9

'Neat machine!' Paddy yelled from the doorstep as I stepped out of the jeep on the pebbled driveway at the doctor's big solid house.

She'd come bounding out of the front door and through the porchway to leap down the steps, landing with a baseballer's slide in front of me. She was all blue eyes and sparkle and still a dead ringer for her mother.

'Where're we going Nick?' I could tell she was excited at the prospect of getting out and away from the big house. She bobbed up and down on the soles of her running shoes, brim-full of energy and ready for fun.

'Don't know yet,' I said, letting her take me by the arm and pull me towards the house, feigning reluctance. 'Hey, hey, at least let me keep my arm.'

'Are we going for a picnic?'

'Well, I thought we'd go for a drive across to Loch Lomond. Maybe we can have a picnic there. I've brought some stuff to eat.'

'Great. I'm starving.' The little girl's enthusiasm melted away my night creeps like hoar frost under a hot sun. I had only met Paddy that once, the time I'd accosted her in the car park, and I had watched as she'd stuffed her face with Mary Baker's finest. I'd taken to her, which is hardly a surprise, because she was so like her mother that she evoked a whole string of pleasant childhood memories. But she was also a good kid. Bright, intelligent, well mannered and funny. She took to me as well. It was as if she'd known me all her life. In a strange way, I felt really good about that, though I couldn't explain why.

I'd thought about Barbara once or twice since we'd re-met. No. That's a lie. I'd thought about her quite a lot. She was terrific. I mean she was not just terrific looking. She had all the qualities her daughter had, and some that Paddy was surely going to inherit.

Over our Danish pastries we'd talked a lot about this and that and it didn't take long for the small talk to evaporate. Maybe we hadn't seen each other for twenty years and maybe we had been just kids then, but it really felt to me like she was an old friend, as if I knew what she was going to say, just before she said it. Her humour was quick and her brain was agile, and she had poise and confidence.

On top of that, she really was terrific looking.

That estimation was reinforced when she came out through the porch and stood in the sun, the rays that lanced through the chestnut tree gleaming the waves of golden hair.

'Hi Nick. It's a great day for a trip.'

'You betcha mom. We're going to Lock Lomond.'

'Loch Lomond, Paddy. You say it like you're clearing your throat.'

'I thought we'd take a run up there. I haven't been for years.'

'Sounds like a great idea. I need to get out in the fresh air. I've been stuck in with a summer cold.'

'Oh, you should have told me. I could have made it another day,' I said, but glad that she hadn't.

'No, I'm feeling fine. I just haven't been sleeping well at all. I've been waking up with the shivers in the middle of the night.'

For an instant I had the shivers, up and down my back.

'But I slept all right last night, so I think I must be over it. And I wouldn't give up a day like today for anything.'

'I've brought along some things to eat. Juice and crisps and some cakes,' I said. 'Plus some sausages and beans in case we want to light a fire.'

'Great,' Paddy said, jumping around excitedly. 'Can we make a camp fire Nicky? Can we mom?' she said, looking back and forth from me to Babs. Her mother smiled and ruffled her hair.

'We'll see. First I'll get the stuff I've packed,' she said, and went back into the house to reappear seconds later with a load of things wrapped in tin foil. It looked like enough to feed a platoon. Her father came out of the house with her. He'd aged a lot since I'd last seen him, but he still looked like an able old fellow. He took off his horn-rimmed glasses as he came down the stone steps and shook my hand.

'Well, hello there, Mr Ryan. Nick, isn't it? Haven't seen you in a long spell.' His accent was still Scottish, unlike Barbara's which, though not erased, was a mid-Atlantic hybrid. Paddy was strictly American.

'Nice to meet you again, doctor,' I said.

'Take care of those ladies for me,' he said. 'They're all that's between me and senility.' He laughed and I went along with it. He was probably right.

I opened the back door of the jeep and Paddy scampered in, bouncing up and down. Babs eased herself into the passenger seat and belted herself up while I started the engine, reversed and headed back down the driveway. The old doctor waved vigorously as we turned into the street.

We passed through the edge of Westbay and out along the Kilcreggan Road past the Langcraigs, a long ridge of buckled rocks that formed a low cliff parallel to the road. Out beyond that we turned up by the old reservoir and down the twisting leafy road in the valley towards Loch Lomond. It took less than half an hour to be on the main lochside road and heading up towards the hills in some of the country's most breathtaking scenery.

The further we travelled from Arden, the better I felt. Barbara was lively and animated and frankly stunning. I put down my good humour to her presence.

She wore a cotton shirt and a pair of white tight jeans that made no attempt to hide her slim figure. She had a light sweater as well, but it was at her back, with the arms tied around her waist. Every time she moved her head her hair swung and bounced with it. Like her daughter, she smiled a lot and her piercing blue eyes sparkled.

The Lomondside Road twists and turns alongside the Bonnie Banks in a series of chicanes and hairpin bends, which is murderous for the driving tourist who has to keep his eye firmly on the road and therefore misses those stunning glimpses of the deep blue water and the sweeping slopes of Ben Lomond.

Babs and Paddy were impressed with the views and kept up a running commentary for me while I concentrated on passing caravans trailed behind slow-moving cars. I stopped at Inverbeg where there's a nice little inn and an out-of-the-way art gallery that I made a mental note to have a browse through some time. I left the jeep in the car park and we took a farm road on foot behind the inn which led up Glen Douglas. We walked for no more than twenty minutes, which was enough to get us well out of earshot of the road, and then followed a narrow path that took us down to the river.

The walk was worth it for we found ourselves in a clearing at the bank of a crystal-clear stream that gushed down from a spectacular height into deep pot-holes in the rock. The sunlight slanted down deep into the water, giving the dell a fairytale quality. The only sound was the rush of water and the singing of linnets and chaffinches.

Barbara stood entranced while her daughter immediately slipped off her trainers and left them on a narrow strip of shingle while she tested the water with her bare foot.

'Ooh! It's freezing!' she cried out after wading in until the water was just above her ankles. She danced about, trying to get both feet out of the water at once, and failing comically.

'This is a lovely spot,' Babs said. 'I never even knew it existed.'

'I used to come here now and again during the summer holidays,' I said. 'There's some good trout in the water. We used to take a few and grill them over the fire.'

'Sounds good.'

'It was, but if we'd been caught poaching, the gillie would probably have shot us. They don't mind you walking up here, but fishing's a capital offence. We never did get caught.'

'The water looks so clean and cool,' she said, watching as Paddy minced back on to the shingles.

'She's right, it's freezing, but you get used to it.'

I pointed downstream to a huge, water-smoothed rock. 'Just beyond that there's a good pool that you can swim in. After the first shock you get your breath back and when you come out you feel great.'

'I think I'll try it,' Barbara said. 'I haven't swum in a stream for years.'

'Go ahead. I'll pass. It's too damn cold for me.'

'Cissy.'

'Too true. I'm no masochist.'

I did let her persuade me to take a dip later. It was absolutely Baltic and I was blue with the cold. But I was right. After I got out and dried off, my skin tingled and I felt good.

Paddy insisted that I light a fire, so I got some sticks together and put some fair-sized rocks in a circle and got a blaze going. I cooked the beans in the can and put some small sausages on a sharpened stick. It was no gourmet meal, but there's something immensely appetising about anything cooked outdoors over an oak fire. After we ate that, Barbara let her play about in the shallow pool and we sat by the crackling fire.

Barbara had been telling me about her life in America where she'd gone just before her eleventh birthday.

'I was absolutely devastated when my father told me we were going,' she said. 'I remember I cried all night and most of the next day, but nothing I said seemed to matter. He had kept it from me right until the last moment, probably because he knew how I would react. Suddenly I found myself on a plane and away. It was the most miserable time of my life. I must have cried every night for the first year.'

She sat with her back against the stump of an old oak tree. Her hands were clasped together around her knees, which she'd drawn right up almost to her chin. I was stretched out on the short grass, having a smoke. I'd cut down a lot since coming back, but one after a meal was still great.

'I remember being really upset when I went up to the house and found it empty. I thought you'd run out on me. There was nobody left.'

'My father never told me why he decided to leave, but it was quick. He'd been offered a consultancy in Vermont, but he'd had such offers before and disregarded them. His practice here was running well. I've got the feeling he just wanted me to grow up somewhere else. It's strange though, when he decided to move back, there was no question in my mind I'd come back too. And after all that time, it was a wonderful feeling to be coming home.'

'It was just after the accident, wasn't it?'

'What was?'

'When you went away.'

'Oh, you mean down at the point?'

'No, Ardmhor.'

'Ah, that was it. Yes. I think so. Not long after that.'

'Maybe your father thought you were in bad company. But I felt as if I'd been deserted. Colin was in the hospital for months and you were gone to America. There was nobody left.'

Barbara leaned forward, away from the tree stump, trying to see what her daughter was doing further upstream.

'She's all right. I can see her from here. She's as happy as hell, but she must have anti-freeze in her feet.'

Barbara smiled. 'We used to spend a lot of time in the stream, I remember. The one-and-onlies. How did we ever come to call ourselves that?'

'Colin made it up. He thought we were unique.'

'Yes, I remember now. It seemed to fit right, didn't it?'

'Like an exclusive club. We had some great times.'

'Yes, we did. My father didn't approve of you two.'

'I can't blame him. We were a bit wild,' I said. 'But you were just as bad as the two of us.'

'What the hell were we doing down at that place?' she asked.

'Where?'

'That rock. Ardmhor.'

'I haven't a clue. It's strange. I hadn't thought about it for years until I came back, and then a couple of people reminded me. Really, I just hadn't thought about it at all.'

'Neither did I. I just remembered it when I met you down at the supermarket. I mean, I remembered what I'd been told about it, but I can't recall anything at all, subjectively.'

'Have you seen Colin?'

'God yes. I really had no idea. I was walking along the street with Paddy and this big guy lumbered out of a shop and started giggling at her and nodding. He tried to take her hand and I let out a yell. Hell, I didn't even know who it was.

'He jumped back as soon as I shouted at him and then he started to cry. I felt a bit silly afterwards, and a bit ashamed, but I really didn't know about him. He's so... different.'

'They call him Badger, you know.'

'Yes, I heard. I suppose it suits him with that funny hair, but it's a shame. He was really so bright and funny. Paddy and I have passed him by a few times down at the shops. She isn't bothered. He just stands and smiles, like a big shy kid, and she makes a point of saying hello.

'Children are instinctive about that sort of thing, but mothers are different. I know he doesn't mean any harm, but I can't identify him with the Colin I used to know.'

'A damn shame. He was pretty battered, so I'm told. What a waste. I've seen him down in Holly's bar. They give him a lemonade shandy and he sits quietly and watches everything that goes on like a child. I don't know how much of it he understands. It's as if a switch has been clicked off inside his head.

'It could have been you, or me.'

Barbara shuddered: 'Oh, don't say that. I've always been terrified of brain damage. A friend of mine was in a car smash and ended up in a coma. When she came out of it she was pretty near a vegetable. I was so screwed up I couldn't go to visit her, because it really wasn't her any more.'

She shivered again. 'Let's talk about something less morbid.'

'How about Paddy?' I ventured. 'I'm still amazed at how much she's taken after you. I swear that when I first saw her I thought I was in a time warp.'

'She's a good kid.'

'Yeah, I can see that. I wonder if she's as wild as you were.'

'I wasn't wild. Maybe just a bit wilful. I could climb trees as well as you.'

'Probably better. You were an honorary boy to us. That was the greatest praise you could get.' I turned and looked her up and down with a mock leer. 'I suppose I'll have to withdraw that honour.'

Babs blushed. 'I've had twenty years to grow out of it, plus,' she said, nodding towards where Paddy was still splashing in the water, 'somebody to take over where I left off.'

'Just as long as she stays away from kids like me, she'll be all right.'

We both looked towards the stream where a flash of lights sparkled. Paddy was standing in the water up to her knees, and with one outstretched hand she was sweeping the surface of the water, sending up a coruscating curve of droplets.

'Look. Look at this,' she cried. 'I can make a rainbow!'

Barbara and I watched, laughing as the sunlight caught the droplets and laced them with colour. Paddy turned towards us with a wide smile on her face, and suddenly I was ten years old again and Barbara was . . .

. . . standing in the water up to her knees, and with one hand outstretched she was sweeping the surface of the shallow stream, sending up a coruscating curve of droplets.

'Look. I can make a rainbow.'

Colin and I were sitting on a rock that sat in the middle of Strowan's Well. He was whittling the point of a blackthorn stick that he'd cut for an arrow. I had my head in my hands, feeling the sun on the back of my neck. We watched as Barbara squealed with delight, sending up rainbows into the air.

The stream gurgled softly through the glade, murmuring as it meandered through the shallow gully, down towards the bridge and on to the firth. It was one of those days that you could feel and smell and hear. The air was warm and still, sultry with pollen that settled on the surface of the little pools. Bees and insects buzzed in the trees and bushes and an occasional dragonfly would dart out like a fighter plane and buzz the calm surface, scooping up the mayflies as they hatched out.

There was the smell of green that went with the dappling shadows on the water. A cuckoo called in the distance and wood pigeons threw their voices from the branches hanging down from the beech and lime trees that lined the clearing.

Colin was using the sharp end of the stick to scrape off thin lines of moss that lined the back of the stone, and Barbara, with her jeans rolled up over her knees, was a pirouetting sprite, delighting in the play of sun and water.

A fly buzzed up near my ear and I lazily swatted it.

'We could live here, you know, ' Colin said. 'There's rabbits and fish and lots of things to eat. '

'Yeah, we could build a hut. Maybe up in a tree. Nobody would ever know we were here. ' The idea had enormous appeal. I picked up my bow and nocked an arrow on the string. 'I could be Robin Hood,' I said, and let an arrow fly into the air where it curved lazily and landed in a tree. It failed to come down again.

'I'd love to stay here, ' Barbara said, 'but my father would never let me. '

'We'll just have to run away,' Colin said. 'My mum would kill me when I got back. '

'Don't be daft. If you run away you don't go back. '

'Well, I think we should build a gang hut where we can keep all our bows and arrows and stuff and come here anytime we like, even when it's raining.'

'Great, and we can bring things to sit on, and even a bed and pots and pans, and all that. '

'And nobody would ever know, if we hide it well enough.'

'It would be just our place. For just the three of us,' Barbara said.

We found a rock overhang later that afternoon and started piling up logs against it like a lean-to. The gales in the winter had dropped a couple of tall pines that had broken up, and there were any number of big branches that had snapped off the lime and beech trees. It didn't take long to build a shelter that could take the three of us comfortably. We grunted with strain as we rolled up three fair-sized flat stones to sit on and Barbara and I collected clumps of fern and bracken to cover the gang hut with. It was rough and ready and pretty cramped - there was no way we'd get chairs inside, never mind a bed - but it was dry and well camouflaged against raiders.

And it was our secret.

The lean-to in the overhang of the rock in the clearing at Strowan's Water was our place for the summer, our special hideout, our headquarters and our galleon, whatever we wanted it to be in those hazy days, but there was something special about the day that we built it - that day when Barbara had stood in the water and swept up a rainbow, and Colin had caught the fish. It was a day when the insects murmured softly and the stream gabbled its way through the rocks and I felt the sun on the back of my neck and . . .

Somebody shook me gently by the shoulder. I started out of my daydream and Barbara was saying something.

'You were miles away,' she said. 'I thought you'd fallen asleep.'

'Not so many miles, but a long way,' I said, shaking my head. 'I was thinking about the hideout.'

'So was I. That's an amazing coincidence. It must be twenty years since I last thought about that.'

'It was just when Paddy ...'

'Said she could make a rainbow,' Barbara finished for me. 'Yes, as soon as she said that I could see myself doing it down at the stream. The whole picture just came into my head, complete, like a film from an archive.'

'Déja-vu, or something, they call it. No, more like a memory trigger. I was just thinking of that time, remembering how good I felt then. Those were the days.'

'But they didn't last,' she said, almost wistfully.

'No, nothing ever does. You went off to America and Colin was in hospital and even when he came out there wasn't anything left of the one-and-onlies. I stayed round at my grandfather's a lot after that, because I couldn't be bothered with anything else. I suppose I became a bit of a loner then.'

'Me too. It took me a long time to forgive my father for taking me away. I remember thinking then that you two were the best friends anybody could have.'

'I suppose all childhoods are like that. You think you're going to be friends for ever, but it hardly ever happens.'

'I'll tell you something, though,' Barbara said, sitting with her arms crossed over her knees again. 'Nothing was the same again. I mean I've had some interesting times growing up in America, but there was nothing to make it sparkle. I went to school, and then college, and then I sort of drifted into marriage, and it was as if I was just going through the motions.

'And then Paddy came along, and the sparkle came back. It was as if everything was in black and white and then went into full colour. She brought the magic back into my life, like nothing else could.'

'You're lucky,' I said, looking over to where the little girl was wading in the stream, her jeans rolled up over her knees, and her tanned legs cutting bow waves in the water. 'She's a lovely girl.'

'I suppose you're going to say she takes after her mother,' Barbara said, and laughed softly.

'You can hardly deny maternity, can you? Yes she does take after her mother, and if she keeps on going she'll be every bit as beautiful as her mother is.'

'Oh Nick. I believe you just made a pass,' she said. But she was smiling just the same.