Callum opened the glove box and pulled out an open bag of wine gums he seemed to have been expecting, rooting through for a red one before holding the bag out for me.
‘I told her all the important things. That’s why I never mentioned you.’
For a brief second, one tiny black bar appeared in the corner of the screen and a little red circle appeared over the text icon, fifteen messages awaiting my attention. But by the time my thumb flew across the screento open it, the bar was gone and the messages had not downloaded. I was on my own.
‘You’re a brave girl, venturing into the lair of the beast without knowing what you’re in for,’ Mal intoned as we pulled off the wider road and onto a narrow one, the railings disappearing, replaced by bushes and bracken. ‘And at Christmas of all times of year.’
‘If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing a good job,’ I replied, slipping my useless phone back in my bag while Mal dug into the bag of sweets and stuffed his cheeks full, padding out his smiling face like a particularly chuffed hamster.
‘Ignore him,’ Callum instructed. ‘Everything is going to be fine.’
‘Famous last words,’ I replied, echoing his own line from the night before. ‘Famous last words.’
A little over an hour after we left Inverness, Mal interrupted his own running commentary to announce that we were almost home.
‘It’s so pretty!’ I said as we turned onto a side road, passing through a green farm gate that opened automatically as we approached. ‘Are those your sheep?’
‘Yes.’ Callum’s voice was a flat monotone. ‘They’re our sheep. Just like the others and the ones before that.’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ I said, pouting and indignant. ‘You said your dad was a dairy farmer, not a sheep farmer. I’ve never been on a farm before, how am I supposed to know you can have both?’
Mal said nothing but the lines that bracketed his mouth ticked with amusement. Callum looked less entertained, twisting against his seatbelt to look at me.
‘What?’ I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder asbest I could while tethered to the backseat. ‘Caroline isn’t a mind reader.’
‘But she does like to refer to herself in the third person?’ he commented as we crawled up the road so as not to disturb his woolly neighbours. ‘Yes, we’ve got sheep and cows and chickens and a couple of horses and do we still have the goats, Mal?’
‘Aye, there’s a handful of goats,’ the older man nodded. ‘And your sister took in two rabbits from a kiddie who was moving away so now we’ve about five hundred of the wee sods hopping around the place. Puts me in the mood for rabbit stew.’
In front of us, a quaint farmhouse came into view. A limestone cottage with a pitched roof and two chimney stacks, both of them smoking. The white window frames matched the neatly painted pipes and guttering, and each of the four panes of glass at every window glinted in the sun. It was like something out of a storybook, with old chimney pots on either side of the door full of deep purple winter pansies.
‘It’s exactly how I imagined it,’ I breathed, forgetting my role for a moment. ‘So beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ Mal dipped his chin as he continued driving, leaving the farmhouse behind. ‘I do my best to keep her in good shape.’
Turning around, I watched the cottage disappear out the back window and the car began to climb up a steep hill.
‘I can’t help but notice we’re not stopping,’ I said, one hand grasping each of their seats. ‘Why aren’t we stopping?’
‘That’s Sleagh Cottage, where Mal lives.’ Callum folded the top of the bag of wine gums over and overuntil there was nothing left to fold. ‘Mum and Dad are at the top of the hill.’
‘Right,’ I nodded, sitting back. ‘I did think it was a bit small for five of you.’
‘Then how does this suit?’ Mal asked as we crested the hill, another larger, grander building coming into view. It was beyond stunning. A sprawling estate, etched majestically against the morning sky, the ancient stone walls, their lines softened by time and the elements, arched wooden doors marked with iron struts and studs, and an honest to goodness tower stretching up until it almost touched the low clouds.
‘Dear old Balmaclay, home to the McClay family since 1786 with plenty of room for five or more.’
‘Oh my God, it’s a castle,’ I gasped as Callum’s childhood home loomed ahead. ‘How did you not tell me you grew up in an actual castle?’
‘It’s not a castle,’ he argued as Mal smothered yet another laugh. ‘It’s a house.’
‘No, it’s five houses joined together,’ I corrected. ‘With atowerand, bloody hell, is that a moat?’
‘It’s a pond.’
‘A pond that just so happens to go around your house and has a bridge we have to drive over to get to the front door?’
‘We didn’t dig it ourselves and it doesn’t go all the way around,’ Callum replied stiffly. ‘It’s a naturally occurring pond.’
