Return to the Scottish Island Inn

Prologue

Dear Sorrel,

I wish you’d talk to me. Or any of us. We miss you.

Heather and I talk about you all the time.

About the time you climbed the oak tree in the school playground and refused to come down.

About the stories you would tell us and how you used to make us dress up as princes and princesses.

About how you used to cut up pictures of furniture and interiors from Mum’s magazines and make them into collages. You always made them look so good.

Heather has just announced that she’s getting married next year. She’s marrying some guy called Matty Campbell, if you can believe it. We don’t know much about him, but Heather is head over heels.

I hardly hear from Violet, but that’s because she’s abroad all the time being a beauty journalist. I don’t know why that means that she has to travel so much, but apparently the world of beauty never sleeps and she has to be in Abu Dhabi one week and Paris the next.

We are super proud of her, but I wish she would come home more – and send me some freebies, ha ha.

She and Heather don’t talk much, which is sad for twins, especially as Heather is getting married.

Violet says fifty per cent of all marriages end in divorce.

Blossom and Tom are still running the farm on the mainland.

It’s going well, she says, even though it’s a lot of early mornings and the subsidies aren’t what they were, and the kids are growing like weeds.

Her words. She brings us lots of food though, so Mum’s always happy with that.

Aunt Joan says she can’t eat a steak because of her teeth nowadays, but last time Blossom brought steaks home for everyone, Aunt Joan ate her whole one in about ten seconds.

Primrose is still teaching in Edinburgh, and she says that if she has to spend one more winter inhaling the sweaty teenager stink of the drama studio she might die, but we all know that she loves it.

I can’t believe you’ve been gone ten years. We all miss you so much.

I wish you’d come back.

Your sister,

Bluebell xx