Page 82 of The Cottage in the Highlands

She took one look at Flynn, let out a gasp, and then bundled him into her arms. “Look at you! What a handsome young man you are. Oh, my word! I haven’t seen you for too long. Much too long!” She beamed up at him. “For a minute there, I thought Aidan Turner had rocked up and my luck was in!”

Flynn laughed. “You need new spectacles, Mary.”

Her warm, welcoming face then took on a melancholier edge. “We don’t see enough of you, Flynn.”

Flynn shrugged. “Well, my grandfather isn’t the most welcoming of people, is he?”

Mrs Oates hopped from foot to foot. She looked at me, recognition spreading over her face. “I know you from somewhere. Aren’t you the journalist who was here the other day?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

A cloud of concern took over her features. She turned back to Flynn. “Your grandfather isn’t going to like this, whatever it is.”

“We need to speak to him,” said Flynn. “It’s important.”

She let out a resigned sigh. “All right. Come with me, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. He’s working on a landscape of the Queensferry Crossing and is getting rather frustrated with it, so he’s not in the best of moods as it is.”

I threw an apprehensive glance up at Flynn as we followed Mrs Oates up the paved path and into the house.

The hallway was cool and airy, with a tiled coffee-and-cream floor and a burnished staircase any Hollywood actress would love to descend. A long length of ivy studded with white bows wound its way around the banister. A lavishly decorated Christmas tree stood in the corner, dripping with tear-shaped baubles.

A couple of abstract paintings of cubes and triangles hung from plain white walls.

I could smell the rich aroma of Christmas cake being baked.

“Mr Talbot,” called Mrs Oates up the vanishing staircase, offering us an anxious look over her shoulder. “There are a couple of visitors here to see you.”

A door handle rattled open somewhere at the top of the stairs. “Who is it? I’m in the middle of the Forth at the moment.”

Mrs Oates glanced at both of us. “It’s your grandson – and Ms Baxter, the journalist from the other day.”

There was a slam of a door. “What the hell?!”

Flynn Talbot senior’s feet thundered down the glossy staircase. His silver moustache waggled with fury. “Ah, the cavalry, I see. Now look, I’ve already said my piece.”

But his grandson wasted no time. “May I?” asked Flynn, gesturing to my shoulder bag.

I dipped my hand in and produced the papers I had managed to obtain from the council about Merry Wood’s sale – or lack of it – and handed them to him.

“We have proof, Grandfather, that Merry Wood wasn’t sold. From the council. I spoke to Grandma this morning and up until today, she was convinced it had been. You even gave her the proceeds, purporting to be from its sale.”

The older man’s jaw jutted out.

“And Lily Cruickshank still lives in the cottage opposite,” I interjected. “Even after all these years.”

I thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. “Lily?” Then he swallowed and tried to compose himself. “This is ridiculous! You have no right poking around in my private affairs!”

“So, you’re not denying it then?” pushed Flynn, folding his arms. “You let my parents think Merry Wood had been sold all those years ago.”

Flynn senior’s lips ground together harder.

“Well?”

He looked to Mrs Oates for support.

She gave him an awkward smile. “Whatever has been going on here, Mr Talbot, don’t you think you ought to be honest?”

He shifted his eyes heavenwards to the corniced hall ceiling.