Face the Wind and Fly by Jenny Harper

Hailesbank. ‘You’ll be hellish early.’ Melanie worked as a hairdresser in the town. It was barely seven thirty and she wasn’t due at work till nine. ‘Sorry.’
    ‘I’ll survive. I’ll go get a bacon buttie.’
    ‘I’ll make it up to you, honest.’
    In Hailesbank, Melanie turned her face to his for a kiss. ‘Hope everything’s okay. Call me later?’
    Ibsen cursed as the van hiccupped away. Time he looked for a new one. Don’t let me down now . At least it was still early. He’d miss the worst of the rush hour traffic.
    Later, he called Melanie.
    ‘Is she all right?’
    Ibsen, still lightheaded with relief, said, ‘She’s had the baby. A girl. She has eclampsia.’
    ‘That’s dangerous, isn’t it?’
    ‘Very. But she’s okay.’
    ‘Great.’ There was a pause. ‘Can I see you tonight? Take up where we left off?’
    It had taken Ibsen five years to get through the grief, then the divorce. When the decree nisi finally came though, he’d taken a vow never to get serious again.
    ‘I don’t do commitment,’ he now told each new girlfriend, maybe not on the first date, but on the second, because a second date was, in its own way, a kind of commitment.
    ‘Great, I like it that way myself,’ they’d say, or, ‘Suits me.’ But in his experience that attitude quickly changed. After a few dates they’d be on the phone, texting to ask where he was or why he hadn’t called, or when they’d see him next.
    Melanie McGillivray was perilously close to becoming possessive and with every emotion stretched tight and quivering from the dramatic birth of his niece and Cassie’s brush with death, he had no room to spare for her demands right now.
    ‘Sorry, love, I can’t. I’ve got to get back here to see Cass, there’s a hundred people to call and anyway, I’m picking the parents up from the airport at midnight. Do you mind?’
    ‘Oh. Okay. When, then?’
    ‘I’ll call you.’
    On any other day Ibsen might have been tempted to linger around the hospital and pop in to see Cassie again in the afternoon, but this morning he had his first appointment with a new client. Frank Griffiths lived in one of the houses on the main street in Forgie, one of the pretty, painted cottages near the old corner shop. He remembered going in there as a boy, cycling down from Summerfield and spending his pocket money on sweets and pop. There was no shop there nowadays, though, it had closed years ago – no need for a corner shop in a village where everyone has posh cars and likes to buy uniformly shaped courgettes and tomatoes that have no taste. Ibsen hated shopping, disliked supermarkets and was, in any case, spoiled by having garden-fresh vegetables on hand and on demand.
    He found a bell hidden under a climbing rose and pushed it, while Wellington sniffed around the roots and relieved himself to establish his presence.
    No-one answered.
    He was just about to push it again when a lean figure in blood-red corduroys and a richly patterned sweater strolled out from an arched gateway beside the cottage.
    ‘Morning Ibsen, good to see you. No-one ever uses the front door.’
    ‘Morning Mr Griffiths.’ Ibsen took the outstretched hand and shook it.
    ‘Call me Frank. Hello boy, what’s your name?’ He bent and patted Wellington’s head. ‘Lovely coat, you keep him in good condition.’
    ‘That’s Wellington.’
    Frank laughed. ‘Don’t you need two of them, then? Come on in, we’ll go round this way.’ He turned back the way he’d come, under the arch. It was the first view Ibsen had had of it and he stopped, astonished.
    ‘Like it?’ Frank Griffiths looked at him, obviously pleased by his reaction.
    ‘It looks amazing. Not what I expected at all.’
    Amusement was evident on the elderly man’s face. ‘What did you expect?’
    ‘Something much smaller, for a start. I didn’t realise these old cottages had such big gardens.’
    ‘Put you off?’
    ‘Not at all.’
    ‘I’ve done it myself for years, but