Page 6 of The Boathouse By the Loch

Thinking of school, and missing the last few days of term, Jake asked Faye how things were going at work.

‘I’m suffocating under a mountain of paperwork,’ she said sullenly, ‘and it’s not even mine!’

Jake pursed his lips. He knew what she was referring to. He remembered the state of his in-tray. As his mentor while he was training, she was responsible for his work. ‘Well, I wanted to make sure you were too busy to miss me while I’m away.’

‘Don’t worry – I’ll make sure I return the favour,’ said Faye, ‘with knobs on.’

Jake kicked off his shoes and threw his legs onto the bed, enjoying the banter.God, I miss her, he thought. He smiled, then plumped a cushion and leaned back into it. ‘Is Natty okay?’

‘She’s fine. It’s the last day of term tomorrow, so I expect she’s going to enjoy the fact that there won’t be much schoolwork going on, just fun and games, and a movie in the hall for the whole primary school in the afternoon.’

‘Sounds fun,’ Jake said, smiling.

There was an awkward silence. ‘Look I’ve got a lot to do at work, so …’ she trailed off.

Jake noticed that the easy familiar banter had disappeared at the mention of Natty. She was obviously still a sore point. So, he’d bought her too many toys, and had been thinking of getting her a puppy, although he’d kept that thought to himself. Although Jake knew he had been spoiling her, he couldn’t help thinking it really was no big deal. It was definitely a big deal for Faye, though. Shehad never had to share her daughter’s affections until now, and Jake was wondering what the consequences of that would be.

They hadn’t properly cleared the air regarding that debacle. It wasn’t something Jake wanted to bring up over the phone. But he did want to talk about that elephant in the room, because he was still afraid of losing Faye and Natty.

He did want to be completely honest with Faye from that point on. No more hiding things. ‘Look, there’s another reason I need to stay here for a bit.’

‘Jake, it’s fine. You don’t have to tell me what—’

‘I want to. I need to,’ Jake blurted. He frowned, thinking,do I sound desperate?Desperate to remain in her good books, for fear of losing her again? Damn right he did – and he knew it.

He said, ‘This guy phoned me out of the blue asking me to help him. Martha had some letters. Turns out she needed help finding her son. That’s how I ended up deciding to come back here in the first place.’

‘Who?’

Jake didn’t want to get into the fact that this guy had been impersonating Martha’s husband. Instead, he said, ‘It turns out that Martha is Aubrey’s sister.’

‘Aubrey. He’s a bit of an enigma, isn’t he?’

Jake raised his eyebrows. That was certainly one way of putting it. Faye had only met him once, but she’d cottoned on to that too. With Aubrey, you never really got to the truth of who he was – his background. All Jake had known about him was that he’d worked for the Rosses for decades, and it had turned out his name, Aubrey Jones, was fictitious. Jake told Faye that.

‘Now, why does that not surprise me in the least?’

Jake’s mouth curled up in a smile. He hadn’t been smiling,though, when he’d realised that after he’d left the Ross Corporation, William had told Aubrey to babysit him, follow him around, check he was okay. After his initial annoyance, he’d reasoned that it was understandable. Jake was now working in a tough inner-city school, biking to work through not overly salubrious areas of London. William was worried for him, for his safety. After what had happened to Eleanor, he didn’t want to lose Jake too.

Jake suddenly had a thought. What if Faye knew about Aubrey’s activities? After all, she had spent some time talking to Marcus in his house, and then Aubrey had arrived. If she’d found out that Aubrey had been following Jake around, she would know that he might have been following him when he was looking after Natty, taking her to the park, to his house. She didn’t know who this guy was. He was harmless – on paper. Just a sweet old guy who had known Jake since he was a child, and who Jake was very, very fond of. But Faye didn’t know him from Adam, and he could just imagine she would not take kindly at all to the discovery.

Jake didn’t want to think about that. The fact was that if Aubrey had been following him around, he hadn’t followed him to Scotland. It was the one place that Aubrey refused to return to. And now Jake knew why. Ralph Delaney, or Aubrey Jones as he was now known, had fallen out with his father, Angus Delaney, many, many years earlier, and never returned to claim his inheritance – the mansion, Cedar Grove.

‘His real name is Ralph Delaney.’

‘Oh, okay. Have you asked him?’

‘Who?’

‘Aubrey – about his nephew? He might know where Martha’s son is.’

That had occurred to Jake. When he’d visited Martha, who had Alzheimer’s and only had rare lucid moments, he’d thought that Aubrey must know about her son – where he was, where Jake could find him. But of course, he’d thought, things were never that simple.

Jake sighed. ‘I’m afraid it might be a little bit more complicated than that. You see, Martha never married Ralph’s father. I think she gave him up as a baby.’

‘Ah, so you’re saying Aubrey might never have known about him.’

‘That is a possibility.’

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