AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I assumed you’d booked into a swanky hotel and you were just here for a flying visit.’
‘Ah. No, actually. I was rather hoping I could stay here ...’
She stopped wiping the table and turned around. ‘Why?’
Callum sighed, and decided to come clean about the real reason he’d shown up out of the blue. ‘The show’s over. They are not renewing for another season. I wanted to come home and figure out what’s next.’
‘What’s next? Your agent is going to find you another role – surely.’
Callum nodded. ‘Sure.’ He didn’t want to get into why that probably wouldn’t turn out to be the case. Word had probably spread already about him turning up drunk to auditions. He doubted something else would turn up – and if it did, he doubted he’d want it anyway. ‘My agent said I was burnt out and suggested I go somewhere to unwind.’
His mum looked at him incredulously. ‘And you thought of coming here? What’s wrong with a beach in, oh, I don’t know, Hawaii or somewhere? It’s where you Hollywood types go, isn’t it? I mean it is closer. And hotter.’
You Hollywood types. Callum frowned at her. He got the impression she rather wished he had chosen somewhere closer to LA. Then he wouldn’t be in her house. ‘Yeah, I thought of that, but then I haven’t been home for an age, and I wanted to see you – and Dad.’
She looked at him. ‘Are you still single?’
Callum thought the question came across as more akin to an accusation. ‘I’m here on my own, aren’t I?’
‘Well, you’re not going to find any of those Hollywood types here in Edinburgh.’
He assumed she meant someone like the actress off the show he starred in. ‘Maybe I don’t want one of those types.’
Moira regarded him a long moment. ‘Well, if you’re thinking of Beth, that ship has sailed.’
‘I know that!’ snapped Callum. ‘She’s living in Suffolk. And besides, she’s married.’
‘That didn’t stop you—’
‘Right,’ Callum said, cutting her off, ‘I’m leaving now. I presume it is okay if I come back here?’ He wasn’t sure it was okay with him now, but he didn’t have the money for a hotel room, so his former childhood home was it. Unless ... Callum thought of his dad’s old VW campervan. He assumed it was still in the garage. He could sleep in that, although it was quite cramped. ‘You haven’t got a lodger – have you?’ Perhaps that was where she’d got the money to do up the house. He thought of the new car on the driveway. The money from a lodger wouldn’t pay for that.
She looked aghast. ‘Of course not.’
‘Great – so it’s okay if I stay here for a bit?’ Callum really hoped she still wasn’t going to question him over why he wasn’t booking into a swanky hotel, as she put it.
‘I suppose. You’ve still got your key, I see. You gave me quite a fright, you know, turning up in the house so unexpectedly.’
‘Sorry about that. I did knock at the front door when I arrived, but you didn’t answer. Obviously, you were busy with your friends.’
‘When I heard a noise in your father’s study, the last person I expected it to be was you. I thought—’
‘You thought—?’
She put the cloth down. ‘Look, don’t ask me how, but during one of your father’s lucid moments, he went missing from the care home and came back here.’
Callum looked at her, perplexed.
He phoned for a taxi and came back home. I heard someone in the study and thought there was a break-in happening, so I called the police. That’s when I discovered your father.’
‘What was he doing?’
She heaved a sigh. ‘I don’t know. I caught him binding a book. For a split second, when I saw you in the shadows I thought it was him again.’
Callum walked over to the front door and opened it. He spotted the taxi driver, and waved. He turned to his mum, who had followed him to the front door. ‘Did something happen that precipitated your decision to send him away?’
‘I did not send him away. I decided it was safer all round if he was in a place where they could take care of him, and keep an eye on him,’ she said. ‘Obviously, they weren’t doing their job very well,’ she added under her breath.
Callum raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to answer his question.
