Page 45 of A Secret Scottish Escape

Heather glowered out of the passenger-side window. “It would have been so amazing. I just don’t understand why he was so against it.” She frowned over at me. “Do you think Mask might change his mind?”

“I don’t think so. The way he was talking, he’d rather pull out one of his own teeth.”

Remembering what Alec had said about Heather’s enthusiasm for Mask, rather than her studies, I cleared my throat. I’d promised him I would mention it.

Heather watched me through china-blue eyes as I spoke of her dad’s concern about her schoolwork. “I’m not going to tell you what to do with your life, but believe me, Heather, you won’t stay sixteen for very long.”

I could see her wrinkle up her button nose. “I wouldn’t mind working in the music industry. Maybe in public relations.”

“Good for you.”

I glanced in my rear-view mirror. “I’m sure you’d be great at that, but it’s like a lot of careers in entertainment. It’s very competitive.”

Heather opened her mouth to speak but then clamped it shut.

“I’m not trying to deter you. All I’m saying is, if you do your best and stick at school, you’ll stand a far better chance of getting your foot in the door, OK?” I offered her what I hoped was an encouraging smile. “Nobody can ask any more of you than that.”

I clicked on the right indicator, the hillsides dashing past the car windows. “Lecture over, OK?”

“OK,” she agreed. “I get it.”

We drew up outside Heather’s grey stone cottage, with its red painted fence and hanging baskets brimming with indigo and lemon pansies.

She clambered out and then bobbed her blonde head back in. “If you do decide to speak to Mask again, can I please come with you?”

“Sure. I don’t think I will ask him again, but you can come along and be verbally abused with me if I do take leave of my senses and change my mind.” I pinned her to the pavement with a meaningful look. “But that would only be on one condition.”

“What?”

“That you promise to try at school.” I laughed at her reluctantly accepting look. “See you later.”

I drove back to my dad’s with ideas for bands and artists I could approach spinning through my mind. It would be a nice touch if Dad were to agree to Battalion reforming, even if it was just for my opening night.

Thinking about my dad, a shadow of a name for my music venue flitted around at the edges of my mind.

When I was much younger, Dad and I had loved to take off to the coast. We would wander along the vanilla beach, peppered with rocks and studded with a swathe of pastel shells that reminded me of colours of ice cream: snowy white, buttercup, faintest peach.

Dad would hold my hand and I’d crouch down, digging them out of the damp sand with my determined little fingers. The conch shells were always my favourite. It was their twisting shape that I loved. I could imagine using it as a musical instrument to call mermaids to the shore.

The conch variety was also so ornate and colourful, like a multi-layered truffle.

The horse conch shell was still the one I liked the best. Its ripples and soft shades were so pretty, like the petticoats of a sumptuous gown.

“The Conch Club,” I said out loud. The sound of my own voice, alone in the car, startled me for a moment. I took an excited breath and repeated it.

I drew up outside Dad’s house and the car engine slowly died.

I would speak to him about Battalion, tell him about the Mask situation (even if it didn’t look like he would appear), and offer to take him for a celebratory drink, now that I had decided on a name for the business.

I locked the car and bounded up the path excitedly.

There was a stillness as I entered the cottage that made me pull up.

My dad was incapable of not having music churning through the house. It would either be him playing an impromptu session on his drum kit or songs sizzling from his radio. At other times, he would be sat like Buddha in the centre of his sitting room, marvelling yet again at his extensive record collection.

But today, there was an unsettling quiet.

A kernel of concern started to grow. “Dad. Dad? Are you there?”