Chapter 1
Rowan – Present Day
The haunting emptiness of the room mocked me.
Taunted me with the way it flung my footsteps into the air as I stepped to the window and drew the blind against the waning afternoon sun.
Shattered me with the vision of a comfortable paisley armchair, tucked into the corner nearest the fireplace.
My mother’s. And a worn leather recliner, angled for nightly conversations over biscuits and tea. My father’s.
Now, all that remained was a scarred wooden floor, and the ghost of an Aubusson rug.
The details of the room, of how it had looked before, were forever etched into my subconscious.
The patterned wingback chair, the cosy spot by the fire, the smell of freshly brewed tea, the familiar creak of the recliner – all just memories, tucked away in the void of my heart.
The void left by the death of my parents.
The absence of their belongings, their laughter, the gentle tone of their conversations made the space feel foreign. Cold. Empty. Just like I was. No number of books or paintings or furnishings could fill that hole inside. It was a hollowness that would stay within me forever.
Turning away before the gathering tears could fall, I caught sight of the hall mirror. Too large to move into storage, it had been sold with the house. It was a beautifully carved piece, reflecting the room in the soft, hazy light.
Standing before it, I studied my reflection.
The reflection of a stranger. Blue eyes, glistening with sorrow, bared a soul so much older than my twenty-five years.
My hair, a dark shade of red, was pulled back tightly into a high ponytail, yet rebellious strands still fell softly about my face.
High cheekbones stood out in sharp contrast to that softness.
The result of my weight loss over recent months.
Weight I couldn’t afford to lose, having been slim my entire life.
Throughout my teenage years, my body remained slender, boyish even, while my peers, hormones running rampant, had blossomed overnight.
Where teenage girls had once been, young women had appeared, with rounded curves and budding chests. But not me.
My father – a doctor – had assured me it was due to my high metabolism, and that my time would come.
And it had. Eventually. Though it had not stopped me from wishing to be something I was not.
It was just one of the many things that played on my self-doubts.
This ever-present feeling in my chest, telling me I was different.
Whispering to me that I was wrong. That I was lost. I could almost hear my father’s voice in my head, telling me to be strong, reminding me I was loved.
But the weight of my emotions threatened to consume me, so I turned away, unable to face my reflection any longer.
As I cast my gaze down the hallway stretching into the kitchen, I gathered myself to take those final steps.
But my feet were unwilling to close this chapter of my life.
Each inch forward felt like a tug-of-war between acceptance and avoidance, my heart torn between bidding farewell and clinging to the familiar comforts of the past. But I gathered my breath and mustered the courage to step forward, the mocking sound of my footsteps protesting the inevitability of change.
On the bench, huddled against the back wall, sat the remnants of my former life.
The last of the boxes patiently awaiting transport to their new home.
Amongst them was my tote, brimming with the contents from my father’s study.
Stacks of papers, books, medical journals.
All filled with his wisdom and musings. All bearing the weight of memories yet to be unpacked.
My suitcase stood packed by the door, a reminder of the journey to come.
The final piece of the puzzle that would shape my new beginning.
Sniffling, I took in the bare shelves. This was where I had grown up.
Where I had spent my childhood. My parents bought the stately manor home in Surrey when I was less than twelve months old.
I couldn’t recall those early days, but they had told me all about their move from the Lake District, my father having accepted a transfer to the local county hospital in Surrey.
It had been my home, the only one I knew, until I had moved out only a few years earlier.
I’d lived in London since, but had commuted back every chance I could.
And although it had been years since I’d last lived here, my room was still set up just as I had left it.
Or it had been, until recently. Now, without the furnishings and the familiar sounds of my mother in the kitchen and my father in his study, the house felt like a tomb.
An empty, echoing shell of memories. All traces of laughter and warmth replaced with the harsh silence of nothingness.
The small boxes were heavy in my hands as I lifted them off the bench. Careful not to drop them, I slung my tote bag over my shoulder and, with one last lingering look around the room, pushed my suitcase out the door. I felt the lock, as it clicked shut behind me, in the depths of my soul.
Tears threatened. I blinked them back, struggling to reel in my emotions. But it was harder than I expected, and they trickled down my cheeks despite my efforts.
Get it together.
Wiping my face against my shoulder, I was sure I heard my father’s voice again. The words echoing through my memories.
Be strong, be brave.
“Rowan? Are you ready?”
I turned to see my aunt walking up the gravel driveway, her face lined with sadness. I gave her a weak smile. Her answering one was its twin. Her grief just as present. Together, we loaded the boxes into the car.
“We should go,” she said. “We need to get to the station soon, or you’ll miss your train.” She paused, looking at me. “Or have you changed your mind?” she asked. Pleaded.
I don’t know how I would have coped without Sarah.
She was my rock. The one person who could make me feel better, who lifted my spirits and made me believe in myself.
I don’t know if it was due to her profession – she was the counsellor at my old school – or if it was just that she was family.
But she seemed to understand me, in a way that my parents hadn’t.
She was an unwavering pillar of strength.
One that I had clung to amidst my tsunami of grief, and I loved her.
Sometimes more than I had my own mother.
Her house lay across the paddocks that bordered the road opposite ours, only a couple of streets away.
Whenever I was in trouble or angry with the world, or just needed someone to talk to, I had run through the woods that skirted those fields, straight to her home and straight into her welcoming arms. She’d always greeted me with a hug.
A warm smile. And although I knew she messaged my mother when I arrived, I hadn’t realised my mother would also text her to say I would be coming.
Mum always knew that was where I would go when I went flying out of the house.
She and my aunt shared a special bond. One only sisters could have.
But the bond between my aunt and me was just as special.
Sarah was the person I shared everything with.
My confidant. Being ten years younger than my mother, she understood the generational divide more intimately, allowing me to confide in her about matters I could never tell my parents.
Things like my first childhood crush: Oliver Jones in Year Five.
Or when I had my first kiss at fifteen with James Delany in the woods behind our house, and how he had crushed my tender heart the next day when I saw him kissing Penelope Wilde.
How, when I had confronted him about it, his response had played straight into my insecurities.
“I lost a bet,” he’d said. “Had to kiss the weird girl as penance.”
Horrified, I had gone straight to my aunt’s house after school and cried in her arms for hours. Little had I known it was only the start of the hurtful whispers that would creep into my ears when I returned to school the following day. Whispers that continued for years to come.
My aunt had been the one to call me on that fateful night, nearly seven months ago, to tell me the news of my parents’ car crash.
They had been en route from London, having spent the evening at a show in the West End.
And with only fifteen miles to go before they reached the safety of home, an approaching vehicle had swerved onto their side of the road, hitting them at such speed that the other driver was killed instantly.
He had been drunk. Or so I had later been told.
My mother had been pronounced dead on arrival at Surrey Hospital. The same hospital my father had worked at for the past twenty-five years. He had managed to hold on until they got him to the operating table, but they had been unable to save him, and he joined my mother shortly thereafter.
Absolute numbness had spread through me after that call, and my mind had shut down. My body, driven by instinct alone, had caught the train from London to Milford, but I recalled little of the trip. And when Sarah had arrived to collect me, I’d been unable to speak from shock.
It wasn’t until I had been alone in this very house that the numbness had splintered, and my tightly held emotions had ruptured.
I hadn’t made it to the sofa before I’d shattered into a million pieces and had woken up stiff-necked and puffy-eyed on the floor hours later, crawling to my bed and staying there until Sarah found me, curled in a tight little ball, the next afternoon.
She had pulled me out of the dark and into the light of the kitchen, insisting I eat.
We spoke and we cried and we reminisced, and then we planned.
The resulting seven months passed by in a blur.
After the funeral, I’d made the decision to return home.
Leaving my job. Leaving my friends. What friends?
It was no hardship, really. I had been unhappy well before the accident drew me home.
I had no relationships, no love life to worry about.
Nothing that held me there. I was so incredibly lonely, and my feelings on the matter were not something I had ever shared with anyone, even my aunt.
I had set out for London to prove to myself and my parents that I could be an independent young woman.
Yet I had been failing. Failing in all the ways that mattered.
So it was something of a relief to return home, despite the reason why.
Slowly, I’d begun packing up the house. Stowing away their belongings.
Selling the furniture in an estate sale.
I had only reached out to a realtor eight weeks prior to list the property.
It had happened so swiftly: the house sold, the memories entombed inside it.
All too soon it would be just a bittersweet memory from my childhood.
With one final look at the big brick manor, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of closure.
A sense that a door had been shut on one half of my life, and another had creaked open.
It was time to move on. Time to step through that door and embrace the new life that awaited me.
I swallowed down my grief and straightened my spine.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” I replied, answering Sarah’s question. “I am going to Scotland.”
With my chin held high, shoulders pushed back, I placed my suitcase in the back of the car and made my way to the passenger side. I positioned my tote on the floor and got in, and we drove out of the driveway. Without a backward glance, I said goodbye to my former life.