‘Like what?’
‘The usual stuff, nothing wacky. Decorating the tree, presents in stockings, me and Mum would always go to the carol service in the town hall, that sort of thing.’
Callum took a beat, his eyes watching me as I filled a glass with allegedly poisonous water.
‘Your tap water is delicious,’ I muttered. ‘In case you didn’t know.’
‘I know you don’t really have food poisoning but are you sure you’re OK by yourself?’ he asked over the sound of an engine turning over outside the window. ‘Fi’s out for the day and Mal’s driving, you’re on your own.’
‘You won’t believe this,’ I replied, hopping up onto the kitchen counter, ‘but I’ve been on my own in a house before.’
He smiled, running a finger along the edge of the wooden kitchen table.
‘I could stay. If you wanted me to.’
I took a long drink from my glass of water to moisten my suddenly dry mouth. Callum waited for me to swallow before I replied with forced indifference.
‘Why would I want you to stay?’
‘Not entirely sure.’ He raked a hand through his hair before resetting with a hard exhale. ‘Right, I’ll see you later. Oh, and I made you breakfast, it’s hiding in the oven. Feel free to use a knife and fork this time.’
‘Text when you’re on your way back!’ I called ashe departed, hopping down from the kitchen counter to peek out the window and watch him climb into the passenger seat of Mal’s Mercedes like a crazed stalker.
Once the car had disappeared, I bolted across the room to the dark green AGA at the heart of the kitchen. As someone whose culinary expertise began and ended with toast, I would never even consider getting involved with anything so complicated myself, but it was stunning to behold in the same way I could appreciate other beautiful things that were of no practical use to me, like a fancy sports car or Timothée Chalamet.
‘Hiding was right,’ I muttered, unlatching one oven after another, different temperatures blasting me in the face. ‘Where the bloody hell is my bloody food?’
Behind the bottom left-hand door, I finally found my prize. A full Scottish breakfast. Callum had outdone himself, fried eggs, bacon, black pudding, square sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and something that looked a bit like a cross between a triangular pancake and a slice of bread. When I broke off a piece, it tasted like potato.
‘Why have I never been to Scotland before?’ I wondered out loud, furious at myself for suffering through so many years without this bounty.
Before anything could get cold, I moved the plate to the kitchen table, rifled through the drawers for a set of cutlery and got stuck in. Out of everything on the plate, Caroline could probably just about stomach the baked beans, everything else was either meat, carbs or cooked in bacon fat, but Laura was thrilled. Every mouthful was delicious. When I was done, I washed my plate and cutlery, located their homes and puteverything away. The kitchen looked as though I’d never been there in the first place.
Exactly how it would be on Boxing Day when I left and never came back.
‘You’re being so stupid,’ I whispered as a strange sadness settled on my shoulders, smothering my post-breakfast buzz. ‘It’s not like you’re banned from Scotland. There have to be a million places around here, probably even nicer than this.’
Was there a place nicer than this? Hard to say, I’d only seen the hall, the kitchen, the dining room and my bedroom. By my rough calculations, that left ten thousand other rooms to investigate.
‘No time like the present,’ I declared, scooping my duvet up from the floor and dragging it along behind me as I trotted back upstairs to get dressed.
When we’d first arrived, Derek had been itching to give me the grand tour of his ancestral family home, but his enthusiasm wavered after our first awkward meal together. It was fine by me. So far, pretending to be Caroline was not nearly as much fun as I’d hoped it would be. I’d been expecting arsey parents and an evil ex, not complicated family dynamics and a walking, talking, broken-hearted Barbie doll. As for my cosy Scottish fantasies, yes, I had the open fire and my books. But there would be no more whisky for this non-drinking vegan, and my walking boots had given me blisters so brutal, I’d let out a silent scream when I slid out of bed that morning and shoved my feet into my slippers without thinking.
I was so grateful for my ability to emotionally detach, I thought, as I wrapped myself up in a soft mohair sweater and long satin skirt, both a deep shade of red that clashed terribly with my hair but made the rightsort of festive statement. Desi and Joel might accuse me of being a robot but anyone else would struggle to keep their feelings straight in this kind of situation. Anyone else might get pulled in, either by Elsie’s relentless abuse or Callum’s confusing relationship with Shiv. But not me. My job wasn’t exactly a straightforward nine-to-five. It required a delicate balance of empathy, trust and distance. Sometimes you couldn’t avoid forming relationships with patients, and there was no way around the fact things didn’t always go the way we hoped they would, but that was why doctors had to learn to stay detached. And I was so good at bundling up my feelings and stashing them away so the pain couldn’t touch me. Even when the worst possible thing happened, I could always reassure myself that I’d done my best, that we, as a team, had done everything we could for our patients.
So what if I’d been awake until the wee small hours, staring at the canopy hanging over my bed, and fantasised about Callum coming back into my room, taking me in his arms and absolutely blowing my back out? Fantasies didn’t mean anything. Sex wasn’t love. It wasn’t as though anyone could pretend Callum wasn’t attractive, objectively speaking, and if I were in the market for a relationship, I might have considered him. But I wasn’t, so it was a moot point.
‘Moot,’ I said to the empty hallway when I left my room. ‘Absolutely moot.’
One thing about me, I talked to myself altogether too much, but sometimes things made more sense when you heard them aloud. Not to other people, obviously, it made me look completely insane, but the habit was set now and there was no breaking it.
Fighting the urge to strip naked and dance through the house to a Sophie Ellis-Bextor song, I meandered down the hallway, trying door handles as I went and poking my head inside various rooms. Most were locked but even the corridors and hallways were enough to stun me into silence. Hospitals were drab by design, insipid institutional colour palettes and antiseptic scents, and the contrary splendour of Balmaclay was an assault on my day-job-dulled senses. I’d never seen so many different patterns of wallpaper in my life. I hadn’t even known so many different patterns of wallpaper existed. Colour was everywhere, deep jewel tones and rich earthy shades, complementing thoughtfully placed pieces of furniture in mahogany and oak. A console table here, an umbrella stand there. Then there were the little touches, a milk jug filled with dried heather, a vase of preserved wildflowers, antique plates and bowls, lamps and sconces, and painting after painting after painting. The sheer amount of dusting this house must require brought me out in a rash. Every time a doorknob gave in my hand and I tiptoed inside, I heard myself gasp with wonder. A study. A sitting room. A library. Any second now, I expected an anthropomorphic candelabra to jump out at me and start singing about my next meal.
I came to the furthest end of the newly reopened Campbell wing and found a large, ancient-looking door. It wasn’t locked but it was impossibly heavy, too heavy for me to open without gargantuan effort. So naturally, that’s what I gave it. If it wasn’t locked, it wasn’t forbidden. I had to know what was behind that door. Putting my whole weight behind it, I shoved the rusted iron latch upwards, puffing out my cheeks with thestrain, and when it began to give, I jostled it back and forth. I was determined to get inside. The door creaked and complained, screeching across the stone floor as I forced it open an inch at a time, a gust of cold air racing by like I’d released some malevolent force.
‘Which I haven’t,’ I told myself sternly. ‘Because there are no such thing as ghosts.’
But if there were, this was where they would be.
