Page 38 of A Secret Scottish Escape

With the Thursday summer evening sky rapidly giving way to charcoal patches of cloud outside the sitting room window, I resumed searching in vain for any other background information about him.

What was it Alec had said about rumours flying that he had bought that secluded old cottage up by Galen Waterfall?

My thoughts travelled to our often harsh winters, when snow and ice clung determinedly to everything and made a lot of the winding verges and roads in the Loch Harris area impassable. If what Alec said was true and Mask had moved in up there, he obviously didn’t care too much about being stranded if the weather turned nasty.

I turned back to my search. There were a few similar articles about his songs starting to make an impact on the charts and other excited reports about the amount of hits his music was receiving on social media.

Oh. Hang on!

My fingers paused over one brief article in an indie music magazine. It said:

Reports are very sketchy and we have no way of confirming this story, but elusive singer/songwriter Mask is rumoured to be scouting for homes in the Strathlevin/Loch Harris area of Scotland…

My eyes widened. So it could well be true then?

I eagerly read on.

As is the case with this mysterious performer, we have been unable to either confirm or deny this rumour with his management, Buccaneer, who, yet again, we have been unable to contact.

I picked up my mug of tea from the table and tapped my nails against it. It wouldn’t do any harm to look into approaching this Mask about a possible appearance at my new music venue. OK, so it might be a complete waste of my time, but what did I have to lose?

I stared back at the laptop screen. An image of Mask’s challenging, dark eyes glowered back at me.

What a coup that would be for me, and for Loch Harris, if we could book someone like him to appear. I fought the nagging doubt that getting a publicity-shy musician to literally show his face was going to be almost impossible.

It was worth a try.

Alec and the boys were starting work on their carpentry at the boathouse first thing in the morning. If I could recruit his daughter, Heather, to help me locate Mask, I’d probably stand a better chance.

After all, it sounded like she was his number one fan.

Then my thoughts travelled to Faith again. Surely there must be something I could do to let her see how obstinate and silly she was being about Greg?

My fingertips tingled as I turned my attention back to my laptop and searched for the Loch Harris Forestry Commission website.

It appeared, all moss greens, sage, and emerald, with pictures of the many tree-lined walkways and wooded paths morphing in and out of one another in the background.

I located the Who We Are section and typed in ‘Greg McBride’.

Almost immediately, Greg’s attractive grinning face appeared on screen.

I leaned forward and read that Greg and two of his colleagues were based at the log cabin offices on the outskirts of Loch Harris, while the other members of the team were scattered between Finton and North Spey, another slightly larger town a few miles out from us.

I snatched up a yellow Post-it pad beside my laptop and jotted down the address of the log cabin, deciding that I would head straight there tomorrow, once I had dropped by the boathouse.

The next morning delivered a hotchpotch of enthusiastic, early summer bursts of lemon sunshine.

After a shower and a hasty bowl of cereal for breakfast, I got ready to head out. I wanted to try and catch Alec early, before he started to get tired and a bit grumpy. Then I would head off to pay Greg McBride a visit. If he wasn’t on a shift, I would leave him a message and hope he would contact me.

Just because my relationship had ended like a Greek tragedy, it didn’t mean Faith’s had to. I couldn’t allow Faith to give up on the possibility of something good without even giving it a bloody try first.

Conflicted ideas jostled inside my head. I mean, perhaps I could just give things a little nudge in the right direction between her and Greg?

That wasn’t interfering, I assured myself. That was simply … interfering.

Oh hell.

You would have thought that after my heart-shattering experience with Mac, I would have had enough of affairs of the heart. But seeing my best friend so down and sounding so flat propelled me into action.