Page 55 of The Secret Castle in the Highlands

‘Which are like what?’

‘Oh, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.’

‘Okay, don’t, then.’

She sighed again. ‘Okay, you’ve dragged it out of me. One is an earthenware design, covered in tangled blackberries, and I’m putting a knit-like array of hearts and flowers on the other.’

‘They sound gorgeous – worth having skanky nails for.’ I glanced down at my watch. ‘I’d better go back to the annexe and set up my laptop for our call.’

I placed it on the breakfast bar and soon Dad’s tanned, glowing face appeared on the screen. He was seated on a huge cream leather chair in their hotel room, with Mum arranged beside him.

Caleb had arrived five minutes before, demanding to know why he’d been summoned up here. ‘No idea,’ hissed Katie. ‘Just sit down and we’ll soon find out.’

We exchanged some pleasantries before Dad launched into his in-business-sacrifices-always-have-to-be-made speech.

‘Now, what did you want to talk about, Popps?’

I stared back at him through the rectangular screen, aware of Caleb and Katie hunched beside me on the breakfast bar stools. ‘I’ve just sent you an email with some newspaper articles attached. It should be coming through on your phone now.’

Dad winked at me. ‘This is all a bit cloak and dagger, Poppy.’

While he waited, he indicated the darkening sky outside their hotel window. It was autumn, moving into winter there. ‘Weather is glorious here,’ he remarked. ‘Still like summer. Do you remember that awful summer we had three years back? Oh, hang on, there’s your email now⁠—’

‘Dad,’ I interrupted. ‘Mason Cooper, a historian, has been researching the Scarlet Highwayman story.’

Dad scrolled on his phone to find my email. ‘Yes. And?’

‘During his investigations, he uncovered what you’re seeing on your phone: articles showing there’s been some sort of rivalry between our family and the Lapleys for the past seventy years.’

‘Eh?’ snorted Caleb to my right.

Dad stopped, an odd expression settling on his features. ‘He shouldn’t be poking about in other people’s affairs. What right has he?’

Anger and disbelief suddenly took hold of me. ‘So, you did know all about this, then? Why not tell us?’

Mum fidgeted in her seat and shot a loaded look up at my dad. ‘We didn’t want you and Caleb involved in all that mess from the past.’

My eyes flew across the screen to her. ‘So, you knew too, Mum?’

My father fetched his sunglasses from the nearby table and jabbed them into the pocket of his shirt. ‘There isn’t a problem,’ he said with irritation. ‘At least not now.’

‘But there was something going on?’ piped up Caleb, giving Katie a confused look.

‘Yes,’ Mum agreed tightly. ‘All that carry-on years ago over Grandpa George and his art gallery; it was Bernard Lapley’s insane jealousy that triggered all this mess. He was obsessed with your grandma and when she chose George instead of him, he couldn’t take it.’

Dad pushed a hand over the top of his dark-grey hair and nodded. ‘The Lapley family bore a grudge after that and every chance they could, they would try to humiliate my parents and make things difficult.’

‘And so, the Summers fought back,’ explained Mum, ‘and it just became a game of tit for tat that went on for years.’

‘But, Mum, Dad,’ I said, leaning closer to the laptop screen, ‘why didn’t either of you tell us?’

‘I’m sorry,’ sighed my mother, her blonde bob shimmering in the hotel room light, ‘we didn’t want you or your brother caught up in some sort of ridiculous feud that was none of your concern.’

‘And grandpa’s financial impropriety at the bank? What was that about?’

My dad stared down the laptop screen. ‘All a misunderstanding. Well, that’s what the Lapley family claimed. They’d blamed him for stealing from their account, but it wasn’t true.’

So, another way that the Lapley family had tried to discredit mine.