Highland Fling - A Funny Chick Lit Romance (COMPLETE)

Three's a Disappointment

A-CHOO!

One's a wish, two's a kiss, three's a disappointment...

And twelve, or is it twenty by now? My nanna used to tell me what the number of sneezes meant when I was a child. I can't remember what she said for twenty, but surely it can't mean anything good? Death, perhaps. Sneezing on this scale is not fun.

It started precisely three minutes after Jamie Fraser stroke Jack McAllan left me to unpack all by myself. I heaved the first lot of bags and rucksacks into the house and felt my nose tingle and my eyes water before the sneeze exploded out of me and I dropped the box of food I was holding as a result. Food packets, tins and boxes rolled everywhere. "Must be a summer cold," I said to myself as I sneezed again two seconds later. By the fourth time, I knew it wasn't. The itchy eyes gave it away and the guilty culprit herself wandered into the room—Little Ms Mena. It appears I'm badly allergic to cats. I've just accepted a two-month job as a cat sitter, having lied about my years of experience of cat sitting and the wretched little beast turns me into a snivelling, snottery mess just by walking into the same room.

Ms Mena watches me coolly as I attempt to blow my nose. She jumps onto the coffee table and begin to lick a paw, her tongue delicate and precise as it flicks back and forth. I can't help feeling she's doing a ya boo sucks to you human gesture at me. Certainly, her furry little body radiates nothing in the way of apology or sympathy. Having completed a thorough cleaning job that covered ears, paws, tail, stomach and...urgh, bottom, she yowls at me—the weirdest sound I've ever heard. I thought cats miaowed. This one cries like a baby.

Kirsty's instructions said the food bowl was in the kitchen area. My mother sent me up to Lochalsh with a tray of Asda's own brand cat food she told me she'd got at a bargain basement price. I open a tin of it, try not to retch (the smell is overwhelming) and shovel out half of it as quickly as possible. Little Ms Mena sniffs it, lifts her head and yowls once more, which I take to indicate disapproval. I back away anyway. The closer I get to her, the itchier my eyes get and the more I sneeze, and I feel the beginnings of headache tightening in my temples. 

As an experiment, I try going upstairs to see if the effects would lessen the further away I got from her. No such luck. Mena follows me up, the yowling still at full pitch. I begin to worry one of Kirsty's neighbours might hear and think her new cat sitter is a psycho cat killer in disguise. Distracted as I am, I can't help noticing the house's upper interior is as sumptuous as the bottom half. The master bedroom, as I'd guessed, shares that same full-length window and the view is even better up here, thanks to the extra four metres of height. Light shimmers on the gently rippling waves and a boat makes its slow way across the loch. Kirsty's bed looks so soft, comfortable and inviting I'm almost tempted to dive straight on it until I notice the light covering of cream and brown fur on the pillow on the right-hand side. Great. She shared the bed with the cat. I'll need to sleep in the spare room.

Naturally, the master bedroom has an en suite bathroom, complete with a sunken bath, a marble sink and a toilet I wonder if I dare sit on it was so luxurious looking. And still the sneezing goes on, my A-choos punctuated by Mena's yowls. What am I going to do? Fair enough, I'd not looked after cats before but an allergy to them? Why hadn't I noticed it before, surely I'd have realised when I went round to visit friends who had cats, the sneezing when one of them came near me would have given it—

Oh, right enough. None of my friends has cats. I haven't encountered that many of them in my life. I whip out my phone, deciding that when it came to one to ten emergencies, this comes out at the top end and I need to talk to the fifth emergency service—Katya. I hold the phone to my ear and will my friend to pick up ASAP. When the time between dialling and the phone make the connection stretches out too long, the screen tells me that I am not getting a signal. As Katya promised, Lochalshie doesn't seem to have the same number of phone masts as we have down south. Again, what am I going to do? Panic mounts, making my breaths come in short gasps, and I bolt outside holding the phone in front of me watching as the bars move from one to two. Poor, but better than nothing and enough to get me through to my friend.