The Firebird

Rob’s father’s eyes met mine and though he didn’t move his lips I heard his voice say, Interesting.

Even as I blocked him in surprise, he grinned and turned to Rob and said, aloud this time, ‘That’s very interesting. Keeping it a secret, were you?’

Rob’s expression didn’t change, but from his eyes I guessed that he was saying something choice in private to his dad.

‘All right, all right.’ The older man held one hand up, amused still, but apologising. ‘No offence.’

I sensed that Rob was trying to say something to me, too, but I had blocked them both out, still unsettled by the unexpected contact. Not once had it occurred to me that Rob might have inherited his psychic talents, as I had my own. I viewed his father with new eyes as he glanced back at Rob with an expression half-resigned and half-impatient, as though he were being lectured.

And he very likely was, if Rob’s slight frown was anything to go by. Still, I felt the strong affection binding one man to the other, too – a deep affection that would not be shaken by small differences.

The kettle boiled. Rob’s father made the tea, and said aloud, as though repeating something he’d been told to say, ‘I’m sorry, Nicola. I won’t do that again, I promise.’

Setting my tea on the table in front of me as a peace offering, he gave me a swift charming smile as Rob’s mother, just coming in, asked, ‘Won’t do what again?’

She was a lovely-looking woman, feminine and small but with an air of capability. Her soft cheerful face seemed more freckled than lined and the highlights of grey in her chestnut hair might have been done for artistic effect by a stylist, they looked so attractive. But it was her smile that I noticed the most, it was so like her son’s.

She came over to welcome me, toning her rich accent down in the way many Scots did when speaking to outsiders. ‘Nicola, is it? I’m Jeannie. We’re so glad to have you. Now, what has my Brian been doing to bother you?’

Both the men had adjusted themselves to her presence. Rob quietly brought his chair back from its tilted position to rest in the proper way, with all four legs on the floor, while his father, too, made an attempt to look innocent.

I said, ‘Nothing at all. He’s just made me some tea.’

Her eyes danced. ‘Never defend him, you’ll only encourage him.’

Rob’s father grinned. ‘Robbie’s brought home a bird of a feather,’ he told his wife plainly. ‘He met her while doing those tests up at Edinburgh. I did a test of my own, that’s all. Reckon I gave her a bit of a shock. And your son,’ he informed her, ‘has already torn me a new one, there’s no need for you to do likewise.’

Rob, at the end of the table, said quietly, ‘Nicola doesn’t like using her gifts. Or discussing them.’

‘Well, then,’ his mother remarked, ‘enough said.’ And she cheerfully shifted her husband aside on her way to the Rayburn. ‘Now, who’ll have a biscuit?’

I could tell, before another half an hour had passed, just who was at the heart of the McMorran family. For all the affection I’d felt between Rob and his father, I sensed that what bound them together most strongly was Jeannie McMorran herself, with her quick easy laugh and her genuine warmth.

I’d have had to have been carved of stone not to like her.

And she made amazing ginger biscuits. Rob ate four of them, but even with all of that sugar and coffee to bolster his system he wasn’t a match for the after-effects of his time on the lifeboat, and what must have been a long day. When he yawned for a third time, his mother said, ‘Och, away home with ye, Robbie. You’re dead on your feet.’

‘I am not.’

‘Away home, or I’m fetching the pictures of you as a bairn to show Nicola. I’ve got those good ones of you in the bath …’

Rob conceded defeat with a grin. ‘Right, I’ll go.’ He stood, stretching, and said to me, ‘Don’t let them push you around. I’ll be back to collect you at eight.’

‘All right.’

‘Eight in the morning?’ his mother asked. ‘Never. Let her waken when she wishes, and I’ll give you a phone when she’s finished her breakfast.’

Rob knew better than to argue, from the look of it. Instead he bent his head and took an interest in his wristwatch. I walked with him to the door.

‘You’ll need your coat,’ I said, lifting it from the back of my chair to give to him.

He took it with a question in his eyes. All right?

His father was watching us. I gave a nod.

Rob unbuckled his watch strap and passed me the watch. The alarm’s set for seven. He smiled and stepped out, letting cold in behind him.

Then Jeannie McMorran was there, spreading warmth. ‘You must be needing your sleep as well, after your travels. Come, let’s get you settled.’

The cottage was not large – the kitchen, a sitting room with a piano, and two bedrooms, one with the door standing open and welcoming. Rob’s mother told me, ‘The bathroom’s down there, at the end. Take as long as you like – we’ve a lovely deep tub if you’re wanting a bath, and I’ve found you a pair of pyjamas.’

She’d done more than that. In the bathroom, I found a thick stack of soft towels, and new soap and lavender bath salts, a hairdrier, toothbrush and toothpaste, all laid out with no questions asked, as though having young women show up on the doorstep with only the clothes on their back were an everyday thing here.