Page 1 of A Secret Scottish Escape

Chapter One

“Mac, you’ve done it again!” I grinned into my mobile. “You’ve forgotten your notebook.”

I glanced round to where his leather-bound journal was lying on the glass coffee table. Beside it was a framed photograph of the two of us by the shores of our local loch.

Mac’s chestnut hair was streaked with the faintest slivers of grey and we had been laughing as we took the impromptu selfie. His hooded, pale blue eyes were crinkling against the sunshine and I was nestling against him, my freckles popping across my nose and over my cheeks.

My dad, Harry, would often cast wary looks at Mac whenever he visited us. “Doesn’t the age gap bother you, Layla?” he would hiss out of the corner of his mouth. “I mean, the old goat’s only a year younger than me.”

I paused before I spoke again into my mobile, my rose-gold morganite engagement ring flashing as I moved my hands. “So, anyway,” I continued, pulling my attention back to Mac’s voicemail. “I hope your meeting with your agent goes well, even though you have left your notebook behind. Ring me when you’re done. Love you.”

I rang off and headed back to my desk, an old oak affair that sat at the furthest end of my cottage sitting room. Through the cream-painted sash windows, I could see the spooling waters of Loch Harris in the distance.

On a clear April morning like this, the odd smudge of an angler’s boat could be glimpsed between the tangles of woodland that surrounded it. Clumps of daffodils were springing out of the ground, like lemon trumpets.

Loch Harris was the epitome of craggy and mysterious Scottish beauty, with its sprinkling of old stone cottages, churches with stained-glass windows, and an eclectic handful of shops. It was a popular destination for tourists, thanks to its myriad dramatic walks, as well as the expanse of mirrored loch and the magical spectacle of Galen Waterfall, located only fifteen minutes’ drive away.

Mac and I lived together in what had originally been my family home, before my family had been blown apart. When I was seven my mother, Tina, decided that life owed her far more than Loch Harris could ever give her, and she swept out of our lives.

For the past twenty-two years, she had been this unfamiliar, strange entity who sent me the odd birthday and Christmas card from her life in London – and, to be frank, I was more than happy to keep the arrangement that way.

Dad had raised me alone, albeit it with the support of my late paternal grandparents.

I still remember, despite the absence of my mother, this little whitewashed cottage reverberating with the sound of music. From an early age, I recall my dad’s assorted albums littering the carpet in the sitting room and him proudly cleaning the record sleeves. “Forget any jewels,” he would say to me. “These are all the treasures you will ever need.”

Eric Clapton was my dad’s hero – hence him naming me after Clapton’s most famous song.

When I had mentioned to Dad that I wanted my own place, he’d been content to leave the painful memories of my mum behind and had insisted I stay in the cottage. He took up residence in my late grandparents’ home, which was just a little further down the lane.

I scooped a hunk of my wavy, light brown hair behind my ear and used the mouse to scroll down the new messages that had materialised in my email inbox.

I had a couple of deadlines looming: one was a book review for a Glasgow evening newspaper, and the other was writing up an interview I’d conducted with a debut crime writer from the Netherlands for an online magazine.

Procrastination was the enemy when you were a freelance writer.

I reached over to snatch a pen from my tub and saw Mac’s spidery, dark handwriting. He’d jotted down a random note on a scrap of paper.

Hendry raised the gun, his knuckles white. Fragments of sunrise highlighted the flickering silhouette of the murderer…

Mac was working on his next political thriller, currently titled Injustice.

The success he had been having for a number of years now was impressive, but even the great Mac Christie, with his debonair smile and easy charm, doubted himself at times.

He would sit and write in the spare bedroom and I often heard his fist thump on his writing desk, followed by a cacophony of swear words raining out through the door.

I fiddled with my engagement ring before opening YouTube and clicking on some of my favourite songs to listen to as I worked.

Whereas Mac could only write in silence, I found I worked most productively when I had heart-tugging lyrics soaring around me.

“Do you have to have that cranking out at that volume, Layla?” Mac would yell from across the hall. “This isn’t the O2 arena.”

I often indulged in daydreams in which I owned my own music venue. When I’d confided in Mac about it, he’d said, “Urgh! Not all that manic rock, surely? I could understand a sedate jazz club, but not the sound of someone being unceremoniously tortured for four minutes.”

“If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” I had teased back.

Mac had abandoned his desk and pulled me towards our bedroom, where he’d proceeded to show me how youthful he actually was.

After having rattled off a very complimentary review of the historical romance I’d been asked to read, I padded out of the sitting room and into the kitchen to rustle up some lunch.