Page 51 of The Cottage in the Highlands

Chapter Seventeen

Flynn Talbot’s profile was sparse.

It consisted of beautiful photographs of landscapes and monuments, rather than pictures of himself, family, friends, or even grandchildren. In fact, his personal details were non-existent too, apart from his place of birth, which said Darroch, a little market town about half an hour’s drive from Silver Ness.

That gave me an injection of optimism, as I sat there in the now empty office. It must be him, seeing as he was born in the area.

I scrolled down his Facebook posts, hoping for some crumb of information or a photo of him, but they were either more artistic Scottish sunsets or comments about books and films. He seemed to be a huge fan of Clint Eastwood and spaghetti westerns.

Was he married? Divorced? Widowed? Did he have a squad of grandchildren? It seemed unlikely given that, again, there were no photos or proud boasts, but perhaps he just wasn’t that type of man?

In his letter to Lily, Flynn Talbot had mentioned a son though.

I sat further back in my desk chair and chewed my lip. What the hell was I going to say to him? “Hi there. I stumbled across a love letter you sent to Lily Cruickshank fifty years ago. Remember her?”

I wound a finger around one of my errant curls. If Flynn Talbot wasn’t interested in dredging up the past, then so be it. No harm done. But the way I caught Lily gazing at Merry Wood, lost in days gone by… She was so protective of that house too. Something told me there was unfinished business there and she needed closure.

Whatever had happened between Lily Cruickshank and Flynn Talbot all those years ago, it wasn’t healthy for someone to be so preoccupied with an abandoned house. I think her heart went to Africa with him. And it was still with him. Even now.

I thought too about the couple of odd turns she had experienced – her skin growing pale and her breathing becoming laboured. What if she was really ill? This might be the only chance she would have to see him again.

My fingers hovered over the mouse. Was I going to do this? She might be furious with me for interfering, but I was doing it with the best of intentions. It felt like the right thing to do.

Refusing to debate it a second longer, I clicked the cursor on the Message button and began to type, the rattling of my keyboard echoing.

After drafting and deleting several attempts at a short but concise-sounding piece of correspondence, I came up with something I hoped would elicit a response:

Dear Mr Talbot,

Please excuse me for troubling you.

My name is Leonie Baxter. I’m a journalist and a friend of Lily Cruickshank.

Ok, describing myself as her friend was rather an exaggeration.

I accidentally came across a letter you wrote to her a number of years ago and wondered if you might be interested in reaching out to her?

I then quoted my email address and mobile number.

Should you wish to make contact with Lily, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie

I read over the composed message again, my fingers loitering above the keys. I dismissed a stab of hesitancy. Lily couldn’t keep living like that, obsessing over that empty house. She had to move on. We all did in the end, I concluded, trying not to conjure up more pictures of Miles.

I pressed Send and let out a long, low breath.

Ok, so if anything did come of it, Lily would no doubt want to disembowel me with a teaspoon, but this might just offer her the opportunity to cast off the shackles of years ago.

I admit I was very curious about Merry Wood too and wanted to know more. My journalist’s intuition for a story was well and truly piqued.

The next few days vanished in a flurry of beauty write-ups, a phone interview I conducted with the new CEO of a skincare company whose packaging was made from recycled paper, and a number of Athena’s infamous team meetings, which were really butt-kicking exercises under a different name – whether the staff needed their butts kicked or not.

I dipped into my Facebook messages but there had been no response from Flynn Talbot. Perhaps my optimism had been misplaced. If it was him, maybe he wanted the past to remain where it was and whatever had happened between him and Lily was, as far as he was concerned, confined to history. There was also the subject of his wife, Astrid, to whom he had referred in the letter, and the question of whether she was still alive.