent and gone straight into the shower, and by the time you'd had your hair done he'd already left for the church. You hadn't spoken properly since Kirsty walked out. But he was there in the fourth pew in the full outfit, the red tartan and the black jacket with silver buttons, and every time you looked, he was already looking at you.
Every single time.
At the reception, he sat between your gran and your mother and didn't once let either of their glasses go empty. He laughed at your father's single joke, which your father had been telling since 1987. And when Graham stood up to give the best man's speech, and spent nine minutes talking about himself and his new start-up and Saffron's yoga retreat, and finished with "...and of course, a special welcome to my ex, and her new fiancé, who I've got to say is not exactly who I'd have pictured for her," and laughed, alone, into a sudden ugly silence, Soap simply raised his glass from the back of the room and said, in a voice that carried effortlessly to every table:
"Cheers, pal. Neither did I. Luckiest day of my life, the day she let me on her table."
The room erupted. Your gran banged her stick on the floor. Graham sat down very fast.
You didn't look at Soap for the rest of the meal. You couldn't. You were afraid of what was on your face.
Then the ceilidh band's caller lost his voice.
It happened halfway through the Gay Gordons. One minute he was hollering "Forward two, turn, back two!" into the microphone; the next, he made a sound like a stepped-on accordion and doubled over coughing, and the band ground to a halt, and seventy guests in kilts and gowns stood frozen in pairs on the dance floor looking at each other in horror.
Kirsty's face did something terrible.
And then a figure in red tartan was crossing the room, taking the microphone from the wheezing caller with a pat on the shoulder, and turning to face the floor. He flicked the mic with one finger. It thumped.
"Right," said Soap, "who here's done a Strip the Willow?"
About a third of the hands went up.
"Who here's done one sober?"
Laughter. Four hands.
"Grand. Lines of couples, facing each other, lads on the left, lassies on the right, or whatever you like, it's 2026. Mrs Campbell. Fiona. You're my top couple, you and Mr Campbell, you've done this before, I can tell by the look of you." He pointed at the fiddler. "Pal. Take it from the top, nice and steady."
He was good. He was absurdly, unreasonably good. He called the turns like he called breaching orders, crisp and clear and impossible to ignore, and somehow made it funny at the same time. "Birl her, birl her, don't lose her! Big man, that's your wife, no' a sack of tatties!" He had your gran up out of her chair for the Dashing White Sergeant, her hand tucked in the crook of his arm, steering her through the turns so gently she barely had to move and laughed the whole way round. He did the Canadian Barn Dance with three small cousins hanging off him at once. He had the whole room roaring.
And when the band struck up the last Strip the Willow of the night, he handed the mic back to the caller, who had recovered enough to croak, walked straight across the dance floor through seventy people, and held out his hand to you.
"Fiancée," he said. "I believe this one's mine."
You took his hand.
Strip the Willow is not a romantic dance. It's a dance where you get flung down a line of people at high speed, linking arms with every man in the room in turn and spinning until the hall becomes a blur. But every time you came back round to Soap, every single time, he caught you by both arms and swung you in so close you could feel his heartbeat, and his eyes were on your face like there was no one else in the room, and he wasn't smiling the big daft grin he'd been giving everyone else all night. He looked serious. He looked terrified.
At the bottom of the set, breathless, you didn't let go of him. You pulled him straight out through the conservatory doors into the cold.
The loch was black and silver under a sky full of stars. You could hear the band through the glass behind you, faint and cheerful. Your breath smoked. You were still holding his hand, and your heart was going like you'd been flung down a whole hall of strangers, which you had.
"Kirsty's right," you said. "Isn't she?"
Soap looked at the loch. His jaw worked.
"Aye," he said quietly. "She's right. I didn't offer because I was bored." He let out a breath that turned into a cloud between you. "I offered because you'd spent three weeks putting my leg back together and telling me I was a menace, and every single time I walked out of that clinic I was already counting the hours to the next appointment. And then you were on the phone, panicking about a fiancé who didn't exist, and I thought, God help me, I'd give anything for it to be me. Even pretend." He finally looked at you. "Rule five. Nobody gets hurt. I'm sorry, hen. I broke it the day I walked in."
You looked at him: the cold-pink cheeks, the mohawk wilting after an hour of Strip the Willow, his grandmother's ring on your finger catching the light from the conservatory. You thought about a man who'd sat at your family's table and given every last one of them his full and honest attention, and asked for nothing back but a weekend of being included.
"Johnny," you said. "Is this tactically necessary?"
"Is what..."
You went up on your toes, took his face in both your cold hands, and kissed him.
He made a sound against your mouth, surprised and soft. For one second he didn't move at all. Then his arms came around you and he kissed you back, slow and careful and thorough, his hand coming up to cradle the back of your head like you were something precious he'd been told not to drop. He tasted of the Highland malt your father liked and the cold night air. He was shaking, a little. So were you.
When you broke apart, his forehead stayed against yours.
"For the record," he said, a bit hoarse, "that was extremely tactically necessary."
"I agree."
"And I'm wanting it noted," he said, "that I'd like to break every one of those rules. Starting with five. Especially five."
You laughed, breathless, and he grinned at last, the real one, the big daft one, and kissed you again before you could stop laughing.
Behind you the conservatory doors banged open. You turned. Your gran stood in the doorway with her stick, flanked by your mother and Kirsty, all three of them in a state of maximum delight.
"Well," said your gran, looking Soap up and down with the satisfaction of a heron that has just caught an extremely large fish. "I suppose I'll have to knit you a new scarf, son. That blue one's for a man who doesn't exist."
Your mother's mouth fell open. Kirsty put her face in her hands.
"Gran," you said faintly, "how long have you known?"
"Since the train station," said your gran. "Accountant. Honestly. Look at his arms." She pointed her stick at Soap. "Red. It'll be red, to match the kilt. And you'll be at Christmas, or I'll know why."
Soap looked at her. He looked at you. His hand found yours and squeezed, hard.
"Aye, Mrs Campbell," he said, and his voice cracked right down the middle. "I'll be there."
Later, much later, when the band had packed up and the conservatory was dark and you were curled up beside him in the big old bed with the tartan throw (on the same side this time, rule one long since abandoned), you held up your left hand and turned it so the ring caught the moonlight off the loch.
"I'll give this back," you said. "I promise. It's your gran's."
He caught your hand and folded your fingers closed around it.
"Keep it a while," Soap said into your hair. "No rush. We'll work out what it means. Just keep it, aye?"
You kept it.