Caroline Anderson - The Baby Question

Laurie’s business?

Doing what? Maybe she was working as a homefinder? Hence the letter from the estate agents. No. She’d never earn that much.

He glanced at the back of the desk, and there, suspended halfway down the back of it, hanging by a corner, was a yellow sticky note. He peeled it off, and sat down on the desk thoughtfully.

William Guthrie, it read, and a number, and jotted below were the words ‘Little Gluich’.

A house? Had she for God’s sake bought a house in Inverness?

With what?

He looked again at the figures on the sheet of paper, and shook his head slowly. With that, maybe. With her apparently very healthy income. Unless she was renting.

He looked at his watch. Ten minutes past midnight. Almost nine hours to kill before he could reasonably ring the estate agents and find out what the hell was going on.

If they’d tell him, of course, which was by no means a foregone conclusion. He’d have to play the guileless, rather daffy husband, and just see how much he could get out of them. He’d play it by ear.

Unless, of course, he made a personal visit. He glanced at his watch again. He wouldn’t sleep, not a chance, and by the time he’d phoned Luton and booked a flight, driven over there and hung around, then hired a car at the other end and driven to Inverness, it would be nearly as quick to drive.

He took the little yellow note and the envelope and the calculations, flicked off the lights and went into his room, tipping his suitcase out ruthlessly on the bed and repacking. He’d need wash things, a towel perhaps, and thick, warm clothes. Nothing too formal, and nothing much. He didn’t intend to be there long.

He left the house before twelve-thirty, wondering whether he was chasing about the countryside after a total red herring, but he couldn’t just sit there and twiddle his thumbs. He needed to see her, and he needed to see her now.

He hit the almost deserted Al within minutes, and headed north, pulling over at Scotch Corner for coffee at five, then pressing on again. It got much slower in the rush hour, and he reached the outskirts of Edinburgh and stopped briefly for a late breakfast, stocking up on enough coffee to keep him awake and making Inverness by one.

He parked the car in a multi-storey and asked someone the way to the estate agents, then wound his way through the streets until he found it.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the window as he entered the office. He looked shattered, his eyes red-rimmed, his mouth a grim line. Good grief. If he didn’t lighten up, they’d think he was an axe-murderer! He forced his shoulders to relax as he pushed the door open and went in.

The office was almost deserted. A young woman sitting behind a desk looked up with a friendly smile. ‘Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?’

He dropped into the chair opposite her and treated her to his most persuasive confused-little-boy grin. ‘I hope so. I’ve driven all the way here from London to join my wife, and I can’t find the directions she left me. They must have fallen out of the car door pocket when I stopped for breakfast. She’s just taken on a property from you—at least, I hope it was you. Your name rings a bell. I hope I won’t have to trawl round all the agents.’

He dragged a hand through his hair and tried to look as if everything was against him. Not hard, under the circumstances.

‘What was the name, sir?’ she asked him, and his heart thumped with anticipation. So far, so good. She hadn’t told him it was confidential information and sent him packing, at least.

‘Ferguson. She moved very recently—the last couple of days. I feel such an idiot for losing the directions—I’ll blame it on the jet lag. I’ve just got back from New York,’ he explained with a rueful smile. Maybe she’d fall for the exhaustion theory and feel sorry for him.

Or not. She was shaking her head. ‘Ferguson—that doesn’t ring a bell, sir, I’m sorry.’

He thought rapidly. ‘How about her maiden name? She sometimes uses it for business,’ he lied wildly. ‘Laurie Taylor. I think the property’s called Little something.’

The woman’s face cleared. ‘Oh, yes, of course, Ms Taylor. She picked up the keys of Little Gluich yesterday morning. I couldn’t forget her—she had a dog with her, a real teddybear.’

He pulled a wry face. ‘That’s right—Midas—our golden retriever. He’s a bit friendly, I’m afraid.’

She laughed, mellowing, and Rob realised with grim satisfaction that she was falling for his charm. Just give me the directions, he thought desperately, before someone with more sense of client confidentiality emerges from the woodwork and everything grinds to a halt.

‘No problem, Mr Ferguson,’ she said with a smile, and he felt relief course through him. ‘I think we’ve still got a copy of the details we prepared, they’ll have the directions on. Here. It’s a lovely little property—really cosy. I hope you find it all right. Give us a ring if not and speak to Mr Guthrie when he comes back from his lunch break.’

She handed him a set of details from the filing cabinet and smiled again, her face dimpling. She was a sweetheart—totally out of order giving him the information, but a sweetheart for all that. He could have hugged her, but thought better of it.

‘You’re a lifesaver,’ he told her. ‘I tried to ring but I couldn’t get her on the mobile, and I don’t even know if she’s got the phone connected at the house. All that fell out of the door with the directions.’

He smiled again, treating her to the full wattage, and she went pink and dimpled again. The phone rang, and with an apologetic smile she turned to answer it. He made his escape, heading back to the car park with a geographical instinct honed over years of visiting strange places, then slid behind the wheel and opened the slim folder containing the information he was after.

It looked charming, he thought. A little croft house, white-painted, snuggled down in a crease in the hillside with a glimpse of the sea in the distance. No wonder it had appealed to her. He wondered what Little Gluich meant. Nothing, probably.

He read the directions, located it on his road atlas and pulled out of the car park. Just one more hour, and he’d be with her.

He wound his way north, crossing an estuary on a bridge—the Firth of something. Cromarty? Moray? One or the other. Cromarty, he thought. He’d done Moray on the way out of Inverness. He saw seals swimming off the shore and more basking on rocks near the wreck of a ship, then turned north again onto a little road that headed over the hills towards Tain.

And there it was, or at least there the turning was. He couldn’t see the house from the road, there was a kink in the hill, but he turned down the track and winced as his car grounded on the stony grassy hummock in the middle.

Tough. He lurched and bumped his way down, and round a little bend, and there it was, a thin plume of smoke curling from the chimney in welcome. A car was outside—nothing flashy, nothing like the BMW in the garage at home, but hers, as she’d put it.

He felt a flutter in his chest as the adrenaline kicked in. Fight or flight?

He’d never backed away from anything in his life, and he wasn’t starting now. He wanted his wife back, and he was going to have her.

All he had to do was talk her into it …

SHE heard the car before she saw it, grinding slowly down the track towards the house and disturbing the peace and tranquillity of her little hideaway.

A neighbour, come to welcome her? The postman?

From her vantage point in the office over the garage, she peered down at the drive a little warily. ‘Who is it, Midas?’ she asked, her voice instinctively lowered, and the dog whined and stood up on his back legs, his front paws on the windowsill, and watched with her.