Page 51 of Duke It Out
“Let’s say I’m at a loose end for a couple of months,” she says briskly. “And you must be bored out of your tiny mind up there in the arsehole of nowhere, so…”
“I—”
“Don’t worry, I can bunk in with you,” she says cosily. “That bedroom’s bigger than my flat.”
“I’m not sure I can invite people to stay,” I say, realising Janey and Kate are both trying their hardest not to listen to the conversation. And failing.
Janey looks back at me for a moment. “Of course you can have a friend come to stay,” she says cheerfully. “You’re not in prison.”
“Even if you were, you’d be allowed visitors,” Kate adds. “Tell your friend to bring a ball dress.”
“Well, that’s that sorted,” says Anna. “I’ll be up on Friday. Let me know if you want an emergency care package from civilisation.”
“Will do,” I say, but she’s gone.
“That’s nice,” says Janey as we take the now familiar single-track road that leads down to Loch Morven.
“Yeah, it’ll be nice to meet your friend.” Kate nods.
I give a thin sort of smile. I don’t like to tell them that I’d have been more than happy to say no.
20
EDIE
I’m hereto write up the past, not audit it, which is fortunate. After three weeks submerged in the frankly insane ravings of the late Duke of Kinnaird, it’s pretty clear that something doesn’t add up. There are mentions of land purchases shuffled quietly between shell companies, inexplicably generous dividends paid to dubious sounding investors, and dodgy references to mythical trusts which he makes clear don’t exist.
The ancient orangery was transformed into a swimming pool on a whim as a birthday present for his wife, only by the time it was finished, they were on the way to the divorce courts, and it seems as if nobody once questioned how the renovation grant they received was being spent.
Dickie Kinnaird was laundering, skimming, fiddling the books, and playing a complicated game of chess with the foundation and seemingly had a preternatural ability to remove from the board anyone who started asking questions.
I rub my temples and sit back against the solid leather of the library chair. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation… not one that I needed to think about. Forensic accounting isn’t ever going to be my strong suit – I can barely keep a handle on my bank balance.
I close my laptop and push it away, stacking up the journals in a neat pile. My shoulders ache and my eyes are burning. It’s three o’clock and I started work at eight, eating breakfast at the desk and downing coffee all morning. My brain feels like it’s full of fog and my arse has literally imprinted itself on the seat of my chair. I need a break. Something calming. Something mindless. Something not involving the vague threat of financial crime.
And that’s how I end up heading for the aforementioned – and very possibly illegal – pool, shuffling along the corridor in my robe and flip flops.
It’s saved my sanity over the last few weeks. When I think my eyes are about to fall out of my head from trying to decipher the duke’s spidery black scrawl, I’ve discovered that dunking myself into the cool water and swimming a few lengths clears my head. It’s like being in my very own private spa – the long windows look out over the lawns that stretch down towards the pinewood, and I swim up and down bathed in pale golden shards of sunlight like a happy little dolphin, round and cheerful in my grey bathing suit.
Only—
I stop dead in the doorway.
“Edie! Join us.” It’s an instruction as much as an invitation. Jamie’s sprawled on a lounger by the side of the pool with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a pretty blonde in the other. His head’s tipped back, a broad smile on his handsome face. Two girls in tiny bikinis appear from the changing room, all long legs and effortless beauty. The pool is a maelstrom of splashing and hysterical laughter. A girlwith a soaked dark ponytail is trying to mount an inflatable pink crocodile held steady by the fair-haired gardener I’ve seen mowing the lawns with stoic determination.
A cork pops behind me, making me jump.
“This is our resident literary genius,” Jamie explains, unfolding himself from the lounger and strolling over to join me in the doorway. “Come to join the fun?”
“I—”
“Oh, come on,” Jamie says, waggling the bottle. “I bet you’ve been working your arse off all day again, haven’t you?”
I bob my head in acknowledgment. “Something like that, yeah.”
“So you can help us celebrate. It’s World Rewilding Day, and we’ve seen the first beavers in the river in living memory.”
“Beavers, baby,” shouts the burly blond gardener from the pool, raising a fist in the air and making everyone laugh.
