Page 6 of A Scottish Highland Surprise

Chapter Four

I handed Gran’s two letters to my bewildered-looking parents and prised open the remainder of the boxes, sniffing back a succession of tears. The boxes held a vast array of tea sets, from classic Wedgwood to an Edwardian antique silver set from 1903.

Dad couldn’t decide which deserved his attention first, the tea sets or my grandmother’s mysterious letters. “What on earth is all this lot? What’s going on? Sophie?”

I shook my head, still reeling from it all. “Read the letters, Dad.”

He flashed a look at Mum and read to himself, until he reached the end of the second letter. “Bloody hell! The crafty old…”

My mum’s confusion and impatience were growing. “Kenny. What is it?”

Dad passed the letters to her. She began to read them for herself, while I remained hunched over the crockery littering the hallway.

Mum’s hand flew to her throat. “She’s bought you a shop?”

I nodded.

“But why… how…?”

Dad gave a helpless shrug. “Helena was a very savvy lady, but where the hell did your mother get this lot from?”

Mum flapped her hands in the air. “You tell me. I never knew she had all this. I mean, I knew about the crockery in her sitting-room cabinets, of course...”

I rubbed at my forehead, struggling to process any of this. “Goodness knows how much all this is worth.”

Dad cocked one of his thick, greying brows. “I can tell you that this lot will be worth a pretty penny. There must be thousands of pounds’ worth of antique crockery here.”

I was still sitting on Gran’s hallway carpet, my head cartwheeling from the contents of her letters and from the glistening crockery surrounding me.

Mum raised a disbelieving finger and gestured to the boxes parked around our feet. “Where did she get all this?” Her smoky blue eyes widened. “Oh God, you don’t think she stole any of it?”

Dad let out a bark of laughter. “Your mother receiving stolen goods? Don’t be silly, Marnie. Your mother once scanned Briar Glen high street, trying to locate the owner of a dropped fifty-pence piece.”

Despite my shock at the situation, I still laughed at the memory.

“But she must have got them from somewhere. And what does she mean when she talks here about letting her heart rule her head?” said Mum.

Dad threw his arms up in the air. “God only knows. Well, wherever Helena got them from, she has made it clear she wants Sophie to have them now.”

I swallowed. “Yes, and open up my own crockery shop.”

Too stunned to undertake any other sorting of my gran’s belongings for today, Dad suggested we pack the car with the four boxes of tea sets. “I’ll return and collect the nest of tables and the other bits and bobs, once I’ve deposited you and your mother back at the house.”

I could hear the faint clatter from the boot as Dad drove us home. It was fortunate Mum and Dad only lived ten minutes away from my late grandmother’s cottage; I would have been a nervous wreck taking such precious items as these on a longer journey.

She must have been planning this for at least three months, possibly longer. My gran had squirreled away that gorgeous crockery for me and then gone and acquired a shop – and not me, Mum or Dad knew a thing.

We made the journey back in stunned near-silence, only speaking again when Dad eased up the drive.

Through the late morning sunshine, Mum, Dad and I proceeded to carry each box into their biscuit-carpeted hallway and deposit them there.

Dad placed one of the boxes, housing Minton Green Cockatrice in bone china, by the corner of the staircase. He shot up straight as a thought came to him. He turned to Mum. “I wonder if that’s what Helena was up to when I dropped by a few weeks back.”

“What do you mean?”

Dad thrust his hands into his jeans pockets. “At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but on two previous occasions when I’d dropped round to check your mother was okay, she was on the phone to someone. She couldn’t end each call fast enough when I showed up.”

I asked Dad if she had mentioned who she was talking to.