The Secrets of the Glen (Scottish Highlands #2)

Chapter 1

Robyn fastened the buckle and looked up at David, who was holding out his hands. He helped her up. Her feet were unsteady. ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea.’

‘There’s nothing to it,’ David assured her. ‘Just glide …’ He started moving backwards, pulling her along.

Robyn faced him, arms outstretched, holding both his hands, her legs motionless beneath her, her bum sticking out to cushion an inevitable fall. But to her surprise, she didn’t fall. She stood up straighter, feeling more confident. She tentatively moved first her right foot, then her left, as she skated on the ice.

‘There you go.’ David spoke words of encouragement. ‘Are you sure you haven’t done this before?’

Robyn frowned at the question. She didn’t know whether she had or not. Her memories since before the car accident on Christmas Day had not come back. Dr Jamieson at the hospital had told her she had something called selective amnesia, suggesting that although she’d suffered a blow to the head, and she was recovering from that, it was a combination of the physical and psychological trauma of the accident, and possibly of events preceding it, that had caused her memory loss to continue.

It was the day after New Year’s Day, and it had been playing on her mind since the car accident a week ago yesterday. What had happened before the accident that had been so terrible that she’d had to bury it deep in her subconscious, along with all her memories from her past? She hadn’t even remembered her own name. Luckily for her, the police had run her number plate through the system and knew who the car belonged to.

Unfortunately, her purse with her driving licence and bank cards were missing, presumably lost in the accident. It was pitch dark, and her handbag must have been thrown from the car in the crash on the country road outside Aviemore. She had returned to the scene of the accident on New Year’s Eve, passing by the spot where there were skid marks on the road. It was David who had saved her, pulling her free from the car.

She didn’t know why she had been driving along that road alone on Christmas Day. She’d crashed into David’s expensive sports car, writing it off. But, on returning to the scene, she’d also wondered what David had been doing there. He’d refused to answer that question, and when he’d asked her , she hadn’t answered either – not because she didn’t want to, but because she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t told him about her memory loss.

But questioning David further about the accident had precipitated their first row. They’d been getting on so well. David had been visiting her in hospital every day until she was discharged, and had then taken her to a New Year’s Eve party. They’d even had their first kiss the previous day, New Year’s Day, just after midnight.

Fortunately, their falling-out had all blown over, but it had raised questions about what secrets David was keeping. She’d assumed that she had lost control and ploughed into David’s car, which had been coming from the other direction, but the skid marks suggested another story. Had she been trying to avoid him, and he was the one who’d lost control?

After that argument, when he’d been on the defensive over her questions, she hadn’t brought it up again. But it had made her wonder for a time whether he’d been visiting her in hospital because he’d felt guilty. Even if that had been the case to begin with, though, those visits had quickly blossomed into the beginnings of a relationship. There was no denying they’d been instantly attracted to one another.

Still holding her hand, David came closer and turned to face forward so that he was skating beside her. ‘That’s it – glide …’ he said again motioning at his own feet and encouraging her to take larger strides.

Fewer people were overtaking them now as Robyn started to match David’s stride. She was beginning to skate more confidently. After a while, she took her eyes off her feet and smiled at David before casting her gaze about her. ‘The scenery is just stunning.’

‘I knew you’d love it here,’ David replied.

The small frozen loch was surrounded by pine trees, the snow-capped Cairngorm mountains rising up in the distance. This place was just too wonderful to forget. ‘I don’t think I’ve been here before.’

‘Oh, I know you’ve never been here before.’

‘How would you know, for sure?’ Robyn said. She felt defensive, as she couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure herself.

‘It’s a closely guarded secret. Just us locals come to this place. Otherwise, there’d be a stampede. The frozen loch is too small to accommodate people in large numbers. And unsafe.’

Robyn looked at him sharply.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve been coming here in the New Year ever since I was a kid. It’s like a tradition among us locals. Mind you, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people who aren’t in the know spot us from the road and venture down here. I mean, the place is lit up like a Christmas tree.’

Robyn could see what he meant; dotted around the circumference of the loch, placed a few metres apart, were a variety of large vehicles owned by the locals. On each one was mounted a large spotlight. It was like something out of a fugitive movie; they were the biggest and brightest lamps she had ever seen. The loch road wasn’t far away. Anyone driving past was bound to spot the strange lights through the trees.

‘But we do our best to keep it a secret.’

Robyn nodded, thinking, more secrets. Her gaze shifted to David’s bad knee. She frowned. Unbeknown to him, she’d spied him using a walking stick to climb into his van. She guessed he had good days and bad days with the injury that had ended his promising ice hockey career.

‘Look,’ David whispered in her ear. He was holding up both hands.

‘What?’ Robyn asked, not sure what he was getting at.

‘No hands. See?’ David laughed.

‘Oh.’ Robyn felt her legs go all wobbly when she realised what David meant; he was no longer holding her hand.

‘Whoa.’ David caught her. ‘Let’s try again.’

David let go before Robyn could protest. He said, ‘I think you have done this before.’

‘Well, perhaps I have,’ she said, trying to sound light-hearted, as though she was just having some fun with him. She felt guilty for not letting him into the secret that she’d lost her memory, even though he had secrets of his own. Although she knew he’d busted his knee and could no longer play professional ice hockey, and that he was back in his home town, where he’d invested in a house with his earnings from the game and was working at his father’s general store, she still didn’t know what exactly had happened when he had been landed in hospital with a shattered knee and a shattered career. He didn’t want to talk about that. She’d assumed the injury had happened during a hockey game.

She looked at David, holding her hand, and said, ‘Are you sure you should be on the ice?’

‘What do you mean?’

Robyn looked ahead, concentrating on keeping her balance as she said, ‘Don’t you have to be careful with your knee? What if you fall?’

David grinned. ‘I can assure you that I won’t fall. I’ve had years and years of skating practice.’

That was one thing Robyn did know. David had told her all about his father putting a bat in his hand when he was very young. Then, all through school, it had been practice, practice, practice, fuelling David’s resentment towards his younger brother, now a local police officer, who’d had a ‘normal’ childhood and adolescence. Robyn had pointed out to David that perhaps his brother, Joe, had some resentments of his own. After all, their dad had spent most of his time with David at ice hockey practice, which must have left little time for his other son.

‘Hey!’ someone shouted out. ‘Hey – you guys!’

Across the frozen ice, Robyn could see a man waving at them. ‘There’s Joe!’ Robyn exclaimed, recognising David’s brother, who was standing with a group on the far side of the frozen loch.

She’d met him at the party on New Year’s Eve in the village of Granton-on-Spey. David had taken her there for a night out, which hadn’t quite gone to plan. He had introduced her to his horrible dad – Mr Gillespie. The old man had barely acknowledged her presence. He had been so rude. David had clearly thought so too, because he and his father had got into an argument, which had ended with his dad punching him in the face. Luckily, Joe had intervened.

‘I’m sorry.’

David took her hand, and they both skated to a stop at the edge of the loch. ‘What for?’

‘About that.’ She turned to face him, pointing above his eye, where he’d been punched in the face by his father.

‘It’s not your fault, Robyn,’ he paused. ‘I have always had this way of provoking my father, bringing out the worst in both of us. I wish I hadn’t introduced you to him. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

Robyn decided to let it go at that. She had learnt that there were two sore points with David that were just not worth bringing up. One was his ice hockey, and the other was his father.

Robyn glanced across the loch at Joe. ‘Why didn’t you tell me your brother, Joe, is a police officer?’

‘Why – are you in some kind of trouble or something?’ David said, smiling at his own joke.

Robyn laughed nervously, ‘Of course not.’ The problem was that Robyn didn’t know. Was she? What or who had she been fleeing from on Christmas Day?

Robyn didn’t want to think about that. She changed the subject. ‘I’m glad our matching bandages have come off.’

He’d had a cut from the fight, and a bandage, which had matched Robyn’s bandage from her car accident injuries. Their wounds had been checked and their bandages removed. Now, they couldn’t be made fun of, in a good-natured way, by the occupants of Lark Lodge, the place where she was staying, thanks to her other hospital visitor, whom she’d met by chance: Gayle, a middle-aged, single, former nurse, who had returned home to Scotland to care for her elderly parents. Her father, a former local GP, had been in hospital over Christmas and had sadly passed away. The funeral would be at the end of the week.

Robyn thought it wasn’t the best start to the New Year for Gayle, organising her father’s funeral. But Gayle had been stoical, saying such is life . She had mentioned that at least her father had wished to be laid to rest in his beloved adopted country, Scotland, and she hadn’t had to return with his ashes to Trinidad, a country she’d never been to. Gayle had been born in Scotland, unlike her older twin brothers and her sister, who had accompanied their parents to England on a boat in the sixties – part of the Windrush generation.

At least you’ll get to meet my brothers and sister , Gayle had said.

Robyn wasn’t sure she wanted to – not after what they’d discovered in the basement of Gayle’s parents’ house. Sadly, Gayle’s mum, Doris, had dementia, which meant that the possibility the house would have to be sold to pay for her care was looming large. In the basement, it had become apparent that her brothers and sister were already anticipating the inevitable, along with the fact that she was quite elderly and might not have long to live. They’d packed up some of their mother’s valuables, dividing them between themselves in boxes marked with their names.

Robyn thought it was despicable that they’d done that already, and worse, that they hadn’t included Gayle, the baby of the family, in their decision. Gayle had only discovered them because Robyn had come across the boxes in search of family photos; Robyn had wanted to see how the house had looked before it became rather run down.

She wondered what Gayle’s siblings would think of the plan to turn their childhood home into a guesthouse. It wasn’t exactly official, and it hadn’t started out as Gayle’s idea. Robyn wanted to do up the house, redecorating a room at a time. It was a big old house, with plenty of spare bedrooms that could earn Gayle and her mum some extra money. She already had two houseguests – neither of them exactly planned.

Robyn, Gayle’s first guest, didn’t pay rent. Gayle had insisted that she was a friend, and could stay as long as she liked, even though she’d only met her just over a week earlier. Robyn had readily accepted going home with Gayle when she was discharged. She didn’t want to return to her university, St Andrews, just yet. She’d discovered she was an undergraduate there – the police had found that her car was registered with an address at the university’s halls of residence. Robyn had decided that redecorating the house would be her way of repaying Gayle’s kindness, if Gayle would let her. She really liked Gayle.

Robyn also liked Joe. She smiled across at him as she skated. He was quite different to David in appearance – he was shorter, stockier, and blond. David said his brother took after his father’s side, he after his mother. But Joe and his brother were both nice, kind, caring guys. They didn’t get that from their father, in Robyn’s opinion.

David waved at Joe and took Robyn’s hand. He said, ‘I think he’ll probably come over. Let’s stop a moment. He’s a pretty good skater, but he does sometimes go a little too fast, and I’d rather he didn’t plough into us.’

Robyn nodded. She got the impression that had happened to David in the past. Standing with him on the edge of the loch, out of the way of those skating in a wide circle, her eyes darted around the skaters to see if there was anyone else she recognised. She’d suddenly had a horrible thought: was Joe there with their dad?

She turned to David and just had to ask, ‘Is your father here too?’

David furiously shook his head. ‘This is the last place he’d come.’

Robyn wasn’t surprised when David didn’t elaborate on that comment. She imagined that the last thing his father would want to see was his once-famous ice hockey star son skating, reminding him what might have been if he hadn’t been injured.

Robyn breathed a sigh of relief as she watched Joe turn to a young woman she hadn’t seen before, who was dressed warmly in blue waterproof trousers, a blue-and-white ski jacket, and a red knitted bobble hat that didn’t match her outfit. Robyn guessed, by the colour of the hat and the fact that it looked hand-knitted, that she might have been given it as a Christmas present.

The young woman waved back. Then they both left the group and skated across the ice.

‘I didn’t think you were going to make it,’ said Joe, skidding to a controlled stop in front of them. He eyed Robyn.

She looked away, feeling her cheeks growing hot, despite the freezing temperature. David must have mentioned to his brother that he’d invited her, but that he’d had to convince her to come.

It wasn’t just that, though, that had made her cheeks flush. She looked at Joe anxiously, wondering when he would learn the details of the accident on Christmas Day. Joe hadn’t been at work over Christmas and New Year. She expected he might find out on his return. The police officer who’d interviewed her before she was discharged from hospital knew about her memory loss, and she realised that on Joe’s return to work, he might hear about it too. She hoped not. At least not before she told David.

So far, she hadn’t summoned the courage to tell him. She knew why. She didn’t want David fussing over her or trying to come up with suggestions to get her memory back. She wasn’t sure she wanted whatever she’d buried deep down in her subconscious to come back. If that meant all her memories before the accident wouldn’t come back either, then so be it. She felt happy living in Gayle’s family home, and she had a job lined up doing some interior design on a house belonging to a lovely old couple – Rose and George. She didn’t want anything to jeopardise her new life; least of all someone from her past.

She tried to keep her expression neutral at the thought that there must be someone out there, someone she had been with. She only knew this because Dr Jamieson had told her that she had been pregnant, but that she’d lost the pregnancy in the accident. She hadn’t been too far gone, but that wasn’t the point. She must have had a partner, a boyfriend. Which begged the question – why hadn’t he been with her in the car on the day of the accident? Had she been running away from him on Christmas Day? Was the fact that she’d even consider this possibility her subconscious telling her it was true?

She still couldn’t remember his name or picture his face. Her mind was still keeping secrets. She felt strangely thankful. If something bad had happened, or had been about to, before she’d sped away in the car, she did not want to remember. Whatever or whoever she’d been running away from, she’d decided she didn’t want to go back – ever.

‘It took a bit of encouragement,’ David said.

For a moment, Robyn was at a loss as to what David was talking about, until the young woman with Joe smiled and said, ‘It took a bit of encouragement to get me out ice skating this evening too. To be honest, I was quite happy curled on the sofa with a novel in front of the fire, although now I’m here, I don’t regret coming at all.’

Robyn returned her smile. She felt exactly the same.