Page 14 of The Boathouse by the Loch (The Scottish Highlands #4)

‘Jake – are you still there?’

If only he’d listened to Ellie at Christmas. But I wasn’t listening, was I? he thought. I didn’t hear her unhappiness. I didn’t see her need for me to put her first over the family, over the company.

He had thought he’d done that already by choosing to be based in London. But he hadn’t considered how she must have felt about being pregnant when she’d thought it was never going to happen.

Jake didn’t think badly of her when he thought about her not being overjoyed at the news. She’d just needed time to figure out how she was going to balance doing what she wanted for herself with being a mother, and perhaps figure out what she wanted for them as a family.

Jake said bitterly. ‘It never occurred to me that she might want us to make a life for ourselves independently of the family business.’

He’d chosen to stay in London, but for how long would it have lasted?

As much as he had wanted to plan a life around staying in London with Eleanor and the baby, the reality was that it might not have been possible in the long run.

The company always came first, and he didn’t know what that would have meant for their future.

‘Is that what she said?’

‘Not in so many words.’ But Jake knew his wife.

There had been things going on with her at Christmas.

He was back to wishing that he hadn’t been so hellbent on sticking to their normal routine and spending Christmas with the Rosses in the Cairngorms. In hindsight, it felt like it had been a test – would he put her or the family first? He’d failed, and the cost had been—

Suddenly Jake wished he wasn’t having this conversation over the phone. Why didn’t I just get on that plane with Marcus? he thought. Then he could be telling Faye this in person. He stared up out of the attic window, up at the Cairngorms.

Jake had had many months to dwell on the events surrounding that fateful Christmas Day.

He had eventually arrived at the real crux of the matter.

‘I realise now that she wanted us to stay together in London. Not just over Christmas; she was asking for something more. She was asking me not to make her choose.’

Jake took a deep breath and confided, ‘She would have left me, Faye. One way or another, I would have lost her, because she knew I could never walk out on Marcus, William or the company.’ The irony wasn’t lost on Jake that he had ended up doing just that.

‘I think she needed to pursue her own career without the shadow of her father’s company bearing down on her and squashing her personal achievements.’ Jake thought of the abandoned doll’s house in the basement of his house. ‘It just never occurred to me until it was too late.’

‘Too late?’ Faye halted. ‘But she’s alive – isn’t she?’

Jake said, ‘Yes,’ in a small voice. ‘I just wished she hadn’t pulled one last surprise,’ he mumbled.

‘Everyone in school assumed you were a widower.’

Jake heaved a sigh. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be!’ Faye quickly replied. ‘You don’t have to apologise.’

‘What the Rosses wanted, what I wanted, was to keep the press out of our personal affairs, away from Eleanor, and her … recovery.’

‘Recovery? Does that mean you’ll leave teaching and go back to working for the Rosses?

No, wait – you thought that was not what she wanted; that she wanted you to leave the corporation.

Is that true? What did she say about that?

Perhaps she’ll be okay with you teaching in London. Perhaps she’ll open her shop here?’

‘Oh, Faye. If only that were true.’

‘Which part? You staying in teaching or her opening her shop?’ Faye paused and said in a small voice. ‘I thought she’d died after that accident. I thought you were … single.’

‘She did. I am.’

‘What? Jake – what are you talking about? You said you’re not a widower, and she’s recovering. I don’t understand …’

Recovery. Jake realised that was the wrong word. ‘She’s not—’ Jake halted. How could he explain? He hadn’t seen her himself. In all these months, he hadn’t visited. But he didn’t have to. How could he forget what the doctors had told them?

‘She’s never going to be what she once was.’

‘Oh, Jake. People change, and when you’ve had an accident, it’s bound to take time to—’

‘No. You don’t understand. She’s gone, Faye.

She may recover physically, but—’ Jake thought of the doll’s house Eleanor had once loved in the basement of the house.

She’d never design anything now. All she would be able to do was to play with it like a three-year-old.

Jake suddenly had a thought. Perhaps when he visited, he’d organise having it shipped so she could.

‘Oh, Jake.’ Faye interrupted his thoughts. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea …’

‘No, neither does anyone else, apart from close family.’ Close family. Jake scoffed. So close, that none of them, including himself, had visited her in all these months. Well, he was resolved to change that. As soon as he returned to London.

‘I promise,’ Faye said, sounding very earnest, ‘that what you told me will never leave my lips.’

‘Thank you, Faye.’

‘I don’t know what it’s like to suffer that sort of loss.’ She breathed deeply, ‘but I can imagine …’

Jake sat up and thought about the little girl who had answered the phone. ‘You’re talking about Natty.’

‘If anything happened to her, I think I’d go crazy.’

There was a pause. Jake imagined what had crossed her mind at that moment.

When Natty had been a toddler, and she’d nearly been taken by Natty’s father, Yousaf, to meet his family in Oman, he might not have brought her home.

And Faye might never have seen her daughter again. Jake shuddered at the thought.

‘You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to her,’ Jake reassured her.

‘I’ll just go check on her. Won’t be a minute.’

‘It’s alright. You do that,’ said Jake, as much for his own peace of mind as for hers. Suddenly, he was feeling the distance between them; his powerlessness to do anything if Yousaf should try anything again.

‘Stupid, huh?’ Faye was back on the phone within seconds.

‘Not at all,’ said Jake, just relieved that Faye had come back on the line and that everything was OK at her end.

‘So, tell me Jake, about that one last surprise?’

‘One last surprise?’

‘Yes, you said she’d pulled one last surprise.’

‘Yes, she did.’

Jake took a deep breath and exhaled before continuing.

‘She must have arrived at the slopes before us. I saw her up ahead, waiting in the queue for the next ski lift. At first, I thought it wasn’t her; I thought I was mistaken because she had cleverly convinced us she was not coming.

Don’t you see? She had it planned from the start – the surprise show at the slopes.

’ Jake paused. ‘I just wish she’d gone shopping like she said. ’

‘She said she was going shopping?’

‘Yes, that’s what she said.’ Jake frowned.

It was beginning to dawn on him that she would have needed help to pull off her little surprise, turning up on the ski slopes unexpectedly.

She would have needed somewhere to keep her ski stuff, to change into.

And someone to drive her there too. Their driver had taken her into town, but Jake knew he’d returned.

‘It turned out that the surprise, discovering she’d come after all, was just the start.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Remember I told you about skiing off-piste a moment ago?’

‘Of course. Is that what you and Marcus did? And Eleanor followed?’

‘No, not at all.’ Jake sat there, shaking his head. He still couldn’t believe what had happened next. ‘It was Eleanor who, to our amazement, went skiing off-piste.’

‘So you two followed her.’

‘That’s right. ’

‘I don’t think it’s all that surprising,’ said Faye. ‘I mean, Marcus had goaded her, said you were going skiing off-piste.’

‘Yes, I know. But I would have thought that was the last thing she’d want to do.

In fact, I thought at the time, if Marcus was trying to persuade her to come with us by goading her about skiing off-piste, then he was going about it the wrong way.

As I said before, skiing wasn’t her thing.

Why would she do that, especially in her condition? ’

‘I think I know,’ said Faye, surprising Jake.

‘How could you possibly know?’

‘Well, no, you’re right, how could I know? But from what you’ve said, the fact that she enjoyed surprising you … that’s just what she did, doing something you’d never imagine she would.’

‘And look what happened.’

‘I’m sorry, Jake.’

‘It’s Marcus who ought to be sorry,’ Jake blurted.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Tell me,’ said Faye. ‘Tell me what happened up there to make you hate Marcus.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘He said you’ll never stop blaming him, that you’ll always believe it was his fault.’

‘I don’t hate him, Faye. I hate what he did. I wish it had been me and not her. I wish she had walked away unscathed.’

‘But you can’t blame Marcus for the avalanche.’

‘You want to bet?’ Jake knew he sounded heartless, but he had every right to blame Marcus. ‘He chose me, Faye, over his own sister.’

He had wanted to believe Marcus when he’d said there had been someone else up there on that mountain with them; someone else who had chosen to leave Eleanor trapped in the snow after the avalanche and dig Jake out first. Jake hadn’t seen anyone else skiing off-piste with them.

Part of him still thought it more likely that it was Marcus’s way of coping with what he’d done; to block it out and convince himself someone else had made that decision.

‘Up there on the ski slopes …’ Jake got up off the bed and stood by the window, staring at the snow-capped mountains beyond the house. ‘Up there, he made the wrong choice.’