Livvy began to feel a painful anticipation, as if possibilities waited alongside the green shoots in the earth, and it frightened her. So she tried not to think at all, throwing herself into the running of the house and, with Will, the business of the distillery.
She practiced holding each moment, like a pearl in her hand, but one by one they slipped inexorably away. And then on a morning when the sun shone and the breeze blew soft from the east, an auburn-haired man came riding up from the village on a bay horse, and she knew him.
Louise slipped out the front door while John was cooking a belated breakfast for the guests. There were still two white-coveralled technicians working in the scullery, and the guests were milling about in the hall and sitting room—no one seemed to want to face the dining room, where they had been interrogated by Chief Inspector Ross.
She’d had to ask John for the keys to the old Land Rover—letting go her car had been just one of the sacri-
fices they’d made when they came to this godforsaken place. When he’d questioned her, she’d told him they needed biscuits for tea that afternoon, and she’d offered no explanation to anyone else. The constable on the porch nodded but didn’t stop her.
The rain fell in a mist so fine and heavy that it felt as if she were walking through water, and she had forgotten an umbrella. By the time she reached the car she was sopping, bedraggled as a water rat.
There was English rain, she had discovered, and there was Scottish rain, and Scottish rain invariably made you wetter and colder.
Whatever had possessed her all those years ago, to give up life in London and come here? It had been Hazel, of course, the one person she had ever truly thought of as a friend, and now Hazel had come back and turned everything topsy-turvy once again.
How could they have taken Hazel away? Every time Louise thought of it, she came up against a wall in her mind, as if this shock on top of all the others had formed an impenetrable barrier. It couldn’t be happening—none of this could be happening. Donald couldn’t be dead. She saw the square shape of the mortuary van at the edge of the drive and looked away, her throat closing convulsively.
And John, where had John gone that morning? It shouldn’t have taken him more than half an hour to buy eggs, yet he had been gone a good deal longer than that. He was terrified, she could smell it on him, and this wasn’t the first time he’d disappeared without explanation.
Louise backed the Land Rover up and drove to the gate, rolling to a stop as a constable came up to the window.
His yellow-green jacket was slick with rain, the water
beaded on the bill of his cap. As she lowered the window, drops splattered on the sill of the car door.
“Ma’am,” said the constable, “you’re not to—”
“Chief Inspector Ross said we were free to go.”
Stepping back, he spoke into the radio on his shoulder.
After a moment he nodded at her. “Sorry, ma’am.”
The crowd milling about on the verge was not so obliging. Louise eased the car forward, avoiding eye contact with those who looked vaguely familiar, and when a man held a news camera up to the window she shook her head violently and pressed on the accelerator.
The bodies scattered and she was free, the car skimming along silently except for the rhythmic squeak of the wipers against the windscreen. A mile down the road, she slowed and turned to the right, bumping into a drive heavily rutted by the wheels of horse vans. A weathered sign on a post identified the MacGillivrays’ stable.
The house looked deserted, not even a wisp of smoke from the chimney visible in the rain. Nor was there any sign of Tom, Callum’s father, for which Louise was grateful. She couldn’t have coped with the man’s drunken ramblings, not today.
She drove down to the barn and got out, shielding her face from the rain as she ran in the open door. The air inside the barn smelled warm and ripe, even in the wet.
Two horses looked at her over their stall doors with mildly curious expressions, and she recognized one as Callum’s horse, Max. She called out Callum’s name, her voice tentative in the echoing space.
When there was no answer, she went out and looked down the hill towards the old crofter’s cottage that lay between the barn and the river meadow. She knew Callum lived there, rather than in the main house, but she’d never been inside. They had developed an unexpected friend-
ship in the past year, based at first on their common interest in native plants. Callum was odd, Louise had to admit, but in a way it was this very oddness that had allowed her to feel comfortable with him, to open up with him in a way she seldom did with other people. With Callum, there was no fear of not measuring up, of giving herself away as not belonging.
Until now, however, she had not visited him in his cottage. As she hesitated, wondering if she should have come, a light flickered faintly in the window.
Before she could change her mind, Louise ran down the pebble-strewn path and knocked lightly on the door.
A dog barked sharply, making her jump, and Callum’s voice called, “Come in with ye, then.”
Louise stepped in, holding out a hand for Murphy, Callum’s Labrador retriever, to sniff. There was only one room, she saw, warmed by an old stove and lit by a paraffin lamp standing on a scarred table. There Callum sat, pouring over what looked like account books.
Glancing up, he said, “Louise! What are ye doing here? I thought you were my father.” He stood, closing the topmost book.
“Have you heard?”
“It’s true, then, about Donald?”
She nodded. “How did you—”
“I saw the crowd round your gate. I stopped, but they wouldn’t let me through. It was Peter McNulty told me Donald had been shot!”
Louise felt suddenly faint, as if the reality of what had happened had finally caught up with her body. It must have shown in her face, because Callum hurried towards her.
“Sit ye down, Louise.” He pulled out a chair at the oak table. “I’ll make ye some tea.”
Obeying, she looked round the cottage in an effort to
focus on something other than the turmoil of her thoughts. The black iron stove, where Callum was putting a kettle on to boil, stood on a raised tile hearth. To one side of it stood a deep farmhouse sink, with a hand-made rack holding cups and plates; on the other, a tatty armchair and a small side table stacked with books, and what looked like a tin hip bath. There did not seem to be any indoor plumbing, except for the sink.
The two deep front windows let in little light, but she could see the outline of an alcove bed against the far wall, as well as a notched rack holding half a dozen fishing rods, and pegs hung with oilskins and tweed caps.
Murphy, apparently deciding the excitement was over, returned to a cushion near the stove and flopped down with a sigh, his black coat gleaming in the lamplight. The room smelled of peat smoke and warm dog.
Callum set a steaming mug before her, adding a dash of whisky from the bottle that stood on the table. “Drink up, now. You’ll feel better.”
He gave her a moment to sip, then said, “Tell me what happened.”
Haltingly, she related the events of the morning, ending with Hazel’s being taken for questioning.
“They took your friend? Do you think she can have done such a thing?”
“No! But if it was John’s gun . . . Who else could have taken it? And after . . .” She glanced up at him. “Callum, that woman last night . . . I saw you, watching from the hedge. Did you bring her to see Donald?”
He hesitated, spreading his fingers on the tabletop, and for the first time she noticed how large his hands were. “I didn’t bring her exactly, but aye, I did tell her where Donald was.”