Page 62 of A Recipe for Love
‘What?’
His grandmother remained impassive. ‘It’s a big estate.’
‘But…’ Figures were not Adam’s thing, but they had been his father’s, hadn’t they? ‘…aren’t there ways around it?’
‘There are, which is why he had insurance.’
Dipper padded into the office as she did most days. She snuffled around him, and quickly ambled away, her search for her true master still fruitless. The dog could see what everyone else was missing, but Adam already knew. He wasn’t the right man for any of this. ‘So how do we raise the rest of the money?’
‘Well, when your father inherited I think he sold all the artworks that were worth putting on the market, and he let Macwillis take on the land we held on Skye.’ She paused. ‘We can use the cash equity but that’s only about fifteen thousand, and that will mean we have no reserves at all for anything unexpected.’ She tapped her pen on the table. ‘So we can ask for payment in instalments, or we could sell an asset.’
‘I thought you were dead against selling.’
‘I don’t mean breaking up the estate, for goodness’ sake.’ Veronica shook her head like she was talking to a child. ‘We do still have one cottage in the village though.’
‘Would that cover the shortfall?’
‘Close to certainly.’
‘And it’s an empty cottage?’ Years ago they’d had multiple tenants in the village but Adam had honestly thought all the cottages had been sold.
Veronica was quiet for a moment. ‘No. It’s Margaret’s cottage.’
‘Margaret?’ Oh. ‘Flinty?’ Adam shook his head. ‘We are not throwing Flinty out of her home.’
‘No. Well, good. That really only leaves one other option then.’
Adam looked up. Something in his grandmother’s tone told him he wasn’t going to love the end of this conversation.
‘The flat in Edinburgh.’
What flat in Edinburgh? Finally the penny dropped. ‘My flat?’
‘Well ultimately it’s you who owes this bill.’ Even Veronica had the heart to look slightly apologetic at that point.
Of course it was. Like everything else it all came back to Adam. He was the hub at the centre of the wheel. ‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘Let’s take a break there.’
‘There’s still lots of…’
Adam was already out of the door. He had no doubt that there were lots of other things he ought to be thinking about but this one was enough for today. To hold Lowbridge together, which was his duty, he had to draw a line under the life he’d built in Edinburgh. Letting go of the flat was like letting go of who he truly was, in the midst of the storm of who he had been born to be.
In the kitchen, he flicked the kettle on and started making tea. Fiona had seemed happy enough and maybe she was right. Maybe estates like Lowbridge did need to modernise. Even if he raised the money for the inheritance tax bill, a house – OK castle, he conceded, silently in his head – like this was a money pit.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. The old school WhatsApp group had thirty-one new messages. He scrolled quickly down. Fiona was definitely the person who’d wanted this group. Her contributions were a steady stream of photos of the McKenzie estate with chirpy comments about the modern Highland life. Everyone else was scattered to the seven winds, living their own lives in pastures news.
Bella and Darcy clattered in from the back corridor. Darcy was chatting and in higher spirits than Adam remembered seeing her. She stopped when she saw Adam. ‘Well I’m going to leave you two to catch up!’
Adam frowned as she jogged through to the front hall. ‘What’s up with her?’
Bella shook her head. ‘Nothing. Just some ideas we were talking about at Ladies’ Group. She might have got a bit carried away.’
That sounded more like the Darcy Adam remembered bowling into his life when he was fifteen years old in a whirlwind of chatter and modernity, than the pale withdrawn woman he’d been sharing a home with recently. Bella glanced at his phone. ‘Is that Fiona?’
‘Just WhatsApp. She’s like the poster girl for Highland living.’
‘What’s she saying?’ He could hear the edge in Bella’s voice.
‘Nothing.’ He took her hand. ‘Why?’
