Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists

by Abigail Clements

  I picked up the receiver and dialled ‘O’ as instructed, but was greeted by an unnerving silence. I jiggled the receiver button with no results. In desperation I tried to feed coins into the unwilling coin slot, but I knew then that wasn’t going to help.

  In defeat I dropped the receiver back in its cradle and sat down wearily on the triangular seat in the corner. It should hardly come as a surprise, I told myself, to find this rarely used and remote phone out of order. More than likely it remained like that for weeks at a time before anyone came by, as I had, and discovered it.

  But I was tired and cold and wet and I knew now that I could not after all reach my parents tonight as I had promised. They would be worried, as Grisel had feared, and that worried me. Also I was feeling homesick and I had wanted very much to hear their voices.

  An illogical wave of annoyance, directed at Dominic O’Brady, came over me. What kind of a business relies on a phone booth in the middle of a moor? Then I reminded myself that Sron Ban was Dominic’s home, not his business, and no doubt the distillery itself, wherever it was, had a phone. I could hardly blame Dominic for not stringing half a mile of phone wires over the moor to his little farmhouse, though tonight I very much wished he had.

  Resignedly I stood up and began retying my damp scarf. I heard the dull thudding as I turned to leave, but it only registered as quick footsteps. I reached for the door and felt it jerked violently beneath my hand as it was forced open from the outside.

  The light went out as the door banged open and I jumped back, scared, into the darkness, away from the figure that had forced its way into the booth. My hand was on my flashlight on the shelf and instinctively I flicked it on in defence.

  ‘No, put it out.’ The voice was female, and frantic. I obeyed because in the short flash of the beam I had seen the figure clear enough to know I was in no danger. It was a young woman, more a girl indeed, in rough clothes and with loose wild long hair. She was a lot more scared than I was. Even now I can see that young desperate face, streaked with rain and tears and pinched thin with the exhaustion of running too far too fast.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I cried out.

  ‘Take her please,’ she gasped, begging. ‘Please, I can’t carry her any more.’ In the darkness she thrust forward a bundle that my arms enfolded instinctively. What I had taken in my brief lighted glimpse to be a folded coat had far more weight and warmth than cloth.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I demanded as she pulled away.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ she shouted, already running. The night and the wind took the sound of her footsteps in moments.

  I stumbled blindly after her a few steps, but then the bundle in my arms struggled and whimpered as the rain lashed down on it. I gave up. I had no hope of catching her, even if I knew where she was going. Shaken and bewildered, I returned to the phone booth, shut the door, and sat down again on the bench. There was nothing else I could do.

  The light blinked on and the struggling shape in my arms became a faded patchwork quilt out of which a small face looked, blinking at the light. She was about two, a little girl with soft honey-brown bangs over wide dark-blue eyes. I thought of Mark on the plane that morning, which seemed now days ago. I thought of my daughter.

  ‘Mummy?’ she asked, peering around the edge of her quilt twisting on my lap, searching. I cuddled her up close and said, ‘Mummy’s coming back soon.’

  She blinked. I thought she would cry, but instead she pulled the edge of the quilt over her eyes and curled against me. I thought perhaps the light was bothering her and I slid the door open far enough to trip the switch. In the darkness the little girl said softly, ‘Back soon,’ and leaned closer to me. I stretched my legs and leaned back, hoping she would sleep. I, too, was glad of the darkness. I didn’t know what the child’s mother was running from, but I was sure she was running in fear. And though I had no reason to feel I, too, was in danger, I was suddenly aware how visible and vulnerable I had been in that bright lonely booth.

  I sat there for two hours. It seemed a lot longer, but I had my watch and occasionally I flicked the flashlight on and bit by bit read the dial around from ten-thirty to twelve-thirty. The baby slept, cocooned in her quilt It was late and she was exhausted.

  I was sure once at the beginning that I heard a motor sound, close, perhaps even beside me on the road, but I saw no headlights and could not be certain I had not been fooled by the roaring wind.

  But there was no sound nor sign of the woman whose child now stirred restlessly in my arms. Eventually I knew I must leave. The open door of the phone booth let in the wind and stray drops of rain. I was shivering and I feared the child, who had begun to whimper in her sleep, was also cold. Nervously I pulled the door shut, allowing the light to flick on again.

  I found in my shoulder bag a pencil and small note pad. Balancing the restless little girl against my shoulder, I wrote awkwardly with my free hand, describing in detail precisely where I was going and the exact time. If the mother who had so mysteriously and completely vanished did choose to return, she would, I hoped, have no difficulty finding me and her child.

  Leaving the note pad propped securely beside the phone and carrying the baby, wrapped now in my raincoat as well as her quilt, I started back on the dark track to Sron Ban.

  It was a full forty-five minutes later when I finally stood fumbling for my key at the door of the dark house. I had seen no other car and there were no lights; I realized my employer had not yet arrived. I was glad. I was far too tired and confused to speak rationally to anyone, much less to explain the baby on my shoulder.

  Incredibly the little girl was sound asleep. Once I had begun walking, she had drifted peacefully off, lulled apparently by even the very jerky motion of my stumbling progress over the moor. I was filled with admiration for the ability of a really tired baby to sleep anywhere under any circumstances.

  The fire in the front room was out, grey ashes. Upstairs, my bedroom fire that I had so cautiously stoked still glowed dimly. I put the child down on my bed, still wrapped in her cocoon, and putting the fire screen aside, I gingerly poked the hot ashes and added a few more coals. To my delight, they began to smoke and crackle enthusiastically.

  I crouched by the fireplace, warming my wet hands and stretching my tired arms; even a two-year-old was a weight to carry that distance, in that manner. I wondered how far her mother had run with her before she reached the phone booth. Thinking back to the afternoon, I could recall seeing no houses beyond where Mr. McGuire had dropped me. And there were none between the phone booth and Braemore. If she were seeking some refuge when she left me, she had a long way to go to find one.

  I shook my head, too weary to think any more about it, and began peeling off my wet clothes. I dragged a nightgown from my suitcase, slipped it on, and by the light of the fire began unwrapping the baby. The coat and quilt were damp, but inside, she seemed pleasantly warm and dry in her little playsuit. I undressed her down to her undershirt and woolly trainer pants, while she wriggled and yawned and stretched but didn’t wake.

  Deciding a little more security wouldn’t hurt, I replaced her little pants with a diaper improvised out of a hand towel and pinned with one of those safety pins girls like me carry in case they ever need one. I had a brief flitting vision of Danny and I, giggling together and diapering a wide-eyed plastic doll at one of the hospital’s prenatal classes. We hadn’t reckoned on how long I’d wait to use that lesson.

  As I climbed into bed under the heavy quilt, curling myself around the warm little body, my chin resting on the silky head, I was aware that for the first time since his death I had thought about Danny without pain.

  The baby stirred, sighed, and stretched her soft arms up until instinctively they were around my neck, the chubby fingers twined in my hair.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Want egg-ie,’ a small but insistent voice came prying into my sleep. There were little fingers on my face investigating my eyelid. Also there was a heavy weight on top of
me.

  I opened my eyes. She was kneeling on top of the red quilt, on top of me, mermaid-shaped, wispy-haired head tilted sideways, small bare feet flared out like seal flippers.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, half asleep.

  ‘Want egg-ie.’

  Well, anyhow, I knew what she expected for breakfast.

  ‘Okay, then,’ I said, sitting up and rolling her backwards. She lay on her back with her feet in the air, pleased with herself.

  Sunshine from the former window patched a square on the wood floor. I put my feet down onto the furry sheepskin, stood up, and walked to the window. The sash slid up, loose and rattly, and the air rushed in to the little room. It was soft as silk and smelled sweet as fresh water. The sound of the loch was quieter this morning; the storms were gone and the sky was clear.

  The little girl still watched me from the bed, playing with the toes of one foot. I thought her calm acceptance of me, of waking here with a stranger in a strange room, extraordinary. She had not again asked for her mother.

  I wished I knew her name, and was about to try to coax it out of her when I heard the roar of a motor and then the squeak and thud of the front door opening under a heavy hand.

  Startled, I jumped back to the window, peering out. The front door was, of course, obscured from my view by the slope of the slate roof, but in front of the house, beside the green minivan, there stood now the battered grey Land Rover that belonged to Kevin McGuire.

  Then I leaned farther out the window and saw, beyond the corner of the house, what I had missed before; the tail end of another vehicle, sand-coloured and gleaming new. Dominic O’Brady had come home in the night.

  ‘Come on, little one,’ I said to the baby. ‘We’d better go meet the boss.’

  I dressed her hurriedly and slipped into my jeans and T-shirt. When I opened my door to lead the child to the bathroom, I heard men’s voices downstairs, rather loud, behind the closed door of the front room.

  I had finished tucking her back into her playsuit and had just slung her up on my hip for the descent of the narrow stairs when the front room door flung open. The voices were loud indeed; they were shouting and angry. I caught sight of Kevin McGuire’s shoulder, clad in the same rough sheepskin jacket, as he stepped back into the hallway.

  ‘You hadn’t really much choice about that,’ he flung sharply into the room. ‘You haven’t much choice about anything now, have you?’ he finished in the same harsh ironic voice that had taunted me on the roadside.

  From within the room I heard Dominic reply, something short and bitter, so bitter that he did not sound at all like the man I had met in New York.

  I stepped back quickly, hoping to slip into my room unnoticed. Whatever this conversation was about, I doubted either of them would want it eavesdropped.

  Kevin McGuire whirled, alerted by my quick movement. He didn’t say anything, but stood staring, not at me, but at the child in my arms. A confusion crossed his face and there was a momentary trembling weakness around his small mouth and chin. He looked afraid, as his eyes darted, calculating, to me and back to Dominic O’Brady who had pushed past him into the room.

  He looked different in jeans and a white fisherman’s sweater. But the heavy grey-streaked black hair, hanging low over the heavy brows, and those dark, dark blue eyes were the same. Amazement and confusion crossed his face, as it had McGuire’s, and another look, too, like pain. Then I realized that he, too, was staring at the child, as if I held something ghostly and terrifying in my arms.

  Finally Dominic said with careful calm, ‘Hello, Caroline. Perhaps you had better come down.’

  I did, following him and Kevin McGuire, who still said nothing at all to me, into the front room. The little girl, clinging comfortably and watching everyone with interest, suddenly said clearly aloud, ‘Ke-vin.’

  McGuire stared dumbly.

  Dominic stood half-turned away from me, looking distractedly out the sunlit window, as if he did not know where to begin. He put his hands to his face, covering it for a moment, the dark hair falling through his spread fingers. Then he dropped his hands, turned to me, and said, ‘Caroline, where did you get the child?’

  I told him, about the phone booth and the young woman appearing out of the storm, and how I had sat waiting with the child for her return. I had heard the child speak McGuire’s name, so it was to him I turned to ask, ‘Do you know who she is? Do you know where her mother is?’

  He made no answer, just stood, his face very pale. He and Dominic exchanged a silent look and then they turned without speaking to me and left the room together, closing the door behind them.

  I stared at the painted planks of the door. I knew that seeing the child here had distressed them both, and I wondered if I had done something very wrong. Still I comforted myself with the knowledge that I had had no choice about what I had done. I could hardly have left the baby up there on the dark moor.

  She wriggled to be set down and demanded her egg again. I eased her to the floor and went into the kitchen. Whatever else was going on around here, some things could not be asked to wait. A hungry two-year-old was one of them.

  I boiled an egg for her, and put it in a little egg cup on the small table in the window. I was just draping a dishcloth around her front for a bib when the door opened again and Dominic came in, alone. Outside, I heard the Land Rover start up and pull away.

  Dominic came right up to me and took my hands the way he had in his office in New York.

  ‘Caroline, I am really very glad to see you,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry about this terrible introduction you are having to Sron Ban.’

  ‘Hardly terrible,’ I said quickly. ‘Just a bit confusing.’ I smiled, but he shook his head and did not smile back. He seemed very tired and I had the feeling he had not been to bed that night.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ I asked quickly. He nodded, looking very grateful. I gestured to the seat across from the little girl and he sat down wearily. I went to the kitchen again and found a coffee pot and a can of ground coffee. I prepared it and set the pot on the stove before returning.

  Suddenly I did not want to ask about the child and her mother. I knew he did not want to talk about them. But I had to know. I stood beside the little one, helping her with the last yellow bits down in the shell.

  ‘Mr. O’Brady,’ I said softly, ‘do you know who this little girl is?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said without expression, and paused so long, his head tilted back and his eyes half-closed, that I thought he wasn’t going to explain any further. Then he looked down at the child and said gently, ‘Her name is Caitlin.’

  ‘And her mother?’

  ‘Her mother is Shona Anderson.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said, shaken and not wanting to believe it. But I knew it was true. That explained everything, their shock at the sight of the child, the way Dominic sat there, sad and hopeless and exhausted, and most of all why Caitlin’s young mother had never returned for her.

  ‘How?’ I demanded feeling sick at the thought. ‘I just saw her last night. What happened?’

  ‘The police thought it was a hit-and-run driver. I called them out. I found her, you see, just past Braemore, when I was driving home last night. I found her in the road.’ He looked up at me, somehow asking for help, then buried his face in his hands again.

  I jumped up and got the coffee, trying not to think about Shona Anderson, with her desperate young face and rain-tangled hair. Could I have somehow helped her, somehow stopped her? I shook my head as I mechanically poured the cups of coffee. Neither she nor I knew that whatever she was running from could be no worse than what she was running to on that lonely mountain road.

  I was quite probably the last person she spoke to on earth.

  We sat together at the table, Dominic and I and little Caitlin, innocently unaware of her loss. I felt oddly close to him. He explained quietly that the police w
ould come to Sron Ban shortly to discuss the matter with him, and that I should, of course, tell them my story.

  Caitlin finished her egg, and a slice of bread I spread with butter for her. I wiped her face and she slid down from her chair and toddled off and began a game with the brass and irons.

  Dominic watched me watching her, and said, ‘You look tired, Caroline. Was the trip over difficult?’

  ‘No, not that,’ I said. ‘But it was a short night, of course, and then last night, too. It was two o’clock by the time I got to bed.’

  ‘Two o’clock?’ he questioned, surprised. ‘How long did you stay there, in the phone booth? It must have been hours.’

  ‘Just two hours,’ I said.

  He stared hard at me and said, ‘Caroline, what time did you meet Shona?’

  ‘It was ten-thirty.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been.’

  ‘It was,’ I repeated. ‘I looked at my watch.’

  ‘Caroline,’ he said slowly, pointedly, as if explaining the illogic of my answer, ‘it was eleven-thirty when I found her. She was dead already.’

  I didn’t understand, and looked blankly back at him, repeating, ‘It was ten-thirty. I looked at my watch.’

  ‘It’s nearly ten miles to Braemore, and I found her just after I passed Braemore. She couldn’t walk ten miles in under an hour.’

  ‘Perhaps she hitched a ride?’

  ‘No cars use the Sron Ban road, Caroline. None except mine,’ he added slowly, ‘and Kevin McGuire’s.’ And then he was up from the table so fast that the chair tipped back and fell against the floor. He didn’t stop to right it, or to speak a word to me.

  Outside, he leaped into the green minivan and roared away, skidding and leaving broad tracks in the dirt. I stood with my mouth half-open, still holding my coffee cup and staring out of the window at the empty spot in the road where the van had been. I think I would have been annoyed at his rudeness if the look on his face hadn’t scared me so. I didn’t like thinking about where he was going or what he planned to do.