Winterbringers Read Free

through Pitmillie.
    ***

2. Lunch
    She’d known at once when she saw him white-faced among the potatoes that he wasn’t local.
    She hadn’t been able to resist poking fun at him gently as he’d tried to cover up how scared he was of Luath. She didn’t tell him, as she should have, that lots of people were a bit cautious with him because of his size, pretending complete surprise at his reaction instead.
    He had longish brown hair that curled a bit at the ends, and weirdly pale brown eyes. He kept pushing his hair out of his eyes as he talked to her.
    The shopping list had given her a chance to make up for being spiky with him, and she’d watched him from her window all the way along the road as he went back to the holiday cottages.
    ***
    “You were a long time,” said Anna.
    Josh rolled his eyes. “The shop hardly had anything, then some enormous dog jumped out at me and the mad girl who owned it invited me into her grandfather’s garden and gave me all this.” He held out the second bag he was carrying.
    She took it, baffled, and unpacked tomatoes, a cucumber, two red peppers, a bulb of garlic with the withered green top still attached, and a jar of honey.
    “I didn’t know that was in there. They grew all the rest. Doyou think they made this?”
    “I shouldn’t think so. Did you pay them? Tell me properly who they are.”
    He explained over their unexpectedly lavish lunch.
    They went into St Andrews in the afternoon, to have a look round and do a big shopping. Apart from the supermarket, his mother dragged him to a butcher’s shop in Market Street to buy haggis, although he protested that he didn’t like it, and to Fisher and Donaldson’s cake shop. He didn’t protest about that; in fact, the only problem he had with it was what to choose. Really, what he wanted was one of everything.
    “It’s just the same as when I was a student,” said Anna, almost drooling.
    Eventually, they each decided to have a fudge doughnut and a ridiculously creamy cake called a Devon Slice. Josh was all for eating them there and then, but Anna wouldn’t let him.
    “You have to earn it first,” she said, with an evil smile, and dragged him off to play putting on an unbelievably hilly course that she said was called the Himalayas, before heading back to Pitmillie.
    Josh had pointed out Callie’s house as they drove into town. Now, halfway through his fudge doughnut, he was surprised as his mother slowed the car and parked outside.
    “Why are you stopping?”
    “I just want to say thank you for all that stuff.”
    “I already did that.”
    “I know, but I’d like to say thanks as well. Are you coming, or do you want to stay in the car?”
    Josh swallowed the last of the doughnut and got out of the car with a sigh to follow his mother.
    They went in by the front gate of the garden this time. Josh was not reassured to see a “Beware of the Dog” sign, but his mother paid it no attention, went up the path to the frontdoor and rang the bell.
    Josh had only seen the back of the house that morning. The front was like a child’s drawing, all symmetrical four-paned windows and a central door. There was a deep pink rose climbing up the wall, and carved into the lintel above the front door was the date 1672. On the door itself was a sign that said ‘The Smithy.’
    There was a sound of footsteps inside the house in response to the bell and the front door was opened by a woman Josh had never seen before, but who he guessed must be Callie’s grandmother. She had grey hair done up in a knot at the back of her head and bright, brown eyes. Looking at her, Anna thought she had one of those faces that would still look lovely in extreme old age, with clear skin and wonderful bones.
    “Yes, can I help you?” she said, looking at them quizzically.
    “I just came to say thank you. It was very kind of you to give my son the vegetables and honey this morning.”
    Comprehension dawned in the woman’s eyes. “Ah, Josh and his mother,