The Christmas Secret

by Karen Swan

  ‘Seriously?’ one of the men asked.

  ‘Christ. That was the extent of it?’

  ‘Yep,’ Lochlan nodded.

  ‘Only thanks to Lochie, though,’ Alex said, taking a sip from her drink. ‘He stopped a bigger explosion from razing the place to the ground.’

  They all looked back at him open-mouthed again; in return, Lochlan shot her a look, seemingly annoyed to be credited as a hero.

  ‘What did you do?’ a blonde-bobbed woman with a slight accent asked, looking rapt.

  ‘Nothing—’

  ‘He ran into the burning building and shut off the venting system, to stop it from blowing through the pipeworks.’

  ‘Mate!’ a man with a stubbly beard said, looking both concerned and impressed at once.

  ‘He was incredibly brave,’ Alex nodded. In spite of his glares warning her to the contrary, it never hurt to big a man up in front of his peers. ‘He could have been killed. If the fire service hadn’t arrived when they did—’

  ‘Oh my God,’ several of the women gasped.

  ‘Lochie!’ said another, throwing her arms round his neck before punching him on the arm. ‘You damned fool! I can’t believe you put yourself in danger like that.’

  ‘It was fine. It wasn’t as dangerous as Alex is—’

  ‘The fire chief said he couldn’t understand how Lochie had been able to withstand the heat,’ Alex added.

  Lochie stared at her as the other women threw punches at his arm.

  ‘You crazy fool!’

  ‘I always knew you were a dumb-arse! A brave one but still a dumb-arse.’

  ‘I’m Elise, by the way,’ said the white-blonde woman with the accent; she was slight, with perfectly symmetrical features and owlish eyes.

  ‘Anna,’ said the one with long frizzed hair and an athlete’s physique, who had instigated the arm punching.

  ‘I’m Emma,’ said the one with dark bobbed hair.

  ‘Hi,’ Alex smiled, ticking them off mentally and wondering where the other one was – Jess, was it? ‘Alex.’

  ‘Top-up?’ Ambrose said to one of the men – tall, broad-shouldered, long legs.

  ‘So do they know how it started?’ the man asked Lochie as they followed Ambrose back to the bar and the fire, leaving her alone with the women. Clearly, she wasn’t Lochie’s ‘responsibility’.

  ‘This is so thrilling. New blood in the group!’ Emma said excitedly. ‘I didn’t realize Lochie was bringing anyone this weekend. I mean, he never does, does he?’

  ‘Not to these gatherings, no,’ Elise agreed. ‘Well, not since you-know-who. How long have you guys been together?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not together, we’re . . . colleagues, I guess you’d say.’

  ‘You guess?’ a voice behind her asked, and she turned to see a striking woman with long, dark hair and a blunt fringe, holding out a tray of blinis.

  Alex smiled, seeing in the other woman’s eyes a steady coolness. ‘I’m consulting for them at the moment. You must be Jess?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hi. Alex.’

  ‘Hi, Alex,’ Jess said. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘You sure? We all need to keep our strength up. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.’

  Alex took one, hoping to God her clothes arrived in time in the morning. She was not shooting in her pyjamas in front of this woman. ‘You’ve done the MacNab before, then?’

  ‘Well, every year I try,’ she said. ‘Once I missed it by forty minutes.’

  ‘How about the rest of you?’ Alex asked the group, covering her mouth with her hand as she chewed.

  ‘Nope,’ Emma sighed. ‘I’m afraid I just keep Max company and watch. Killing a perfectly healthy animal for sport isn’t my thing.’

  ‘Their numbers have to be controlled, darling!’ the heavy-set man with strawberry-blond hair called from across the room. ‘At least these culls generate revenue and create local jobs.’

  Emma rolled her eyes. ‘Like I said, not my thing.’

  ‘Well, I would have managed it a couple of years ago if they’d accepted my brown trout instead of a salmon,’ Anna pouted.

  ‘Not that we’re refusing to let that little grudge go,’ Elise chuckled, rubbing her hand playfully.

  Alex glanced over at Lochie. He was standing by the fire, deep in conversation, a flush on his cheeks although Alex still thought he looked tired.

  ‘Lochie pulled off the double last year; he’s going for the hat-trick,’ Elise said, catching her gaze.

  ‘Really? Do you think he’ll manage it?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Knowing Lochie. Once he sets his mind to something, he doesn’t give up,’ Jess said, taking a sip of her whisky. Alex noticed the bespoke semi-precious cocktail ring on her left hand, the subtle but flawless diamond studs at her ears; her skin was lightly tanned and she looked as though she had an expensive personal trainer. Alex wondered what the app was that her husband had sold – and retired on; she wondered which of the men was Sam, her husband, and she wished they weren’t standing across the room in two separate groups, like teenagers at a school disco.

  She also tried to imagine Skye standing here – part of this group. She would have been so much younger and less sophisticated by comparison. It was hard to visualize.

  ‘Well, he’s neck and neck with Ambrose, but I’m afraid that husband of mine is determined to regain his crown; family honour rests upon it, apparently,’ Daisy said with a roll of her eyes. ‘He says it simply wouldn’t do for the first Borrodale MacNab hat-trick to be won by a “rank outsider”.’

  ‘Can a Farquhar be considered rank?’ Emma asked with a chuckle. ‘They’re one of the grandest families in the country.’

  ‘Clans,’ Anna clarified.

  ‘Listen, forget the MacNab, all I really want to know is what the lot of you are wearing tomorrow night?’ Elise asked, smoothing her hair back with small hands. ‘Because I really don’t have anything black or tartan.’

  Alex felt a bolt of panic arrow through her stomach. What? What was happening tomorrow night? She slapped a smile on her mouth and kept it there as the women detailed their outfits – a black crêpe column dress for Jess; a black silk butterfly-sleeved dress for Anna . . .

  ‘Do you think it’s okay that my dress isn’t black and isn’t full length?’ Elise asked, her round blue eyes wide with apprehension.

  ‘Well, what’s it like?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Silver three-quarter length; strappy with a pleated skirt.’ Elise bit her lip. ‘Black just washes me out – doesn’t it?’ she asked Anna.

  ‘I think you look great in black,’ Anna said.

  ‘No, it washes me out.’

  Anna shrugged, as if to ask, why bother?

  ‘It sounds gorgeous,’ Daisy sighed. ‘I, on the other hand, am in my usual Bride of Frankenstein monstrosity. Black Watch taffeta.’

  Jess giggled. ‘Stop it. I love that dress. It’s so eighties and yet it seems to get more right every year.’

  ‘Ugh,’ Daisy groaned. ‘It’s an abomination. Never marry a clan chief, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘How about you, Alex? What are you wearing?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Um . . .’ Alex decided to come clean. She pulled a face. ‘What exactly is happening tomorrow night?’

  Elise gasped; Anna frowned. ‘Didn’t Lochie tell you?’

  ‘Well, he . . . I mean, I . . . it was all a bit last-minute,’ she blustered, not wanting to admit she had practically hijacked her way over here.

  ‘Tomorrow’s the Keepers of the Quaich,’ Anna said.

  She might as well have said it in Ancient Greek. ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s a society for whisky aficionados. Very exclusive for those who care about such things. Lochie’s being made a master, which is a massive deal,’ Anna explained.

  ’Maybe that’s why he didn’t mention it,’ Jess said. ‘He’s never liked people making a fuss.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’ Alex finish
ed her drink.

  ‘I can’t believe he didn’t tell you,’ Elise said sympathetically. ‘Men. No forward planning.’

  ‘Do you need to borrow a dress? I’m sure we could find something to fit you,’ Daisy offered kindly. ‘Although you’re so tiny, it would probably have to be something from my thin era, 2006 to 2009 when I dieted to get into Ambrose’s grandmother’s wedding dress. A twenty-four-inch waist, I ask you!’

  ‘Oh, you are kind,’ Alex demurred. She was not-not-NOT borrowing someone else’s clothes again! ‘But luckily I always pack a black dress. You never know when you might need it.’

  It was a half-lie. She did always pack a silk-jersey full-length Amanda Wakeley dress with a twist knot below the bust; it was sculptural, elegant and could be rolled up into a ball for the smallest carry-on bag. But coming up for a job on a tiny island off the Scottish west coast? She had thought, for once, it was surplus to requirements. She hadn’t bargained on some exclusive ceremony at a castle on the other side of Scotland.

  ‘Sorry, would you excuse me for a minute?’ she asked, putting her glass on the nearest table.

  ‘Straight down the corridor, third door on the right,’ Daisy said discreetly.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Louise was in third position, her feet turned out to improbable angles and her thighs screaming, when she heard her phone go in her bag. She scrambled over the piles of furry parkas squashed into the corner to get it.

  ‘Yes?’ she panted, only just getting it before it went to voicemail. ‘Oh, Alex.’

  She sagged, sliding down the wall and staring at her reflection in the mirrors opposite.

  ‘Is everything okay? The car left an hour ago.’

  It was eight thirty on a Friday night. She was meeting Jago at the pub at nine thirty.

  ‘Black dress?’ she asked, scrambling to her feet and mouthing an apology to the Barrecore teacher as she tiptoed from the studio. ‘The one with the jet beads, the lace one or the one with the chiffon overlay? . . . Oh, good. Because I sent up the lace one.’

  Her phone pressed between shoulder and ear, she carried on with her pliés as she watched the class continue through the small window in the door. She smiled as she heard Alex’s surprise. ‘Well, I figured if you were going to be shooting, there was a good chance there’d be a dressy dinner afterwards too. The car will be with you before breakfast.’

  She rolled up onto her tiptoes and continued with her pliés in second position. ‘No, it’s fine, of course I don’t mind. I’m not doing anything special,’ she said, reaching one arm up above her head. ‘You’ve got to do whatever it takes. Just get him, Alex.’

  She lay in bed, staring at the upholstered button that formed the centrepiece of the four-poster’s dramatic canopy. Every pleat was exactly the same size as its neighbour, the pattern of the blue-and-white toile lost to an abstract melange. The wood was heavily carved and the bed must have weighed the same as a family car, even though her toes reached to the bottom of the mattress.

  The walls were papered in the same pattern as the curtains and the soft furnishings on the bed, colour and pattern layered up in a dizzying celebration. It wasn’t to her taste; she preferred a more ‘restful’ scheme, but it suited the house. History oozed from its bones. Aside from the ceremonial swords crossed on some of the walls, and even – yes – a suit of armour standing guard further down the corridor, the very fabric of the building belonged to the past: the walls were lathered in a bumpy limewash, the carpenters and joiners and stonemasons had never been introduced to a right angle and the walls had to be two feet thick if they were an inch, with mullioned windows and deep stone sills. Every door was so heavy it creaked on its hinges and the floorboards were thirty inches wide. She had glimpsed a keystone above the front door on the way in that had read 1546 and she could well believe it.

  She turned over with a weary sigh and looked out of the windows. She hadn’t drawn the curtains – a habit of hers; she liked to rise with the sun and make her days productive – and she could just make out the shadow of the helicopter on the lawn, its blades drooping in the stillness like wilted wasp antennae. Lochlan’s studied concentration made sense now that she knew he was freshly qualified.

  It had been a long day and already felt like a week since the disastrous constellation in the canteen, not eight hours ago. But dinner had been interesting and she sensed that her hunch to come had been right. He was a different person here – softer, less defensive. He laughed readily and was at the centre of most of the jokes; they had their own language, his group, talking in shorthand about the pubs they used to frequent as students, the disastrous dinners they would cook when they’d shared a house just outside the town, and she felt those familiar pangs of regret to have missed out on the opportunity herself: the friendships she might have had, the memories it would have given her that would make her smile even now, even when she was on her own. Whatever she might have insinuated to Lochie, that three-year head start of hers rarely felt like the clever win she claimed it to be.

  She resolutely closed her eyes, pushing the thoughts – feelings – away. Going to university herself had never been an option and it was the very definition of wasted energy to regret something that had never even happened. ‘What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?’ It was one of her favourite Eckhart Tolle quotes, one that she used time and again on her clients. She repeated it to herself, trying to make the lesson truer.

  She felt her muscles relax, giving up the day and letting the night come, sleep on a stealth mission creeping up her body as she sank deeper into the soft mattress, her long hair splayed on the pillow behind her. She needed to rest well tonight and be up with the sun in the morning, because tomorrow they were going to hunt. And it wasn’t just the salmon, the grouse and the stag she had in her sights.

  Chapter Nineteen

  10 February 1918

  Dear Clarissa,

  Was very glad indeed to get your letters. I hope you are all well as I am myself. I had a bit of a knock at Barisis as you know but have quite got over that now and am in the best of health and spirits. I am sorry I did not write before but opportunities are hard to find and we’ve had a fairly trying time of it. We’ve been ‘in’ since the 8th but the 9th and the day following have been difficult, although we have reinforcements now; just as well, we were down to our last two hundred. I don’t know how long we shall keep it up. Had a dirty time yesterday dodging damned great bombs the blighters were presenting us with. It’s a noisy business as you might imagine. One shell landed in the middle of some corned beef tins, scattering them and their contents quite around so we proceeded with boiling water for tea to show the Huns we were still there. I have enclosed a copy of my will for you to keep, in case I can’t get round the corner in time, though they can be seen descending in the air so don’t fret.

  We managed a game of football two weeks ago, sorely tested by the pitch which I think was a cabbage patch. Haven’t bumped into Frostie or Kit Oakham yet but Billy Wilkes has not been with us the past eighteen days. He broke his glasses and would not buy new ones and so got left behind with the Transport. Don’t know whether he worked the ticket and got a safer job further back. Shouldn’t blame him if he has. His nerves have been in a shocking state and he’d brood a lot which is absolutely fatal in a dirty job like this.

  I must close now to get this letter away. Give my love to Mother, and tell her by God’s help I shall come home safe. I hope Father is quite well and please remember me to Mrs Dunoon.

  Your loving brother,

  Percy

  Borrodale House, Perthshire, Saturday 16 December 2017

  Breakfast was hot kippers and scrambled eggs, strong tea that looked as though it had been made with brick dust, and toast so thickly cut, it could prop open the doors. Alex had been the first up, naturally, standing by the window and waiting to intercept the car as it came up the drive at first light. The house was set upon a knoll, the grounds mo
re beautiful and landscaped than she had been able to see in the twilight last night – wide level lawns rolling away from the house, old tiered fir trees on the periphery framing the view as they dropped down in a series of terraces towards the wild, unbrushed textures of the open moors. A gentle mist had drifted, wraith-like, over the gardens as the reluctant sun was nudged into the sky, soft colours of blue, grey and green beginning to bud hesitantly. When she had seen the car crunch over the gravel, she had torn silently through the house in her pyjamas and dressing gown and managed to catch the driver before he could knock on a knocker or ring a bell. And as she had turned to go back inside, she had been surprised to see that half the house – the other side from her room – was covered in scaffolding. It had been obscured in the darkness when they’d arrived last night.

  It was barely brighter now, a pale strip of daylight pushing weakly against the night clouds like a saucepan with its lid askew, and everyone apart from Ambrose and her looked half-asleep.

  ‘We’ve got to eat as much as is humanly possible,’ Elise said, helping herself to a huge bowl of cranachan – a traditional breakfast made of a blend of oats, whisky, cream and raspberries and which looked to Alex more like a pudding. ‘It doesn’t matter how full we think we are, we must push through,’ she said grimly. ‘We’re going to be standing in a river in two hours.’

  Anna gave a shudder. ‘Remind me why we always agree to this?’

  ‘Because you like Ambrose’s whisky,’ Sam – the tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged man with sandy hair – replied in a knowing tone.

  ‘And Mary’s cooking,’ Elise added. ‘No one does cranachan like Mary.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Daisy smiled. ‘I’ll tell her you said that.’

  ‘It looks freezing out there,’ Jess said, eyeing the dark vista beyond the windows suspiciously.

  ‘How are you feeling, Alex? Nervous?’ Daisy asked, passing down the salt and pepper to Max who seemed not to be a morning person and had so far managed to communicate via a series of grunts.

  ‘I’m nervous about the fishing. I’ve only done it once before.’