A Secret Scottish Escape

A Secret Scottish Escape

Julie Shackman

One More Chapter

a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

Copyright © Julie Shackman 2021

Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover illustration © Carrie May / Meiklejohn

Julie Shackman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record 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 e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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: 9780008455774

Ebook Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008455767

Version: 2021-04-01

Contents

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

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Thank you for reading…

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About the Author

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Chapter One

“Mac, you’ve done it again!” I grinned into my mobile. “You’ve forgotten your notebook.”

I glanced round to where his leather-bound journal was lying on the glass coffee table. Beside it was a framed photograph of the two of us by the shores of our local loch.

Mac’s chestnut hair was streaked with the faintest slivers of grey and we had been laughing as we took the impromptu selfie. His hooded, pale blue eyes were crinkling against the sunshine and I was nestling against him, my freckles popping across my nose and over my cheeks.

My dad, Harry, would often cast wary looks at Mac whenever he visited us. “Doesn’t the age gap bother you, Layla?” he would hiss out of the corner of his mouth. “I mean, the old goat’s only a year younger than me.”

I paused before I spoke again into my mobile, my rose-gold morganite engagement ring flashing as I moved my hands. “So, anyway,” I continued, pulling my attention back to Mac’s voicemail. “I hope your meeting with your agent goes well, even though you have left your notebook behind. Ring me when you’re done. Love you.”

I rang off and headed back to my desk, an old oak affair that sat at the furthest end of my cottage sitting room. Through the cream-painted sash windows, I could see the spooling waters of Loch Harris in the distance.

On a clear April morning like this, the odd smudge of an angler’s boat could be glimpsed between the tangles of woodland that surrounded it. Clumps of daffodils were springing out of the ground, like lemon trumpets.

Loch Harris was the epitome of craggy and mysterious Scottish beauty, with its sprinkling of old stone cottages, churches with stained-glass windows, and an eclectic handful of shops. It was a popular destination for tourists, thanks to its myriad dramatic walks, as well as the expanse of mirrored loch and the magical spectacle of Galen Waterfall, located only fifteen minutes’ drive away.

Mac and I lived together in what had originally been my family home, before my family had been blown apart. When I was seven my mother, Tina, decided that life owed her far more than Loch Harris could ever give her, and she swept out of our lives.

For the past twenty-two years, she had been this unfamiliar, strange entity who sent me the odd birthday and Christmas card from her life in London – and, to be frank, I was more than happy to keep the arrangement that way.

Dad had raised me alone, albeit it with the support of my late paternal grandparents.

I still remember, despite the absence of my mother, this little whitewashed cottage reverberating with the sound of music. From an early age, I recall my dad’s assorted albums littering the carpet in the sitting room and him proudly cleaning the record sleeves. “Forget any jewels,” he would say to me. “These are all the treasures you will ever need.”

Eric Clapton was my dad’s hero – hence him naming me after Clapton’s most famous song.

When I had mentioned to Dad that I wanted my own place, he’d been content to leave the painful memories of my mum behind and had insisted I stay in the cottage. He took up residence in my late grandparents’ home, which was just a little further down the lane.

I scooped a hunk of my wavy, light brown hair behind my ear and used the mouse to scroll down the new messages that had materialised in my email inbox.

I had a couple of deadlines looming: one was a book review for a Glasgow evening newspaper, and the other was writing up an interview I’d conducted with a debut crime writer from the Netherlands for an online magazine.

Procrastination was the enemy when you were a freelance writer.

I reached over to snatch a pen from my tub and saw Mac’s spidery, dark handwriting. He’d jotted down a random note on a scrap of paper.

Hendry raised the gun, his knuckles white. Fragments of sunrise highlighted the flickering silhouette of the murderer…

Mac was working on his next political thriller, currently titled Injustice.

The success he had been having for a number of years now was impressive, but even the great Mac Christie, with his debonair smile and easy charm, doubted himself at times.

He would sit and write in the spare bedroom and I often heard his fist thump on his writing desk, followed by a cacophony of swear words raining out through the door.

I fiddled with my engagement ring before opening YouTube and clicking on some of my favourite songs to listen to as I worked.

Whereas Mac could only write in silence, I found I worked most productively when I had heart-tugging lyrics soaring around me.

“Do you have to have that cranking out at that volume, Layla?” Mac would yell from across the hall. “This isn’t the O2 arena.”

I often indulged in daydreams in which I owned my own music venue. When I’d confided in Mac about it, he’d said, “Urgh! Not all that manic rock, surely? I could understand a sedate jazz club, but not the sound of someone being unceremoniously tortured for four minutes.”

“If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” I had teased back.

Mac had abandoned his desk and pulled me towards our bedroom, where he’d proceeded to show me how youthful he actually was.

After having rattled off a very complimentary review of the historical romance I’d been asked to read, I padded out of the sitting room and into the kitchen to rustle up some lunch.

My dad, though a landscape gardener by trade, was very handy, and had transformed the dark wooden fitted cupboards we’d suffered with for years into the wash of palest lemon we had now, ably assisted by a few of his local tradesmen friends.

I had dotted several potted plants on the deep brown worktops, ranging from sprouts of heather to trailing ivy, stationed an old-fashioned yellow silk lamp in the corner, and chosen a stainless steel oven and fridge to replace our original white goods that had seen better days.

My bare feet slapped on the burnished wooden floor as I drifted from the cupboards to the fridge. Mac hadn’t returned my call. Maybe he hadn’t received my message?

I cranked open the fridge door, reaching for a loaf of seeded bread, smoked salmon, and some leafy salad.

A sharp knock at the front door managed to fight its way over the sound of Stevie Nicks singing about paper flowers.

Through the frosted glass, I could make out the shimmery silhouette of a tall man.

A grin broke out across my face.

“Mac,” I started, tugging at the handle. “Have you forgotten your key as well?”

I blinked several times at the sombre eyes of Tom, our local policeman.

A kind-faced policewoman, whom I didn’t recognise, lingered at his back.

Chapter Two

My fingers clawed at my engagement ring. “There must be some mistake.”

Tom laced his fingers together. “I’m so sorry, Layla.”

I lurched from the chair and paced up and down in front of the two concerned police officers. “No. I don’t believe this.”

They stared up at me from the sofa, empathy etched into their expressions.

“But none of this makes any sense,” I stammered, my mind careering in all directions. “Mac was meeting his agent in town. Why would he be in some hotel in Stirling?”

My heart felt like a cold lump sitting in my chest and the colours of my sitting room were beginning to swirl into a smudgy claret and grey haze.

Tom stood and patted me on the arm. His companion, who had introduced herself as Constable Emma Nicholson, gave me the briefest of sympathetic smiles. “I think you should take a seat, Layla.”

I stared at her for a moment before nodding slowly and lowering myself back into my armchair.

Emma glanced at Tom out of the corner of her eye. There was an embarrassed silence. “Mac wasn’t with his agent when he suffered the heart attack.”

My brows knitted together. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

Tom and Emma exchanged another brief look, which made my breath judder. What was going on?

“Mac collapsed in a room at the Brookman Hotel – and there was someone with him at the time.”

Tom’s words pierced me and the breath caught in my throat. “Are you trying to tell me he was with another woman?”

Emma’s pale blue eyes blinked. “Yes. Yes, he was.”

Tom dropped his light gaze to my wine-red carpet and then looked back up at me. “Mac was with Hannah Darley-Patrick.”

This was ridiculous. None of it was making sense. “No,” I struggled. “That can’t be right. She’s his ex-wife.”

Tom and his companion said nothing.

“What were they doing?” I rasped, silently chiding myself over the stupidity of my question.

There was yet more silence.

I surprised myself by letting out a gravelly laugh. It sounded alien, as though it didn’t belong to me. “Oh no. They were in bed together, weren’t they?”

Emma inclined her head. “I’m very sorry, but yes, it would seem so.”

I dragged my palms down the front of my jeans and shot out of my chair again. “This can’t be happening,” I murmured, my engagement ring flickering on my finger. “So, you’re telling me my fiancé had a fatal heart attack while he was shagging his ex-wife?”

Tom and Emma sprang up from their seats to stand in front of me. “We’re so sorry, Layla,” emphasised Tom again.

Shock and anger were battling it out inside of me. “Not as sorry as I am.”

Emma hovered in front of me. “Is there someone we can call for you? You shouldn’t be on your own right now.”

I traced my disbelieving fingers up and down my arms. I tugged needlessly at the hem of my jumper. “Harry,” I muttered. “You could ring Harry.”

“Harry Devlin is Layla’s Dad,” explained Tom to Emma.

“And Faith,” I added in desperation. “I want Faith.”

As I muttered those words, the irony wasn’t lost on me.

Mac and I had first met when I was assigned to interview him for a lifestyle magazine almost two years ago.

He was this louche, charismatic, older man with a ready smile and a prominent nose that only seemed to enhance his character.

Mac had flirted outrageously with me from the beginning of the interview, and as I was departing the Edinburgh restaurant where we’d met for lunch, he’d snatched my mobile from my hand and entered his number.

I remember feeling warm and fuzzy with flattery and admiration for this political thriller writer, and after allowing a couple of days to pass, I had rung him.

After a few dates, Mac insisted on visiting me in Loch Harris and was swept away by its silvery waters and swathes of forestry.

He said he had been energised by its beauty and I was delighted when he announced he was renting one of the plush new holiday apartments that had sprung up close to the town.

My dad had been sceptical of Mac from the beginning, especially when he learned that he had been married before. “But there’s a twenty-five-year age gap between the pair of you,” he would protest. “He could be your father.”

“But he’s not, is he? You are.”

I recalled Dad sucking in the air through his teeth. “And now you’re moving in with him?”

“Correction, Dad. Mac is moving in with me.”

My father had pushed his tanned hands into his combat trouser pockets. “Stop being so pedantic.”

Then he had reached out and given me a protective hug. “This must be boosting the old codger’s ego no end, being seen with a gorgeous twenty-nine-year-old.”

“Old codger?” I laughed. “Really?” Dad’s sombre expression made me laugh louder. “Mac’s only fifty-four, Dad, not ninety-four. And you’re only a year older than him.”

A flush appeared across my dad’s weather-lashed cheeks. “He’s been married before, love.”

“Well, so have you,” I pointed out, trying not to pull up images of my mother.

Tina was like this faceless silhouette at times, who had lingered on the outskirts of my life, before she’d taken off to London, leaving my shattered Dad and her confused young daughter behind.

The less I thought about my mother, the better I always felt.

“That’s an entirely different situation,” argued my dad.

“No, it isn’t. He’s over fifty, Dad, just like you. At that age, baggage is only to be expected.”

Now, that baggage – in the shape of Hannah, his ex-wife of twenty-four years – had reared her head in all its severe, black-bobbed glory.

Once Tom and Emma had departed my cottage, I slumped against the front door.

My attention fell on my engagement ring. The rose-gold band seemed to grin up at me. It might as well have sprung from a Christmas cracker.

What had meant so much to me was now taking on a meaningless, cheap hue.

As Mac’s life had drained from him, he hadn’t been here in Loch Harris with me. He’d been thrashing about in a hotel bed with her.

Chapter Three

“I could kill him!” thundered Dad into his mug of tea.

Faith, my best friend, folded her arms. Her three gold bangles jangled together. “Well, something tells me that’s going to be rather tricky, Harry.”

“You know full well what I mean.”

When I emerged again from the bathroom, snuffling into a hankie and still sporting a face that resembled a melted waxwork, Dad and Faith dumped down their respective mugs of tea and rushed towards me.

I gazed past Faith’s shoulder, the grey and blue twists of the loch visible out of my kitchen window. “Why was he with her? What was he doing with Hannah when he was supposed to be meeting his agent?”

Faith shoved a lock of her strawberry-blonde hair back behind her ear. “There’ll be time to mull over all that later. Right now, you just need to focus on yourself.”

“But how can I? I’ve just found out that my fiancé died while he was shagging another woman! And not just any woman at that…”

My dad’s lips morphed into a hard line. I noticed he was wearing his favourite Pink Floyd T-shirt.

“Have you heard from her? The ex?” he asked.

I dabbed ineffectually at my eyes with a corner of my hankie. “Not yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.”

My dad and Faith exchanged wide-eyed glances. “You don’t have to speak to this Anna, if you don’t want to, love,” he said.

“At least not yet,” added Faith.

“Her name’s Hannah, Dad. And how can I not speak to her? She was the last person to see Mac.” A dry croak shot out of my mouth. “Well, I say see, but we all know what they were doing and it wasn’t a sodding crossword!”

Dad gathered me into his arms. He smelled of damp earth and there were faint traces of dirt under his fingernails.

I let out a series of heaving sobs, until I was able to take a few breaths. “You need a haircut,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

Dad’s chest lifted. “I was going for the rugged landscape gardener look.”

I jerked my head up and eyed his collar-length salt and pepper waves. “Actually,” I conceded, rubbing my red nose, “it does quite suit you.”

Dad’s arms tightened again around me. “You do know we’re both here for you, don’t you? Anything you need, you just have to ask.”

Visions of Mac’s hooded blue eyes drifted in and out of my mind. I reached up and kissed Dad on the cheek. “I know.”

Then I flinched as Hannah’s powdered and pointed expression interrupted me again. She refused to leave me alone. Everywhere I turned in the cottage, I could see her and Mac in bed, going at it like two battery-operated bunnies.

I made an attempt to gather myself together. I knew what Faith and Dad would say to my suggestion, but decided to air it anyway. As far as I was concerned, it was just putting off the inevitable. “Actually, there is something I need.”

“What is it?” asked Faith.

I swivelled my wet grey eyes on her. “I really do need to speak to Hannah. Now.”

Dad and Faith’s appalled expressions followed me out of my sitting room.

“What are you doing?” asked Faith gently. “What are you looking for?”

I ventured into our bedroom further down the hall, deliberately averting my gaze from our bed, with its coffee and cream covers and two vanilla-coloured scatter cushions. There was the faintest ticking noise from the alarm clock.

Lying on top of the white bedside cupboard on Mac’s side was his contacts book. “I knew it was in here,” I mumbled.

“What is?” pushed Dad, lingering in the doorway. “Look, darling, you’ve had a terrible shock. Why don’t you go for a lie-down and I’ll bring you a fresh cup of tea?”

I shook my head. “That’s the worst thing I could do. When I close my eyes, I just see them together.”

I rifled through the alphabetical pages until I came across Hannah’s mobile number under her new married name. A thought struck me. Not only was I wounded by all this, but her new husband Mark would be too.

But the selfish, furious part of me didn’t care.

Dad heaved a concerned sigh. “Layla. Think about this. It’s not really the right time—”

“So when will be the right time, Dad? You tell me when will be the right time to ask my fiancé’s ex-wife why he was in bed with her when he died?”

There was a weighty silence.

“My mobile is up on the mantelpiece,” I said to Faith, heading out into the hall. “Just by that photo.”

Faith hesitated for a moment before walking past me into the sitting room and reaching past the grinning picture of Mac. She handed the phone to me.

Mac’s gaze sprung out of the picture frame. He had such a ready smile. The lights of New York were popping behind him.

Ignoring the silent pleading of Dad and Faith, I set my phone down on the coffee table and rifled through the pages again until I located Hannah’s number. A ball twisted in my stomach at the sight of Mac’s spidery, dark handwriting.

My cheeks were hot and tear-stained. “Faith, you couldn’t make a fresh pot of tea please?”

She inclined her head, as if accepting defeat. “Of course I can, and I’m making you some buttered toast too. No arguments. You need to try and eat something.”

While the dial tone began ringing in my ear, Faith encouraged Dad to join her back in the kitchen. “Come on, Harry. Layla has made up her mind.”

Dad shot me a concerned look. “Oh, I can see that.”

I watched the pair of them meander back into the kitchen and begin pottering about with mugs. I knew they were worried, but ignoring what had happened wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all me.

My thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sudden husky tones of Hannah bleating, “Hello?”

Chapter Four

“Hello?” she repeated again. “Who is this?”

“It’s me. Layla,” I said, as I began to pace.

“Layla,” she repeated in a flat tone.

I clung to the silence for a moment before a surge of resentment swept over me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the oval mirror above the fireplace and wished I hadn’t. I looked like a negative of the real me – pale with soulless eyes. I managed to force out the first few words that popped into my head. “You owe me an explanation.”

I needed to hear what had happened. I needed to hear it from Hannah.

“I don’t think now is the best time to discuss this,” she replied evenly.

Anger flared in my chest. “So, when would be the best time? How about over afternoon tea? Or would 3 p.m. next Wednesday suit you better?”

“There’s no need for sarcasm.”