‘Isn’t he, well, old enough to look after himself? I thought she’d sent him away to boarding school, anyway.’
‘She’s still a parent. She sits on several charitable committees, too.’
‘Right. Our monthly raffle probably requires more work than Miranda’s committees.’
I knew from numerous private conversations with Holly that she was only defending Miranda out of a sense of duty. She frequently complained that Miranda had too much time on her hands and that she spent half her life on internet forums, gossiping about minor celebrities.
‘What about Lewis?’ Morag asked. ‘What does he do all day?’
‘He’s been trying to set up his own business, I think.’
‘That’s good. Making Charles proud. What kind of business is it?’
Holly shrugged. ‘I’m not really sure. Something to do with software development.’
‘Like father like son. Let’s hope he makes a success of it.’
Was I imagining it or was there bitterness in her voice? They had all hung out as teenagers. Had it ended in a massive falling-out?
‘What about you?’ I asked her. ‘Have you always worked here?’
‘Yeah. I got stuck.’
She gave Holly yet another meaningful look then got to her feet. ‘Speaking of being chained to this pub, I’d better get to work. Hope to see more of you, Patrick. My offer before was genuine.’
As soon as she was out of earshot, Holly said, ‘What offer?’
‘She said if I need a break, I know where to find her.’
‘Ha. Of course she did. Well, she can keep her hands offyou. You’re mine.’ She dropped her own voice. ‘You know, the reason Morag got “stuck” here is because she got pregnant with Avril when she was seventeen.’
‘I figured she must have had her young.’
‘Yeah. But Avril is grown up now and Morag is still only my age. She talks like she was handed a life sentence, but she could easily change her life. Go to college. Get out of here. She could do anything.’
‘So I was right? You don’t like her.’
‘What? Of course I do. I just get fed up hearing about her hard life. She talks like she has no agency. Yes, she had a baby when she was barely more than a kid, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have got away from here.’
‘Who was that on the phone before?’ I asked, suddenly keen to change the subject. I didn’t want to get into an argument about how it wasn’t always that easy to escape your upbringing and see possibilities for yourself. How it was so much easier for people like Holly, who’d always had the safety net of her family’s money. Holly was a kind person. She often stopped to talk to homeless people in the streets. She took part in voluntary clean-ups of Brighton beach. She was involved in a local scheme to support young people who had been mixed up with drugs. She cared. But she had a blind spot when it came to her own privilege.
‘The phone? Oh, it was Lewis. He’s arrived. We should get back.’
We were putting our coats on when Brenda came over to collect our dirty plates.
‘I couldn’t help but hear, about your film,’ she said to me. She pronounced itfillum. ‘The big unsolved mystery. We had something like that happen around here back in January.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Aye. A wee English lad, up in the hills.’ She leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Hypothermia. Want to know the weird part? No one knows how he got here. No one saw him, not till he was already frozen stiff, anyway.’
5
‘Was he a hiker?’ I asked, assuming Brenda was being over-dramatic. You hear about this kind of thing often. Hikers and tourists, unprepared for the weather to take a turn for the worse, probably not accustomed to the conditions in the Highlands.
‘You’re not getting it.’ Brenda pulled up a chair and gestured for me to sit back down. Holly remained standing, looking annoyed. ‘He hadn’t told anyone he was going to be here. Nobody knows what he was doing on the peninsula. He wasn’t dressed for hiking. The people who found him said it was like he’d dropped out of the sky. Like,poof. One second he’s nowhere, and the next, there he is– dead.’
She was very blunt.
