The House Between Tides (24 page)

She was reluctant to leave. The place had got to her, and she could feel the threads which had drawn her here coiling around her, binding her close; the complex legacy of the past. Her original plans for the house now seemed astonishingly naïve, and James Cameron's assessment of the amount of money needed was plain scary. Thick end of a million! If so, that signalled the end of the project and of her dreams of starting afresh. And that thought, at the moment, was unbearable.

But need it be the end? Giles had already told her that it might be possible to raise capital if a sound business plan was put together, telling her that investors liked that sort of project. But large investors with an eye to profit were unlikely to be impressed by the likes of Dùghall and the effect on his “business,” or by schoolchildren gluing shells on matchboxes.
Big money brings big problems
, James had said.

But James himself was something of an enigma, and she wondered again what his real objections to the project might be. Was he just resisting change, or was there more to it? She drove on down the slope towards her cottage, then slowed, seeing someone
standing on her doorstep. A man, with a suitcase, but there was no car— She drove on, then drew to a halt and sat staring through the windscreen in disbelief as the figure strolled towards her.

Giles. As if summoned by her thoughts.

“Hello, darling,” he said as she opened the car door and stepped out. “I thought I'd surprise you.”

Inside the cottage, he explained.

“Emma heard about the bones being found, and she rang me. There was an item on the local radio and it referred to you being here.” He paused and gave her a rueful look. “I sort of thought you might be.” Hetty said nothing, and he gave a small shrug. “Anyway, she wondered why you'd not been in touch?” She got up and busied herself tidying away the breakfast dishes left from the morning. “And I must admit I felt the same . . .”

He used that injured tone in situations like this, and it annoyed her. “Giles, I—”

“Anyway, I spoke to the police in Inverness,” he continued hastily, “who put me in touch with a community police officer here. Forbes, a nice chap. Once I'd convinced him I wasn't the press, he told me where you were.”

Thinking he was being helpful, no doubt. “Giles—”

He came over and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Look, I'm sorry if you think I'm intruding, darling, but I thought that dealing with the police might be unpleasant, and that you could use some support.”

And that was always the problem—he genuinely meant well.

She let it ride until, over a scratch dinner of omelette and frozen peas, he dropped the next bombshell. “Emma was disappointed that you
hadn't
been in touch, you know,” he said, filling her glass from a bottle of wine he'd produced as a peace offering. “They've had a very downbeat report from the local builder.”

“I know. I've met him.”

“What did you make of him?” He sampled the wine, studying the label. “Emma thinks she picked a wrong 'un.”

“We went through his report together. It seemed very thorough.”

“She thinks the job's beyond him. We need to find—”

“No. There are real problems.”

Giles flicked at the rim of Dùghall's cracked wine glass. It gave a flat, dull ring. “Sure, but . . . Now, don't be angry, darling, but you see, I flew up to Glasgow, and then got the train and stayed last night with Emma and Andrew, and we talked things over.” She looked at him, wondering how he
could
be so obtuse. “And, long story short, they came across with me this morning and checked into the hotel—”

She put down her knife and fork, and stared. “
Giles!
”

“So now we can all go across to the island tomorrow and take a look. Andrew's the man to know what needs doing. Bags of experience.”

“You shouldn't have done this.”

“Whyever not? That's what agents are for! Let them do their job, for God's sake. They're professionals.”

“So why didn't they send me the report?”

“They'd only got it themselves a couple of days ago, and they wanted to look through it first, evaluate it, and then explain the key points.” He made it all sound so reasonable. “But what
I
don't understand, Hetty, is why you just took off like that, without a word?”

The sudden shift caught her off guard, and they looked at each other across the table. She'd known she'd have to try and explain this to him somehow, but she was unprepared. There'd been no time to work things through in her own mind, no space in her head for Giles these last few days. They'd reached this point too quickly, and she retreated from it. “I needed space, Giles. To think.”

“I hated you going like that. I thought you'd left me.”

His expression sought reassurance, but it was not so simple. “No. I didn't leave because—”

“Thank God for that!” He didn't wait for the rest, but his relief was a further reproach. “Look, I'm sorry, love, but frankly, I wanted an excuse to come up and find you, and so Emma's call was a godsend. But I shouldn't have brought them, I see that now. Clumsy of me. But believe me, Hetty, it was well-intentioned, and as they're here now, just down the road . . . ?”

The evening ended on an uneasy truce, but she lay sleepless beside Giles through the night, listening to his snores and thinking how incongruous it was that he was here. And he seemed to think he had arrived in some remote colonial outpost. “What! No mobile signal
at all
? I thought you were just not replying. How do the natives cope?” It was almost funny, especially when she found herself defending the shortcomings of Dùghall's dreadful cottage.

Next morning, however, indifferent to Giles's protests regarding salt water and shoe leather, she refused to wait to be collected by her uninvited agents and said that she would walk across. “You wait, by all means,” she said as she pulled on her jacket, but Giles seemed disinclined to quarrel again, and so they left a note pinned to the cottage door and left together.

“Great Scott! What a place,” he said, as they squelched up the track from the foreshore. “Stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.” And as he strode up the drive, she felt her resentment reignite. He was trespassing.

Then she looked back across the strand and saw a Land Rover leaving the far shore. Not a battered workhorse but a shiny black model. It drove slowly across the strand and halted at the bottom of the track, unwilling to tackle the mud. Giles went down to meet them while Hetty waited at the front door, keys in hand, and watched the three of them stepping carefully to avoid the worst of the mire as they came up the old drive.

“
So
nice to meet you at last.” Emma's red lipstick framed perfect
teeth, and she kissed the air beside Hetty's cheek. “I feel I know you already.” Hetty smiled briefly and turned to shake Andrew Dalbeattie's hand. But you don't, she thought, as Dalbeattie beamed at her, well polished and confident in wax jacket and Galway boots.

Then, to her astonishment, she saw that another Land Rover was crossing the strand, a familiar, battered one. Emma had seen it too. “Good, this must be Mr. Cameron. I phoned him earlier this morning and luckily he was free to join us. Seemed sensible.”

This was too much, and Hetty felt her cheeks flame with annoyance. “I think you should have—” But Emma had already set off down the drive.

Giles glanced uneasily at her as the muddy vehicle pulled up the track, passing the other Land Rover, passing Emma, and parked beside the house. “I
honestly
didn't know,” he said.

Emma doubled back to greet James. “So good of you to turn out at short notice,” Hetty heard her say as she introduced herself. “But an opportunity not to miss, us all being here together.” James shook her hand briefly and was introduced to the others, and his eyes lingered on Giles's face a moment, then he looked across at her and gave a curt nod.

“So, let's get started, then, shall we?” Dalbeattie was clutching a copy of the report, and he took James aside.

“He's not quite what I expected,” murmured Emma, but Hetty ignored her and followed them.

“. . . Buttressing and ties would hold things together while the underpinning was done,” Dalbeattie was saying.

“Of course. But with that wall fundamentally weakened, it'll be—”

“I've seen worse.” Dalbeattie turned to beam at Hetty. She looked at James, but his expression was unreadable.

“What were you going to say?” she asked him.

“What I've already said.” He looked steadily back at her. “The cost to—”

“But cost isn't your problem, is it?” Emma had joined them, and she placed an admonishing hand on his arm. “That's our bit.” James looked down at her hand until she withdrew it.

While Dalbeattie took up the discussion with James again, Giles scanned the pasture behind them. “What about the land? How far does the estate stretch?”

Emma took out a large-scale map, which rattled noisily in the breeze, and gave him a corner to hold. Red highlighter described a large irregular tract of land, larger than Hetty had imagined, which Emma now traced with a glossy fingernail. “And it includes that stretch of land further to the west.” She recognised it as where she had walked and saw a rectangle marked with the word
ruin
in brackets, beside a small cove. Not a ruin now, she thought, and glanced across at James.

“And that's the bit you see joining up with the links?” Giles asked. “Making it an eighteen-holer?”

Emma smiled back. “World-class.” James abandoned Dalbeattie mid-flow at that point and, taking hold of part of the map, he studied it intently, his brow furrowed.

“What's the shooting like up here, Mr. Cameron?” Giles asked him, but James didn't look up. “What is there? Snipe, duck, plover?”

“All of those.” James's face was expressionless as he turned to Hetty. “You're aware that the bird reserve abuts the land over that way?”

“We know
all
about the reserve, Mr. Cameron,” said Emma. “And the links will provide something of a buffer, a sort of green belt for the birds.”

James looked blankly at her, then he turned back to Hetty. “They oppose the development, as you know, they could hardly do otherwise. An expensive shoot next door to one of the country's most important bird reserves? What'll that do for—”

“I'll tell you what it'll do,” Emma said, her lips a thin line. “It'll put the place on the map.” And she gave him a twinkling smile.

“New jobs, new money,” Dalbeattie added.

James looked from one to the other, and then directly at Hetty, but Emma moved quickly, before he could speak again. “Let's go inside while the weather holds good, shall we?” She gestured to a cloud bank building on the horizon.

James remained where he was. “And the patch of land you have in mind for extending the golf course is not estate farmland. It's croft land—”

“These plans were drawn up from the land registry.”

“—And the tenant is John MacPhail,” he continued. “He grows his potatoes there.”

Andrew Dalbeattie gave a short laugh. “Then I'm afraid he'll have to grow them somewhere else.”

Hetty saw a glint again in James Cameron's eye. “I'll leave you to tell him that,” he said, and he went to retrieve two hard hats from the Land Rover. He put one on himself and gave the other to her. “I only have two,” he said to Emma.

“We should have thought,” she replied with another, more brittle, smile.

Hetty pulled out the keys as they went up to the front door, then cursed to herself as she struggled with the unfamiliar lock.

“Shall I?” said James, behind her. It opened for him, of course, and he stood back, gesturing them into the house and followed her in. “This was a surprise,” he murmured.

“I didn't know—”

“No?” The others were already eulogising the hall, flashing the beams of their torches around the walls, and Dalbeattie called to James and took him off into the morning room. Hetty hung back, and scraps of conversation reached her from Giles and Emma in the dining room.

“. . . pity about the fireplaces . . .”

“. . . easily replaced, and it's got
such
potential . . .”

She stood alone in the hall and looked up the wrecked staircase to the broken landing. Things were moving too quickly.
Stay in control
, James Cameron had warned. Easy to say. She went and stood at the door of the drawing room, now half lit by daylight from the front door, and saw before her those muted images: a grand piano, draped with a lacy cloth; the chairs pulled up to the fire; and the woman, a pale ghost, seated alone at the window—but much harder to know where her allegiances should lie.