Suddenly all his attention was on her again, his eyes were smiling, and one eyebrow was slightly raised.
She playfully punched him on the arm and said, “Houses. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
He laughed. “Deal,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling I’m about to be embarrassed, though.”
“How come?
“Yours will be much bigger than mine.”
“What if I promise I won’t laugh at you?”
“Like you’re not laughing at me now?”
“I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because I’d forgotten how good it feels to flirt with a man.” She’d said what was on her mind without thinking what the words would sound like when they were spoken aloud. Putting a hand over her mouth, she mumbled through it, “Whoops! Told you more than you needed to know there, didn’t I? Nice one, Kate. Now you’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I’d forgotten how much fun it is to flirt with a woman … And how sweet and pretty a woman can be.”
“Wow,” Kate said, feeling a kind of happiness she hadn’t known for far too long. “I can’t imagine I did too much to remind you when I was winding up to slap you a little while ago.”
“You didn’t remind me then of sweet, but you reminded me of pretty, even when you were angry.”
Not believing she was going to do what she was about to do, but not able to stop herself from doing it, Kate got on her tiptoes, put her arms on his shoulders and kissed him lightly on the cheek. The kiss lasted barely a heartbeat, and then she took her arms from his shoulders, settled back on her heels and stepped away from him. “Now do you consider yourself welcomed to Glen Cranoch?” she asked.
“So warmly I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave.”
“You might change your mind when you see your cottage.”
“Looks a bit like these, does it?” Cameron asked, his mood changing again as he pointed to the blackened clusters of cottages scattered around the edge of the lochan.
Kate nodded. “At least, that’s what it looks like from a distance. I haven’t had a closer look yet.”
“You talked earlier as though you had.”
“I’ve just heard a bit about it. Have you?”
“I don’t know anything about it at all. I got a telegram out of the blue saying I’d fallen heir to a derelict cottage, thanks to some relative I’d never even heard of. It came at a time when I wasn’t sure what direction to go in next, just that I wanted to go in a different direction. So here I am. Talking of directions, what’s the best way to get up to the cottage?”
“I think if you follow the track you were on, then turn right at the foot of the crags, there’s a place where the stream that runs into the lockhan—”
He smiled, and Kate asked him why with her eyes.
“It’s just funny to hear a Scottish word spoken in an American accent,” he told her. “Are you going native?”
“Yes, I think I am. I don’t think I got that word quite right, though. How would you say it?”
“Lochan.”
She laughed and asked, “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get the ‘och’ in your lochan.”
“You managed it there yourself.”
“That’s just because I was doing a comedy impersonation of you.”
“You should hear me say ‘sporran’, that would really give you a laugh.”
“It just did. What an earth is a sporran?”
“It’s the dangly purse a Scotsman wears over his kilt.”
“You know what question’s coming next, don’t you?” Kate said, a mischievous smile on her face.
“I think I can guess.”
“Well, what’s the answer?”
“I’ll leave it to your imagination.”
Kate threw her head back and laughed, then said, “So, have you got a kilt, then, Mr. Fraser?”
“Not any more, but I find myself wishing I still had.”
“Was it part of your uniform?”
His smile slowly faded, and again Kate got the sense of someone who wanted to leave the past behind, not be reminded of it.
For a moment Cameron said nothing, and then he asked, “How did you know I used to wear a uniform?”
“Archibald Cunningham mentioned it when he told me who my neighbour was going to be.”
“And what else did Archibald Cunningham happen to ‘mention’?”
“Just that you were a soldier, or had been. He maybe got that wrong, though, because you said you’re a photographer.”
“Not all soldiers carry guns.”
When he didn’t elaborate, Kate said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was prying.” Guessing that a change of subject—or, rather, a return to the one she’d sidetracked him from—was in order, she said, “Back to the lochan—”
“You’re a quick learner: you got more ‘och’ in your lochan that time.”
“Aye, I did, didn’t I?” she said in a passable impersonation of Finlay’s lilt.
Cameron had to laugh.
“Anyway,” Kate turned back to face the far end of the glen, “there’s a place at the bottom of the two crags, where the stream—”
“The burn. A wee stream is known as a burn in this part of the world.”
“I’ve got to learn a whole new vocabulary, don’t I, as well as just a comedy accent.”
“At this rate, just give it a week and nobody’ll be able to tell you weren’t born here.”
“Aye, well,” she said, doing another Finlay McRae. “There’s a place where the burn looks shallow enough to ford, and I think you can follow the track around the front of Jamie’s Crag, and up around the back of it to your cottage at the top.”
“When you asked if I’d heard anything about the cottage … There was something in your voice: just what exactly have you heard about it?”
“How can I put this?” Kate said, pondering out loud. Finally she settled on, “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Fraser?”
“You’re kidding me … a haunted house?”
She nodded. “Apparently so. Do you know anything about the man the cottage is named after … Jamie Chisholm?”
“Just that he’s a very, very distant relative.”
“Maybe it’s not my place to tell you.”
“As if you could help yourself,” Cameron said.
Kate laughed. “Now it’s your turn to read me like a book, huh?”
“It’s pretty obvious you’ve got a story you can’t wait to tell.”
“Apparently he fled the field in disgrace at some old battle—Cullodeon or something.”
“Culloden,” Cameron said quietly.
“Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, he was spotted fleeing from the battlefield, and never seen again. His portrait hangs facing the wall in Greystane, and his old cottage is supposed to be haunted.”
Cameron looked thoughtfully up at Jamie’s Crag, and Kate got the feeling he’d almost forgotten she was even there. Wanting to remind him, she said, “So, do you believe in ghosts?”
“Not that kind.”
“What other kind is there?”
Cameron didn’t answer, just kept looking at the crag. Kate didn’t know if he hadn’t heard her question or just chose not to reply. She didn’t push it because, although she was more intrigued by him with every moment, she didn’t want to intrude. She just watched him, studying his profile, liking the slight curl of his hair and wanting to run her fingers through it, liking the straightness of his nose, the smooth plane of his cheeks, wanting to trace his clean jawline with her fingertips.
“I’ve never seen a haunted house,” she said finally.
He turned from the crag back to her and said, “Would you like to see mine now?”
“I’d love to, but I have to go around to the crofters and arrange that meeting I mentioned.” As she said it she realized with surprise that for the last few minutes she’d forgotten all abo
ut the meeting and why she had to hold it—things she hadn’t been able to get off her mind for the last day or so, no matter hard how she tried.
“How about tomorrow?” he asked.
“Definitely. Now, if you’re showing me yours tomorrow, how about if I show you mine tonight?”
“Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”
“We’re still talking about houses here, remember?”
“For a moment I almost forgot.”
“Have you any plans for dinner?”
“Actually I do: a couple of sandwiches and a Mars bar in my camper, with LeeAnn Womack and Matraca Berg for company.”
“I’m almost being deafened by the sounds of violins, and I’m not just talking about your choice of music.”
“At least you didn’t make fun of my choice of music.”
“I’m a bit of a closet C&W fan myself. When it’s bad it’s awful, but when it’s good it strikes a symphony of chords … And I don’t think it gets any better than Lee-Ann Womack’s voice or Matraca Berg’s songs. Ever heard Strawberry—”
“Wine,” he said, answering her question by completing the title of the song. “It’s my favourite country and western song,” he told her, “along with I Hope—”
“You Dance,” Kate said, doing to him what he’d done to her a moment earlier.
They both laughed. “Sounds like we could do a duet,” Cameron said.
And then they weren’t laughing quite so hard because there had been a nameless longing in his voice and in her eyes. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Kate said, “Seven o’clock at my place okay for you?”
“Seven is fine. Meantime, can I give you a lift to the crofters’ cottages?”
“It’s okay, thanks. I love walking through the glen. I don’t know how many more chances I’ll get, so I want to make the most of every one.”
“I understand. It’s that kind of place, isn’t it?” he said, looking around.
“Yeah,” Kate agreed, “it’s that kind of place.”
She walked with him to the camper and said, “See you at seven, then.”
He smiled and hesitated for a moment before nodding and getting in the van.
Kate was smiling, too, as she watched the van disappear in a cloud of dust.
Cameron Fraser hadn’t kissed her, but she knew that he wanted to.
THE WINDING TRACK FLATTENED OUT JUST AS CAMERON was wondering if his camper van would make it to the summit of Jamie’s Crag, and the old cottage came into view.
His first sight of the ruined house gave him second thoughts about wanting to stay there. He’d expected dilapidation, but not that it would bring back sights and sounds and smells so vividly that he could almost be in another country, several thousand miles away, and at another time, several months ago. The walls here were plain stone rather than whitewashed, and the roof was grey-slated rather than red-tiled, but the cottage had the same ghastly, desolate air as the houses in that other country.
Walking around the outside of the cottage, Cameron saw all the little details that had given the overall impression of neglect: gaping black holes in the roof where slates were missing; the old wooden door hanging off its hinges; cracks in the tiny, dirty windows sunk into the thick stone walls.
Going over to the nearest of the two windows, he peered through an empty square where the glass was missing altogether. It was like looking into a bottomless well or the darkest of midnight shadows. He moved to one side so he wasn’t blocking the daylight, but it made no difference. The inside of the house seemed to swallow the light and give nothing back. Even as his eyes became dark-adapted he couldn’t make out any distinction of shape or shade.
All he could see was why people might think the cottage was haunted.
He didn’t get such a sensation himself, however. His disquiet came from the presence of a different type of ghost, the kind that haunts the memory and torments the mind, a product of conscience that lingers in the shadows of consciousness.
When details finally started emerging they came from the darkness inside him rather than the blackness within the cottage. He saw an old woman with a gaudy headscarf, clutching a framed photograph to her chest…
A cattle truck filled with frightened people instead of cowed beasts …
Bodies hurriedly buried in forest clearings and un-ploughed fields.
When Cameron took a step back he wasn’t recoiling from Jamie’s Cottage but from his own past. The derelict cottage reminded him of that past so graphically that his first reaction was to drive flat out to Archibald Cunningham’s office in Inverness and instruct the lawyer to sell the place if he could. The impulse was so strong that he reached for the handle of the camper door.
But he stopped without opening the door. He knew he’d have nowhere to go after leaving the lawyer’s office. He knew that this place was as remote as he could get. He couldn’t run away any further. He couldn’t run away forever. Jamie’s Cottage was at least a place to go, with a reason for going there. He could rebuild it, and with it maybe something of his life. He could make the outside weathertight and the inside habitable, a place he wouldn’t want to run away from, a door he could open without being overwhelmed by brooding darkness from within.
Then there was Glen Cranoch itself. Turning from the cottage to look at the glen spread out below he saw a chance to start afresh. It was everything he could hope for: a place where there weren’t many people, and the few he met would know little or nothing about him; where he could pretend to be a decent human being and maybe fool them.
In time he could maybe even fool himself.
Movement caught his eye from down in the glen. A slender figure with short blond hair. Kate Brodie. She’d almost reached the cluster of crofters’ cottages and was looking up at Jamie’s Crag and waving.
Before he knew it, he was waving back.
Long after Kate had disappeared inside one of the whitewashed cottages Cameron was still thinking about her; about the sparkle in her eyes when she smiled, the way she tilted her head back a little when she laughed. Suddenly he wanted to see her smile and hear her laugh again, whereas before he met her he hadn’t wanted anything to do with anyone.
For a little while Cameron Fraser forgot about the things he’d remembered when he looked into the blackness of the cottage. He forgot about the things he’d seen the previous winter, during the months he’d spent shooting people dead.
It had been a long and bitter winter, and Cameron had shot a lot of people. Men and women, old and young, innocent and guilty alike. He shot them point-blank, so that he could see each harrowing detail on every single face.
He could still see those faces now. They stared at him when he daydreamed, filling his empty moments with waking nightmares …
They peered at him from the blackness when he switched out the light at the end of the day …
And when he closed his eyes they were still there, staring at him sightlessly—part of the darkness that had become a part of him.
He hadn’t shot them with the Browning automatic pistol holstered on his hip, but with the Leica R6 camera hanging around his neck, loading up with 35mm film cartridges instead of 9mm bullets.
He was what the army called a technical specialist, and his specialty was photography. They thought of him as a soldier who just happened to know how to take photos, but he thought of himself as a photographer who just happened to wear a uniform. No matter how much time he spent on firing ranges he still felt clumsy and awkward with the Browning in his hands, like he was missing a couple of fingers or had too many thumbs. He trembled ever so slightly when he took aim, and had never learned to squeeze the trigger smoothly. He always hesitated and then snatched at it, and, each time he fired, he recoiled a little before the gun did. He never felt like a soldier, even with the Browning in his hands—especially with the Browning in his hands—but he always felt like a photographer. When he’d had the Leica in his hands it felt like part of him and he’d felt quietly confident ab
out getting the job done.
Until the job was shooting people dead.
Before that winter his assignments had comprised portraits at passing-out parades and stunted action shots for Press releases and posters—photos of fit young people doing adventurous things in exotic places.
Then one day, out of the blue, he was asked how he’d feel about being seconded to a United Nations special investigation unit in Kosovo. The fact that he’d been asked rather than ordered gave him an idea that the assignment would be pretty rough. The thought filled him with dread, but alongside the dread was the knowledge that he’d had a free ride and now it was time to earn his keep; there was the feeling that he was a phoney, wearing a uniform but only playing at being a soldier; a desire to prove something to his father—and himself—by swapping easy street for a combat zone; and the urge to actually do something that truly mattered, to earn the pride and satisfaction that came from taking on a difficult job that had to be done.
He’d been warned that it would be harrowing, and thought he had a rough idea what to expect… But there are some things that other people’s words and your own imagination can’t prepare you for, however stark their words and however vivid your imagination. The sort of things he saw in a forest outside Blace on his first sortie with the unit.
He’d always loved forests, felt at peace whenever he set foot in them. It was something to do with the way it was always a little cooler than the surrounding area on a hot day and hotter on a cool day, stiller when it was windy, and drier when it was raining …
It was the welcoming give of the ground that makes up a forest floor …
The half-heard, half-imagined sounds of countless unseen little creatures as they went about their lives; the gentle whispering of branches overhead, as if the trees were talking to each other in a language he couldn’t understand but could listen to forever just for the lyrical sound of it, and the perfect peacefulness of the silence that punctuated the words and sentences …
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