Chapter 2
TWO
Dear Sorrel,
I know you’re gone from our lives and you likely won’t ever come back, but I have to ask you if you can help us.
I don’t know what happened between you and Mum and Dad. They refuse to say, and you’ve never replied a word to my emails. I don’t know if you’ve read them. I don’t even know if this is still the right email address for you. But I have to believe that I’ll see you again one day, so I keep trying.
I know that you’ve ended up being pretty successful as a property developer. I found your website for your company with Simon. We’re all really happy for you: you were always artistic, I can imagine you taking rundown houses and doing them up, making them look all gorgeous inside.
Mum misses you terribly. She will never say it, but one night I found her looking at your website and crying. She never cries apart from when you’re mentioned.
I’m writing to ask for your help. On the off chance that you read this, and that you feel like you can come home.
The Inn has subsidence, and Mum and Dad don’t have much money to fix it. Dad says that he’s had some astronomical quote from the builder, and they’ve got as much chance of finding that money as Aunt Joan has of winning the Tour de France.
Are you rich now, Sorrel? Because if you are, I know that Mum and Dad would hugely appreciate a loan to get the work sorted.
Until it’s done, we can’t have any guests at the Inn, and it’s even dangerous for us to live there, so we’ve moved into a big caravan Dad’s borrowing from one of his dodgy mechanic friends.
Heather and I are sharing a room and the bathroom is vile: all orange vinyl flooring and anaglypta.
Dad snores like a bear and Mum’s trying to make the best of it, but it’s horrible.
The aunts have gone to stay at the castle. I wish I had too, quite frankly. Dad refuses to ask Uncle James for help, even though Mum says that James could afford the building work, and anyway, it’s his responsibility because of being laird.
If you can help us, please think about it, and if any of your property development experience could help as well, I know that Mum and Dad would be grateful. I wouldn’t ask, but we’re desperate. I don’t want to be in this caravan when the winter comes. And we can’t lose the Inn. We just can’t.
Help us, please, Sorrel. Whatever’s keeping you away from us, please know that we love you. I know you still love us.
Your loving sister,
Bluebell xxx
On the day when everything fell to pieces, Sorrel Balhennie had had one tab open on her laptop screen with her sister Bluebell’s email on it, and another showing the accounts for the company she had set up with her partner, Simon, eight years ago.
She stared at the accounts, uncomprehending. It didn’t make any sense at all.
How was this even possible?
It felt as though the ground had shifted under her.
She had met Simon at a party in her first year in London.
He had found her while she was holding hands with two other girls she’d just met and singing childhood songs in the kitchen.
Ring-a-ring-a-rosie, a pocket full of posies/a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down.
The three of them had collapsed in a giggling heap at the end of the song, and Simon had gallantly helped Sorrel up from the kitchen floor.
She didn’t remember why they’d had the idea or why it had been so amusing, apart from the fact that there had been a lot of cocktails at the party and she’d drunk too many of them.
When they told the story of how they met to friends later, Simon always said that he’d noticed Sorrel because she’d been adorable. How could I not help her up? he’d say, appealing to his audience with a shrug. She was like a baby fawn. She looked at me with those big blue eyes and I was gone.
Gone. Like the money that seemed to be missing from their company accounts.
Sorrel frowned and looked again at the calculations, but she was sure of it – there was money missing.
She had noticed some irregular withdrawals from the company account a few weeks ago but hadn’t thought much of it. Simon sometimes had to entertain clients or pay unforeseen bills for the properties they renovated.
Flipping. That was what some people called it.
They flipped properties, meaning that they’d buy something that needed fixing up, renovate it and then sell it on at a profit.
Sometimes they kept the property and used it for a rental or a holiday let.
Some of them were insanely lucrative. They had both made a lot of money in the eight years they’d been working together.
In that time, they’d flipped twenty-five properties.
She had been right. There was a payment of ￡2,000 to a name she didn’t recognise: Teresa Hadley.
Sorrel found the name when she clicked through from the main statement onto the information for the payment.
On the statement, it had just read T Hadley, which could theoretically have been a builder or a supplier.
But T Hadley wasn’t a name Sorrel recognised, and she was generally the one who contracted builders, carpenters and plumbers in the house renovations she and Simon managed. She was also the one who decided on the décor and tended to work with a couple of decorators that she trusted.
Teresa Hadley was not one of them.
With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Sorrel had searched the bank statement in front of her for other payments to the same payee.
She had found five in total. And the values totalled over ￡20,000.
Sorrel had sat staring at the computer screen in disbelief, and then, her heart beating wildly, she’d picked up Simon’s phone from the desk – he’d left it there while he was in the shower – and opened up his messages.
She wasn’t even difficult to find. Teresa was at the top of Simon’s message list. Feeling sicker by the second, Sorrel scrolled through the messages.
I can’t wait to see you. I missed you.
Tank ooo for my present. I missed you too.
You’re welcome, sweetheart.
When can I see you?
She’s away for the day on Tuesday. Same place as before, 10 a.m.?
The ‘she’ was her, Sorrel, she realised. And it looked very much like Simon had been transferring money from their company accounts to this Teresa regularly for a few months without Sorrel noticing.
When Simon had walked in from his shower, a towel around his middle, she’d been unable to meet his eyes. Instead, Sorrel had picked up his phone, turned the screen to him so that he could see the messages from Teresa, and thrown the phone at the wall.
‘I know about the money.’ She’d pointed at her laptop screen. ‘Twenty thousand pounds. I expect that to be repaid within the week. I’m going to stay with my family. This – whatever it even is between us now – is over.’
She hadn’t given Simon time to reply. Sorrel had picked up her laptop, thrown some random clothes into a bag, called a taxi and caught a plane to Scotland. Four hours later, she was renting a car at Edinburgh Airport.
She was filled with trepidation about seeing her parents again; the betrayal of years ago still hung between them. How would it feel to see them again?
She was about to find out.