Page 5 of A Scottish Country Escape

My grandmother made a strangled noise and whipped her head round to look at me. ‘I don’t believe this! It’s gone! Carwood House has been replaced by… by that monstrosity!’

I wouldn’t have described the mansion in those terms, but it did carry a bit of a haunted house vibe. Whoever it was who was moving in, had certainly gone to town re-establishing the Gothic vibe of the place. It must have cost them a fortune. ‘Did you know this was going on, Gran?’

Her mouth set in a line. ‘I’d heard the odd rumour about building work taking place up here and stories of security guards being seen around, but I didn’t take much notice. There were even stories it was just a film crew, on location for Outlander.’

We fell silent, both staring through the wire fence at the bustling site workers. It definitely wasn’t a TV crew filming. ‘Do you know who might be moving in here?’

Grandma rolled her eyes up to the sky, and somewhere behind us in the trees a blackbird flapped and fizzed its song. ‘I’ve no idea, but no doubt it will be one of those obscenely wealthy YouTuber types.’

I was just thinking how impressed I was that my seventy-seven-year-old grandmother was au fait with the social media generation when I was interrupted by a terse male voice. ‘Excuse me? Can I help you, ladies?’

My grandmother and I started at the sight of one of the builders barrelling up to the other side of the wire fence. He was kitted out in a white hard hat, the obligatory fluorescent jacket, and had his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was carrying a red clipboard.

His narrow eyes appraised us out of his ruddy, jowly face. ‘Are you selling something?’

I bit the inside of my cheek as my grandmother delivered one of her best glares. ‘Indeed we are not, young man. My granddaughter and I live here in Fir Haven.’

She craned her lavender-grey head past his shoulder towards the gothic mansion. ‘I see someone has been busy. New owner, I take it?’

The middle-aged man puffed out his chest. ‘Yes.’

Grandma folded her arms, making her cape ripple. ‘I used to work in that house as a councillor back in the day. Well, in the house it used to be. Not the Dracula’s castle you’ve turned it into now.’

The insulted foreman’s jaw clenched. He cocked one eyebrow so high it threatened to push his hard hat clean off his head, so I decided to try an alternative tack. ‘It looks beautiful,’ I insisted. ‘And you guys must have worked flat out to do so much work so quickly.’

Grandma narrowed her gimlet eyes up at me.

The foreman basked in my praise. ‘Thank you. We’ve got a good team here. Our client insisted they wanted the renovation work completed as soon as possible.’

‘Renovation?’ gasped my grandmother beside me. ‘It’s unrecognisable!’

The foreman shot Gran a sharp look and appeared to be on the verge of saying more, but a shout out from a young lad in a yellow hard hat distracted him. ‘Sorry, ladies. If you’ll excuse me.’

Gran watched his retreating back with suspicion. ‘That’s why most of the locals won’t know about this,’ she muttered out of the corner of her mouth. ‘You heard Bob the Builder just now. It’s all supposedly “renovation work”, so whoever the new owner is, they won’t have had to ask planning permission from the council. Very clever.’

I studied the landscaped rolling grass and rejuvenated ornate wall of mini Corinthian-style columns surrounding the property.

Grandma sniffed and peered again through the lattice wire fence that towered over us. ‘No doubt it will be some ignorant townie who thinks a crested tit is a porn star.’

‘Gran!’

She made a grunting noise in frustration. ‘As long as they don’t do any damage to the wildlife round here, they can do what they ruddy well like, as far as I’m concerned.’

We took one last look at the triangular roof, soaring up to pierce the expanse of China-blue sky.

‘Come on,’ I urged. ‘Let’s go home.’

She nodded and I linked my arm through hers to make our way back down the slope.

‘I’ll ask around,’ she said. ‘Someone must know who will be moving in there.’

Chapter Four

I indicated left and took us down the sweep of lane that boasted ‘Pebble Brook’ in black writing on a painted white sign.

Grandma and I sat for a while, listening to the car engine fade and surveying the gold lights Dad had strung along the garden fence at the front of the house. She slid a freckled hand across to clasp mine in hers. ‘Let’s go in,’ she suggested. ‘We’ve got lots to do.’

I blinked away pictures of Mum’s empty newsagent’s. ‘What do you mean?’