Page 47 of A Secret Scottish Escape

“You know how complicated things were,” insisted Tina, squirming. “Anyway, I’m not here to drag over the past. I want to help Layla.”

Was she serious? How deluded was she? I glowered down at her, trying to contain my temper. “Who told you I was setting up my own business?”

She simpered, which just infuriated me more. “I bet it was that old gossip Susan Mayhew. Am I right?”

“She just thought I should know.”

Dad rolled his grey eyes. “And I take it you’re staying at Susan’s whilst you’re up here?”

My mother looked appalled. “Good God, no! I’ve got a suite at that dinky little hotel in the next town. The one with the drawbridge. Had a wonderful sleep there last night.”

I blanched. “You’re staying at The Linear? But that’s extortionate.”

Tina dismissed my statement with a flap of her hand. “Look, investing in your concert hall thingy…”

“It’s not a concert hall. It’s an intimate music venue.”

My mother pinned an indulgent smile on her lips. “Well, whatever it is, I’d like to help you financially. I can afford it.”

“You mean, Ramon can,” muttered Dad.

I shot her a chilling stare. “I don’t need help. Mac left me money in his will.”

Tina’s beige-smeared eyes widened in her pointed face. “So it’s true then?”

Dad and I didn’t reply.

“It was good of you to come to Mac’s funeral,” I ground out after an awkward pause.

Tina’s chest heaved. “I would have come, but Ramon and I were so busy with his new restaurant in Covent Garden.”

“Well, either way, it’s all over with,” answered Dad.

Tina rose up onto her spiky black heels. “So that’s it? I’m dismissed.”

I moved to Dad’s sitting room door and yanked it wide open. “I’ll call you a taxi.”

My mother eyed us both. “It doesn’t matter what I do now, does it?”

I hitched my eyebrows up towards my hairline and watched her thrust her handbag under her right arm. “Quite the cosy little unit, you two.”

Dad joined me at the door and placed a protective hand on my shoulder. “We had to be.”

A flash of something reared up in Tina’s eyes.

She started down Dad’s hallway, an unfamiliar figure striding past Dad’s tumble of walking boots, waterproofs, and assorted photos of us together. She wobbled to a stop in front of one picture of the two of us, ruddy-faced and laughing on one of the Loch Harris hillsides.

She flicked an unfathomable look at my dad but her words were for me. “You and your father should have a talk.”

Dad went ashen. He took a lunging step. “Be quiet, Tina.”

I swivelled my head between my fractured parents. “What’s going on? What’s she talking about?”

Tina tugged open Dad’s front door. She glanced at me from over her shoulder. “You need to speak to your … dad.”

The sharp inflection as she spat out the word ‘dad’, triggered an odd chill in my stomach.

“I’ll call my own taxi,” she called out from further down the path.