“Kind of.”
“Don’t tell her anything, son. Even if she uses me as some form of bait. Your sister wouldn’t let me come to harm.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because her mother told her to make sure we were alright. And Majjie always does what her mother told her.” He stands up and walks towards where the water laps onto the stones. “How’s Blair?”
“Sleeping when I left her.” And I realise what I’ve just given away.
He smiles. “Never saw that one coming.”
I shake my head. “Nothing can come of it.”
“Things already have, son. You just don’t see it yet. If you’re free today I need a hand tidying the maze. There’s a brush with your name on it.”
He picks up a stone and skims it across the water. One, two, three, four jumps.
I copy him, skimming my own and manage five.
“Has Isaac Everleigh been up here?”
“Ivy’s brother? Yes.”
“What do you make of him?”
My father’s eyes take all of me in. “Like all of us, he has secrets.”
We don’t talk any more. He skims another stone and then we head back to the maze where he hands me a brush and shovels and sets me to work just as he did when I was a teenager.
He tells nothing more and there’s nothing else to ask. The quiet and the loch tell me everything.
* * *
The temperature turns on Bonfire night.
There’s a hotel a few miles down that shares the banks of the loch. It’s a newer building than the castle; but then, most buildings are. On November fifth there’s the inevitable fireworks display, a shower of sparks that light up the sky.
The castle is quiet. Staff who are there for the weekend watch the show from grounds. Someone organises an outside bar with a barbecue and mulled wine for the staff and everywhere else seems deserted.
Bonfire night. The night they celebrate the death of a traitor.
I hear from my sister. A delivery of a plant with a note asking me to look after it. It’s in her handwriting, an elaborate cursive that she maintains by practising it still, one of her strange quirks.
I step outside near to the loch, facing away from the fireworks towards the mountains. The snow is visible even in the night sky, the moon just big enough to highlight it and there’s a pinch to the air that I know means the snow will fall here tomorrow. Whoever spends the night in the castle may need to spend a couple more as I’m sure that the roads haven’t been gritted and the ploughs aren’t in place.
“You look like the decisions of the world are yours alone.”
I don’t need to turn around to know who the voice belongs to. It’s Isaac, here to see Ivy and not Blair, as Blair’s in Paris for two days.
“Fortunately they’re not.”
Isaac steps behind me, close enough so he could touch. I can feel his heat and I want to turn round and see if he’s wearing a coat because I’ve never seen him in any more than a suit jacket.
“Thank you for looking after Ivy.”
The loch washes over the rocky shore, the glint of light catching the waves.
“Your sister is an easy person to look after.”
