Chapter 12
Stevie watches with interest as I tip up the bottle and allow the smallest amount of the amber liquid possible to dribble into my glass, then take an experimental sip, looking curiously around the apartment at the same time.
I deliberately didn’t look too closely at my surroundings earlier, because it would’ve felt too much like snooping.
Now that I know the place is Hunter’s, though, and that he has a daughter, but apparently no wife or girlfriend, my ‘intrigue sensor’ has been triggered, and I shamelessly want to know why the two of them are on their own.
Tragic dead wife?
Bitter custody battle?
Witness protection programme?
I scan the room quickly, but all I can gather from the general chaos is that Hunter wears brightly coloured underwear, and really needs to get a cleaner.
There’s no evidence of any feminine touch at all, though, and I’m just trying to figure out why that pleases me as much as it does when the door opens and Hunter appears again.
‘Got it,’ he says, holding up a room key. ‘I see you decided to brave the whisky again?’
‘I did,’ I reply, holding up the glass to show him. ‘It tasted a bit better this time. Either that or my taste buds have just been destroyed by it.’
‘I told you it would grow on you,’ he says. ‘Everything OK here while I was gone? No more ghostly wanderings from Hannah?’
‘Nope. Not so much as a peep from her. And I didn’t really think she was a ghost earlier,’ I add, knowing Hannah will probably be telling him all about my hysterical reaction as soon as she wakes up in the morning.
‘It was just a bit spooky after everything else that’s happened since I got here.
I’m starting to feel like I’m in an episode of Scooby Doo. ’
‘Well, I’m happy to assure you that Hannah’s very much alive,’ Hunter replies, refilling my glass without asking. ‘And her mother’s alive, too,’ he adds. ‘Just in case you were wondering.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t,’ I assure him, even though I absolutely was. I take another sip to give me an excuse to look away.
‘She lives in Edinburgh,’ he goes on, smiling in a way that tells me he knows exactly what I was thinking.
‘We’d originally intended to try to share custody, but she travels a lot for work, so Hannah ended up with me.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love having her here; I just worry that she’ll be lonely stuck in a mouldy old castle without any other kids to play with. ’
‘That must’ve been really hard,’ I say, surprised that he’s being so open. I guess that whisky really does loosen the tongue. ‘Breaking up when you have a child, I mean?’
I’m hoping the question will prompt him to say more about the mysterious ex – and why she’s a mysterious ex – but Hunter’s face just takes on an odd, closed expression, as if he’s said too much already.
‘Ah, well, it is what it is,’ he says, in a tone that tells me story time’s over, as abruptly as it began. Shame. ‘Another dram?’
‘Definitely not.’ I cover the top of my glass with my hand. ‘I should probably be going, actually. It’s late.’
‘You’re sure you won’t be too scared of the ghosties to make it back to your room?’ he replies, but there’s a twinkle in his eye, which I know means he’s just teasing.
‘No, it’s the human residents of this place I’m scared of,’ I reply, getting reluctantly to my feet.
The whisky I’ve drunk has left me feeling pleasantly fuzzy around the edges, but not so much that I don’t know a bad idea when I see one; and falling for a man who lives hundreds of miles away would definitely be a bad idea, even by my standards – and I say that as someone who recently pretended to be an influencer in order to blag her way into a free hotel stay.
‘You still think someone’s out to get you, then?’ Hunter asks, hitting on the one topic of conversation guaranteed to make me stay.
‘Um, I’m not sure,’ I reply, sitting back down beside him and trying not to think about how good he smells: like woodsmoke and salty air.
‘I can’t imagine why anyone would be, really; especially not if they’ve seen the kind of content I’m coming up with for this competition.
It’s not like I’m a big threat to any of them.
But then, someone definitely moved my clothes; I just can’t accept that I imagined that.
And then there’s the thing with the itinerary. ’
I tell him how I searched my room for the piece of paper with the note on it, watching him closely the whole time for any sign of guilt. But Hunter just listens quietly, then shrugs in that way of his.
‘It’s a slip of paper, Rosie,’ he says. ‘It’s really easy for a piece of paper to go missing. They fall down cracks. They get mixed up with other documents. The fact that you haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean someone’s stolen it.’
‘I know. And if it was just that, I wouldn’t give it another thought,’ I reply.
‘I’d think I’d just mislaid it. But there’s also the fact that mine was the only copy with that note added to it.
Zara told me hers didn’t say anything about dressing to impress.
Someone wrote that on mine deliberately, then took the paper from my room so I couldn’t prove it. I’m sure of it.’
‘OK,’ says Hunter, leaning back. ‘Say someone did. What’s the point? Just to make you dress up when no one else was? So? Why does that matter?’
‘Oh, it matters,’ I mutter darkly. ‘I know it probably seems trivial to you—’ he nods briefly, not even bothering to deny this ‘—but it made me feel stupid and out of place. And I hate that.’
He fixes me with that intense gaze again, and for once there’s no mockery behind it.
‘You try very hard not to feel out of place, don’t you?’ he says softly.
‘Very,’ I agree, the whisky I’ve drunk making me brutally honest. ‘I’ve been trying all my life. It never works, though. I think I’m doomed to always be the “wrong” Rosie – at school, at work . . . and now here, too.’
Hunter reaches out and tops up my glass again without asking.
‘Is that what it’s all about then?’ he asks. ‘The shopping? The obsession with wearing the right thing at all times? It’s not about standing out for you, like it is with all the rest of them, is it? It’s about fitting in.’
I pause, struck by the insightfulness of this observation, especially coming from a man who barely even knows me.
‘I grew up poor,’ I tell him, deciding to trust him with something I’ve never really admitted to anyone else.
‘With three older sisters and a mum who was on her own and couldn’t afford to buy us new things.
All of my clothes were hand-me-downs. Everything was at least two years out of date.
And I went to a school where that kind of thing mattered far too much, so, needless to say, I didn’t exactly fit in.
And, yeah, I guess now I try to shop my way out of the feeling of being a perpetual misfit.
I always feel like if I can just find the right outfit, or the right piece of furniture, or .
. . the right thing . . . then my life will be perfect.
And it never is, but I still keep trying.
I know how stupid that sounds, trust me. ’
‘It doesn’t sound stupid, Rosie,’ says Hunter. ‘But no one’s life is perfect. Not even those women you’re trying so hard to be like.’
I think about Bex and Daniel, arguing in the grounds; Millie’s big blue eyes filling with tears when she spoke about some of the horrible comments she gets.
Maybe he’s right.
Although, right now, I’d still rather have their lives than mine. At least that way I’d have somewhere to live when I leave here. And be able to take a sauna without worrying someone might try to kill me.
‘So, who’s the number one suspect?’ Hunter asks, his eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘Oh, come on, don’t pretend you don’t have a list. I can tell you do.’
‘So far I’m thinking either Sabrina or Dante,’ I reply, secretly grateful for the opportunity to air these thoughts rather than just obsessing endlessly over them in private.
‘They’ve had the most opportunity. Oh, and neither of them particularly wants me here, do they?
Especially not Sabrina. She hates me. And Dante’s not exactly warm, either. ’
‘He’s got a lot on his plate,’ says Hunter, carefully.
‘It’s a big responsibility, running a place like this.
The Laird puts a lot of pressure on him.
And, just between you and me, I don’t think Sabrina’s business is doing too well, either.
So she probably has a lot riding on this launch, too.
I wouldn’t take anything they say too personally, you know?
Stress does funny things to people. And, like I say, no one’s life is perfect.
Not even mine, even though it looks it.’
He grins, gesturing at the towering pile of laundry behind him.
‘I guess not,’ I reply, thinking about him trying to raise his daughter on his own while living in the picturesque middle of nowhere.
‘Although this place does seem pretty perfect to me, at least. It’s so beautiful.
I always thought I was a city girl, but scenery like this could easily change my mind. ’
‘Aye, well, I’m not much of a city person myself,’ Hunter replies, taking another sip of his drink. ‘Too many people for my liking. Out here you can hear yourself think. There’s a freedom you don’t get in the city. You can be yourself here. If you want to, that is.’
‘Oh, I do,’ I reply, captivated by the picture he’s painting of Highland life. ‘I do want to be myself.’
Or, at least I think I do.
‘Maybe not this exact version of myself,’ I qualify, an image of me emerging, tomato-faced from the sauna, popping suddenly into my head. ‘But a better one. The version of myself I’m going to be once I’ve finished figuring out who she is, exactly.’
And once the Chrysalis has worked its magic on me.