He stopped for a moment by the side of the road and rolled down the car window. He was driving a battered old Rover, manufactured before the days of power steering and electronic windows.Hamish breathed in all the familiar scents of the Scottish Highlands: peat smoke, wild thyme, pine, and salt air blown in on the Atlantic gales from the coast.Urged by his friend Angela Brodie to go abroad on holiday for once in his life, Hamish had opted for a cheap off-season package trip to the south of Spain.His hopes of a holiday romance had been dashed as soon as he arrived. The hotel, ambitiously named The Royal Britannia, catered to British old-age pensioners who wanted to escape the winter back home and the heating bills that came with it. He was in great demand at tea dances, as the other guests were mostly sprightly ladies in their sixties and seventies. When he tried to escape from the hotel food, which was designed for the British palate—chips with everything—and went to some little Spanish restaurant, he would find that several of the ladies had followed him only to become amorous over jugs of sangria.
