Page 25 of The Boathouse By the Loch

‘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 onthe 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.’

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