Prologue
March
Alistair
I couldn’t say exactly when my life had become a heaping pile of flaming shit. Maybe it was two years ago, when I’d been suspended from my inner-city GP practice for “unprofessional conduct”.
Maybe it was months before that, when I’d started riding the Glasgow Subway an extra stop on my way to work every morning, just to hold off the pandemonium that inevitably awaited me: a backlog of angry patients, mounting paperwork and not enough hours in the day.
Or maybe it was years before that, when I’d dumped my fiancée, Juniper, only weeks after her dad had died. A life-changing conversation I’d handled in a single phone call. Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds was all it had taken to prove to everyone in my life what a selfish arsehole I truly was.
There were probably an infinite number of tiny moments in between those milestones, micro misdeeds adding to the tapestry of a man who wasn’t worth very much. But today really took the cake.
“Please tell me you didn’t just skip out on our father’s funeral?” The hard voice of Callum, my eldest brother, filled the cab of my rented Land Rover.
My hands tightened around the wheel, the narrow slice of tarmac slipping beneath its wheels. “I stayed as long as I could,” I said. Until the coffin was in the ground, and I’d felt like my chest was ready to explode.
I barely even recalled clambering behind the wheel or tossing the crumpled copy of my dad’s will onto the passenger seat before peeling out the cemetery’s car park. I’d meant to drive somewhere that reminded me of him. Anywhere to scrub the image of that wooden box beneath mounds of earth from my brain. Within minutes of driving out onto the main road, I’d realised Dad had spent so much of our childhood working, chained to his desk at Kinleith Surgery, he’d never taken us anywhere. Not a single day trip or even a fucking picnic at the beach.
So, I’d driven the entire length of the Isle of Skye to Neist Point Lighthouse and just sat in my car, the rain lashing the windows, until my body began to tremble from the cold.
“As long as you could? Alistair! This wasn’t a family barbecue. I get that we all had our issues with him but shit – he’s still our dad.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Our father, Jim Macabe, had been a hard man to grow up with. He’d run his household like an army unit. We were like Scotland’s answer to the Von Trapp family without the genetic predisposition for perfect pitch. Even now, at thirty-seven years old, I couldn’t set foot in my parents’ house without recalling his dad stare, levelled at whichever of his four kids had pissed him off that day. Cold and flat, like he was taking inventory of every bad choice we’d ever made.
He’d been an arsehole, to put it plainly. Short-fused.Impossible to please. And yet, weeks after he’d died, I still couldn’t shake the urge totryto live up to those unachievable standards.
It was like, at some point during my teen years, I’d become an addict and his approval was my drug of choice. With enough effort, I could craft myself into exactly the man he wanted me to be – a doctor, just like him – and in return, I’d gain his affection.
Fucking pathetic.
My hands tightened on the wheel, a sob I’d been holding in for months now working its way up my throat. “Shit, Callum, I – I’m sorry. Is Mum okay?” Had she seen me leave?
“She’s fine. Juniper and I are staying with her tonight.” Maybe I was too numb, because the guilt that should have dug into my chest like shrapnel at the sound of my ex-fiancée’s name was nothing more than a dull twinge.
Callum’s girlfriend, I reminded myself. It had been several months and that revelation was still taking some getting used to.
Talk about fucked family dynamics.
“Good,” I said, absently. “That’s good.”
“Just tell me you’re okay. I can send Mal—”
“No. Don’t bother him.” My younger brother had enough on his plate. “I’m nearly home now anyway.” I turned my car into theblink and you miss itturning toward Kestral Cove and the little cottage I’d started renting back in December. It wasn’t quite a home. But it was quiet. Clean, if not for the smell of fermented cabbage I was still trying to air out of the soft furnishings (I’d come to the conclusion that the previous tenant was a hobbyist pickler). Good enough for the few short months I planned to stay here while I sorted my shit out.
“Okay,” he clipped. The shine of taillights in the distance distracted me as he continued, “How about we meet in the morning—”
“Shit!” I cut him off. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I pointlessly hit my indicator, coming to a stop behind an ancient pink VW Beetle.
“What’s that?” Callum asked.
“Nothing. Just a damn tourist. Must have taken a wrong turn off the main road.” There was nothing down this way except miles of fields and two little cottages perched right by the cliff edge.
My windscreen wipers were working overtime in the downpour, and I flashed my headlights, indicating they should move over – they weren’t even stopped at a passing place. “It’s really coming down out there, I can come out—” Callum offered.
Always the hero, offering a hand no matter how weird things had become between us. Guilt slithered through me. It was more than I deserved. “I’m fine.”
