Page 48 of A Secret Scottish Escape

I slammed the front door closed on her plucked eyebrows, hitched up my mouth, and swung round to look at my dad. “Sounds like we need to have a chat.”

My father glowered at his closed front door. “It can wait.”

I felt suddenly uneasy. “No, something tells me it can’t.”

He looked weary all at once. There were smudges of tiredness under his eyes.

“Dad, whatever venomous poison Tina has been spitting this time, I want to know.”

He made a puffing noise and rubbed at his face. “Come on. Let’s go and sit down.”

I sank onto his sofa, pushing one of his striped cushions out of the way, and Dad lowered himself down beside me. I studied his hand as he placed it gently on mine, the contrast of his gnarled drummer and gardener fingers popping against my pale ones.

“I don’t want to believe what your mother has just told me.”

I observed his usually open smiling face tense up. “Dad, you’re worrying me. What is it? What has she been saying now?”

I had grown accustomed to my mother lobbing the odd emotional bomb at Dad and me – I was certain it was fuelled by jealousy – but it transpired that on this occasion, she had really outdone herself.

Dad let out a bark of dry laughter, as though trying to reassure himself. His eyes searched mine. He took so long to speak, it was as if his words were crawling through treacle. “Your mother has just told me I might not be your biological father.”

I curled up my lip. “She said what?” I couldn’t comprehend how she could be so wicked. “She really is something else,” I spat. “I always suspected Tina was eaten up with jealousy at how close we are but that’s despicable, even for her.”

My voice died in my throat as I looked at Dad beside me. An odd, tortured expression had taken over his face. I had never seen him look like that before.

Fear and fury felt like they were about to suffocate me. I squeezed his hand, shocked tears springing into the corners of my eyes. They were battling to force themselves down my cheeks, but I bit my lip.

“Don’t tell me you believe her? Dad?”

He opened his mouth and closed it again.

No. No. I didn’t believe it. Not one word. She was lying.

All I had to do was stare back at my father’s features to see mine. We shared the same shade of conker-brown hair, the same quirky cut to our mouths.

I propelled myself up off the sofa and down Dad’s hallway towards the front door.

“Layla! Layla! Where are you going?”

I pulled at the front door handle and it opened with a ferocious jerk.

My mother, such as she was, was now just a flash of patent heel as she deposited herself into a waiting taxi.

I wanted to grab hold of her. I wanted to shake the truth out of her bony frame. I imagined sinking my fingers into her designer sleeves and demanding to know why she was such a spiteful cow.

I raced down Dad’s path, my sparkly trainers flashing as they slapped over the paved stones. “What is wrong with you?” I screamed at her as she streaked off. “Why would you lie?”

She angled her coiffed head round and out of the taxi window.

“He is my father,” I yelled, carrying burning air in my lungs. “Harry is my dad and you’re an evil bitch for saying otherwise!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

From somewhere behind me, I heard Dad yelling from the doorway. “Layla. Layla!”

I stood there, hunched over and confused.

All around me, blackbirds were fizzing like fine champagne and there was the warm scent of honeysuckle.