“But I found a chewing gum wrapper up by the tree.”
“Ah, I see what you mean. So where are you at the minute?”
“I’m on my way back down to the cottage. Josh, if they’re up on the hill, they’ll never find their way back. They’ll be lost, Josh.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“I’ve no idea.” Dan stopped to catch his breath. “Yes, actually, I do. Go to the police station, Josh. Tell them that your two sisters left the cottage this afternoon at about three o’clock with two dogs and that they haven’t returned. Give them descriptions and anything they want to know, and tell them that we’ll need to get search parties out looking for them as soon as possible.”
“That’s a bit serious, Dad. Do you really think it’s that bad?”
“Too right, I do. I think they’re in a heap of trouble.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll take the car along to Auchnacerie to find out if they’ve been there. If not, I’ll call you back from Trenchards’ phone.”
“All right.” Josh paused on the line. “Dad?”
“What is it?”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine. I can usually sense if something’s gone wrong.”
Dan silently blessed his son’s ability to come out with the right words at the right time. It had been exactly that way when they had sat together watching the towers of the World Trade Center crumble to the ground. “I hope you’re right, Josh. I pray to God that you’re right.”
He burst into the kitchen at Auchnacerie without so much as a knock on the door, and found every member of the Trenchard family present, each occupied with a different project. Max lay on the sofa, fingers flicking the controls of a Play Station as he stared intently at the darting figures and flashing laser beams that filled the television screen; Sooty was at one end of the kitchen table, absorbed in yet another pictorial masterpiece; while Patrick and Katie, seated at the other end, entered data onto the laptop computer from the untidy pile of bills and receipts that Patrick had in front of him. They were immediately united by their looks of surprise and concern when Dan entered.
“Everything all right, Dan?” Patrick asked, peering over a pair of half-moon reading glasses.
“You haven’t by any chance seen Millie and Nina, have you?”
Patrick looked across at his wife. She shrugged her shoulders. “No. Why? Are they not at the cottage?”
Dan let out a deep sigh of despair. “They went off for a walk at about three o’clock with the dogs and they haven’t returned.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes!” Katie exclaimed, getting up from her seat and pushing her way past Sooty. “Have you any idea where they’ve gone?”
“No, but I’ve a horrible suspicion that they could have gone over the top of the hill at the back of the cottage.”
Patrick began to push himself to his feet. “Kate, get on the phone to the police station in Fort William.”
“Don’t bother to get up, Patrick,” Dan said. “I’ve already done that. At least, I’ve called Josh and asked him to go round to tell them that they’re missing.”
“I don’t think they’ll have gone very far,” Max said, sending a laser beam towards a grotesque creature that exploded in a splat of computer-generated gore. “They’re not the type.”
“That’s enough, Max,” Patrick said sharply to him. “This is really quite serious, you know.”
“That’s all right,” Dan said. “Josh said exactly the same thing. Would you mind if I called him to say that they’re not here?”
Patrick gestured towards the telephone. “Of course. Go ahead.”
Katie put a hand on Dan’s arm as he went to pick up the receiver. “I’m sure that they’ll be all right, Dan. They can’t have gone that far.”
“But this countryside is bloody treacherous, Katie!” Dan said vehemently, getting frustrated by their calmness. He began forcefully dialing Josh’s number. “I’m always reading in the papers about people being found dead up in the bloody Highlands. I mean, they’re not even prepared for the weather up here. The kind of clothes they’re wearing wouldn’t keep an ant warm.”
Sooty sat with her pencil raised in the air, as if asking for permission to speak in a classroom. “Dan the Man?”
“You said that they had the dogs with them,” Patrick stated.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s good, because they’ve been here long enough to get their bearings. What’s more, if they do have to send out the search dogs for the girls, then”— Patrick caught Katie’s eye and saw from her expression that she thought he should tone it down a bit—“well, it’ll help anyway.”
Sooty now supported her tiring arm with a hand under the elbow. Once more she tried to get a word in. “Dan the Man?”
“Josh, it’s Dad,” Dan said into the receiver.
Katie turned to her daughter. “What is it, Sooty? Can’t you see that Dan is on the phone?” She softened her voice. “We’re all a bit worried, angel, because Millie and Nina have gone missing somewhere.”
“I know.”
“So why don’t you just get on with your drawing so that we can work out what best can be done to help find them?”
“But I don’t think that they need to be found.” Sooty was all at once set upon by four sets of staring eyes. She wondered what she had said wrong now. “Well, anyway, not up the hill,” she said quietly as she got on with her drawing.
The telephone was slammed down mid-sentence and Sooty suddenly found herself hemmed in on the bench by Katie and Dan.
“What do you mean, Sooty?” Katie asked her daughter.
“I saw Millie and Nina out of the window there.” She pointed out into the darkness. “They were on the road and I waved to them, and they waved back.”
“Can you remember when this was?” Dan asked.
“When Mummy went to get Max from school. Daddy had gone to the loo, and I was sitting here by myself.”
Dan looked over the top of Sooty’s curly black head at Katie. “What time would that have been?”
“About quarter past four,” Katie replied.
Thumping his elbows onto the table, Dan slapped his hands to his forehead and let out a long sigh of relief. “Thank goodness for that! At least they’re not up on the hill.” He bent over and gave Sooty a kiss on the top of her head. “Thanks, Sooty, you are a wonder girl.” He jumped to his feet and went back over to the telephone and dialed Josh’s number.
“Josh?”
“Have you found them?”
“No, not yet.”
“Oh.” Josh’s voice dropped in disappointment. “I thought that when you hung up just then—”
“Sooty saw them earlier this afternoon, Josh, so they’re not up the hill.”
Dan heard his son let out a long sigh. “Well, that’s something, anyway. Where were they heading?”
Dan looked over to where Sooty was continuing with her drawing. “Can you remember which way they were going, Sooty?”
“That way,” Sooty replied, pointing the rubber on her pencil westwards. “They were going towards the bridge at the top of the loch.”
“They were heading towards the main road, Josh.”
“Right, I’ll tell the police.”
“Are you at the station?”
“Yes. They’ve got the Mountain Rescue Team on standby.”
“Well, tell them that I don’t think that we’ll be needing them, but could you ask the police to check the main road between Kinlocheil and Fort William? I’ll go out myself to see if I can find them. You’d better stay there just in case any word of their whereabouts comes through.”
“Okay.”
“Well done, Josh. And thanks.”
“No worries. I was right, you see, Dad. The girls are going to be fine.”
“I hope so, Josh. We’ve still got to find them, though.”
The telephone call came through just as Dan was moving off in the car from Auchnacer
ie. Katie came rushing out of the house and banged on the back window to stop him.
“They’ve been found, Dan.”
Dan jumped out of the car. “Thank heavens! Where?” he said, walking quickly ahead of Katie into the house.
“Glenfinnan.”
“Glenfinnan? What on earth were they doing there?” He entered the kitchen and picked up the receiver from the sideboard. “Hullo?”
“Is that Mr. Dan Porter?” The man spoke with a slow, easy accent that did little to accentuate the urgency of the situation.
“Yes, it is.”
“This is Constable Lamond here of the Northern Constabulary.”
Dan hurried him for information. “You’ve found my daughters, Constable Lamond.”
“That I have, sir. That I have. The two girls and their dogs are in my van at this very moment in time.”
Dan blew out a relieved breath. “Thank you, Constable Lamond. I very much appreciate your trouble. They’re none the worse for wear, then?”
“Aye, well, it depends on what you mean by that, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the control room at the station received a phone call from Jimmy Maclean, the landlord at the Jacobite Inn at Glenfinnan, saying that two girls had recently left his establishment in a state that would raise a wee bit of concern.”
“What do you mean? They were drunk?”
“Aye, well, sir, they would seem to be fairly inebriated. Jimmy Maclean feels awful ashamed and also a wee bit angry that he had been serving underage drinkers, but with all their fancy makeup, he thought that they were both of a legal age.”
Dan screwed up his eyes and ran a hand over the top of his head. “Where did you pick them up?”
“On the main road, sir, about two miles out of Glenfinnan. They were heading back on the road to Fort William with a wee bit of difficulty. Certainly the dogs seemed to be making better weather of the walking than your daughters.”
“What had they been drinking?”
“Ah, well, the evidence was there for all to see.”
“Meaning?”
“Both were carrying packs of these Alco popthingies under their arms. Awful dangerous stuff, sir. Shouldn’t really be allowed, passing off alcohol as lemonade.”
Dan pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Oh, the stupid idiots!” he said quietly.
“Aye, I would agree, sir. I’ve already given them a good talking-to, but I don’t think that a few words from yourself would go amiss.”
“They’ll certainly get that, Constable. I’m really sorry that you’ve had to deal with this. We’d better arrange a meeting point and I’ll come and pick them up.”
“Don’t worry about that, sir. I’m on my way back to Fort William anyway, so I’ll drop them off on my way past.”
“Do you know where I live?”
“It’d be the cottage where Patrick Trenchard stayed, would it not?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting, Constable.”
The phone rang again before Dan had the time to turn round to witness the reactions of Patrick and Katie. He picked up the receiver without thinking.
“Hullo?”
It was Josh. “Dad? Have you heard the latest?”
“Have I not.”
“Bloody headcases. What the hell did they think they were doing?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out in about fifteen minutes.”
“Well, don’t go all soft on them, just because they’ve been missing. They won’t have any idea how much trouble they’ve caused.”
“I wouldn’t think so for a minute.”
“Just lay into them, Dad.”
“I’ll deal with it, Josh.”
“Yeah, well. Listen, I don’t feel like coming home right now. I’m going to give Maria José a call and meet her for a drink.”
“Good idea. Sorry, Josh, about all this. To be quite honest, I have no idea what I’m going to do with them after this escapade.”
“If I were you, I’d put them on the next train back to London. If they want to behave like that, they can damned well stay down there. This has done nothing for our family’s reputation up here, you know.”
Dan found himself grimacing at the formality of the admonishment delivered by his ex-grunge son. “I know, Josh. I do realize that, and I promise you that I’ll make sure that they’re fully aware of that.”
“Bloody idiots,” Josh said with a spit of animosity before ending the call.
Dan left the Trenchards’ house immediately, only giving a brief account of what had taken place. Josh had been right. It was an embarrassment and he was glad to have the excuse to leave, saying that he had to get back to the cottage before the constable arrived with his wretched load.
There was no way that Dan could utter even one word of rebuke to his daughters that evening. He realized that the moment they entered the house, clinging to the arms of the constable as if being guided blindfolded along a precipitous mountain path. Even the dogs skulked off to their bed in front of the stove without giving Dan their usual rapturous welcome.
“If I were you, sir,” said the tall, stern-faced policeman, “I would just get them into their beds and then have a wee word with them in the morning.”
Nina’s eyes tried to focus on her father, then her ashen features turned an impossible shade of green and she started to retch. Dan grabbed her and forcefully lifted her outside where she rid herself of at least some of the contents of her stomach.
As they came back into the cottage, Constable Lamond raised his eyebrows. “Aye, we’ve had a number of forced stops on the way home for that kind of thing, I’m afraid.”
He stayed long enough to help Dan get the girls into their sleeping bags, and then, having seen him to the door with further thanks and apologies, Dan set about covering the floor around the comatose bodies of his daughters with newspapers and an assortment of receptacles that could be used in the event of further upheaval. He then sat on the sofa for the next three hours, staring at the girls, sometimes leaning forward to brush a hand against their foreheads just to make sure that they were still in the land of the living. And as he sat there, taking in the characteristics of their faces—the dimple on Millie’s chin that was his, the fine blonde hair that was Jackie’s, the arch of Nina’s eyebrows that was his, the fullness of her mouth that was Jackie’s— his heart began to ache at the thought that the evening’s shenanigans could have turned out so much worse.
The girls did not wake until just before eleven o’clock the following morning. Josh had gone off to work at the normal time, which pleased Dan. He knew that his son would have had much harsher things to say to his sisters than those that Dan himself had planned. As soon as they raised their throbbing heads from their pillows, Dan handed each a glass of water and a couple of Nurofen capsules, and by the time that they had ventured out of their sleeping bags and sat down at the kitchen table, the pained furrowing of their foreheads had lessened. Not a word passed between them as Dan placed the plateful of well-done toast and mugs of hot, sweet tea in front of them. The girls glanced across the table at each other and both simultaneously burst into tears.
Even though Dan’s heart yearned to comfort them, he kept up his work in silence. He picked up their sleeping bags and folded them up and put them on the sofa. He cleared the buckets and saucepans from the floor and scrumpled up the newspapers and threw them in the dustbin. And all the while, the girls kept crying and picking at their toast and drinking their tea in mouselike quantities.
It was Millie who eventually broke the silence. “We are really sorry, Dad. We really are.”
“Right,” said Dan, and then began to wash up his own breakfast things.
“We didn’t mean to do it,” said Nina, giving him full benefit of her doe-eyed meekness.
Dan turned to look at her, but his expression of displeasure never changed. “Right.” He
slung the dishcloth over his shoulder and began stacking away cups and plates in the cupboard next to the sink.
Millie began sobbing with renewed gusto. “We are just so miserable, Dad. You don’t understand. We just hate it so much.”
Dan threw the dishcloth onto the table between them with force. “It was only for a week, you know. That’s all. One week. And I think that the least you could have done, for my sake, was to just make the best of it. In fact, I really thought you were. Both of you were in sparkling form the other night at the Trenchards. I was really proud of you. And then you have to go and do a stupid thing like that!”
Millie looked at him as if he had just slapped her across the face. “But—”
“There is absolutely no excuse, Millie, so don’t even bother trying to wriggle your way out of this one. What you did was inexcusable. You involved a hell of a lot of people last night, and every one of us was in fear of your safety. To be honest, I couldn’t give a shit about you getting drunk. I’m pretty sure that you’ll be feeling the punishment for that right now. But what I can’t excuse is the selfishness that you showed towards others.”
Millie dipped her head and stared into her lap. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“We truly are, Dad,” Nina added quietly.
Dan shook his head. “Do you know something? After that night at the Trenchards, I had an idea that I might ring up your mother and ask if you could all come up here for Christmas. I thought that it would be great fun because I thought you were beginning to enjoy yourselves. But that was a stupid idea, wasn’t it?” He turned and stared out the window. “You win, girls. You can get on that train on Sunday night and neither of you need ever come back to Scotland again.”
“But we love it up here,” Nina spluttered out, her face collapsing as only Nina’s could.
“I don’t think so, Nina.”
“But we do,” Millie continued on from her sister. “We really love being like a family again. That other night with the Trenchards was good fun. I really liked Patrick and Katie and their children. It was just . . . fun.”
Dan turned and leaned against the kitchen sink, his arms folded. “Excuse me, you two, but do you think I have a memory like a sieve? No more than a minute ago, you were telling me how much you hated it up here?”
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