Chapter 23 #4
Now we all looked at one another again. ‘Are you mad?’ Mal asked.
‘Take a look. Is this better or not? I’ve apparently got an actor keeping my bed warm and my cat fed and I’m en route for the best PhD anyone’s ever seen.
I’ll take that, thank you very much. He actually calls me.
’ Mal looked around us all again. ‘I mean, seriously. Every day. To make sure I’m all right. It’s almost unnatural.’
I thought about Mal’s confession of loneliness.
Now here he was, clearly in love. David no longer had to care alone for his sister.
I had loved-up parents and my new, improved brother.
‘There’s going to be differences,’ I said.
‘We’re going to have to get used to things again.
But I think we should stick together. We all remember the same things, don’t we? ’
‘Turnips,’ Mal said. ‘Mostly turnips.’
‘I mean George and Jamie… falling. And the goat and the mud and the smell.’
‘And Jeannie doing all the work,’ put in Kaylinn.
‘“All for one, and one for all”, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?’ Lachlan moved so that he was on the edge of the trench, facing us all. ‘We’re the only ones who can understand how the others feel. Together for life, sort of thing.’
‘Looks like Kaylinn and I are going to be related by marriage anyway,’ I put in, raising my eyebrows at her, but she gave me a brilliant grin. ‘But yes.’
‘Does that mean we all have to buy your books?’
‘David!’ Mal jabbed him. ‘Actually yes, does it?’
‘It means we keep each other sane,’ I replied, quietly hoping that it really did mean that they’d all read my books.
Hell, I was going to have to read my books to find out what I wrote about.
I hoped I could still do it, but writing in a bothy in a deserted spot by a burn in the Highlands with Lachlan for company would probably inspire me.
There was a sudden flash of movement near the postern gate and a white streak came belting across the grass, landing in a tumbled movement at my feet. ‘Oh, look!’ I bent down. Cellar Dog, tongue lolling, flung himself against my leg in an ecstasy of ear scratching.
‘He turned up earlier,’ Lenny called over from the trench he was squatting in. ‘I thought he belonged to one of you lot. Unusual-looking dog.’ He went back to bending over some fragment of stone that someone was holding clear of the mud and discussing.
I heard Lachlan swallow. ‘He must have come through with you, Pax,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t he be invisible, then?’
We all stared down at the dog, who had mud encrusted halfway up his white body in a tidemark of filth, one ear up and one ear flopped over an eye and a tongue that looked longer than his body.
He smelled pungently of fox. The dog looked up and saw us staring and a stringy tail wagged cautiously a few times.
I bent down to scratch the top of his knobbly head.
‘Might be better if he were,’ Mal observed. ‘He’s disgusting.’
‘I hope you don’t mind me bringing the dog,’ I said to Lachlan, who was trying not to laugh.
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Not at all.’
Almost without thinking, we all stood together and put our arms around each other, hoping that everyone else was too concerned with the historic findings in the trench to wonder why we all seemed to know one another so well, and looked out together at our new, alternative future.
* * *
From Guidebook to Dunaire Castle by Lachlan McFarlane, published by Historic Environment Scotland 2026.
This spectacularly located castle on its dramatic headland was built by the McKell family in the fifteenth century and is almost unique in Scottish history for having remained in the same family ever since.
Earl George McKell (1680-1765) established the family fortunes by developing a secret process to produce steel, and set up workshops and a small factory near the site.
The family went on to become railway magnates in the nineteenth century and now own The McKell Foundation, famous worldwide for funding good causes.
Now the castle can chiefly be seen as the gatehouse (labelled A on map) (rebuilt 1727) and the keep (C on map), one of the oldest extant examples of a Scottish tower house.
The postern gate (B on map) was built to enable goods and wagons to travel up the cliffside to the site and has been widened and extended in modern times to give vehicular access to the castle.
Alternative access is by way of the steep steps cut into the headland, built as an alternative, defendable entry to Dunaire at some point in the fifteenth century.
Archaeological surveys are under way to establish dating evidence for occupation of the site, believed to have been from Pictish times (approx. AD 300–900) and, as the castle is privately owned, visitors are granted access only on certain days of the year.
Dunaire has always been a bastion for the McKell family, being easily defended on its rocky promontory. The cliffs fall one hundred metres to the sea and have been the death of many who tried to take the castle.
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