No Place Like Home Jane Renshaw (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

apologising to him for David, as if David were a badly behaved child she’d failed to curb rather than her parent. Bram widened his smile, and did a mad eye-roll, and Kirsty’s face finally relaxed as she smiled back.

Kirsty McKechnie had intrigued Bram before he’d even set eyes on her. The name spoke to him, somehow, the very first time he stepped out of his room in the halls of residence to explore his new surroundings, after Ma and Pap had left in a flurry of tearful hugs. There it was, on the nameplate of the door of the room next to his.

‘Kirsty McKechnie,’ he murmured to himself, and smiled.

It was such a friendly name. ‘Kirsty McKechnie,’ he repeated, like a mantra, as he walked down that intimidatingly long corridor to the tiny common room-cum-kitchen. Each corridor in the halls had one of these little communal rooms, and it was full of chatter and laughter, full of other students who all seemed to know each other already, although he’d arrived only a couple of days late. Pap, Ma and Bram had delayed their return from Amsterdam because his grandmother had sprained her ankle and Ma had wanted to stay until she was mobile.

But the other students welcomed him like a long-lost friend. ‘Hi, Bram!’ ‘Bram Hendriksen – is that Dutch?’ ‘Your English is amazing!’

Bram laughed. ‘My parents are Dutch, but I was born and bred in London. My mates from school insist I say some words – like “bizarre” – with a Dutch accent, for some bizarre reason.’

‘You do! I think you do say it with an accent! Bizarre!’

They all introduced themselves, but none of the girls was Kirsty McKechnie. When he asked about her, the girl called Steph exchanged a look with the boy called Jake. ‘Oh, right, the Weird Girl.’

The Weird Girl who, Bram discovered over the next few days, never socialised, scuttling along the corridor to and from her room without making eye contact. When he said hello, she said it back, but if he tried to expand the conversation she just aimed a smile somewhere over his left shoulder and darted away, like a little wild animal he was unsuccessfully attempting to tame.

‘She’s just really, really shy,’ he said one morning when Steph started on again about her weirdness, as they were eating breakfast in the big canteen that catered for all the students in the halls.

‘No, she’s not.’ Steph turned in her seat and regarded Kirsty, who was eating toast at a table on her own, as usual. ‘There’s something sinister about her. I reckon she’s a member of a cult. Some sort of strange Highland religious sect, anyway. It’s probably against her religion to eat with other people.’

‘Don’t stare at her like that,’ Bram objected.

Gary immediately turned in his seat to stare too. ‘She probably uses a mathematical formula to work out which table is furthest away from the other occupied ones.’

‘She’s doing maths?’

‘Yeah. Course she is.’

The sun was streaming in through the big windows, striking chestnut highlights from Kirsty’s long, glossy dark hair. As Bram watched, she put a hand through it in a languid, graceful gesture, and he found his gaze lingering on her face, on those high cheekbones and straight brows.

She had finished her toast and was looking out of the window.

It must be horrible to feel people staring at you. He averted his gaze, looking past her to the lawn that surrounded the canteen on three sides. There were two blackbirds out there, pecking at the grass, and some other smaller birds Bram didn’t recognise. Siskins? As he idly watched them, one of the blackbirds decided to chase the other, which flew up onto a low wall topped with polished slate, slick after overnight rain. The first bird jumped up after it but misjudged his landing in the bird equivalent of a prat fall, slipping off the end of the wall and flapping onto the branch of a tree, as if that had been his intended perch all along.

Bram smiled, and glanced again at Kirsty.

She was looking out of the window and smiling too.

Somehow it seemed hugely significant that the two of them, amidst the hubbub of the canteen, amidst all those people chatting away to each other, intent on their own concerns, had been the only ones to see that happen. To see it, and find it funny.

Almost twenty-one years later, here he was, sitting opposite the Weird Girl at their own kitchen table. It blew his mind whenever he thought about it.

‘Crows are the farmer’s traditional enemy,’ David was ploughing on, talking around the quiche, bits of food visible in his mouth as he spoke. ‘Bam bam bam, problem solved!’ He chuckled, forking in salad after the quiche.

Phoebe, sobbing, pushed herself up from her chair and bolted across the room to the stairs. Kirsty, flashing a black look at her father, dropped her napkin by her place and went after her.

David rolled his eyes at Fraser, who shrugged, grinning, and held out his empty glass to Bram for more Coke – Fraser was the designated driver. As he did so, his gaze fell on Max, who was sitting frowning down at the table. ‘Hey, Max!’ Fraser made his lower lip wobble. ‘Don’t wuh-way, the widdle cwow’s gone up to hea-ven!’

But David, suddenly, was not amused. ‘For Christ’s sake, Max. You’re not a nine-year-old girl.’ But it was Bram he was looking at.

‘Piss off, Fraser,’ said Max, stabbing a piece of quiche crust.

Bram laid down his knife and fork. ‘No one,’ he said, slowly and clearly, ‘no matter their age or gender, should ever feel ashamed of compassion for another living creature.’ He ignored the empty glass Fraser was waving at him.

‘Quite right,’ said Linda.

When Kirsty and Phoebe eventually returned to the table, Phoebe subdued but at least not crying, Bram served the poached pears and yoghurt. When they’d all finished, the others moved with their coffee, or in Phoebe’s case home-made lemonade, to the living area of the