The Stalker, Page 2

  As the boatman turns off the motor to allow us to drift to the jetty, and the roaring in my ears disappears, I’m struck all at once by the stillness. All I can hear is the water lapping the side of the boat, the wind whispering through the trees and a gull crying overhead.

  I turn wide-eyed and still smiling to Liam. ‘It’s so beautiful.’

  He grins back at me and I take his hand, linking my fingers through his, feeling the warmth and strength in them. I know I haven’t been easy to live with these last two months, but he’s stuck by me regardless, telling me repeatedly that he’s not going anywhere. Besides, now we’re married, he’s got to stick with me through thick and thin, he likes to joke.

  ‘Are you happy?’ he asks now, a shade of concern in his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my eyes drifting back to the island; and it’s true for once.

  Once we’re tied up at the jetty, the boatman points us towards the cottage. It’s sitting three hundred feet away, on a piece of higher ground.

  ‘You’ll find the key in the lock box by the front door,’ he tells us as he sets our bags down. ‘I think you’ve got the code.’

  Liam nods and slips him a twenty as a tip. The man pockets the money with a grateful smile. ‘I’ll be back in a week,’ he says as he steps into the boat.

  I take out my phone to check the time and notice there’s no coverage.

  ‘You willnae get signal out here,’ the boatman comments, nodding at my phone.

  ‘There’s a satellite phone in the cottage if you need to contact anyone in an emergency. Though I doubt you’ll need it,’ he adds. He gestures at the loch. ‘Just make sure you keep out of the water.’

  I grimace; I have absolutely no intention of going anywhere near the water.

  ‘Lots of people drown, god rest their souls,’ the boatman goes on. ‘Don’t realise how deep it is – six hundred foot in places. Deeper than the North Sea. Drops away before you know it. It’s the cold that gets ’em. Only takes a few seconds and you’re dead.’ He snaps his fingers to illustrate his point.

  I eye the loch even more nervously, my stomach muscles clenching rigidly, as though someone has just thrown me into the icy depths.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Liam reassures the man. ‘We won’t be going swimming.’

  ‘Aye,’ the man says, untying the boat. ‘Well, have a nice time. Enjoy yourselves.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I call after the man as he pushes off from the jetty.

  As the boat drifts away, the boatman tilts his head up to look at the sky, as though reading something in the clouds, which have now almost completely been chased away by the sun. ‘Best make the most of the weather,’ he says. ‘Storm’s on its way.’

  ‘The forecast said it would be sunny all week,’ Liam responds.

  The boatman gives a shrug. ‘Weatherman doesnae know anything. Take it from me. There’s a storm on its way.’

  Liam frowns as he picks up our bags and starts walking down the jetty towards the cottage. I watch the boat disappear into the distance and then hurry after him, feeling a faint stirring of something I can’t immediately identify as I take in the view of the island and the cottage up ahead. Excitement. I haven’t felt that in so long. I take a deep breath and let it buoy my spirits.

  This is going to be the perfect honeymoon, I think to myself as I reach Liam’s side.

  Chapter Three

  Liam locates the key in the lockbox and unlocks the front door. He has to duck to enter the cottage as the doorway is so low, built for shorter men in long-ago times. From the look of it I’m guessing it’s at least four hundred years old.

  I stop for a moment to admire the lavender and geraniums planted in the flower beds and hanging baskets by the front door.

  ‘Laura, come and have a look!’ Liam shouts and I follow him inside.

  ‘Oh wow,’ I say, blown away as soon as I enter the living room. There are wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling and a brand-new cast-iron stove sits in an ancient-looking fireplace. A plush sofa in heathered blue tweed sits on one side of the room, facing a wooden slab of a coffee table and a winged armchair in a damask rose. Warm rugs cover the flagstone floor. Thick, grey velvet curtains hang beside the small windows through which I can see fragments of the loch and sky. ‘This place is amazing,’ I sigh. And it is; it looks like something out of an interior design magazine.

  ‘Home for the week,’ Liam says, clearly also impressed. ‘Come on, let’s look around.’

  We wander through into a kitchen at the rear of the cottage. It’s simple but tastefully done, with granite surfaces and state-of-the-art appliances, including a coffee maker, which I know will make Liam exceedingly happy. He loves his coffee in the morning.

  True to form, Liam notices it with glee, running his hand over the surface. He then makes for the fridge and opens it. It’s full to bursting with groceries: milk, cheese, vegetables, packages wrapped in brown paper, which I assume are the steak and the fish that we ordered in advance. I count two bottles of white wine in the door, as well as six cans of IPA. In the wine rack by the back door I notice another three bottles of red.

  ‘Seems like everything I ordered,’ Liam says, shutting the fridge and opening cupboards, to find them stocked with staples and dried food.

  We run up the stairs like a couple of giddy teenagers to discover the bedroom. I stop in the doorway and take in the double bed under the eaves, decorated with a warm quilt and several throw pillows, then I cross to the large dormer window.

  ‘Check out the view,’ I say as I gaze out over the vast expanse of the loch. It’s like we’re on a boat at sea.

  ‘I am,’ Liam answers.

  I turn and find him looking at me from the threshold, grinning in a way that makes my stomach flip over on itself again. I know what he’s thinking about, it’s clear from his expression, but I need a shower first. We’ve been on the road since six this morning and I feel gritty and rumpled from the journey.

  I make for the en-suite bathroom. There’s a clawfoot tub set in front of a window, this one facing the back garden. I peer out to see that it stretches all the way towards the forest, standing proudly several hundred feet away.

  Liam comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. He rests his chin on my shoulder. ‘Let me run you a bath,’ he murmurs into my ear.

  I close my eyes and lean back against his broad chest. ‘Mmmm, that would be nice.’

  Whilst he starts running the taps, I turn and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink. I startle, as I often do when I catch sight of myself unexpectedly these days, because it’s like a stranger has appeared out of nowhere and is staring at me with a look of shock on their face. I’m so thin. I really need to start eating again. Hopefully all the fresh air will help rouse my appetite.

  I head into the bedroom to unpack, folding my clothes neatly into the drawers of the dresser, leaving the top one clear for Liam. I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to live here. We keep talking about buying together, although Liam moved in with me a while ago. It made sense, as I have a two-bedroom terrace house and he was living in a flat-share with a colleague. He’s been saving up for years to put down a deposit on his own place and now that I have a little inheritance from my mother, we’ve been talking about pooling our money and buying somewhere bigger.

  By the time I head back into the bathroom I find Liam has emptied half a bottle of Molton Brown bubble bath into the bathtub and it’s almost overflowing. He grins like a kid and I laugh.

  ‘Go on, get in,’ he says.

  I undress slowly, aware of Liam watching. I feel self-conscious about my body, always have, but I know how much he enjoys looking at me. And even though I’ve lost some weight, he’s always telling me that I’m gorgeous and paying me compliments. At first, I found it hard to hear and didn’t believe him, because no one had ever paid me that much attention before, or treated me the way he did – and even now, eight months later, I still haven’t quite got used to it.<
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  I grew up with a father who was always calling my mother names and yelling abuse at me, too, telling me I was a lazy, fat cow. And before Liam, I dated a couple of guys, one at school and one just last year, both of whom ended up being as awful as my dad, though at the time of course I couldn’t see it; I was just flattered that somebody was interested in me. I cringe when I think about it now – how pathetic I was, how needy, and how willing I was to put the needs of undeserving people before my own.

  My first boyfriend, Dean, I met at school. I only found out after he dumped me that he’d been cheating on me the whole time. Turns out he hadn’t even thought of me as a girlfriend; I was just a bet he’d made with friends, to see if he could make me fall in love with him and take my virginity. I offered it up to him on a plate and the memory still makes me burn with shame. As soon as he succeeded in his goal, he started spreading disgusting lies about me around school, and I ended up dropping out of my final year and finishing my coursework at home because of all the bullying that ensued.

  And then there was Paul, who I met at the animal shelter where I used to volunteer. He was older than me and worked for the council’s animal control service. He’d bring in dogs, ones that the police had deemed dangerous that needed to be put down. Paul seemed sweet and considerate but after a few dates he ghosted me on New Year’s Eve and I never heard from him again.

  I’d begun to believe that all men were as bad as my dad, and I’d just about given up hope of ever meeting anyone decent when Liam arrived like Prince Charming and whisked me off my feet.

  I shiver as I discard my underwear. The heating isn’t on and the cottage is a little cold, so I slip quickly into the bath and beneath the water.

  ‘How is it?’ Liam asks, perching on the side as I let the bubbles smother me.

  ‘Bliss,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’ll go and put the heating on and make a cup of tea. It’s chilly isn’t it?’

  ‘It is Scotland,’ I tell him.

  ‘It’s still summer,’ he complains.

  ‘At least we’ve got central heating. Imagine what it must have been like for the Celts and the monks who used to live here.’

  He grins. ‘True. Glad I’m not a monk. For more reasons than that.’ He winks at me.

  Once he’s gone, I tip my head back against the bathtub and take a deep breath. I let it out in a big exhalation, feeling the tension start to ease from my knotted shoulders. Before I know it, I’ve started to cry. The melancholy descends on me like a sudden summer storm. The sadness rises up out of nowhere sometimes; a tsunami of grief, and the tears will be pouring silently down my face, soaking my lap, before I even notice I’m crying. Other times it comes in great racking sobs that force me to bury my head in a pillow and scream. And every so often the pain hits me like an axe to the stomach, felling me, making me clutch my sides and gasp for breath, the sob trapped inside of me, unable to escape.

  I miss my mum more than I thought it possible to miss a person. The two of us were unusually close, more like sisters, and definitely best friends. After my dad died of a heart attack when I was fifteen it was just the two of us for years. I would quite happily have stayed living at home with Mum forever, but she wanted me to go out and live my life – insisted, in fact, that I did. After graduating, when I found a job, my mum dived into her savings and helped me put down a deposit on a small two-up, two-down terraced house. But even after I moved out, I still spent several evenings a week over at her place. We’d eat dinner and watch The Great British Bake Off or Escape to the Continent.

  It was Mum who encouraged me to pursue veterinary science at the local college, even though I didn’t think I was smart enough, and Mum who told me to follow my dreams, even when I didn’t feel brave enough. It’s why I’m here now – why I told Liam to rebook the honeymoon. I’m trying to move on; trying to be strong. I want to do it to honour her memory. My mum wouldn’t want me to be moping and sad and pathetic. She’d want me to pick myself up and get on with my life. Above all, I know she’d want me to be happy.

  She loved Liam, too, and I comfort myself with the fact that she got to be there for the wedding. They say your wedding day is meant to be the best day of your life, but in my case, it was the best day of my mum’s life. I’d never seen her so happy; she cried through the entire service, tears splashing onto the paper when she signed her name as witness. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me when I came downstairs in my wedding dress, and how she told me I was beautiful before she walked me up the aisle at the registry office. I’ll never forget how Liam kissed her cheek and told her thank you when she put my hand into his before we said our vows. I’m so grateful that I have these memories, even at the same time that I’m furious I won’t get to make any more with her.

  Quickly, I wash my hair in the bath, dunking my head beneath the water – careful to keep my face above the surface – then I clamber out, gripping the sides of the bath tightly because my legs feel like they’re made of cotton wool. I dry off using a soft white robe that’s hanging on the back of the door and then throw on some jeans and woollen socks, as well as a T-shirt and a thick jumper, glad I thought to bring warm clothes, knowing that the weather can be temperamental in the far north of Scotland.

  On my way out of the room, I look in the mirror and notice with dismay how badly my roots are showing, my hair not so much blonde as the colour of dirty dishwater. I look alabaster pale, too, and for a moment I almost crumple in my resolve to be strong, but I take a deep breath and force a smile. New beginnings, I remind myself.

  By the time I head back downstairs, the tea Liam has made is half-cold, but I sip it anyway and go and sit beside Liam on the sofa. He’s leafing through a book and I glance at the title: A History of the Isle of Shura. There’s a photograph of a grand Gothic castle on the front.

  ‘There’s a castle?’ I ask, gesturing to the picture.

  Liam nods. ‘Yeah, it was built on the ruins of the medieval monastery.’ He keeps flicking through the pages of the book. ‘I didn’t know about it either – it wasn’t mentioned on the website. We should go and check it out. Maybe we can go inside.’

  I look closer at the image. The castle looks like something out of a Brontë novel; lots of arched windows and towers and gargoyles. No wonder people think the island is haunted. If a ghost was looking for a place to haunt, it would definitely feel at home there.

  Liam pushes a plate of shortbread fingers my way. I take one but find I can’t bring myself to eat it. I feel suddenly nauseous, flushed from the bath, my head spinning, so I set it back down on the plate.

  ‘The castle was in the McKay family for six hundred years,’ Liam says, reading out loud. ‘They probably had to sell because it was too expensive to keep up – I’ve read about that happening.’

  He turns the page.

  ‘Is that them?’ I ask, peering at another photograph, this one of a man, a woman and a boy of about eight or nine standing on the steps of the castle. The massive wooden doors of the castle are open behind them, giving a small glimpse of a wood-panelled interior hall filled with portraits and stuffed animal heads.

  Liam reads the description below the photo. ‘“Andrew and Nancy McKay with their son, Elliot”. Yeah, looks like they were the last owners. The book was published seven years ago.’

  I study the picture. Andrew, who looks to be in his forties, has a long face with piercing eyes. He’s tall and rangy and has a sullen expression on his face as he stares directly into the camera, like he’s staring down an enemy.

  His wife, Nancy, looks to be in her mid-thirties, beautiful, with a watchful gaze. She’s slim and delicate looking, but perhaps that’s only emphasised because she’s standing beside Andrew.

  Elliot looks like his mother: slight, with light-coloured hair, though it’s hard to tell the exact colour because it’s a black-and-white photo. He’s clearly pale though, and I can just about make out freckles dotted across his nose and cheeks. A large Greyhound dog stands beside him and his h
and is resting on the dog’s back. Similarly, I notice Nancy has her hand on her son’s shoulder. Meanwhile, Andrew is touching neither his wife nor his son, nor the dog, but stands apart, hands hanging at his sides, curled into fists.

  Liam shuts the history book and picks up a map of the island. It’s old and creased and he spreads it out over both our laps. He stabs his finger down where the cottage is marked. ‘This is us,’ he says. ‘We’re at the south-east end of the island.’

  I glance at the key at the bottom of the map and calculate that the island is approximately two miles long and about a mile-and-a-half wide. The castle is marked right in the centre, with the forest to the east and the cliffs rising to the west.

  ‘The book said there’s an ancient barrow somewhere,’ he says, sounding excited.

  I shake my head, confused. ‘What’s a barrow?’

  ‘It’s where the Druids and the Picts used to bury their dead,’ he explains eagerly. ‘A stone and earth chamber. I just read about it in the book. I thought we could go looking for it.’

  I remember what the pub landlord said about the ancient burial sites. ‘OK,’ I say, trying to summon some enthusiasm. I know Liam is a history buff so I’ll have to let him drag me around in search of this barrow. ‘Does it give any indication of where it is?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘No, but we’ll find it. I am a detective after all.’

  I glance at the map. The forest seems to cover about two thirds of the island, with grazing land marked on the far western end, where the cliffs are. It’s a large area to scour for what is essentially a mound of earth.