She thought of texting David and asking his advice. But she dismissed that thought with the blink of an eye. She couldn’t text David. Not about this. Not right now. Not until she could return to her room. She drank some of the wine, tasting nothing as it passed through her lips. Then she clapped her hands together.
“Right,” she announced, interrupting Hollis’s argument. “I’m here because of Avon.”
They all looked at her, confused, as if they’d forgotten she was there.
Hollis came so close, she could feel his breath on her cheek. The wrinkle on his forehead that had once been a slight line had deepened to a crevasse.
“You’re here because of what?”
She adjusted her bracelet. “Avon. I sell Avon. You know, soaps, lotions, beauty products. We have an excellent men’s line that would do wonders for those worry lines, Hollis.” She uncrossed and crossed her legs. “Anyway, my regional supervisor held a sales contest to promote our new Highland fragrance line. I won.”
“Did you get to choose where to stay?”
“No. They arranged everything.”
“They?”
“Avon.”
“How did you know you won?”
“They sent me an email.”
“And you’re sure that email came from Avon?”
“Who else would’ve sent it?”
That terrible laugh, the one she never thought she’d hear again, sprang from Oliver’s throat.
“That’s the question, isn’t it, love? That’s why Hollis here is playing detective. He thinks he can catch you out in a lie, or figure out who’s been lying to you.”
Oliver’s voice drew Hollis like a lure to a greyhound.
“Playing detective?” Hollis slapped Oliver’s feet off the chair.
The heat of interrogation lifted, Ellie hadn’t realized her hands were shaking until they stopped.
“Playing detective?” Hollis repeated. “I am a detective, Holcombe. Manchester CID. What have you been up to? Any of your big plans come through? Your business investments? Saw Dragons’ Den by the way. Loved the suit.” Hollis’s face remained grim, but there was a smirk in his voice. “So, because I am what Oliver says I’m playing at, I’m going to ask you all questions, and you’re going to answer them. Because, one, I’m the most qualified person here to do so. And, two, I won’t trust any of you until I do. Ellie’s already volunteered. Do I have any others?”
Ellie held her wineglass to her lips and cast her eyes around the room. Each of them gave away so much on their faces. They didn’t know how to keep their emotions bottled in, not even Lorna, who kept fidgeting with the ring on her forefinger. No, there would be no leaving. Not until she saw more.
1.5 hours prior
“Talk to your father. He can make that decision. I’m sorry but . . . I’m sorry but . . . Well then, if that’s Daddy’s decision, I’ll stand by it. I’m sorry but . . .”
The world outside the windshield sank under water, rivulets blurring the gray road. Ellie scrambled to find the windshield wipers in the hired Land Rover while holding the phone to her ear.
“Poppet, I’m sorry. If Daddy said . . . if Daddy said . . .”
She switched her phone to her other ear, taking in a deep breath of the floral scent of her Avon car freshener.
“I do understand, poppet, but if Daddy—All right . . . All right . . . I’ll talk to him . . . Yes, I’ll talk to him. Yes, I’ll—Yes . . . I love you, too.”
She set the phone in the cup holder and located the correct lever. On high blast, the wipers distracted as much as the rain itself, but she could at last make out the twisting road ahead.
“What did I do? What?”
“In five hundred meters, turn right.”
“Haven’t we given her everything she’s asked for? God forbid her brother turns out the same way.”
“In two hundred meters, turn right.”
“I blame myself. I really do. You’re too nice, Ellie. That’s exactly how you get into these situations.”
“Turn right.”
“David’s right. You need to grow a backbone or you’ll never—”
“Missed turn. Make a U-turn.”
“What? How did I? Of course I did.” She spun the Range Rover around, slipping on the wet road but managing to save the car before it tipped into a ditch.
“In one hundred meters, turn left.”
“Where? There’s not even a—Oh, there!”
Her frustration shifted to a new target as the car bounced down the unpaved drive.
Why hadn’t there been a sign to mark the house? Why couldn’t they have done this on Skye itself? Why make her take a ride with a ferryman who wouldn’t stop leering at her? Why make her drive out into the god-forsaken middle of nowhere?
She smacked the steering wheel, then took a deep breath. Tried to see the positives. For example, when was the last time she had been on her own?
No David, no children, no anyone? It must have been before their wedding, so at least fifteen years. She looked at the passenger seat. So strange to see it empty. Yet freeing, in its own way. She was alone, and she was doing something for herself. Something that had nothing to do with her family.
The manor house, when it appeared, looked more like a child’s drawing than the real thing. Uneven lines and too many windows. Ellie would’ve laughed, except it seemed inappropriate, like laughing at the child who came to school in dirty jumpers and too-small shoes.
She parked near a beat-up little Vauxhall and tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, debating whether or not to wait out the heavy rain that patterned the glass, obscuring the house’s façade. Through the rain, the house looked like a watercolor painting, one she might see hanging in a café on the King’s Road. She could be there now with a mug of black coffee, cooing over the babies in prams that clogged up the seating area. But that thought retrieved a memory, one she thought she’d shaken once her plane had taken off at Heathrow. One that now made her shudder. She unclipped the air freshener and stuffed it into her trench coat, pulled the trench over her head, and exited the car, only to step right into a mud puddle that splashed up her leg. She swallowed down a scream and ran into the house.
Hoping the staff wouldn’t notice the messy trail she left on the carpet runner, Ellie rang the bell at reception until an attractive young man hurried down the stairs.
“Yes, yes. I’m here. Let the bell rest.” His immediate frown conveyed his frustration at her mess, but he left it unmentioned as he checked her in.
“Such a lovely place you have here,” she said with a smile after giving her name, twirling her hair on her finger. “It must be so much work to maintain.”
“It keeps me busy. Your room is on—”
“And what an enterprising young man you are”—she laid a hand on his arm—“to run it all by yourself.”
He withdrew his arm with a closed-lip smile and held out her key. “I do what needs to be done. Now, your room is on the third floor. If you—”
“Could you be a lamb and help me with my suitcase? It’s been just a terrible drive, you see. I’m not usually this exhausted, but I haven’t traveled this far by myself in such a long time.”