THE FORBIDDEN PROMISE
Lorna Cook

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2020

Copyright © Lorna Cook 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Cover photographs © Susan Fox/Trevillion Images (woman); © Shutterstock.com (landscape)

Lorna Cook asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008321888

Ebook Edition © March 2020 ISBN: 9780008321895

Version: 2019-12-04

Dedication

For Mum, Dad & Luke

For being family. For being there. And just because.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Lorna Cook

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1
Invermoray House, Scotland, end of August 1940

Sometimes it’s not the biggest lies, but the little white ones that bring about the most change. Although Constance couldn’t possibly have known that by pretending she had a migraine in order to escape the house, there would be such lasting consequences.

Constance sat on the edge of the large rock that jutted out over the loch and hitched her evening dress up in what her mother would call an unladylike fashion. She removed her satin shoes and peeled off her stockings, dipping her legs into the cool water, soothing her dance-sore feet. She needn’t be discreet; the edge of the loch was so far from the house that no one could possibly hear her, and given the strict blackout regime the housekeeper adhered to, no one could see her either.

Constance closed her eyes and then opened them almost immediately. Her migraine had been a fabrication, although the racket the band was making was exceedingly loud and growing louder the more enthusiastic both the players and the guests became. If she strained her ears now, she could hear them playing all the way from the loch. The need to escape her birthday party, to escape Henry, had engulfed her to the point she could think of no other way out but to lie.

Over the past few months she had found herself liking Henry. She had only known her brother Douglas’s friend a short while, spending time with him when the two men journeyed to Invermoray on rare days of leave. He was older than her by only a few years, and she had looked up to Henry, idolised him and found herself following her parents’ lead when they suggested he might be a good match. Henry had clearly liked her, or so she believed. Constance thought he would be different, not like the other suggestive and sometimes inappropriate men she’d met, of which there had not been that many, admittedly. But he had shocked her as they danced, as she nestled into him, enjoying the closeness. His hands had crept down her back until they were resting far too low, his fingertips grazing her bottom. She had become stiff, alert and then he had clutched her. It had taken all her courage to gently move his hands when she realised his behaviour was anything but romantic.

‘Henry?’ she had questioned, when he had pulled her closer again. He had smiled as if he’d done nothing wrong and she doubted herself. Was she being too prudish? The silver-grey silk ball gown clung to her skin as she danced, and she had caught Henry staring at her chest on more than one occasion. He had clearly found it a challenge to listen to her conversation, to drag his eyes up to meet hers. She had begun rambling, in order to cover her embarrassment, her growing sense of disappointment. When she had excused herself to powder her nose, uncertain as to what was happening and if she should allow it, he had cornered her, pulling her into the darkened orangery, which was unlit in case enemy aircraft should spot a light through the glass panes.

Constance knew men had needs and she wasn’t unworldly. She knew what those needs were and what part she’d be expected to play. While she’d been told that a girl should save herself for her husband, there were many girls at her Swiss school who had bragged joyously that they’d been up to far more than they should with the opposite sex. But as much as she thought she might eventually want it with Henry she wasn’t quite sure. Not yet. She didn’t want him to go off her but whatever was happening between them needed to permeate. Just a little longer. Just until she was sure.

‘You look beautiful tonight,’ he had said, his eyes raking her body.

And then he had kissed her, his lips crashing against hers, his hands holding her shoulders. She had tried to put her arms around his waist, her eyes wide open, uncertain if she was responding correctly, unfamiliar with how far she should let this go. His eyes were closed and he was slowly ushering her further into the deserted orangery, until she was up against an oversized hothouse palm her mother had been cultivating for the best part of a decade.

His whisky-soaked breath had coated her tongue as he kissed her harder and faster and she wasn’t sure if it was this, or the realisation her skirt was being lifted that made her suddenly rigid.

‘Henry!’ she chastised as she pushed free of his grasp. She attempted to laugh, to brush aside his behaviour.

‘Come here.’ Henry held out his hand. Tentatively she had taken it. Perhaps it was simply the party spirit and a little too much to drink that had motivated him into this small bout of madness. Maybe now he realised he had been pushing her a little too much and was relenting.

‘Haven’t you wanted this as long as I have?’ he asked, nuzzling her neck.

Disappointment flooded her. Had he noticed her reaction to him and simply disregarded it? She didn’t know what to say. Until this evening she had never seen this side of him and it had confused her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. It was all happening too fast, and not at all like she’d ever imagined. ‘I’m not sure … like this … here …?’

‘There’s nobody about. We could find a dark corner; over there looks good. I’ll lay my jacket down for you so you don’t get cold on the tiles.’ The suggestion of chivalry was misplaced.

‘No, Henry, I don’t …’

‘If you don’t know what to do, I’ll show you. Now come on, lie down over here.’

‘No, Henry.’ She was firmer now. She finally knew what she wanted and it wasn’t this. ‘No.’

‘If you loved me …’ he said, incensed, letting his suggestion hang.

She knew in that very moment that she did not. Disappointment had engulfed her. How could it all end like this, so horribly?

Without another word she had turned and left Henry standing in the orangery, breaking into a run until she had found safety in numbers in the ballroom.

She needed to be as far away from Henry as possible, to think. And so she had lied. A migraine so painful she thought her head would explode. Her mother had baulked at the picture Constance had drawn in front of their guests and excused her daughter – it was almost midnight, and guests would be leaving soon. But instead of running to her bedroom Constance ran into the cool night air, past the fountain, skirting the ornamental garden and down towards the loch in the distance where she had always found her own haven of peace and calm. No guests would brave the dark journey down to the water’s edge for fear they would trip to their deaths in the blackout and miss out on the Champagne her parents were doling out from their carefully hoarded supply in the cellars under the house. She was entirely alone.

Dangling her feet into the cool water, Constance looked back through the darkness to where she could just about make out the outline of the baronial mansion. Inside were fifty or so of her mother and father’s closest friends, and barely any of her own, still celebrating Constance’s birthday with little regard for her absence and even less for the war outside Invermoray House.

It was no longer the faint noise of the band playing, but rather another sound that suddenly caught her attention, causing her to look skyward. A smattering of low grey cloud hid something she sensed was looming closer in the dark night sky.

It took Constance a few seconds to understand she was listening to the sound of a Spitfire engine. But far from its usual smooth whir, it sputtered and whined as if gasping for breath. She saw its outline against the darkness of the sky above and the black mass of forest on the horizon as the plane dropped from the sky. Its engine went almost completely silent before it juddered to life and then died again, the propellers slowing to a complete stop. And Constance realised the pilot must still be inside, trying to restart the engine instead of doing the sensible thing and parachuting himself to safety. Perhaps in the blackout he had no idea how close to the ground he was.

As the plane sank even further, Constance knew it was going to crash and she scrambled to her feet, moving quickly over the jutting rock in case the plane should bank suddenly towards her. But it did not.

The Spitfire came level with her before hitting the water at such a horrific angle, Constance was sure one of its wings had been ripped clean away, sending spray high into the air. Instinctively she turned away to avoid the large splashes. After the loss of its wing the plane spun and tumbled on the water until Constance didn’t know which way round it was. Where was the pilot? It took only a few seconds for the weight of water to fill the vessel before the plane gurgled and disappeared below the surface; the water smothering it entirely as if it had never been there at all. There was no sign of the pilot. No noise of him swimming to safety in the darkness. The false tide from the crash lapped strongly against the rock.

She stood shaking, her eyes wide, her breaths coming in quick succession, her hands still tightly clutching her shoes and stockings. Constance knew she had to do something, but her body refused her call to action. She was rooted to the spot, staring across the water at where the plane had been. She was torn. If she ran back to the house for help there would be no time. If she did not do something, he would be dead within minutes, if not already. She had to save the pilot.

Forcing herself to move, Constance clambered down the rock and into the water, cutting her leg on a sharp edge as she did so. She couldn’t feel the pain, or the blood as it trickled down her ankle mixing with the water; so intense was her need to reach the stricken pilot, who she imagined hopelessly fighting with his safety belts and the hatch above. Her silk evening dress clung to her legs as she strode as quickly as she could through the water in the direction of where the plane had sunk from view.

Inside the house the grandfather clock in the entrance hall struck midnight, and the band played on to revellers unaware of the events outside. Congratulations were passed to Constance at the close of her twenty-first birthday. Such a shame she had felt unwell. Perhaps too much Champagne had taken its toll. Her bed was the best place for her. Shortly the band would finish, guests dispersing – their carefully saved petrol coupons taking them the distance to their homes and neighbouring estates – and then the housekeeper would begin the ritual of closing Invermoray House down for the night.

As the water reached Constance’s waist she pushed her feet off from the pebbled loch-bed and let go of her shoes and stockings, so that they drifted away behind her as she swam further into the darkness.

CHAPTER 2
Scotland, August 2020

Kate should never have said no to the offer of a satnav for the hire car. There had even been a promotional discount at the car rental desk at the airport but she had, somewhat smugly, waved her mobile phone at the clerk and explained she had a free GPS app already installed.

But her signal had dropped out long ago and with the countryside becoming even wilder she reasoned her phone data wasn’t about to return anytime soon. Kate pulled the little hatchback over by the side of the road and looked around for any sign of life. Any kind of sign at all would have been nice. She couldn’t remember how far she’d gone down the long B road before she had glanced at her phone and found the app unresponsive. How long had it been like that? The last village she’d passed had been at least ten minutes ago and she couldn’t even remember what it had been called.

As the sun dipped in the sky, she spread the map out across the bonnet and scanned it for something familiar. Thank God someone at the car rental office had placed one in the glove compartment. She would be arriving much later than she’d said she would. It would be the worst kind of first impression, turning up for her new live-in job as night was falling. There was no way Kate was going to find her way in the dark so she was just going to have to keep heading down the road in the hope it would lead her to civilisation where she could get some sort of data reception on her phone. You don’t get this sort of nonsense in London, she thought. Although London was the last place she wanted to be right then. She glanced up and down the desolate road. She’d wanted peace and quiet. But maybe not this quiet.

Kate folded the map up as best as she could, but it was a poor effort and she’d managed to fold creases where there hadn’t been any a few seconds ago. She started the engine and drove, holding her phone in one hand, and somewhat dangerously glancing down, hitting refresh on the app every few minutes. There was still no joy. She needed to restart her phone in a last-ditch effort. She glanced down, holding the off button an interminably long amount of time until it gave the chance to swipe to confirm that yes, she really did want to turn the phone off.

As Kate glanced back up she screamed. A man was standing at the side of the road facing her, his mouth open with horror as she drove towards him. What was he doing in the road? He lifted his hands up to shield his face. At the very last second Kate dropped her phone, turned the wheel quickly to swerve away from him and stamped her foot down on the brake. The car skidded across the road into the path of oncoming traffic – or it would have done, if there had been any other vehicles on the stretch of inhospitable countryside road. Instead the rental car came to a stop at an angle that left the bonnet facing a row of tall pine trees at the side of the road.

She couldn’t move. Her knuckles were white; her fingernails dug into her palms where she’d tightened her grip around the wheel. Kate forced herself to look in the rear-view mirror to see if the man was still alive. He wasn’t there. She hadn’t hit him. Or had she? She wasn’t sure of anything.

‘Oh my God. Where is he?’ With shaking hands Kate unfurled her fingers from the wheel and unclicked the seatbelt. She went to open the door but the trouble was taken from her hands as the man yanked it open and stared angrily down at her.

She sat back in shock. His jaw was clenched and he appeared to be struggling to speak.

‘Thank God, you’re alive.’ Her voice was shaky, her heart still thudding hard.

He stood back and gave her room to get out of the car. ‘No thanks to you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Kate climbed out and stood in front of him, her legs wobbly.

‘You almost killed me.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Are you hurt?’

‘No,’ he snapped. And then added as an afterthought: ‘Are you?’

‘No. I’m fine.’

The stranger looked past her and into the car at the crumpled map on the passenger seat. Kate watched him, hoping he was calming down. He looked about her age, late twenties with brown hair and brown eyes. He was dressed head to toe in running gear, with streaks of neon yellow banded around his wrists and legs. She should have seen him given this get-up, only she’d been distracted by—

‘Were you on your phone?’ He looked directly at her, unblinking. ‘Were you texting while driving?’

‘I … No … Of course not.’

He climbed into the car, knelt on the seat and bent to retrieve the phone.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ she asked.

He stabbed at it a few times, but the phone was mercifully off.

‘I could have sworn …’ He trailed off and then reluctantly handed her the phone.

‘You need to move your car. It’s dangerous positioned like that.’ He was glancing up and down the empty road.

Kate nodded but didn’t move, concerned she’d just broken the law, almost killing someone at the same time.

‘Can you do it or do you want me to?’ He looked at her as if she was an idiot.

‘I … you … I can do it. I don’t mind.’

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a look that proved he was in no doubt she was a fool.

‘You don’t mind? Well that’s just …’ He shook his head in disbelief, stepping back and folding his arms. Kate was in no condition to drive but she got back in and managed to straighten the car and pull it slightly off the road, onto the gravel by the side. She switched her hazard lights on given that she was still on the wrong side of the road. And then she wasn’t really sure what to do. The man was still standing there. Surely this was the point where both of them would leave and go about the rest of their evenings, but he seemed to be watching her expectantly.

Kate got back out of the car and stood awkwardly by the open door. She’d never been in a road accident before, not that this really was a road accident, but the look he was giving her made her think that if she drove on he’d have the police chasing her within minutes.

‘So, what happens now?’ she ventured.

‘What do you mean?’ He looked baffled.

‘Do we … um … do we exchange details?’

He narrowed his eyes again. ‘Why would we do that?’

Kate felt about two feet tall. ‘I’m not sure,’ was all she could say quietly. She was eager to be back in the car – so shaken she wasn’t sure she could drive if she was really honest with herself but it was better than standing here with him.

‘We don’t need to do anything,’ he said.

‘OK,’ Kate agreed.

His arms were still folded.

She started to apologise again but he cut her off. He glanced pointedly at his phone, strapped to a band on his wrist.

‘Chalk it up to experience.’ He put his headphones in his ears, fiddled with his phone, turned and continued jogging away.

Kate watched his retreating figure and when he rounded the bend she slumped against the car and exhaled loudly, relieved he was gone. Chalk it up to experience? How sanctimonious. What did he even mean by that? Regardless, she was thankful he wasn’t pressing charges and that she’d never have to see him again. Kate looked back down the road to where he’d turned out of sight.

‘What a bastard.’

She could have cried. What was she even doing here?

CHAPTER 3

Kate climbed back into the car and grabbed her handbag from where it had fallen into the passenger footwell. She took out her small bundle of good luck cards and reread her favourite, from her best friend Jenny. On the front was a picture of Kate holding an empty Champagne bottle upside down towards her mouth. She was pulling a stupid, but happy expression. It was only a few months old, but remembering the celebrations from the day she’d been promoted to senior PR manager still made her smile.

Inside the card wasn’t the usual ‘Good Luck’ message. Instead it said, ‘From drunken dare to worst nightmare. Knock ’em dead.’

Oh God, the dare. What had Kate been thinking, coming here on a whim and a dare? She couldn’t lay all the blame at Jenny’s door. It hadn’t been Jenny’s fault that Kate had quite simply had enough. If she had to turn up to promote any more bar openings with mediocre guest lists full of Z-list models and footballers’ wives treating her like dirt she would have screamed. What was it about the almost famous that made them think they could talk to her and her colleagues like they were skivvies? And then when one had accused her of flirting with her husband. Well, the fallout from that had been unbearable. She knew why she was here if she really stopped to think about it. She needed to rebuild her reputation, away from the claustrophobic glare of London, her office, her colleagues, everyone who knew the awful situation she’d got herself in that night. The shame of the accusation was what had driven her here, as far away as she could possibly get. After the indignity and humiliation of the formal warning she’d received at work the next day, Jenny had drunkenly applied online for two jobs for her.

‘You’ve always said you wanted to travel more,’ Jenny had slurred, loading up a jobs website on her laptop. ‘From Land’s End to John o’Groats. I dare you. Where do you fancy?’

‘Anywhere, anywhere, just fill the bloody forms in, attach my CV and hit send. It could be in Timbuktu for all I care. As long as I never have to deal with some reality TV contestant falling out of a bar drunk and into the lens of their own pre-organised waiting paparazzi, then it can be anywhere you like,’ Kate had declared.

Jenny had hit send, they’d clinked glasses and Kate had forgotten all about it. Until a week later when a rejection email from a hotel in Cornwall had fallen into Kate’s inbox. Apparently she didn’t have enough experience promoting regional food and had not even made it through to the interview stage. She felt a slight pang of regret over the loss of a job she hadn’t even known existed until that very moment. And it had set her thinking: maybe a change of scenery was the very thing she needed. No more awful bars. No celebrity hangouts. A chance to start afresh with her reputation intact.

And so when the second job application had proven fruitful and the owner of Invermoray House in Scotland interviewed Kate via an hour-long phone call and offered her the job at the end of it, she had jumped up and down for a full two minutes in joy.

‘Not much in the way of visitors,’ she had told Kate. ‘Which we’re hoping you can help with of course, dear. We’re very out of the way up here.’

‘Sounds perfect.’ Kate had felt triumphant, knowing soon she’d be away from run-of-the-mill PR assignments. And it wasn’t as if she had a relationship to tie her down. She’d been single for about a year and very happy about it. ‘I accept.’

But now it was a different story. Lost and in the fading light, Kate had never felt so alone.

By the time she eventually found it, her satnav back up and running, Invermoray House was bathed in twilight. Kate drove down the long driveway and onto the large gravel sweep in front of the house. Her eyebrows rose involuntarily as she took in the grandeur of the building, marvelling at the way it was downplayed as a house when it was more a castle. As she pulled up, the car headlights gave the baronial building a warm yellow glow.

Kate barely had time to drag her suitcases from the boot before the large wooden front door was pulled open and a lady in her mid-sixties walked towards her.

‘Can I help you?’ She had kind, smiling eyes and bob-length straight brown hair.

Kate recognised her voice. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. You must be Mrs Langley-McLay?’

‘Yes, my dear.’ She gave Kate’s suitcases the once-over. ‘You aren’t Kate, are you?’

Kate nodded and Mrs Langley-McLay’s eyebrows knitted together.

‘Then you aren’t late at all, my dear. You’re a day early.’

Kate’s face fell. ‘What? I can’t be.’

The woman laughed. ‘We said we’d start tomorrow, so I assumed you would arrive tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I just thought …’ Kate’s voice trailed away.

‘Well.’ Mrs Langley-McLay moved forward to help Kate with her cases. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being keen. You take that other case and we’ll see you inside. You must need a cup of tea and a sit-down after such a long journey. And then we’ll see you to your room. Or perhaps you’d like a gin and tonic instead of tea? I was going to have one before dinner.’

‘That would be lovely, Mrs Langley-Mc—’

‘Oh, call me Liz, or else it’s such a mouthful.’ Liz placed Kate’s suitcase by the bottom of the ornately carved mahogany stairs and indicated Kate should do the same with the other one.

Liz led her through the black and white tiled hallway, the roaring fire crackling away comfortingly in the large stone fireplace. Despite the fact it was mid-summer there was a nip in the air as dusk settled. Liz slowed down and peeked into the doorway of a room.

‘Oh good, he’s not here,’ she mumbled to herself.

‘Who isn’t?’ Kate asked as she followed Liz into the library. It was perhaps the grandest room Kate had ever seen. Rows and rows of leather-bound books lined tall shelves that stretched to the ceiling. A wooden ladder on wheels was positioned up against the shelves and for a moment she had a childish urge to leap onto it and slide around the room.

‘Not to worry. Not for the moment. Now, let’s fix ourselves a drink, shall we? Dutch courage and all that.’

Kate wondered why on earth Liz needed Dutch courage, but Liz changed the subject, asking about Kate’s journey before launching into work matters.

‘We’ve needed someone like you for quite some time.’ Liz moved over to a drinks trolley and lifted the lid of the ice container. She plunked several pieces into two cut-glass tumblers. ‘We’re in a complete state, as I explained on the phone, so you’ll be a bit of a jack of all trades while we get started.’ She gestured for Kate to sit on one of two red velvet Knole sofas and she did so on the one nearest Liz, her back to the door. The sofas were worn, with horsehair sticking through, and the rope that bound the back together had once been gold but was now utterly frayed. It was a stark contrast to the leather volumes and the oversized wooden desk positioned near the French windows, which although old looked as good as new.

‘Now there is a teensy issue with you arriving early. But it’s nothing I can’t factor in I’m sure. Only he might fly off the handle at first but his bark is far worse than his bite.’

Kate blinked as Liz handed her a drink. ‘Your husband?’

‘Heavens, no. My poor husband passed away a year ago. No, my son. But don’t worry, because I’m sure he’ll come round to it.’

‘Your son?’

Liz nodded and sat on the opposite sofa. Suspecting Liz wasn’t going to offer more information, Kate probed further.

‘Come round to what?’

‘To you, of course.’

‘Me? What about me? Me being a day early?’

Liz chuckled, but it was a nervous laugh and her eyes darted to the hallway as they both heard the front door bang shut.

‘To you being here at all.’

Kate stiffened as Liz continued. ‘You see, I hadn’t quite had a chance to tell him that I’d hired you. I was rather hoping to do it tonight, over dinner.’ Footsteps sounded on the tiled hallway floor, getting closer to the library. Liz sped up. ‘We were in desperate need of help and he flat-out refused to entertain thoughts of hiring someone. Says we can’t afford it, which is piffle. You’re an investment, of course. But he will rather blow a gasket at you being here. Terrible manners. Well … you’ll see.’

Kate heard the footsteps stop.

‘Thought I could hear voices,’ a man’s voice sounded from the doorway to the library.

Kate froze.

Liz spoke. ‘James, I’d like to introduce you to Kate.’

Kate stood and turned slowly towards the newcomer. Before she’d even seen him, she just knew who he was. As Kate faced him, a polite but nervous smile on her face, she watched recognition pass over his expression before his smile slipped. His hand, outstretched to shake hers, dropped.

‘Kate is here to—’ Liz started.

‘Finish me off?’ James interrupted her.

Liz looked between the two of them, clearly confused. Kate wanted to die.

‘We’ve met,’ James continued. ‘About an hour ago. I think it’s fair to say Kate can’t drive.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Kate spluttered. ‘You were on the wrong side of the road. You were in the road.’

‘I bloody wasn’t in the road. And pedestrians are supposed to face oncoming traffic.’

She was silenced.

‘And you were texting,’ James finished for good measure.

‘I wasn’t texting.’ Kate was earnest.

‘Oh Christ,’ James flared up again. ‘Is that why you’re here? Did you follow me? To see where I live? Hoping to get some kind of payout, accusing me of … what … exactly? Well, I warn you we haven’t got two pennies to rub together, so don’t bother.’

‘James.’ His mother put her hand on his arm to silence him. ‘Enough please. Kate is not here about that. Kate is here because we have employed her. I have employed her.’

James turned slowly and looked at his mother. ‘You have done what?’ His voice was dark, but Kate was relieved to find Liz maintaining her son’s gaze, clearly used to holding her own in a standoff.

‘I think this is best discussed outside, don’t you?’ The question was clearly rhetorical as Liz walked purposefully from the room. James looked at Kate and she smiled weakly with embarrassment. He shook his head in disbelief and followed his mother from the room, closing the door to the library behind him.

Kate’s whole body was stiff. She couldn’t believe it. She’d been hired, although not on a contract admittedly. She’d sub-let her flat to her brother, for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t go back to London now, tail between her legs on day one of her new job. What if James overruled Liz and sent her packing, which he was clearly about to try? Where would she go at this time of night? There was a pub down the road. Maybe they had rooms, although out here in the middle of nowhere Kate doubted there was need for a pub with rooms to rent. She slumped back down awkwardly on the overstuffed sofa and tried not to listen to the muffled argument on the other side of the door.

The phrases she could pick out were in James’s thunderous tones. ‘No money … can’t afford her … don’t need any help … can do it on my own.’

She exhaled loudly as she listened to James not handle the situation at all well. There was nothing she could do. She just had to await her fate. Kate looked around the walls at some surprisingly modern artwork and then spied a large book open on a table in front of one of the bookshelves. She wandered over, more for something to direct her nervous energy towards than out of any actual interest. It was an old Bible, the pages wafer thin beneath her fingers. She’d never been particularly religious and after reading the first few lines of the open page she gently closed the hefty book to look at its front cover. The title lettering had faded but she could tell it had once been gold. The black leather cover was crumbling in a few places, particularly the spine, its threads showing bare. She looked around – threadbare appeared to be a running theme in this room. Kate opened the cover slowly and carefully turned a few pages until she reached a page showing the Family Record. Trying to forget the argument outside, she became engrossed in what must be the Langley-McLay family Bible.

The names of the family members varied in colour, the ink of the earlier ones now faded sepia, the more recent names still black. The dates started in the early 1800s and the italic looped and swirled handwriting changed as each new family member’s name was recorded with his or her birth date.

Kate thought of the generations of children who had come and gone, grown old, married and moved away, gone to war and died, lived and inherited before passing it on to the next in line. She glanced at the second page of the Bible, as the dates moved into the First World War. One child was born soon after the war: Constance Amelia Rose McLay, born August 1919.

But what struck her about this name over all the others was the black fountain pen mark that had been scored through her entire name. Whoever had crossed her entry through had done so with such forceful intention that the nib had gone through several of the sheets underneath.

Kate’s first thought was that someone might have done this when Constance had died. But there was no date of death for anyone listed in the Bible – only births – and none of the other entries had been scored through.

Constance Amelia Rose McLay stood alone in having been deleted. Kate shuddered suddenly and looked around. She suddenly wished she was anywhere else but here. With Liz talking in clipped tones to her son outside the door Kate looked back down at the name.

She ran her finger slowly over the deep slice that the pen had made and wondered what kind of crime Constance McLay could possibly have committed that would see her name so meaningfully and forcefully removed from her family history.

CHAPTER 4
1940

The smacking sound the Spitfire had made as it crashed had been nothing compared to the dreadful gurgle that emanated from the water as it sucked the plane down into its inky depths. The whoosh had been sudden. And then there was nothing but the waves as they crashed around Constance, before the loch became eerily still.

Constance swam as fast as she could towards the middle of the loch, pausing to tread water and listen for a sound, any sound that might indicate the pilot was still alive. She pulled her dress up around her waist so she could kick her legs faster.

He was dead. He must be. He’d been under the water for far too long, surely. She wished the clouds would part, allowing the moon to cast some light on to the dark water.

She called out, even though it was hopeless. ‘Where are you?’

Constance pushed her wet brown hair back from her face in order to see, although it was too dark to get her bearings. Her painstakingly pinned hairstyle was now loose and in soaked tendrils down her face.

‘Where are you?’ she called again. Foolishly, she believed if she shouted loud enough she might be able to summon him from the cold depths.

From the darkness to her left the silence was broken. A loud splash sounded as he surfaced, suddenly, violently. He’d emerged but he was flailing, splashing and gasping desperately for air.

Constance yelled that she was coming to help. The pilot was some distance from her and she didn’t know if he could hear her. He appeared unable to reply, his gasps turning to coughs as he expelled water from his lungs.

She swam towards the noise, continuing to try to reassure him. As she swam into his view he swore, startled at her arrival. He appeared to be having a fight with himself.

‘Are you all right?’ Constance called. ‘Can you swim?’

‘Yes. No,’ he said between gasps. ‘Help. It’s drowning me.’ He was trying to undo his leather flight jacket and, in a panic, had his arms stuck in the wet material. Constance reached him and trod water as she wrestled the heavy flight jacket from him. As she held it in her arms the weight of it began to pull her down and she kicked with her legs to stay above the surface.

He started kicking off his waterlogged boots and saw her struggling with the jacket.

‘Let go!’ he shouted at her.

Constance hadn’t known why she’d still been holding the jacket but she released the leaden weight. Like his plane, it disappeared into the water.

His panic seemed to rise as he struggled with his boots. Constance tried soothing him. ‘Stay calm. The shoreline isn’t far,’ she said as she trod water. ‘You must swim for it.’

The pilot followed her as she swam. She could hear his harsh breathing and sporadic coughing as he struggled to swim with boots full of water. Constance’s love for swimming in the loch had worn off when she’d reached thirteen and Douglas had no longer been around as much to share in the fun. But she still knew the loch like the back of her hand. They were swimming away from the house, towards the far side of the wide loch where the wooden jetty jutted out. That shore was closer and after all the pilot had been through, Constance didn’t think he could swim all the way back in the direction from which she had come.

She slowed to swim alongside the exhausted man, ready to drag him along if he should give up. But he continued. He asked only once how far away the edge was and after a few minutes Constance felt pebbles and sharp stones beneath her bare feet.

She turned to take his hand, to pull him from the lake. Weak from his ordeal, he grabbed her hand willingly, stumbled at the shoreline and then lowered himself down, crawling on his hands and knees out of the water. He lay on his front, facing away from her, and breathed deeply.

Exhausted, not from the swim but from panic, Constance fell down next to him. It was only as she sat still that she realised how cold she was and she began shivering. She hugged her bare arms but it was of little use whilst she was in wet clothes. The pilot turned to look at her, wide-eyed with shock, and then looked around at his surroundings. She could barely see his face in the darkness. His wet hair fell partly over his eyes, which were now trained on her face.

When he finally got his breath back he asked, ‘Where in God’s name did you spring from?’

Constance raised her hand and pointed across the water. ‘The house. But I was already down by the loch.’

He nodded and looked to where she pointed. But Invermoray House, in blackout and so far away, was indiscernible. ‘Were you on your own?’

‘By the water, yes.’ She shivered.

‘You’re cold,’ he said as he forced himself onto his hands and knees again and then turned slowly into a sitting position.

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I suppose I am.’

‘We must get dry,’ Constance said as she stood. The thin fabric of her dress clung to her wet skin. Goose bumps covered her.

‘Where? To the house?’ he asked. ‘I’m not going back in that water to reach it.’

‘It’s too long to walk round,’ she said between shivers. She thought as quickly as she could. ‘There’s an estate cottage that’s empty. And it’s closer. If you can walk for only a few minutes, it’s just inside the tree line.’ She pointed to where spruce trees loomed high.

‘It’s empty?’ he asked, a flicker of something like relief on his face. ‘No one lives there?’

Constance nodded.

‘All right. If you’re sure. But first …’ He wrestled each of his boots off and tipped out water before he stood and scooped the boots into his arms. His thick pilot’s uniform clung to him and as they walked Constance wondered what on earth the pair of them must look like.

After a minute or two he asked, ‘How much further is this cottage?’

‘Not far.’ Constance hoped she hadn’t veered off course. She’d never been out to the unused ghillie’s cottage in the dark before. There’d never been the need.

In the darkness of the forest the cottage appeared, looming suddenly. Constance tried the door but it was locked. ‘Oh no,’ she cried. ‘I hadn’t thought.’

The pilot leaned against the cottage wall and put his head back against it. His eyes were closed. ‘Look under the mat.’

Constance stepped off the front mat and lifted it. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said as she retrieved the key. ‘How did you know?’

‘Honest people always put their keys under the mat.’ His face was tipped up. Above them the clouds parted and the moon finally shone, bathing the pilot in light.

For the first time since she’d set eyes on him she was able to see fully what he looked like. He had a strong jawline and he was handsome. Not like a film star, although she’d not been to see too many films recently up here since the war started. They were miles from anything exciting like that. But he was handsome in the sense that if she’d spotted him walking through the village, she knew she’d have glanced at him more than once.

His eyes had opened and he was watching her. A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth. ‘Are you going to open the door?’

Embarrassed, Constance fumbled with the lock and turned the handle. As they entered, a strong smell of damp hit them. The cottage had been shut up for about nine months, since the ghillie, like all the other male staff of fighting age, had joined the war effort. The ghillie’s home, the only estate cottage not situated in the local village, had been closed up ever since and was awaiting his return.

Constance sought out a paraffin lamp on a low table and fiddled with it.

‘Don’t,’ the pilot said sharply.

‘Why ever not?’

‘The blackout,’ he replied. He was right. Constance realised the blackout blinds weren’t in place and as the clouds moved aside, the moon filtered through the windows. ‘Leave it,’ he continued. ‘For now. We need to get our wet things off before we freeze to death.’

He dropped his boots to the floor. They clunked heavily but Constance’s eyes weren’t drawn down. Instead she looked at him in horror as he pulled his blazer off and dropped that to the floor before starting on his wet shirt. He had undone at least two buttons, exposing his chest, before Constance pulled her gaze away.

‘Hurry up,’ he commanded. ‘Take your dress off. Do you want to get ill?’

‘You can’t possibly expect me to remove my dress in front of you.’ She couldn’t keep the horror from her voice.

‘I’ll turn my back,’ he offered. ‘I’ve just crashed into a bloody great lake. I’m in absolutely no condition to think about that sort of thing.’

Constance blushed that he should even mention it. After Henry’s nightmarish behaviour in the orangery, she was petrified it might happen again, here, with this pilot. She was buttoned in so tight she was unable to free herself from her dress anyway. She was sure the silk was shrinking tight against her body thanks to the water. The buttons at the back were plentiful and started at the nape of her neck and ran down the dress until they reached the top of her bottom.

He had turned his back and must have been aware she wasn’t moving as he said, ‘Are you watching me undress?’ in an amused voice.

‘No! I need your help.’

He turned, rolled his shirt up and dropped it on the floor. She’d seen her brother Douglas’s friends without their shirts plenty of times as they swam in the loch over the years but here, in this dark room with this man, it felt different. It was too private. He looked different to any of her brother’s friends – stronger, taller … just different.

When she didn’t speak he asked, ‘What do you need help with?’

Constance had momentarily forgotten about the buttons. She turned and he began unbuttoning her wet dress, his hands moving gently down her skin until he finished. The room felt still and Constance was aware only of his hands as they moved.

As her unbuttoned dress gaped at the back he moved gallantly away and she became aware of the room again. The cottage had been left as if the ghillie had simply popped out for a few minutes. Other than the presence of damp and dust, items of furniture, ornaments and books had been left in the places that they had presumably sat for the past few years. From the back of a battered armchair the pilot pulled a tartan blanket and handed it to her.

Constance wriggled out of her dress as she wrapped the blanket around her. Her wet underwear was uncomfortable and she realised she was going to have to shake that off as well if she was going to warm up. Although it was August, the air was cold inside the stone cottage.

‘I’ll light a fire,’ the pilot said. He moved around the room, fixing the stiff fabric wood-framed blackout blinds into place.

‘You’re still wearing your wet trousers,’ Constance said. ‘Look upstairs. The ghillie might have left some clothes behind.’

The pilot nodded and assembled the fire in the grate, forming a tripod out of a few logs of wood and balling up some newspaper from the basket, throwing it into the middle. He found matches in a pot on the mantel above, struck one against the wall and started a small fire in the grate.

‘Warm yourself up while I find us some things,’ he instructed.

Constance sat on the thinning rug by the fire and pulled the blanket tight around herself. The fire worked its magic and she stretched her bare legs out in front of her, wriggling her toes as the heat from the flames licked them gently. She marvelled at how she could be in the middle of her birthday party and then, only an hour later, soaked to the skin and alone in a cottage with an RAF officer whose plane had crashed into her loch. After a few minutes the pilot came downstairs wearing a pair of dry trousers and a thick blue woollen pullover.

‘They smell of mothballs but they’re dry,’ he said as he stood next to her, offering her a pair of men’s trousers and a thick white jumper that he’d found. He held out his hand and she grasped it as she stood. She said her thanks, took the clothes and went upstairs to put the trousers and shirt on. She rolled the waistband of the trousers over a few times but they were far too big and she kept her hand on them as she descended the staircase for fear they might drop to the floor.

Constance sat back down in front of the fire and tucked her wet hair behind her ears. The pilot sat next to her, the firelight casting him in an orange glow.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

She told him. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Matthew.’

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘I watched you crash; it was awful. It must have been so frightening for you. I thought you must surely be dead.’

When he replied his voice was quiet. ‘I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t see a bloody thing. I kept trying to restart the engine but I knew it was no good. In hindsight I should have thrown open the hatch and bailed out much earlier on but I thought, one more turn of the engine should do it, she’ll start up on one more turn. Goes against everything I was ever taught, given the old thing had been completely shot up. It’s nothing short of a miracle she glided like she did. Full of bullet holes. I had no idea I was landing on water. If the moon had been out I’d have seen. Bit of a shock when I bounced and the cockpit started filling up.’

Constance exhaled. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Can you?’ Matthew enquired, his eyebrows raised. ‘Ever been shot at by the enemy, falling down to the ground with no idea where the ground actually is?’

She felt chastised. ‘No.’ She was quiet.

A log shifted in the grate sending sparks high up the chimney.

‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I should be thanking you. Instead I’m being abominably rude.’

‘It’s all right,’ Constance replied.

‘No. No it’s not. My mother would turn in her grave if she knew how easily my manners had failed me.’

Constance smiled. She wanted to say it was all right again. Why couldn’t she think of anything else to say?

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both focused on the fire that lit the otherwise darkened room. She wondered if anyone would be missing her back at the house and whether the pilot was in any condition to trudge through the forest in the middle of the night. Perhaps, given his ordeal, it would be best to wait until morning before they set off so no one caught her in men’s clothing.

‘What will you do?’ he asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

‘Do? About what?’ Constance turned to look at him.

‘About me?’ Matthew looked at her. In the light of the fire she could see his eyes were a pale green. She’d never seen eyes that shade before. They shone brightly and contrasted curiously against his dark brown hair.

‘Well I rather thought, if you preferred, we should sit it out here and you could rest for a while and then in the morning—’

‘Constance, can I trust you?’ he interrupted her.

She swallowed as he said her name. ‘Yes, I think so.’

Matthew laughed. ‘Well if you don’t know, then how do I?’

‘Yes, yes you can trust me.’

‘I need you to help me,’ he said. ‘I need you to … hide me. Just for a short while, I swear to you. Just long enough for them to think I’m dead. Will you do that?’

Constance’s mouth dropped open. He had been so brave. He had been shot down and now, clearly, he was addled by his trauma.

‘Who do you want to think you’re dead?’ she squeaked in disbelief.

‘All of them. The whole bloody lot of them.’

‘But …’ she started. ‘Your squadron? You don’t want me to telephone someone, have them pick you up, have them look after you?’

‘No, I do not,’ he said. ‘Tonight is the last night I participate in this god-awful war. And if I have to pretend I’m dead in order to achieve that then so be it.’

CHAPTER 5

He was mad. He had to be. Constance didn’t know what to say. She stared at him. He looked back at her, a wary expression on his face. As if he half expected her to jump up, to begin scrambling away from him and back towards the house. She didn’t think she needed to run from him but she half-wondered what would happen if she did. Would he spring up behind her and force her back to the cottage now that she knew his intentions to … what exactly? He looked far stronger than her and although he was clearly not handling the ordeal of his crash at all well, he looked as if he would be more than capable of stopping her if she bolted.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you want to fight anymore?’

‘That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard,’ he replied. ‘Why do you think?’

She tried not to be offended but looked at him and waited.

‘Only a madman actually enjoys it – the killing,’ he replied.

Constance blinked. ‘No one enjoys it. But it’s war. It’s your duty.’

His eyes widened. ‘It’s my duty to shoot other men out of the sky?’ His voice was loud. ‘To watch their planes fall away as I slam bullets into their engines?’

Constance thought about that for a moment. ‘Well, yes. It is. I’m sorry but you must. My brother Douglas is a pilot,’ she added.

‘Good for him. Does he enjoy it? The killing?’

‘I don’t think he thinks of it like that.’ Her brother had never talked about it. She wondered if she should ask Douglas. Constance wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know. She thought of Henry with his wandering hands while on the ground and, up in the skies, his finger on a trigger. Something told her he probably enjoyed all of it.

Matthew picked nervously at a bit of fabric on the trousers he’d borrowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to shelter me. It was wrong. I’m not your responsibility.’

‘Can’t you … can’t you ask for a bit of leave, or something like that?’ she asked. ‘Time to think. You’ve just crashed. No wonder you feel like this now. But perhaps, tomorrow you might—’

He laughed bitterly but chose not to reply. The silence became uncomfortable.

‘Could you become a conscientious objector?’ she offered even though it seemed outrageous to her that this man had his chance to play his part in the war and was refusing to do so.

He shook his head. ‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Really?’ Constance’s brow furrowed. ‘Would you be court-martialled? Would it be desertion?’ Her eyes widened in horror. ‘Would you be shot?’

‘Not here. They don’t do that anymore.’

She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Prison then, perhaps?’

He pulled the thread clear of the trousers and discarded it. ‘Most probably.’

‘At least then you wouldn’t have to fight anymore,’ Constance placated.

‘There is that.’

Constance watched the fire dance and sputter. If she returned to the house and told her father what had happened, what would he do? He would offer the man food and hand him a stiff drink. Then he’d telephone the pilot’s commanding officer and this man, visibly shaken and looking into the fire as if it held all the answers, would be carted off and pushed back into a plane in a matter of days, as was his duty. And then what? Would he just aim it towards the ground this time? A thought struck her.

‘Did you do it on purpose?’ she asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Crash?’

‘No. Of course I didn’t.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘I don’t want to kill but I don’t want to die either.’

Constance nodded.

He yawned. ‘I must sleep.’

She looked at him as he stretched his legs out in front of him on the floor and rested his head back against the armchair. He closed his eyes. Constance chewed her lip, reluctant to move, reluctant for the night to end like this, with her dismissal.

Matthew opened one eye. ‘Can you find your way back to your house in the dark?’

‘Yes.’

He opened both eyes. ‘Then you should go. The very last thing you want is to be found with me. Can you do something for me?’

She watched, waiting.

‘Will you keep quiet? About me being here, I mean. Just to allow me to rest for the night.’

She nodded. ‘All right. And then what will you do?’ she asked as she climbed to her feet, clutching the loose waistband of her borrowed trousers.

‘I’ll go,’ he said simply. ‘I just need a few hours’ rest. If you’ll let me stay for the night, I’ll leave in the morning. You’ll never have to see me again.’

‘Where will you go?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet. Regardless, it’s not for you to worry about.’

‘You need to hand yourself in. You can’t run, if that’s what you intend; it will only be worse the longer you leave it,’ she pointed out. ‘If you hand yourself in tomorrow, just walk back in as if you had just crashed and had some rest overnight, it wouldn’t be a fib. Not really.’

He smiled. ‘Thank you for your concern.’

He wasn’t going to do that though. She knew he wasn’t. What would he do? Where would he go?

He looked up at her from where he sat on the floor. His dark mood lightened. ‘Thank you for swimming out to rescue me. It was very brave of you. Thank you for bringing me here too.’

She nodded. ‘Of course.’ As she reached the front door she turned to look at him. ‘I won’t tell anyone you’re here,’ she said.

It was his turn to nod. ‘Thank you. I’ll be gone in the morning.’

‘Good luck,’ she said.

‘You too, Constance.’

Her hand was on the latch but she didn’t lift it. His gaze was fixed on her and hers on him. She opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t know what. He watched, waiting.

‘Wherever you end up going, please look after yourself.’ She opened the door, slipped into the cold and closed the door gently behind her.

Constance moved quietly through the trees. The walk back would take her around fifteen minutes. The forest was cold, and her hair still damp around her neck. She looked through the trees to see the loch was now perfectly still. Somewhere in its depths was a Spitfire where only a matter of hours ago there hadn’t been. She moved up the stone steps in the garden and slipped through the door to the library, which had been left unlocked. Presumably because her father, who was asleep on the settee in his dress suit, had still been using the room. A cigar smoked gently in a silver ashtray on the low table. Constance stubbed it out. Fearful of him waking and seeing her dressed in men’s clothes, she crept into the dark corridor, climbed the stairs and padded her way silently to her bedroom.

She lay in bed. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even think about sleep. Instead her mind wandered back to the cottage, back to the pilot. She wondered if he was sleeping. If not, what was he thinking about? He would be considering his options. Oh, the stupid, stupid man. What on earth would happen to him? She wished she hadn’t left like that now. She wished she’d tried harder to talk him round, to make him see that running away, deserting, wasn’t the answer. She also wished she had been more considerate. The man had just crashed his plane. How could she know what that felt like? She was playing no part in this war, as much as it irked her; as desperate as she was to break free of the confines of Invermoray and do something useful. But he was. He was fighting the enemy daily and had just crashed horrifically, almost drowning. How could she know what kind of state of mind was acceptable in that circumstance? He had just needed time to think and she had all but said she wouldn’t help. She hated herself. She had no idea what it was like, this war, not really, stuck out here with nothing to do. She should have been more understanding.

As dawn rolled around Constance pulled aside the heavy velvet curtains that shrouded her bedroom windows. Light streamed into her room through the Splinternet tape that had crisscrossed the large windows ever since war had been declared the year earlier. The housekeeper had been diligent but Constance found it hard to believe German bombers would find Invermoray a worthwhile target. The base at Kinloss and the ships at Lossiemouth held far more interest, surely. She put her hand flat on the cold glass and looked across the loch, through the tree line, in the direction of the ghillie’s cottage. But it was in vain. It could not be seen from the house. The sun rose gently above the mountains in the distance, heralding the morning, making the loch sparkle. He would be leaving soon. Maybe he had gone already.

Her stomach knotted as guilt gripped her. She couldn’t believe what she had done. She couldn’t face the fact she’d just abandoned this man. He had no one to help him. He’d asked her for help. He hadn’t eaten anything. Hadn’t drunk anything. Had the water been shut off at the cottage? He might be in shock. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was probably hoping she’d come back so she could offer to telephone his squadron and take him back. And even if not, he’d been fighting in the skies over England long enough for it to have affected him so badly he was considering deserting. He was clearly traumatised. She had to help him.

Constance brushed her matted hair, which smelled damp and of loch water, threw on any clothes she could find – yanking a blouse and skirt from her wardrobe and hopping her way into her brown lace-up shoes. She tried to pin her hair as she moved down the stairs, two at a time, but she was making a poor effort of it.

From the bottom of the stairs she heard her father’s bedroom door open. She glanced upward in the direction of the sound. He must have taken himself to bed at some point and was now emerging for the day. The rest of the family and staff would be up and moving, if not already. Constance moved quicker, fearful of being seen. How would she explain where she was going, and why? At the side of the house she took the path that skirted the formal gardens. It would take her longer to reach the cottage but there was less chance of being seen. Constance avoided the loch shore, moving between the trees. When she was out of sight of the house she ran the rest of the way, bracken snapping under her feet as she sprinted through the wood.

He might already be gone. What time was it? She didn’t have her watch. Five o’clock in the morning? When she reached the ghillie’s cottage Constance almost slammed into the wooden door, she was running so fast. Breathless, she lifted the latch, pushed open the door and stumbled inside.

CHAPTER 6
August 2020

The door to the library flew open so suddenly it made Kate jump. She’d been gazing so absent-mindedly at the handwritten names in the family Bible that she’d almost forgotten the argument that had been taking place in the entrance hall between mother and son. James stood in the doorway and seethed. He appeared unable to speak, his lips forming a thin line. The pen mark that crossed through Constance McLay’s name was forgotten as Kate closed the book gently – expecting her marching orders from the sullen James.

It was Liz who broke the silence, stepping round her son and across the threshold of the room. ‘James will take you to your room, show you where things are, give you a bit of a tour. Perhaps you’d like to freshen up after a day’s travel? And then we’ll dine together, in about an hour or so. Just pop down to the kitchen. We only use the dining room for big occasions. Not that your arriving isn’t a big occasion but … well … you know what I mean.’ Liz blushed.

Kate found it hard to mask her surprise. She glanced at James. So, she was allowed to stay. The vein throbbing at the side of his temple indicated he was less than happy about being overruled by his mother and he now stood in a silence that spoke volumes.

‘Thanks, Liz. That sounds lovely,’ Kate replied, pointedly ignoring acknowledging the son in case the slightest thing she said sent him over the edge entirely. James merely stared at her, turned and walked into the hallway.

‘Are you coming?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Or am I showing myself to your room?’

Almost running after him, Kate found him about five stairs up, holding a suitcase in each hand, his chin pointed up as he ascended the staircase. Portraits lined the walls along the staircase but James moved at such a speed Kate wasn’t able to get a very good look at them. Two of the paintings were faintly interesting: a young woman in a silver-grey evening dress, dark hair rolled and clipped near her ears and her brown eyes looking directly at Kate – or the artist, depending on how you thought about it.

The portrait by the side of it was of a very good-looking young man facing side-on in a sky blue RAF uniform. Both looked as if they’d been painted in the 1940s. Kate paused to take in the brushstrokes and the genial expression on the young man’s face. The pictures had been moved about fairly recently. The paint surrounding these was a different colour, brighter than the rest of the slightly faded paint on the wall, indicating that the portraits that had hung there not long before had been covering a larger space.

Then Kate noticed she was alone. James had disappeared entirely and despite trying for an air of elegance, she scurried up the stairs to look for him. At the top of the staircase the corridor stretched both left and right. Kate turned left and stared down the lengthy hallway. Faded, almost threadbare red runner carpet ran down the centre of the corridor and pot plants on tall brass stands stood by the walls. Old framed pencil drawings hung between the numerous dark wooden doors that probably led to bedrooms. But there was no James. Kate turned back on herself and saw he was at the other end of the corridor past the stairs, watching her but making no sound. He’d let her turn completely the wrong way and had simply waited for her to realise. Kate smiled thinly despite the fact she was really starting to dislike James.

He opened a door and walked inside, taking her suitcases with him. Kate moved quickly down the corridor and then wondered why she was hurrying when he was behaving so childishly. She began ambling, looking at the pencil sketches of the estate that lined this side of the hallway. After about thirty seconds, James peered round the door to see where she was. She saw him out of the corner of her eye but made no move to acknowledge him. She didn’t know why he brought out this side in her. James folded his arms and exhaled loudly. When she didn’t move, he coughed to attract her attention.

‘This,’ he called as he moved back inside, ‘is your room.’

Kate entered and stood at the threshold to the chintziest room she had ever seen. She was reminded of the old IKEA television advert that advised customers to chuck out their chintz. This was the ‘before’ picture. But while the room was overcrowded with floral eiderdowns and doilies on surfaces, the walls were devoid of any decoration at all. No pictures – nothing. The bare walls lessened the homeliness but Kate knew she couldn’t actually feel homesick, because her empty little one-bed flat had never truly felt like home. She supposed it was because unhealthy working hours coupled with far too much socialising meant she never really spent much time in her flat. It had always been more of a crash pad. If she stopped to think about it, even when she lived at home with her parents she’d always been nomadic, catching last-minute cheapish weekends away with friends. Surrounded here by peaks and mountains, clean fresh air and a bedroom that was bigger than her entire flat, she might feel at home, might be able to settle even if it was only for six months. She glanced at James, his expression fixed. Perhaps not.

‘The bathroom’s through here.’ James opened a connecting door and pointed. Kate followed him, walking past an ornate four-poster bed, housing an abundance of floral cushions. She looked inside the bathroom. It was white, mock Victoriana with brass taps, which was something at least. She was half expecting an avocado suite given the décor in the rest of the room.

‘Very cosy,’ she said truthfully.

But James was already at the bedroom door, one foot on the hallway carpet. ‘I take it you don’t want the grand tour now.’ He couldn’t meet her gaze.

‘Well, not if you don’t want to,’ she conceded.

‘I don’t,’ he replied.

Kate laughed, more out of shock than anything else. At least the man was honest.

‘My mother tells me you’re on a six-month contract – is that right?’ James looked directly at her.

‘Yes,’ she offered tentatively. Though the job offer was on a six-month basis, she wasn’t strictly on a contract. She didn’t want to highlight that in case James clung on to that small detail and then tried to get rid of her again.

‘We’ve got the next six months to cover the tour then, haven’t we?’ James turned and left.

Kate’s mouth dropped open and she was left staring into the empty corridor where he had just been standing. ‘Wow,’ she breathed. How could anyone be that rude? This wasn’t the way she’d been brought up, and given how charming and friendly Liz was, Kate suspected that wasn’t the way James had been brought up either. Why was he like this then? She sat on the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands. A lesser person would have been scared off, of that she was sure. Perhaps James would warm to her, she hoped. Perhaps not. Either way, she couldn’t make any rash decisions about leaving now. She would at least have to stick it out for a few weeks and see how the land lay; see how much involvement James had in the running of the estate and how closely she would be expected to work with him. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

Somewhere far below, a dinner gong sounded. Kate’s eyes opened and she blinked at her chintz-clad bedroom, lit by the dim yellow glow from the lamp on the side table. She had only meant to rest her eyes for a few moments, but with horror she realised she must have fallen asleep. The nap hadn’t been enough to recharge her empty batteries after a day of travel and she stretched and yawned in succession. While the flight up to Inverness had been mercifully short, the collective time spent travelling to and from and actually at the airport had been tiring.

Crossing to the window, she looked out to see it was growing dark. In the grounds, she could make out some kind of formal garden with a beautiful clipped-hedge parterre that sloped down towards a loch. The moon began its ascent over the mountains and darts of silver light shifted across the water as it lapped gently. The village, somewhere in the distance on the other side of the forest, from what she remembered from the drive, provided no light. The house was utterly remote.

The smell of something delicious cooking drifted into Kate’s bedroom as she opened the door and hurried downstairs, realising she’d unwittingly ignored the dinner gong.

‘Oh good,’ Liz declared warmly as Kate entered the kitchen. ‘You heard it. You should have seen the dust that flew as I rang it. We’ve not used it in years.’

Kate smiled and looked around the large, homely kitchen. It seemed like a relic from a prior decade. Wooden cupboards and Formica worktops were cluttered with cookbooks; some old, some very new. The new Ottolenghi cookbook was upright and propped open with a red wine bottle. Kate had that book in her flat, although she’d never actually cooked from it because she was out so much. She’d bought it because it had a drawing of a huge lemon on the front and went well with her pale yellow kitchen. Only now she supposed her brother was enjoying the use of it, along with her flat, while she was in Scotland. Kate wasn’t sure how long she was actually going to be here given James’s permafrosty reception. His back had been turned since she entered the room, as he flicked through a newspaper on the worktop.

‘Did you get a bit of rest?’ Liz asked.

‘Mm, yes, thanks.’

‘I’m glad. James has made lasagne. I hope that’s OK?’ Liz said.

‘That sounds love—’ But Kate was cut off mid-sentence as James swung round.

‘You’re not one of those bloody vegetarians are you?’ he said accusingly.

‘No.’ Kate held his gaze wondering if he would have lost it completely if she had said she was.

He spun back round and nudged an old yellow Labrador out of the way with his foot as he opened the Aga door. ‘That’s something then, I suppose,’ he muttered towards the oven. The mouth-watering smell was coming from the lasagne bubbling in the dish.

Kate bent down to the scratch the dog’s ears as it ambled towards her and sat at her feet, investigating her silently. His tail thumped slowly against the flagstone floor and when it became clear Kate had no treats to give, he picked himself up and moved back to his bed on the other side of the kitchen. The scrubbed wooden table in the middle of the room had already been laid for dinner and Liz gestured for them to sit.

James placed the lasagne dish on a trivet and stared at it, as if he wasn’t sure whom he should serve first. ‘Help yourself,’ he said eventually.

Kate hadn’t realised how famished she was until now. The packet of pretzels on the flight up from London had been the last thing she’d eaten.

‘Thanks, I will.’

‘Do you drink?’ James asked suddenly.

The serving spoon hovered between lasagne dish and Kate’s plate as she stopped mid-serve. ‘Er? What?’ she asked.

‘Wine? Do you drink wine? You work in PR in London so you must drink gallons of the stuff, but one doesn’t like to assume.’

Kate couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny or rude, but a laugh escaped her lips regardless. ‘Well, yes, I do actually. I mean, not lots—’ she tried to save the situation ‘—but I do like wine. Are you … offering some?’ God, he was hard to talk to.

He nodded. ‘Red? Goes nicely with lasagne.’ He looked toward the cookbook where the bottle of wine stood. ‘I could open some if you want?’

Kate was about to say she would only have some if they were having some when Liz saved the situation from a politeness tipping point by hopping up and bringing the bottle to the table, turning back to fetch three wine glasses.

‘Good to see your manners haven’t failed you completely.’ Liz told James as she opened the bottle. It made a satisfying plucking noise as the cork was withdrawn. He shrugged and started tucking into his plate of lasagne.

The clock on the wall ticked away, providing an awkward soundtrack for the dinner. Kate’s PR training kicked in and she started on the small talk.

‘This is wonderful,’ she said truthfully.

‘Thanks,’ James mumbled.

Silence threatened to engulf the room again.

‘James is really rather talented in the kitchen,’ Liz enthused. ‘I joke he’ll make someone a lovely wife one day.’

He shrugged then shovelled another fork load of lasagne into his mouth.

As Liz and Kate continued small talk amongst themselves about the weather and the village nearby, James practically hoovered his food down. Kate stole small glances at him every now and again. He’d probably be quite good-looking, if only he’d smile. She glanced back at him a few minutes later and found him looking directly at her. ‘Right. That’s me done,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’m off to bed.’

He put his plate in the sink, took his wine glass with him and left the kitchen. He was avoiding her already; Kate was sure of it.

If Liz hadn’t been sitting there Kate would have breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God he’d gone. He knew how to suck the atmosphere from a room.

‘Oh, don’t mind him,’ Liz said, obviously spotting her expression. ‘He’s going to take a little while to get used to the idea of you being here. Between you, me and the gatepost,’ Liz said quietly, ‘he feels a bit undermined.’

‘Undermined?’ Kate helped herself to another portion of lasagne and Liz did the same.

‘He’s used to ruling the roost. Whole teams of people worked under him at the office. Before he left to come and help me. But of course you’re now here, and you’re an expert in a field James knows absolutely nothing about. So he’s not really sure how he’s going to manage you.’

‘I see,’ Kate said. But she didn’t really see and wasn’t sure how she was going to alleviate James’s concern. ‘Well,’ Kate tried. ‘I’m only here for six months so the plan is to sort of … get you started on the PR side of things – make sure my travel contacts in the media are onside over the next few months, make sure they visit and write glowing reviews, introduce you to all of them when they visit so you have an ongoing relationship with them. I plan to make decent headway and then I’ll hand over the reins to you and James. Hopefully at the end of my time here, you’ll be beating visitors off with sticks and might be able to hire someone locally just for a few days a week.’

‘I know, I know, dear. We talked about this on the phone. All the other candidates droned on and on about how they’d need to move here permanently. How they’d be expecting a resettlement package and all that.’

Kate was pleased her honesty had paid off and she hadn’t been as offensively demanding as some of the other applicants had obviously been.

‘So don’t worry about the nitty-gritty at this stage. For now,’ Liz continued, looking conspiratorial, ‘we need to work out how to get the visitors in and then we need to worry about the PR after that.’

‘Well, that should be easy,’ Kate said confidently. ‘Good PR and a turnaround in visitors go hand in hand.’ She knew her job inside out. It was a rare kind of travel journalist who said no to a free all-expenses-paid mini-break with their partner in exchange for a decent review. And with decent reviews, came an upsurge in tourism – unless there was something very wrong with a hospitality property. Kate could do this in her sleep. And the rest of it, planning out themed articles months in advance in line with what journalists were requesting for their features, that was just good relationships and diarising. ‘You did mention on the phone you didn’t have much in the way of visitors and I admit you are very out of the way. You weren’t too sure about the events programme and we were going to take a look over the bedrooms to see what could improve but …’ Kate cut to the chase. ‘Liz, how many visitors does Invermoray House get?’

‘None, dear.’

‘None? Oh I don’t just mean out of season,’ Kate clarified, wondering why Liz was quoting the unimpressive out-of-season number. Although none, even for that time of year, was a worry.

‘We don’t get any visitors at all. Over any time period,’ Liz explained. ‘We don’t have any kind of events programme. We have never opened the house to paying visitors. We’ve never offered overnight stays. I love the idea of turning us into some sort of boutique bed and breakfast but we wouldn’t even know where to begin. I mean, do we need some kind of catering licence from the council to offer breakfasts or afternoon teas? But for now, what you see is what we are: a family home that needs to start paying its way. That’s why you’re here. We need you to help us do all of this. We need you to save Invermoray House.’

CHAPTER 7

What on earth had she got herself into? She’d done this job for years. But normally she turned up, following in the footsteps of a well-executed business plan, was pretty much thrust a strategy and then off she’d run and drum up interest with the glossy magazines, bloggers and the Sunday supplements. She’d take journalists out for lunch. She’d organise snazzy, all-expenses-paid press trips and then sit back and wait for the editorial coverage to roll in. She’d had it quite easy. She would be the first to admit to herself; although she’d never dared tell anyone else that, especially her clients.

But this was different. If Liz had outlined exactly how amateur this operation was, would she have come? God, no. She was a publicist, not a business strategist. She was the cherry on the cake, not the cake itself.

Kate looked at her watch as she lay in bed, unable to sleep. Ordinarily, it would be too late to text someone, but she knew Jenny would be awake and doing something slightly bonkers such as an all-night spin cycle class. ‘Help,’ Kate messaged. ‘They have no idea what they’re doing.’ She paused before typing again. ‘And neither do I,’ she finished with a flourish before sending a follow-up with a very brief summary of the situation.

Kate watched three dots appear on the screen, indicating Jenny was composing a reply.

‘You’ve handled worse than this, I’m sure,’ she replied. ‘Remember that diabolical spa that thought they were good enough to get coverage in Vogue? You can do this blindfolded. Do you need more in the way of a pep talk or can I go to my trampoline disco class now?’

Kate replied with a heart symbol and left Jenny to her latest late-night exercise fad.

She wasn’t ready to sleep yet and was annoyed with herself that she’d forgotten to ask Liz what the Wi-Fi code was for the house. Kate actually rather suspected there wasn’t one. After trying unsuccessfully to connect her laptop to her phone’s 3G, she gave up and just scrolled through sites using the hazy 3G on her phone. She had one bar of signal and so had to wait an interminable amount of time for a page to load, but at least it was loading. She was looking up famous country houses, to see what they were doing to drum up business. She couldn’t possibly be expected to formulate the entire business strategy, could she? If so, what the hell had James been doing until now, if not that very thing? Liz had said he was some hotshot who’d come home to Invermoray to run the house. Run it into the ground, clearly.

Kate thought of all the country houses she’d visited over the past few years, though there weren’t that many. She googled Longleat, near Bath, remembering it thrived thanks mainly to a Safari Park. That was out of the question. She moved on to Chatsworth, Blenheim Palace and then looked more locally at Cawdor Castle before realising she was completely out of her depth.

This was a disaster. She’d been hired under false pretences. Although she suspected Liz had no idea of the difference between PR and business strategy and now they were all in this mess together.

She switched her phone off and put her head in her hands. She had two options. She could give in, explain to Liz that she’d been mistakenly hired for a job she wasn’t qualified to do. Or she could breathe deeply and be pragmatic.

The sun streamed through a chink in the curtains and Kate blinked and looked at her watch. It was early, but not so early she could try to grab forty more winks before starting her first day at work. She’d had very little sleep, had been up all night formulating a rough kind of plan and had engaged in a stern chat with herself on more than one occasion to force herself to continue. She wasn’t going to give in. For one thing, she could imagine the smug joy on James’s face when she confessed she had no idea what she was doing and that it was probably best for all concerned that she drive back to the airport and not darken their door again. The image of his self-satisfied face riled her. But it was something else stopping her. Kate always made a point of giving clients the best service she could offer. She’d always told them that she treated their business as if it was her own. And she meant it. What would Kate try to do if Invermoray was her house?

And so, with careful, methodical planning, throughout the night she’d filled a notebook with short-term, and long-term ideas for raising cash. In short, she created something vaguely resembling a business plan. She’d made a point of not sleeping until she’d run out of ideas. And the ideas kept flowing, which meant she hadn’t slept. So it was with an exhausted excitement that she stood zombie-like in the shower and tried not to fall asleep upright.

‘I can do this,’ Kate whispered as she stood in the kitchen and loaded the silver cafetière with coffee, ‘I can do this.’ In the morning light things weren’t as bad as she thought. Often she’d make suggestions to clients about how to tweak their business. She understood getting people through doors. What they wanted. What they needed. With the hash they’d made of it at Invermoray so far, things could only get better. Kate had rallied her confidence and had chosen to wear skinny jeans tucked into ankle boots and her nicest shirt, which wasn’t too crumpled from being packed away. She needed to find out where the iron was. Overall, she hoped the outfit conveyed seriousness to her role without being too staid.

‘I can do this,’ she repeated.

‘It’s not that complicated,’ James said as he entered the kitchen, startling her so that she spilled coffee granules over the counter.

‘Fill with boiling water, leave a few minutes and then push the plunger,’ he continued.

‘Right, yes.’ She knew how to make coffee.

‘Jolly good,’ he said dryly. ‘Enough in there for me?’ His tone was lighter, not by a lot, but he certainly wasn’t on as much of an offensive as he had been last night.

Kate made them both coffee as James scraped a kitchen chair out and sat down at the table. Maybe this wouldn’t be as awkward as yesterday.

‘So …’ he started and then stopped.

‘So …?’ Kate echoed. She was wrong. The awkwardness was seeping back into the room.

‘So you’re basically the cavalry,’ James said with a thin smile. ‘Come to rescue us because we’ve cocked it up?’

‘Oh no,’ Kate said quickly. ‘No no no. I see us as more of a team …’

‘Pfft,’ James replied.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. And it was hardly fair given she didn’t know she was meant to be the cavalry.

‘Do you know,’ he started, looking out the kitchen window, ‘I gave up my job to come back here. I don’t know why now. I’ve been here all of five minutes, I think I’ve just about worked out where things are going wrong, I’ve sorted what I believe is a decent plan of attack and then without a chance to do anything about it I get …’

‘You get …?’ Kate prompted.

‘I get you … to be blunt … thrust upon me. Who’s running who? Who’s in charge? You or me? I’ve got no idea. But if you think you can just strut in here and throw orders around, you’ve got another—’

‘That’s really not why I’m here,’ Kate cut in. And then she noted what he’d said. ‘I’m sorry, you’ve only been here five minutes? What do you mean?’

‘Three months,’ James said. ‘I’ve been back for all of three months. I wasn’t going to. I came back after Dad died, got things sorted for Mum. But I had a job. A life. One I enjoyed, so I went back to that. And then Mum issued her call to arms and like a dutiful son I said I’d come and help. So I apologise for my hostility towards you yesterday, but I want you to see it from my point of view. I wasn’t expecting … well … you know.’ He gestured towards Kate and then sipped the coffee she handed him. But he clearly wasn’t done and she watched him take a deep breath. ‘In truth, I wasn’t expecting to be told I was shit quite so soon, especially when I don’t really want to be here.’

Kate nodded slowly. He’d been here for three months. Which meant that when she’d been hired a month ago and had worked her notice period, he’d only been here for two months when Liz had interviewed her. It sounded cut-throat but perhaps Liz just knew things needed to move at a quicker pace than they had been then.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t know what to say. Only, I think I’ll be good at this and—’

James’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You think you’ll be good at this?’ he repeated. ‘What the hell does that mean? Have you not done this before?’

Kate was spared answering as Liz arrived. ‘Ah, good morning, all. Kate, shall we have the tour after breakfast and then we can talk plans as we go?’

Across the kitchen table, James’s eyes narrowed.

CHAPTER 8

They moved through the house, Kate clutching her notebook and pen, writing things down as Liz and she discussed plans. Kate tried to keep the horrified expression from her face as they looked in some of the other guest bedrooms that were even chintzier than her own. Most had en suites, which would be a blessing when it came to offering bed and breakfast packages. No guest wants to traipse down a hall in the middle of the night in search of a loo. It doesn’t exactly scream luxury and so Kate offered up a silent word of thanks to the McLay ancestors who’d seen fit to install additional bathrooms.

The polished ballroom and well-planted orangery were in good condition, although a pane of glass had smashed on the far side of the orangery and had been boarded up. Kate resisted asking how long it had been like that. A while, she suspected, and made a note in her pad to get it fixed. This was really a job James and Liz should have already tackled, but as she moved further through the house with Liz it was clear they were at sixes and sevens and Kate would have to take on a lot of everyday tasks if they were going to get Invermoray suitable for visiting journalists and paying guests.

By the time they finished the tour of the house, Kate’s notebook was full of jobs that needed doing, the first of which was to organise the official paperwork to change Invermoray House from a residential property to a bed and breakfast.

‘You can give that job to James,’ Liz said. ‘He’s good at that sort of thing.’

Curiosity got the better of Kate. ‘What did James do? Before he came back home?’

‘Oh, something in computers,’ Liz said dismissively. ‘He’s been in Hong Kong living the high life and, to be honest, I never quite understood what it was he did, tapping away all day on a keyboard. All sounded very dull, but like most dull things, it made him an awful lot of money.’

Did Liz have another reason for calling James back home other than helping run the house? Kate would try and work that one out later.

‘Shall we look at the gardens?’ Liz suggested.

Kate nodded. She had seen them, briefly, from her window last night and was rather excited to see them in daylight. As she walked, her mind whirred. Where was all this money James had made then? And why wasn’t he ploughing it into the estate? Perhaps it was wrong of her to assume he would spend his hard-earned cash on his mother’s house, even if it would be his one day, especially if he didn’t want to be here – a fact he had made abundantly clear.

The ornamental gardens were a view to behold. Kate had been expecting another ramshackle sight but the gardens were lush and well maintained, the hedges clipped in linear fashion.

‘This is my passion project,’ Liz confessed. ‘I do spend rather a lot of time gardening.’

‘I can see. It’s beautiful,’ Kate said softly. The gardens, bordered by angular hedges, swept down towards the loch. At the centre was a statue of a globe held by three cherubs. Dahlias, hydrangeas and begonia beds held a stunning array of peach, pink and orange flowers.

‘I’ll confess I probably spend far too much time out here, and not enough in there.’ Liz gestured back towards the house. ‘I’ve probably spent too long with my head in the sand. Or the flowers. After my husband died, I’m not sure I was really up to it … saving the house, I mean. In fact, I’m not sure I understood the house needed saving until recently. It all became a bit topsy-turvy without me really noticing. By which point James had come back, and seemed better equipped to handle the day-to-day running of the house – quite willing too. And I think I rather left him to it.’

Liz brightened. ‘But not anymore. I’ve placed too much pressure at his door and now it’s time he had help. Not that he accepts it, of course. But in time he’ll come round. Now, I wonder if I can leave you in James’s capable hands for the remainder of the tour?’

At this, Kate’s heart plummeted into her stomach. ‘Of course.’

‘Good, I want you to see the ghillie’s cottage. I do think it would make rather a good holiday let but it’s a bit of a journey round the far side of the loch so I think it’s best James drives you.’

Kate’s heart lifted itself back into place at this. A holiday cottage. She knew that would bring in much-needed revenue, although given the state the rest of the house was in, she dreaded seeing the condition of the cottage.

James was in the estate office, a low-level outbuilding made of the same grey stone as the main house and nestled between the house and the disused stables. Kate was distracted by the stables’ distressed wooden doors hanging off their hinges. Through the open, wonky doors, she could see the stable was being used for storage. Furniture and all sorts of boxes stood piled up at odd angles. It may be worth a ransack later, to see if anything could be salvaged and used. There were clearly a lot of items and she was starting to see how easy it was to hoard. Generations of McLays had been adept at collecting.

The junk in the stables was nothing to the carnage that awaited her in the estate office. Liz led the way but it was a squeeze to get inside the room. Boxes of paperwork and filing cabinets jostled for space. There was barely an inch of floor. They picked their way across the room towards the set of two large mahogany desks where James sat facing them, watching warily as they approached. Kate was careful not to slip on pieces of paper that had obviously fallen to the floor from the piles of paperwork that needed a more permanent home.

James closed his laptop slowly and gave both Kate and his mother a look that indicated he was being ambushed. Why was this man always on the offensive? Why the near-open hostility? Kate knew he felt replaced, although if he gave her half a second to explain, and his mother too for that matter, he’d be able to understand that she wasn’t there to bring the house down around his ears, but to work with him to save it. She would make a point of convincing him to like her later. Even if it killed her, Kate had to get him onside.

‘James, darling,’ Liz placated.

James lifted an eyebrow, making it clear he knew he was being buttered up.

‘Would you be a dear and take Kate over to the ghillie’s cottage? Explain what you’ve done and what you’ve been doing in general?’

James took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Yeah. Sure. I’ll take Kate over and explain myself to her.’

‘Goodo,’ Liz said as she left, entirely misunderstanding his tone.

‘I don’t need you to explain yourself,’ Kate said once Liz had gone. ‘Not to me. I just …’ She paused and tried a less flustered approach. ‘I think you and I have got off on the wrong foot.’

He put his arms behind his head. ‘Do you, now?’

‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘You don’t? You enjoy meeting new people and there being a permanent air of awkwardness?’

‘Who says it’s awkward?’

Kate looked at him wide-eyed.

‘And who says it’s permanent?’ James continued. ‘By all accounts you’re only here for six months.’

It was Kate’s turn to breathe deeply. ‘Are you always like this?’ she muttered under her breath.

‘Pretty much,’ he replied.

‘Good to know. Listen,’ she said, ‘forget about the tour. Just hand me the keys to the cottage and I’ll go on my own.’

‘The key’s under the mat but you’ll never find the cottage on your own.’

‘We’ll see. Where is it exactly?’

‘It’s on the far side of the loch, through the trees. But there’s no path from the loch anymore. The footpath that once was there has overgrown and the ferns and trees have grown up around it. The cottage is almost hidden now. I’ve been driving round from the woodland. I’ve cut a vehicle path through it and hacked my way through the rest to make a footpath to the front door. Take the Land Rover if you want. Just, try and drive a bit more carefully than you normally do.’

Kate ignored that last comment. ‘I’m sure I’ll find it on foot. I could do with the walk.’

‘OK, so you’re not listening,’ he said, exasperation tingeing his voice. ‘You won’t see it. You’ll miss it completely.’

‘Key’s under the mat you say?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, be my guest.’

Kate had never been so glad to get out of a place in her life. James was positively hostile, rude and unbelievably arrogant. And so … knowing. She breathed down the clean highland air and walked round towards the ornamental garden in order to find the path down to the loch.

‘You won’t find it,’ Kate mimicked James as she slipped through the arched opening in the hedge towards the shore. Was the cottage invisible then? Stupid man. She walked along by the water’s edge. The sun streamed down onto the expanse of still water. Kate paused to take in the view, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face and arms. Despite James’s behaviour, her shoulders were unstiffening and she felt her body relax. A few moments standing in front of a peaceful loch were far more effective than the weekly yoga class she’d been taking back in London. A walk through the woods was just what the doctor ordered and she skirted the loch, feeling the comforting crunch of pebbles and shingle under her boots.

On the far side, Kate turned back by the tree line and faced the house. It really was a handsome building: imposing, baronial, stately – especially from here, where the view across the water and the ornamental garden gave the house an immaculate air, masking the near dilapidation inside. Kate smiled at her luck having landed a job here, then headed into the woods.

How long had she been walking? Half an hour? An hour? She really hadn’t thought this through at all. The large pine trees loomed skinny and tall and their leaves rustled overhead as a hint of a breeze swept through before growing silent almost as fast as it had started. The ground was blanketed in green spindly ferns. It was a job to know where to place her feet, hoping they landed correctly on the ground, out of sight, beneath the deep greenery. Every few yards or so a clump of tall purple foxgloves grew, unexpectedly sturdy and tall between rocks and crevices. Further along, Kate smiled to see thistles, feeling like a tourist at having spotted Scotland’s national flower. The purple flowers crowned them, completely juxtaposed with the rest of their oversized spiky appearance, transforming them into a thing of unexpected beauty. A large rock protruded by a series of trees, grouped together. She had passed this; she was sure she had. Was she going round in circles? What had first appeared striking woodland now appeared almost malevolent.

Kate stood still and listened. To her left she could hear the soft sound of running water, which couldn’t be the loch. She was too far inside the forest. Other than the sound of moving water, there was silence. She walked in the direction of the sound to find a wide stream running through the woodland, its water tumbling over rocks, and its mossy banks dipped gently, easily accessible. Kate felt a bit like Bear Grylls all of a sudden and knelt, putting down her notebook and pen and dipping her hands into the cold water. There was Bear Grylls and then there was idiocy, so she sniffed the water dubiously. It smelt fine and, parched, she drank it. It didn’t taste odd so she cupped her hands into the water again, feeling rather proud of herself at the same time.

‘So you can take the city out of the girl,’ James said from behind her. Still crouching, Kate whipped her head round. He smiled and there was a flicker of a handsome man hiding underneath his sullen exterior. And then the smile left his face and frown lines returned as if he’d just remembered he was waging his own private war against her. His Labrador bounded up to Kate, gave her a nudge with his nose and then turned his attentions to the river and began drinking.

‘Sometimes,’ Kate replied with a small smile, drying her hands on her jeans before retrieving her pad and pen as she stood. ‘Where did you come from?’ She glanced around. He’d not been following her haphazard route on foot; of that she was sure.

He gestured over his shoulder. ‘I drove round. I just knew you’d get lost.’

‘Not that lost,’ Kate countered. ‘You found me.’

‘Not easily. I’ve been in these woods for about twenty minutes. And you’re about ten minutes’ walk from the cottage. In the wrong direction.’

‘Oh,’ she said quietly.

‘I did try and tell you,’ James said.

They stood and looked at each other. He was obviously a man who had to have the last word and Kate wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

‘What’s your dog’s name?’ She changed the subject.

James smiled. ‘Whisky. I didn’t name him. He was my dad’s dog. He’s just sort of become mine since Dad died.’

‘Good name,’ Kate said. ‘Appropriate, given we’re probably surrounded by distilleries.’

‘True. Although depending on the mood he was in, it was often difficult to tell if Dad was yelling for someone to bring him a stiff drink or if he was summoning the dog for a walk.’ James looked wistful and as he smiled there was a hint of mellowness in his eyes. He was almost pleasant when he let his defensive barriers down.

‘Shall we look at the cottage then?’ Kate suggested.

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ James replied as he turned. She followed him. ‘It’s not been lived in since before the war. The house hasn’t had a ghillie since then, so it’s fallen into disrepair. I’m in the process of doing it up. I want to get it ready to let, then that’s one thing ticked off the never-ending list of jobs. We’ll get some incoming cash and it can help fund us while we sort the main house and whatever else we intend to do.’

Kate nodded. ‘That actually sounds like a good idea,’ she confessed.

‘Actually?’ James queried. ‘You weren’t expecting me to have come up with a decent plan myself?’

She sighed. It was disappointing how quickly he reverted back to defensive. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Anyway,’ he continued as they trampled through the thick undergrowth, snapping twigs and dodging nettles as they trod. ‘As the main house started to fall away, so did the ghillie’s cottage. After the war, there weren’t as many staff, no ghillie, no real estate management – either land or financial from what I could gather. It was a case of trying to eke the coffers out as far as they’d stretch.

‘Even my father, when he arrived some years later, with all good intentions, didn’t have it in him to cast his eyes further than Invermoray House itself.’

‘When he arrived?’ Kate questioned. ‘What do you mean?’

James looked at Kate as they walked. He was quite tall and she could feel herself almost jogging to keep up with his long strides.

‘Has Mum not explained the family history to you?’

‘No.’

He exhaled. ‘God, where do I start?’

‘At the beginning?’ She smiled.

James raised an eyebrow and half-smiled in return as he launched into the story.

‘The estate never used to be Dad’s. He lived and grew up in a house in London,’ James said. ‘Dad was an artist …’ This explained the modern artwork around the sitting room, Kate thought. ‘Not the tortured kind, more the jovial kind,’ he continued. ‘But certainly the kind that never made any money. He and Mum lived happily in London with holes in the ceiling and the boiler forever going wrong. It’s why Invermoray’s fared the same in terms of maintenance. I think it’s an attitude thing. Anyway, he inherited Invermoray in the 1980s, when relations of his passed away. Very distant relations from what I could work out. Either way, it was his. Dad quite fancied playing lord of the manor and so we sold the London house and decamped completely up here when I was a kid. In truth, I’ve never quite forgiven them.’

They stopped as they reached a clearing. ‘I just assumed it had been in your family for generations,’ Kate said.

‘It has been, since it was built in the early Victorian era. But for the other branch of the family, the McLays. Our last name was … is … Langley but the will asked for the McLay family name to be carried on, bolted on to ours. You can’t dictate that kind of thing from beyond the grave, the solicitor said, but Dad did it regardless; felt he owed it to them. So we became Langley-McLay, officially. Dad used it. Mum still does. But I don’t.’

‘Why not?’ Kate asked.

‘I suppose I felt like an idiot, changing my name, and a bit resentful at having moved up here. Invermoray never really felt like home. Never really felt like me.’

‘So who were the McLays then?’ Kate was curious now. ‘Who asked you to adopt their name in exchange for the house, which by the way sounds like a really fair trade?’

‘Fair trade? It’s the worst kind of trade. This house is a bloody drain on us. Always has been.’ James screwed up his face as he thought. ‘It’s some boring connection,’ he told her. ‘One of Dad’s cousins or something like that. He and his wife were elderly. I think he died in the early Eighties and then she followed not long after. It’s all a bit odd really if you think about it. They had two grown-up children, I believe. There’s portraits of them in the house. Mum found the pictures buried in the attic a while back.’

Kate remembered the portraits on the stairs, the young man in RAF uniform, the girl in the silver-grey dress. She wondered if they were who James meant.

‘They should have inherited, one or the other of them, according to Mum,’ James continued. ‘But for one reason or another they’d lost touch with their parents, or maybe died. I’m not sure. There was a family rumour they had been disinherited years and years earlier but Dad and his parents didn’t take it seriously. So it was a complete shock when the line of inheritance missed out the McLays’ direct descendants for whatever reason, skipped sideways and landed on us Langleys.’

Kate hadn’t been paying too much attention to her surroundings. Instead she’d been entranced by James’s strange tale. It was with some surprise that she found they had reached the cottage. James had been right. From the direction of the loch, the hedges had tangled into thicket and had built up to a high level, camouflaging it from view. It was unlikely she would have seen it had she been alone. Instead they had doubled round and approached the cottage from the direction of the road that ran to the front of the estate. James’s battered Land Rover was parked some distance away on the track. It was a marvel he’d managed to locate her really.

‘Thank you,’ Kate said.

He frowned. ‘What for?’

‘Making the effort to find me, out there.’ She gestured to what she had now decided was The Wilderness.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. You might have found it eventually.’ He raised his eyebrows theatrically. ‘Then again … you might not.’

She couldn’t help but laugh.

James bent down and pulled the brass key out from underneath the mat.

‘That’s a really brave place to keep it,’ Kate said. ‘Anyone could find it.’

‘Out here?’ He rolled his eyes as he unlocked the thick wooden door. ‘You couldn’t.’ He looked pleased with his own joke. ‘Besides, it’s not here permanently. I left it there so the roofer could finish and pick up his tools. At least it’s watertight now. As I said—’ he indicated the cottage ‘—it’s not much.’ James turned the handle and Whisky beat his tail as he caught up with them, impatient to be let inside. ‘In fact some of the ghillie’s stuff from before the war is still here. Dusty. Moth-eaten. The McLays couldn’t be bothered to chuck it all out it seems, and neither could my dad. I did have half a mind that I could tosh the furniture up a bit instead of buying new. Holidaymakers love that reclaimed look, apparently. So don’t be surprised if you think it looks like a museum. Because it does.’

He opened the door, pushed it open and they stepped inside.

CHAPTER 9
August 1940

The cottage door slammed open, the metal catch clanging as it crashed against the stone wall inside. Constance was breathless; she’d been running so hard. In the woods she’d realised with every pounding step that, with a combination of duty and a longing to help him, she was desperate to see the pilot before he left as he’d sworn he would.

‘You’ll never have to see me again,’ he had said. And for one awful moment as Constance stood at the threshold and looked in, she believed it was true. As she’d left the cottage last night he had been drifting to sleep by the armchair. But the space he’d inhabited was now empty. During the night he must have thrown a few more logs on the fire, their charred, smoking remains reduced to dim embers in the grate.

She ran upstairs to see if he had chosen to sleep in the bed, but the bedclothes remained unruffled and the scent of settled dust lingered in the room. With her heart full of disappointment, Constance descended the staircase.

He had gone.

The pilot, Matthew, had moved one of the spindle-backed dining chairs from its position by the kitchen table and over to the fireside. Over the back he had draped her dress. She imagined him picking it up from the floor after she had left, touching it, taking the effort to look around the room, to find something appropriate from which to hang it; putting it a suitable distance from the fire so it would dry easily but not shrink from the proximity to the heat. She touched the dress with her fingertips, wondering at the effort he had made for her; such a small act but it held meaning that Constance couldn’t understand. He hadn’t just left it crumpled on the floor as others might have done. She stood, not quite knowing what she should do next. Somehow, going back to the house, back to her daily life, didn’t feel right. It was almost as if the events of last night, the aircraft disappearing into the water, swimming out to find the pilot, relief at finding him alive, sitting with him in this very room, held meaning, held an opportunity for … something? Not excitement. No. There had been plenty enough of that last night, heart pounding, frightening excitement. But something else nonetheless. The opportunity to be useful, to break free of the confines of the house and to embrace the war effort, even if it was only starting with keeping a stricken pilot safe while he recovered and came to his senses. It was a start. She looked around. All trace of him had gone.

It wasn’t really for Constance to worry about, but she was worried for him. She couldn’t help it. And now she would return home and see Henry, who had stayed the night, and her family at the breakfast table, other than Mother, who always took a tray in her room. Douglas would be talking non-stop about flying, about the ‘Hun’, about training or some such other nonsense. Henry, oh she didn’t know what to do about him, but in all likelihood he would be shooting daggers at her for spurning his advances last night. Or would he remain as confident as ever, as if nothing had happened at all? The boys were due to return back to their base at Kinloss today. Henry had seemed pleased that he’d been posted there, but Douglas was livid. He wanted to be down in the south of England, down in what he called ‘the real thick of it.’ He was desperate for his squadron to be posted almost anywhere other than on his own doorstep.

Constance thought him rather lucky. He wasn’t exactly out of harm’s way up here what with all the docks and Royal Navy Fleets to protect. But he didn’t seem to relish being a defender of his own patch of Scottish sky. She would have given anything to do something for the war. But until it became obligatory for women to join, if it ever became obligatory, Father had forbidden her. ‘Work isn’t for women like you,’ he had said. But Constance was twenty-one now. Didn’t that count for something? Was there really nothing she could do that would take her away from the incessant, stifling boredom of Invermoray? They were no longer travelling down to spend time at the London house each year and most of her friends had joined the war effort, travelling far and wide for whichever of the services they’d entered and sending letters about how they were wearing the ‘most ghastly uniform’, and ‘eating the most frightful rations’. But their letters had been tinged with excitement, happiness, purpose. Father had closed up the London house the moment war was declared, deeming it foolhardy to decamp to a city where bombs may fall any minute. ‘What kind of father would I be?’ he had asked. ‘If I took us into the eye of the storm?’

And so now they were shut up here for the foreseeable future. She felt as though her home was her prison. She would not go back to the house. Not yet. Constance often took herself off on long walks around the loch or the estate, for exercise and for something to do, and so they would not worry for her. She’d gone to bed with the story of her headache and had risen to walk it off. That’s what they’d think. No one would care enough to ask. She folded the gossamer dress over her arm and reluctantly stepped out into the cool morning air. Perhaps the pilot was right. Perhaps running away was the answer?

What if she did as he had done, arrived somewhere in the middle of the night, no one at home any the wiser as to where she had gone? What if she packed a bag and made her way into a city where she might engage in some kind of war work? But what could she do? What were her skills? After her governess, there had been finishing school. That had instructed her how to be fashionable in polite society, what to say and what not to say in her native tongue and in French, which she had promptly forgotten the moment she’d set foot back on Scottish soil, although she had tried so hard to remember. In essence, it had primed her for marriage. But it had given her no useful skill in the middle of war. She thought of her brother and how men were given the gift of thorough education and the expectation that ran alongside it. Constance was expected to do very little and allowed to do even less.

Pinecones crunched underfoot as Constance walked. She knew the forest so well she paid scant attention to her direction. Before long she would find herself at the road that ran along the edge of the woodland. She didn’t want to see a soul. Not that she would. Not since petrol went on the ration almost the very moment war was declared. Many of those living in Invermoray village didn’t have cars anyway. That level of modernity had yet to stretch to her corner of Scotland and there was no danger of the bus passing at this time of day to and from Beauly.

After a while the rumble in her stomach alerted her that she should probably return home. She would sneak into the kitchen and see if she could snaffle a few treats left over from her unwanted birthday party. She would disappear into the pantry, as she often did, and Mrs Fraser – the cook – wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Constance and Douglas were forever below stairs; had been ever since they were children. With hardly any other friends nearby, they had frequented the kitchens and spent time with the loud, laughing Highland staff. It had felt more familiar than above stairs.

With her father’s nose perpetually in a book and her mother attending the plants in the hothouse, Constance had made herself scarce most days when her governess was not present. As a child, as long as she was neither seen nor heard she had elicited no strong words from either parent. And so, with very little else to entertain her, Constance had been taught to skin the rabbits she had caught when out with the ghillie. It had given her a huge sense of silent satisfaction at dinner when she looked at her parents elegantly eating from their plates, not knowing that their daughter had both caught and prepared their food. They would have been horrified and found her some other, proper yet awful way to express her energy or, heaven forbid, employed her governess for the vast majority of the time rather than just a few days of the week.

And then when Douglas had returned home from school at summer and Christmas, Constance’s life had been complete again. He often joked that school had been his undoing and that if he’d stayed behind – like her – it would have made more of a man of him. He followed Constance and the ghillie about the estate, discovering patches of it he’d long since forgotten, helping to keep the deer populace down but closing his eyes at the last minute when he pulled the trigger, the bullets always missing their mark until he gave up one summer and decided, ‘never again’. He’d never quite bought into the much-lauded idea that with no wolves in Scotland anymore it was the estate’s responsibility to keep a check on its own numbers. Constance and the ghillie had admired his sense of decency but had often taken the gun from him and continued the job themselves while Douglas sighed resignedly behind them; happy to help wrap the venison into brown paper and string parcels but preferring to play no part in the animal’s actual death.

It had always been Douglas who had been fussed over by the staff, his time with them precious, before he returned to a school he loathed. She hadn’t minded a bit about that. She was just grateful for her brother’s return – a bit of company for a few short weeks, a few times a year. But that was then, when they were younger, back when they’d had more staff. Now it was just Mrs Fraser and Mrs Campbell – the housekeeper – along with a couple of local daily girls who cleaned for them. But Mrs Fraser had mentioned there’d been rumblings the daily girls were intending to join the war effort. For one thing they thought they would be paid more, which was probably true. Constance didn’t know, but at least then they’d meet people. Other people. Anyone. Whenever Constance mentioned work, she faced an onslaught of argument from her parents. No one married a girl who worked.

Her stomach rumbled again. She realised she hadn’t eaten a morsel last night, what with so many guests to talk to and thoughts of escaping Henry, there simply hadn’t been time.

After she’d eaten something she would sit in the window seat in the library and read or stare out at the loch, which now held a Spitfire within its murky clutches when yesterday, it hadn’t. She wondered if she would ever reveal that to anyone. Perhaps to Douglas, one day. But not yet. She would give the troubled pilot time to move on. She would not be responsible for a search party assembling.

In the middle of the forest, she walked towards the trickle of the river, intending to scoop a few handfuls of water to drink. The ghillie had spent many an hour showing her how to tickle trout out of the river, before he had gone to war with the rest of the male staff, other than the gardener who was too old to fight and the gardener’s boy, who was too young. Eventually Constance had got the hang of gently ushering trout from the stream of flowing water with nothing more than the tips of her fingers. She wondered what her mother and father would say if she did it now, returning casually to the house with tonight’s dinner in her arms. She laughed out loud. She’d be condemned as a heathen.

The splashing of the stream was louder than usual and as she approached she realised that there was someone in there. The sound of blood swooshed in her ears as she realised it was him – the pilot, Matthew. She was overjoyed. He was still here. She still had the chance to help him and to apologise for her appalling behaviour yesterday. He hadn’t seen her but she had seen him. His clothes, or rather the ghillie’s, were piled up on the mossy bank. He was standing facing the other direction and Constance could see he was completely undressed. He was splashing himself clean in the icy cold water.

He hadn’t heard her approach over the rushing of the water so she took the opportunity to move. She would not hail him. His nakedness embarrassed her into moving quickly to stand behind the trunk of a tall tree. She hoped she was hidden. She turned and pushed her back against the trunk, her fingers splayed out behind her, her nails almost dug into the bark as she stared into the forest, full of joy that he was still here; that he hadn’t yet left.

She moved, just a fraction, intending to peer round the trunk – just to see if he had got dressed yet, just to see if it was safe to come out from her impromptu hiding place, but then all thoughts of movement were interrupted.

‘Is there someone there?’ he shouted from the water.

Constance’s chest tightened as she inhaled sharply.

He repeated himself and then, sounding nervous, added, ‘Come out. Show yourself.’

She was trapped. She couldn’t stay here all day hiding in a cowardly fashion but likewise couldn’t just spring out. She stalled, thinking.

‘I swear to God if there’s someone there …’ he called loudly, aiming for threatening, Constance was sure.

‘I …’ Constance called but further words failed her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m here.’

There was no reply. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t see him naked again, she just couldn’t. The embarrassment of it. Her fingernails dug further into the trunk and she stared straight ahead into the forest. The pine trees swayed of their natural accord but she was almost unseeing of anything around her. What was he doing?

The answer became clear as the pilot appeared suddenly in front of her. He’d put his trousers back on but they clung damply and tightly to his skin.

‘What are you doing here? Why have you come back? Are you on your own?’ He looked around nervously, firing questions at her like bullets. His dark hair fell over his face; his eyelashes still held droplets of water, framing his light green eyes.

‘Yes,’ she almost stuttered, shocked that he had sprung at her so quickly. ‘I’m alone.’

He was so close she could feel the heat from his body. He stepped back. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I was worried you’d brought someone.’

‘Why would I?’ Constance asked.

‘To take me in, of course.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

The statement hung in the air between them.

He frowned, inching a fraction towards her. He pushed his brown hair back from his face and water ran down his neck. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. Although she did know. He’d seemed so fragile of mind, so bewildered, so shocked by his ordeal last night. He’d talked nonsense of running from his duties. Perhaps he just needed time. And if so, she could give him that. Time was something she had plenty of.

CHAPTER 10

Constance stood by the tree. She’d removed her splayed hands from the trunk but resisted the urge to pick the pieces of bark from underneath her nails for fear he would see how tightly she’d been gripping the tree; that she’d been so incredibly nervous she’d been clinging to it. Did he think she’d been watching him? She hadn’t. She’d turned away almost the very moment she’d realised he was naked.

‘Thank you for looking after me last night,’ he said, bringing her back from her thoughts.

‘It was a pleasure.’ She had resorted to formality and tried to rescue herself.

‘Why did you come back?’ he questioned.

Constance thought. ‘I wanted to check you were all right. I wanted to check you hadn’t gone. I didn’t want you to have gone,’ she confessed and then could have bitten her own tongue off to stop herself from talking.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Because, you’re shocked, I think. A sort of shell shock from the crash. And you’ve not eaten anything. And you’ve got no money, I assume. Or papers. Where will you go? And although it’s summer, it’s terribly cold at night so you’ll probably freeze to death.’ She knew this last bit wasn’t true but she pressed on regardless. ‘And we’re miles from anywhere—’

‘Which will probably work in my favour,’ he interrupted.

‘Well, no,’ Constance said. ‘I don’t think it would. There’s Invermoray village a few miles down the road but that’s it. What will you do? Hide out in a village for the remainder of the war? A stranger of fighting age suddenly turning up in a Highland village would be hard to overlook. Or were you hoping for a passing car to catch you on the road somewhere? I warn you, there are almost no cars at the moment, and anyone official passing will want to see your papers. Most of the Highlands have been cordoned off. We can’t go anywhere without being stopped in our tracks by the army these days. There are so many houses being requisitioned up here and heaven knows what’s happening, but it’s all terribly hush-hush. So you won’t get very far on foot. I could lend you my bicycle but the same problem applies. You’ll be stopped. You could always wait for the bus,’ she said, ‘which is unpredictable in its timing at best. But for that you’ll need money. Do you have any?’

The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘Well, I must say, you’ve thought about this a great deal more than I have.’

‘I’ve been thinking about you all night,’ she said and then screamed at herself inside her own head.

‘Have you now?’ he asked. An eyebrow lifted and the smile deepened.

‘Not like that,’ she flustered and she faced the humiliation of watching him laugh at her.

‘Well I should hope not,’ he said, teasingly. ‘A nice girl like you.’

She flushed. ‘I felt horribly guilty,’ she said quietly. ‘That I’d just left you. That I’d abandoned you.’

He tilted his head to one side. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to help me,’ he said seriously. ‘It was unfair. Perhaps you’re right.’ He raked his hand through his wet hair, sending droplets of water flying. ‘Perhaps it was the shock. I wasn’t thinking straight, asking a young woman to go out of her way to house a man who, well, who shouldn’t really be here.’

‘I don’t mind, not now, not now that I’ve thought about it. And I have, a great deal. You should stay at the cottage. Stay as long as you like, as long as you need. There’s plenty of clothes and I’ll bring you food from the house.’

A snapping sound emanated from far behind him and Constance started. Matthew swung round. ‘What was that?’ he said quickly.

‘I think just a doe or a stag perhaps. Since the ghillie left to fight they’ve been allowed to repopulate in droves. Father’s done nothing about culling their numbers,’ she babbled.

He continued staring into the depths of the forest as if he didn’t trust her appraisal of the situation. When he turned back his jaw was set. He breathed deeply.

‘If you mean what you say … if I can stay at the cottage, just for a while, then yes, I’m very grateful indeed that you’re helping me. Completely indebted in fact.’

His smile disarmed her and she struggled to gather her thoughts, looking at the ground, as they walked back to the cottage.

‘Stay,’ she said softly, her eyes still cast down. ‘I promise I won’t tell anyone and I promise faithfully I’ll keep you safe. Stay until you come to a decision. Until you feel ready to hand yourself in or return to your squadron or …’

‘Do you really mean it? You promise not to tell a soul?’

Constance nodded.

‘Thank you,’ he said as they arrived at the cottage door. He held it open for her. ‘It’s not as simple as you think. It’s not that I won’t return to my squadron. It’s that I can’t.’

CHAPTER 11
August 2020

The interior of the cottage was in good condition. ‘It’s very … brown,’ Kate offered as she looked at the solid wooden furniture and somewhat battered kitchen cupboards.

‘Built to last,’ James said. Illustrating his point, he gave the leg of the dining table a small kick as if it were a car tyre. The stone walls were their natural grey and Kate wondered whether painting them would be sacrilege. It would be tricky to put it back the way it was, should they not like the result. The sofa and armchair were so faded that she had no idea what colour they were originally. How long had it been since the war? Over seventy years of sunlight had faded the fabric, the dust probably ingrained within the fibres.

‘There’s one big bedroom upstairs but I thought I’d partition it and make it an en suite,’ James said.

Kate nodded and asked, ‘Where’s the bathroom now then?’

‘Outside.’

‘What?’ She was open-mouthed.

‘The ghillie would have used a tin bath in front of the fire. The loo is in an outhouse attached to the cottage.’

‘There goes the idea of toshing this place up quickly then,’ Kate said with disappointment. ‘Installing upstairs plumbing isn’t going to be a five-minute job.’

James shrugged. ‘Might be. For a plumber.’

‘Hmmm.’ She clicked her pen and made a note in her book.

‘Dear Diary,’ James quipped, ‘James is such a nightmare.’

Kate looked up and laughed, but he had turned and was examining the old cupboards. She moved over to the large fireplace, where an old whisky bottle of Macallan Glenlivet, marked 1926 but ten-year-aged, sat on the mantelpiece. Who had left it there? The ghillie, or someone else? And had it been there, on that mantel, ever since the war?

‘I missed that when I cleaned the general rubbish out,’ James said with a grimace. ‘Although now I wonder if we could leave it as a piece of the cottage’s history, among some other knick-knacks. Tourists like those, don’t they? Although not too many, as we’re the ones who’ll have to dust them on changeover days.’

Kate nodded. ‘Other than the plumbing and some new sofas, a lick of paint’s all that’s needed down here,’ she said. ‘Along with some mod cons such as a dishwasher, some pictures for the walls, maybe some moody landscapes of the Highlands, the loch, that kind of thing.’

‘Repaint the dining chairs and table, make them … less brown?’ James offered.

Kate agreed. ‘Cream? Nice and neutral?’

James nodded and she realised she was slowly warming to him. Maybe they could work together after all.

They drove around the periphery of the estate in the rattling Land Rover. James seemed unfazed when, after a few minutes, a deer ambled its way across the road.

Kate inched forward in her seat. ‘Wow, a real deer.’

Beside her James laughed. ‘Not a fake one.’

‘You know what I mean.’

He pulled the car to a complete stop so she could take a look, and Kate wound the stiff window down. The deer looked back at her and carried on chewing, obviously used to people. After a minute or so it decided they were friend, not foe, and bent its head confidently to continue foraging by the side of the road.

James’s stomach growled and Kate gave him a look. ‘Hungry?’

‘I’m always hungry. Do you want …’ He stopped, clearly debating if he should ask the next question.

‘Do I want …?’

‘To go to the pub,’ he finished. ‘It’s pretty good. Nice food. Decent wine. We don’t have to. We can just head back to the house.’

Kate glanced round at Whisky, already asleep on the blanket spread over the back seat.

‘It would be nice to see the pub and the village. I arrived in near darkness yesterday. It’ll be good to get my bearings. And some lunch. Will they let Whisky in?’

James nodded and they set off towards the village, where he parked in the small market square. There was a coach parked on the far side and Kate looked at it curiously. So tourists did venture to this part of the Highlands. Perhaps they were on their way to or from a nearby tourist attraction. That was good to know.

Inside the pub, it was busy. James, taller than many of the other customers, waved over the top of their heads to the redheaded man pulling a pint behind the bar. He nodded in recognition.

She looked around. Many of the tourists were pensioners, probably just off the coach. When Kate looked back, James was scouting out a table in the corner of the low-beamed restaurant. He had to bend slightly to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling, before he threw himself into the high-backed bench. Whisky squeezed under the table and promptly resumed sleeping as Kate sat on the bench opposite. They had one of the last tables and it had only just gone midday.

‘Angus, how are you?’ James asked as the barman arrived with menus.

‘Aye, not bad. Same day, different date. You know how it is,’ Angus replied. ‘Don’t need a menu, do ya, James? Already know what ya havin’?’

James looked embarrassed. ‘We’ll take menus. I might have something different today.’

Angus put menus in front of them, looked at Kate and then looked pointedly at James. After a moment he sighed, and stretched his hand out to shake hers. ‘James has no manners,’ he said. ‘I’m Angus.’

Without looking up from his menu James said, ‘Oh sorry, yeah, this is Kate. Kate sort of lives with us now.’

‘O … K …’ Angus said, clearly bemused.

‘I’m working there, up at the house,’ Kate explained as she leaned forward to shake Angus’s hand. ‘Helping to put the place on the map, so to speak. Turn it into a B & B and viable holiday business and then begin promoting it.’

‘Great,’ Angus enthused. ‘Some extra rooms round here would take the pressure off us a wee bit. We’re forever turning people away. Drinks?’

James ordered a large bottle of still mineral water for them. So, Kate reflected, this place had rooms and they were busy. It wasn’t as out of the way as she had thought, clearly. She was just about to voice this when James inched forward conspiratorially.

‘What’s in that notebook of yours, then? Your master plan to take over?’

Kate sighed. Here we go again. She was just about to launch into her defence but James got there first.

‘I’m joking,’ he said, holding his hands up, ‘I’m joking.’

But he wasn’t smiling, and she knew this would be ground they’d cover again.

‘Shall we order?’ he suggested. ‘The local steak and ale pie’s good.’

Angus didn’t look surprised when James ordered it. He showed Kate his notepad and said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Surprise surprise. I already wrote it down, look.’

Kate stifled a laugh and then sat back after ordering a sandwich. ‘Are you that predictable?’ she dared. ‘Steak pie, every time you’re here?’

‘Not every time.’ James shuffled on his bench. ‘I’m traditional. I like what I like. I’m a man of routine, I suppose.’

Kate looked out the window towards the village square, watching the tourists as they got back on to the coach. Her mind whirred at opportunities to draw such a strong crowd to the house, but she resisted the urge to start scribbling in her notebook, lest James should comment.

‘A man of routine?’ she muttered absent-mindedly.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I eat in here once or twice a week. I cook a bit at home, or Mum does. Then I go running most evenings or I swim in the loch.’

She looked back from the window. ‘You swim in the loch?’

‘Sure. You should try it.’

‘No thanks. Looks cold.’

He laughed. ‘It’s invigorating.’

‘That’s just another word for cold,’ Kate countered with a smile.

They spoke about her background while they ate. Or rather Kate found she was speaking a lot, as it dawned on her she was being re-interviewed. She let him hurl question after question at her. He did it with an actual air of interest and so she tried to be as friendly as she could, while also feeling she was having to justify her position at the house.

‘And so you left because …?’ James asked eventually.

‘What do you mean?’ she replied cautiously.

There was absolutely no way she was going to tell him she’d been accused of flirting with a bar-owner client, had received a formal warning that had gone onto her work record and, incensed, had thrown in the towel. After all these weeks, it still grated on her that she’d let her guard down quite that much that night; that she’d allowed herself to be led out the back door into the alley so her client wouldn’t have been on his own while he’d had a cigarette, that she’d fallen into the trap of drinking too much and had found him dangerously close to her before she’d realised what he was up to and had put an immediate but polite stop to it.

But it had been too late. His wife had followed them, long suspecting her husband of playing away. He had been cheating on her, Kate was sure. But not with her. And as if that night hadn’t been humiliating enough, the next day her account director said the bar owner and his wife had complained about her behaviour. Kate had been so upset she’d cried at work. And she never cried at work.

‘If everything you worked on was so fantastic – if every project you touched turned to gold …’ James said somewhat provocatively, ‘why leave?’

‘I just needed to get out of the rat race,’ Kate deflected. As much as she could sense James almost coming round to her presence at Invermoray, it felt highly possible he’d use the truth against her in some way, presumably to kick her out. Right now, she didn’t trust him enough to tell him.

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