19. Edie
EDIE
I’m bloody proud of myself, actually. It’s been almost three weeks since Rory disappeared, and the number of times I’ve looked longingly out of my castle window in the hope my prince – okay, duke – might appear out of the morning mist to rescue me can be counted on one hand. Okay, maybe two.
Two hands and maybe a couple of toes.
The good news is that once I realised he was well and truly out of the picture I found it a hell of a lot easier to get down to work. The bad news is that it’s becoming clearer with every page I turn that his father was a complete and utter dickhead.
There’s his obsessive grudge-holding and the imaginary rivalries.
I don’t know who the Laird of Arbothy is, but his ears must have been burning on the regular.
Then there’s the paranoia and delusions of grandeur – don’t ask me how a billionaire can have delusions of grandeur, because if I hadn’t seen it scrawled in black and white I wouldn’t have believed it.
And the things he’s implied about the royals… well.
I’m cross legged on the floor of the library, surrounded by stacks of journals, loose pieces of paper, and sticky notes in a rainbow of colours.
Muffin the terrier is curled up by my side, snoozing gently.
I think I’ve made a friend for life with the aid of some strategically shared toast crusts in the mornings.
I’ve been at it for hours already, trying to untangle a particularly convoluted tale about the late duke’s trip to Monte Carlo in the ‘90s. According to what I can make out from his ramblings, he’d won a yacht in a poker game, lost it the same night, then ended up owning shares in a failing casino that mysteriously started making a profit within a matter of months.
“How am I supposed to make this sound respectable?” I’m muttering to myself when Janey appears with a tray of tea and sandwiches.
“You missed lunch,” she says, setting the tray down on the floor beside me. Muffin opens a hopeful eye and spots the sandwiches.
“What time is it?” I look up at the grandfather clock. I’ve heard it chiming once or twice, but I’ve been so caught up in the tangle of this story that I didn’t really pay attention.
“Nearly three.” She surveys the sea of papers with amusement. “Are you making progress?”
“Sort of.” I accept a cup of tea gratefully. “I’m trying to create some sort of order from chaos, but your former employer doesn’t make it easy.”
She settles into the leather armchair by the window. “He didn’t do anything the easy way.”
I gesture to my notes. “Yellow is for verified facts, things I’ve cross referenced with newspaper articles and things like that. Orange is for plausible but uncorroborated stories. Red is ‘absolutely no way did this happen, but it makes a good anecdote’. ”
“And purple?” Janey points to a smaller stack.
“Things that might get someone sued.” I give a wry grin. “I’m trying to tell the truth here without… you know, telling the whole truth.”
Janey leans over and picks up one of the journals, flicking through the pages.
“It’s funny to see his handwriting. He used to come back from a shoot or a party and sit right there by the fire” – she points to the big sofa – “scribbling away to himself for hours with a drink by his side. I can see him now, laughing to himself.”
“That’s the funny thing.” I pick up a sandwich and tear off a corner for Muffin, who devours it in one gulp.
“When I read these, I can see why people were drawn to him. He’s got this way of making everything sound like an adventure, even the terrible decisions.
It’s sort of compelling, in a horrible way. ”
“But not the whole picture.”
“No.” I tap my pen on the cover of one of his diaries.
“That’s why I’m trying to weave in the estate records, the achievements of the foundation, all of it.
Balance the man with his legacy. It’s like being a detective and a storyteller all at once.
I have to work out what happened, then decide how to frame it. ”
“That’s quite a responsibility,” Janey observes.
I nod, chewing thoughtfully. “I keep thinking about who’s going to read this. Not just Rory, but researchers one day in the future, or historians.” I look at Janey for a moment. “I want to be fair, but I want to be honest, as well.”
“A fine line to walk.”
“Exactly.” I reach for my laptop. “Do you know about the Monte Carlo thing?”
Janey grins. “Oh, do I ever.”
“I’ve framed it on the outcome, how the casino investment eventually funded the marine conservation project on the islands.” I shrug. “It’s still true, just… focused differently.”
“And that’s why Rory hired you.”
“The trust,” I correct her, thinking of the look of distaste on his face when I turned up like a bad penny, and our encounter in the study. “I think that he might have had other ideas.”
Janey’s brow lifts slightly. “Well, for someone who claims to find the whole project tiresome, he asks about it rather often.”
Two days later I’m standing in the hallway waiting for Janey, who rushes out of her office with a stack of envelopes in one hand and her bag in the other.
“You ready?” She hooks her car keys out of her purse. “Let’s go. Road trip time!”
She takes the road to Kate’s house at speed, the detritus on the back seat of her Discovery flying in the air every time she goes over a bump.
“You’re still in one piece, then.” Kate grins as she climbs into the back seat.
“Excuse me,” says Janey, laughing. “There’s nothing wrong with my driving.”
“I’m not saying there is. I’m merely wondering if Edie’s checked the risk assessment forms.”
“You can walk, madam, if you prefer. Or catch the bus,” Janey adds, putting the car into gear and crunching back out of the stable yard.
“The bus comes twice a week. ”
Janey shrugs nonchalantly. “You’d better put up with my driving then.”
“Does it really come twice a week?” I turn to look at Kate.
“Yep. First thing in the morning, back at six. I remember my granny catching it to go Christmas shopping. It was a big event, the Christmas trip to Inverness.”
“You must find this all a bit weird, coming from down south,” Janey remarks.
“Well, I grew up in a village outside Edinburgh, so it was hardly the metropolis. But it’s been a long time since I lived in Scotland, and the only time I’ve ever been to the Highlands before was a caravan holiday when I was twelve. But I already love it here.”
I look out of the window for a moment, spotting a herd of shaggy-haired Highland cows in the field by the road. I swear my heart expands every time I see something like that. Living up here isn’t something I’d ever really thought about, but the strange thing is, it feels like home.
“Have you heard of that astrological thing that says there are three places in the world where you feel you really belong?” Kate sits forward, elbows on her knees, her chin cupped in her hands as she peers through the gap between the front seats.
I frown. “No?”
“I love you,” Janey says, laughing. “But your hippy side is completely bananas.”
We stop on the main road to Inverness after an hour, picking up coffee and pastries from a cute converted horse trailer.
“Do you know what you’re wearing?”
Janey wipes crumbs from her mouth and shakes her head. “To the ball? No idea. Whichever dress I didn’t wear last year.”
That’s why we’re heading to the city of Inverness, the famous Loch Morven ball is looming on the horizon and I – funnily enough – didn’t bring a ball dress in my case when I packed for a writing job.
That, and the minor details that is the fact that I don’t own a ball dress, which at the age of thirty seemed perfectly reasonable until now.
“It’s always more fun shopping for someone else than it is standing in front of a mirror looking like a twit,” says Kate cheerfully.
“Thanks.” I give her my best side eye, and she snorts a laugh.
“When’s Rory back?” Kate adds, and I try to look disinterested, fiddling with the lid of my take-out cup.
“Next week, I think. Thought it was too good to be true having him here for an extended period of time. As soon as Theo said he’d gone to New York, I guessed he’d gone back into work mode.”
“He’s probably desperate to avoid the ball in case Fenella Soames turns up.”
“Who?” I say, trying to sound casual.
Kate groans. “Let’s say she fancies herself as the duchess-in-waiting.”
My stomach contracts.
“Oh no, Rory is definitely here for the ball.” Janey overtakes a campervan which is bumbling along at forty miles an hour. “He couldn’t exactly miss it, being the duke.”
“Shit, yeah,” says Kate. “I forget sometimes. Imagine having all that stuff to deal with.”
“I don’t envy him.” Janey glances in the rearview mirror, meeting Kate’s eyes. “I mean the castle and everything is lovely, but the responsibility?” She puffs out a breath.
“I’m sure Fenella would be more than happy to give him a hand,” Kate says.
“I think he can do better than that, don’t you?”
“What’s she like, this Fenella?” I keep my tone super casual.
Janey and Kate laugh.
“Horsey,” says Kate.
I turn to look at her, and my face clearly states the obvious.
“Yes, I know, I manage the stud farm which makes me pretty much as horsey as you can get.”
“You’re not horsey -horsey,” says Janey. “She’s basically every cliché about upper class women rolled into one not particularly lovely package.”
“As in not pretty?” I feel a little bit heartened.
“Oh god, no, she’s beautiful.”
I do a sort of internal slump. God knows what he was doing with me, but I suppose I was a one-night-only deal.
“In a sort of brittle way,” Kate adds, rifling in her bag for a lip balm. “Anyway, she got the elbow thank God. As long as he doesn’t come back from New York with some American full of ideas for turning the place into a theme park, we’re fine.”