Excerpt

One

Cairndonan

Arrival. Stumbling out of a taxi, catching her balance on her painful leg, looking up at a gatehouse: a neat structure of mushroom stone with pointed gables and black window frames. A long driveway curved away beyond wrought-iron gates, but Gill could see nothing of the great house itself, only a wisp of smoke drifting up behind a green haze of conifers. The estate was fringed by woodland and softened by drizzle misting from a bleak grey sky. Inland stood the sweeping shapes of mountains, all in slate-hues in the chilly gloom of the day. She could smell the sea. It was May but felt like winter. The highland landscape looked barren, wild, hostile; nothing had prepared her for the physical rawness of it.

Gill wondered what she was doing here.

"Rotten weather for you, miss," said the taxi driver, a Sikh with a broad Glaswegian accent. He dumped her case beside her. "Sure you don't want me to take you up to the house?"

"No, it's fine," she said, startled out of her blank moment. "They said I'd be met at the gatehouse."

She paid her fare. It was a sum that might have made the locals blanch, but she was used to London prices and thought nothing of it. As she fumbled in her purse, a small shock whipped across her stomach. Nothing waited for her in London.

With a cheery salute he drove away, leaving Gill alone on the drive. She spotted a distant church spire, but there was no other hint of habitation, only woods, heather and forest, and a silver rim of ocean to her left. That seaweed scent, mixed with the tang of gorse on a sharp breeze, was exhilarating. Several hundred miles from London on the north-west coast of Scotland—and not a soul knew where she'd gone.

I made it, I've escaped, she thought. Her hand convulsed on the handle of her case as the wind took her breath away.

The door of the gatehouse opened and a tall, thirtyish man with scruffy blond hair came strolling out to her. He had stubble and ripped jeans, a lazy, confident swagger, and a shrewd, unfriendly gaze. He wasn't local, she realized as he spoke; his voice had an antipodean twang.

"Hello, there. I hope you're not from the tax office. No one goes in without an appointment and you lot are really pushing your luck."

She frowned. "I've rented a cottage."

"Oh yeah? Think you can trick your way in? That's new."

"No, really." She pulled her booking confirmation from the front pocket of her suitcase. "I'm here on holiday. Gill Sharma."

He glanced at it, gave a quirky, one-sided smile "Oh. Miss Sharma. Robin Cottage. Right. Sorry, just checking. You look like you're on a mission, and that case could have been full of documents, you know?" The blue eyes came to life and his voice became friendly and teasing—or was it mocking? Her judgement on such nuances had never been great. Because she'd travelled first-class on the train, she'd dressed appropriately, as if for work; a charcoal-grey suit with pencil skirt, black tights, no-nonsense shoes with a medium heel. Her outdoor jacket was stuffed inside the wheeled case. Her hair was tied back and her narrow, black-framed glasses were business-like. She felt exhausted and rumpled but, apparently, still looked smart enough to be mistaken for a tax inspector.

"Am I in the right place?"

"You certainly are, Miss Sharma. Hi, I'm Colin, apprentice genius and general dogsbody. You've booked Robin Cottage for six weeks. So, no car."

She shook her head, opening one hand to emphasize the self-evident fact that she was on foot. Colin raised an eyebrow. "Come on, jump on the buggy and I'll take you over there. Welcome to Cairndonan."

He let her through a side-gate beside the wrought iron main gates and flung her bag onto a golf cart that was parked just inside. As she climbed up beside him, her hip joint zinged with pain and she gasped. It would sometimes catch her like that, a stab of fire, so sharp that she couldn't hide her reaction.

"You all right?" Colin asked cheerily.

"Fine," she said through her teeth. "I'm getting over an accident. It seizes up sometimes."

"Wow, that's not good."

Stiffening her face to a mask of calm, Gill pretended the heavy throb of her leg belonged to someone else. She watched the landscape sliding past; deer grazing the rough parkland, distant hills reaching steep arms towards the sea. She waited for a glimpse of Cairndonan House but it remained hidden behind folds of land and forest.

Colin swung onto an unexpected right fork. The buggy began shuddering its way along a narrow track with a meadow on the right and thickly tangled woodland on the left. Gill swallowed a twinge of unease. "Don't I need to check in at reception, or something?"

He smirked. "We don't have anything as grand as reception. Just an office and three slaves; me, Flora and Ned Badger. You can drop into the office later. Get settled in first, eh?"

They were descending a slope, steep enough to make her hang onto her seat. She heard the music of running water. As they passed into the damp shadows of a wood, she saw a stream ahead, running between the rugged sides of a gorge. Trees grew out of the rock itself to form a lacy tunnel above the flow. This was as isolated as she could have dreamed.

"And where's the office?"

"Up in the big house. There's a footpath up through the woods, about half a mile. Hope you brought your walking boots."

"I did," she said. The smell of the stream reached her, a fresh scent of wet rock and leaf mould. In response to all the damp and cold, her leg began to ache fiercely. "Not that walking is my strong point at the moment."

"So, you're not booked on the course, then?" he asked.

Puzzled, she hesitated. "No. There's a course?"

"Oh, yeah." He inclined his head over his shoulder, as if to indicate the unseen mansion. "Annual art school. Three weeks. Starts today, goes until the fourteenth of June. You know who the owner of Cairndonan Estate is, don't you?"

Gill felt a twinge of dismay. An art course meant people, when all she wanted was solitude. She should have realized, or at least read the website more carefully. "Dame Juliana Flagg," she answered quietly. "I didn't see anything about it when I made the booking."

"Well, you wouldn't. She doesn't need to advertise. You know she's mega-famous, don't you? She's a living bloody legend!"

"So I gather, but I'm not really into art."

"That's a shame." He sounded disappointed that she wasn't more impressed. "That's a bit like visiting Buckingham Palace and saying you can take or leave the Queen."

Gill bit her lip, annoyed but forcing herself to smile. "I'm sure Dame Juliana would rather not rent cottages to gawping fans."

"Fair point," he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "Have to admit, I'm a fan. I'm her student. I work for her—odd jobs, estate maintenance, studio help—and in return, I get a few precious hours of tuition. That's the deal."

"Sounds like a tough apprenticeship."

"She doesn't take any prisoners," said Colin, with a grimace.

"You don't look like an artist."

"Well, what's an artist supposed to look like? I'm a sculptor, big-scale. You need a bit of muscle for that. Never had a chance to go to art school; what you see is raw talent." He grinned; she rolled her eyes at the way he managed to be self-mocking yet full of himself at the same time. "Bet you can't guess where I'm from."

"New Zealand?" she said.

Colin looked impressed. "Spot on. People usually say South Africa, or Australia."

"And I suppose they ask if you got the muscles from sheep-shearing?"

"Always. That gets a bit old. So what's your story, then? Up from London, aren't you? Long journey."

"Endless," she sighed. "My story is that I'm knackered, and dying for some peace and quiet."

"Sure. Don't mind me, I'm just nosy." The path meandered downhill until it reached a stone bridge. The golf cart negotiated the span, the torrent swirling over rocks beneath. Turning left, fifty yards along a gravel track that ran along the far bank they came to a tiny cottage. A tall rock face rose behind it, seeming to shelter and cup the building. All over the rocks and around the cottage itself grew gnarled trees, briars and ivy.

Gill took this in only superficially because she saw someone there; a skinny man, wearing faded black trousers and jacket, who seemed to be fixing something on the front door. She tensed. "Who's that?"

"No worries," Colin said dismissively. "That's Ned Badger."

"What's he doing?"

"Lord knows. Nothing I couldn't have done, I'm sure. Here we are, Robin Cottage. Mobile phone reception is poor to non-existent, by the way."

As he pulled up, the man turned to them, holding a screwdriver in one hand. He had thick black hair streaked with grey and a pallid, expressionless face. It seemed he'd been attaching a horseshoe to the door; then she realized the horseshoe was actually a door-knocker.

"Here's our guest," said Colin, helping her down before hefting her case. "Miss Sharma, this is Ned; one or the other of us will come if you have any problems."

"Problems?" she said stiffly. She wanted them both to go. Colin made her uneasy, and Ned Badger's Dickensian seediness gave her chills.

"Yeah, with plumbing, electric, anything at all."

"There will be no problems," Ned said impassively. "I've checked everything and made repairs where needed."

"Great, well I can take over from here. You want a lift back, mate?"

The friction between the two men was tangible. "No," said Ned. "I'll walk."

"All set, then," said Colin to Gill. "Here's the key; if you need another, you can get it from the house."

"One key is fine," she said, and then felt a flash of panic. Great, the staff knew she was on her own, and they had other keys. She pushed the fear back into its box.

She willed Colin to leave, but he insisted on letting her in, taking her case upstairs, then striding around jovially showing her light switches, kettle, teabags, all things she could have found without help. "Flora will pop in to vacuum, dust, change bed linen and that. But if you need anything at all, just come up to the house and we'll help you out, okay? In fact, if you're lonely, you can come up of an evening for a glass of wine with the students. Dame Juliana won't mind."

His easy friendliness was sandpaper on her nerves. She was shooing him out of the cottage now, almost physically pushing him with the front door. Ned Badger had already gone, disturbingly, as if he'd simply melted into the air. "Thanks, Colin, but I wouldn't want to presume on her hospitality."

"She can be a diva," he said confidingly, "but underneath, she's sound."

"Just worried about tax inspectors?" she said dryly.

He grimaced. "That was a joke."

"Oh. Thanks, but I'll be fine."

"See you tomorrow, then," Colin said cheerfully and she closed the door behind him, locked it, rested back against it with a long sigh. Alone at last.