“Mum, I’m not helping Dad hide anything! I barely even talk to the guy! He hates me and ‘my kind,’ remember? All those hours of therapy were for nothing.”
“That would be just the sort of manipulation your father would love.” Abandoning the wardrobe as a lost cause, she’s now turning her wild eyes on Elliot’s desk instead. Elliot leaps in front of it, holding his arms wide.
“Penny! Get in front of my wardrobe,” he says, drawing his mum’s attention to me.
“This is a family matter, Penny. Go home,” she commands icily. Elliot’s parents are normally perfectly nice to me, but then again, in all the years we’ve lived next door, I’ve never seen his mum like this.
“Penny is my family now,” says Elliot. “She’s certainly a lot closer to me than either of you!”
Now I cringe for real, wishing I could disappear through the floor.
Thankfully, his mum’s eyes slide away from me. “While you’re living under this roof, I still have the right to look through your things,” she says. Instantly, I know it’s the wrong thing for her to have said.
“THEN I WON’T LIVE UNDER YOUR ROOF ANYMORE. Come on, Penny.” Elliot storms over to me and grabs my hand.
As we leave his bedroom, he spins round. “Search under every floorboard, Mum. There’s nothing there. What you’re looking for can’t be found in your son’s bedroom. Just remember that.”
When we get outside, we don’t go back to my house—despite the drizzle that’s just started. We walk down the hill, towards the park. When we’re far enough away for Elliot’s mum not to see which way we’ve gone, Elliot breaks down into heaving sobs. I drag him inside a bus shelter, wrap my arms round him and pull him tightly to my chest. “It’s OK, Elliot. It is.”
“It isn’t,” he says after a snotty sniffle. I give him my tissue.
“Did you really mean what you said?” I ask. “About not going back home?”
“Yes. If . . . if it’s OK with your parents, I mean.”
For a moment, I’m taken by surprise. “Wait—you want to live with us? What about Alex?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Alex, and I do want to live with him. Just not yet. When I move in with him, I want it to be for all the right reasons—not just because I’m living in the fifth level of hell from Dante’s Inferno right now.”
“Dante’s what?”
“Honestly, Penny, don’t you read? Even Dan Brown? The fifth level of hell is dedicated to anger. Our house is drowning in anger right now.”
I gently squeeze his hand. “See, even when you’re an emotional, snotty mess you’re still the geekiest person I know.”
He sniffles. “Thanks, Pennylicious. Sorry you had to see that.”
I shrug. “Don’t mention it. You are my family, you know that. You know everything about me too.”
He sighs and leans his head on my shoulder. “Did they have to do this to me in my last year at school? Couldn’t they have waited until I’d gone off to uni or something? The worst thing is, I think Mum is probably right. Dad has been acting totally weird lately, making more of an effort with his appearance—I swear I actually caught him working out the other day—coming home even later than normal, signing up for more and more business trips. At first, I thought he wanted out of the house to get away from me, but now I think it’s something else. That, or Mum’s paranoia is contagious.”
“I think sometimes paranoia is contagious. But also your instincts are normally pretty good.”
“In this case, they’re pretty bad.”
“They’re both grown-ups. They have to figure this out for themselves.”
Elliot dabs his eyes with my tissue. “I know that. I just wish they’d sort it out without dragging me through it too.”
“It’s not fair at all.”
“It’s not fair, but it’s reality. God, never did I think I’d be so desperate to go to Scotland! Couldn’t your mum have arranged a wedding in Ibiza, or somewhere hot at least?”
I nudge his shoulder. “Hey, you love Scotland.”
“I know. The Highlands were one of the few places my parents took me to as a kid. They’d pretend to be all outdoorsy and buy all new camping gear: tents, mattresses, sleeping bags, the lot. Then halfway on the drive up, somewhere near Watford Gap services, they’d have an argument about how much dehydrated food they should have bought, then they’d pack it in and Mum would book a last-minute hotel in Edinburgh at some outrageous price. Sounds dumb, but it was actually enjoyable. It’s not like we’re great at family activities in the Wentworth household.”
Elliot leans his head against the glass panel of the bus shelter, where the streaks of rain trickle down on the outside like the tears staining his cheeks.
“At least Alex will be with me this time. Then we can make new memories in Scotland. I have a feeling I’m going to need them.”
Chapter Twenty
“Can we stop? Can we stop?” I tap Dad on the shoulder as we drive out on the road from Inverness. I’d survived the plane journey—just—with the help of Mum’s huge woolly cardigan, which I’ve stretched out so much now it looks like a lumpy blanket with arms. Just when I think I’ve turned my back on my anxiety, a plane journey will come along to remind me I still have a lot of work to do before I’m truly fine. Maybe I’ll never be one hundred percent how I want to be, but as long as it doesn’t stop me from doing the things I love, I’ll be OK.
Now that we’ve landed and we’re here, though, my anxiety has been banished to the back of my mind. Out of the window, a glittering loch stretches as far as the eye can see, surrounded by golden fields of long grass. We’ve barely been in the car for half an hour, and already I’m totally smitten with the Scottish countryside going past my window.
“Penny, if we stop every five minutes, we’re never going to get to Castle Lochland.”
“Just this once more, please?”
“OK, darling daughter of mine.” He pulls over onto the rocky verge, and I leap out of the car. I’ve never done much in terms of landscape photography, but round every corner is a view that’s even more inspiring than the last. I look down at the screen to preview the photo I’ve just taken. I grin. This landscape doesn’t need any kind of filter or editing to look fantastic. It just is.
I take a deep breath and clean, fresh air fills my lungs. It’s different than Brighton, where the air is always tinged with salt from the sea. This feels pure and restorative.
An impatient toot of the horn from Dad brings me back to reality, and I slide back into the car. “Sorry, Dad. It’s just too beautiful!”
“You’ll have to go on some Highland walks when you’re settled at the castle,” says Mum from the passenger seat. “You’ll love it. Just make sure to take a guide with you—you don’t want to get lost out here.”
“Maybe I do,” I say wistfully.
The castle really is up in the middle of nowhere, and as we get farther away from the city, the countryside gets even more wild and craggy. Dad only lets me stop one more time for photos, and that’s when we pass a circle of standing stones perched high on a moor—just as atmospheric and mystical as Stonehenge. Maybe even more so, because there aren’t scores of tourists milling around everywhere.
“Careful,” Mum says. “They say there’s magic in stone circles like these.”
“Wow, I could totally believe that,” I say. “Magic . . . or maybe they were just built by giants.” Who else could have carried up such huge stones to such a precarious location?
“Just wait until you see the castle, Penny. It might be a struggle to get you home.”
“You keep saying that, but how long until we get there?”
Dad consults his map. For some reason the satnav doesn’t like it up here, so far away from everything. “Not far,” he says. “Probably half an hour or so.”
“Eek, I can’t wait,” I say.
“Now,” says Mum, “where did I put my notes?” She pats her sides, looking around the footwell of the car.
Now that we’re on Scottish soil, I can sense the tension building in the air, radiating from Mum. She always gets like this before a big wedding. And with this one having such a big budget, there are even more to-do lists—and only three short days to complete it all in. No matter how big or how small the wedding is, she always tries her best to make sure it runs perfectly. But with something this size, the logistics are almost overwhelming.
“Ah!” she says, finding her notes, and she starts flicking through the pages. I can hear her muttering out loud, checking off the items on her lists.
“Is there anything I can do to help when we get there?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m sure there is, honey! One of the things you can do for a little while is man the phones. We won’t have any phone signal up there, so everything is going to have to be done via landline.”
“Wow, that’s so old-school!”
“Trust me, a lot of this wedding is going to be old-school. Also, if you could keep Bella out of Sadie Lee’s hair during the wedding preparations, that would be so helpful.”
“Of course!”
“Brilliant. The rest of this stuff will be down to me . . .”
I reach over the headrest and stroke my mum’s hair. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be great.”
“Speaking of great—keep your eyes peeled, Penny.”
I turn back to the window. The road, barely wide enough for our car now, is surrounded by tall trees, blocking the light and casting spooky shadows. It twists and turns sharply, up and down, and we pass over an old stone bridge that looks as if it was constructed hundreds of years ago. It probably was.
Then, like a curtain parting to reveal the set of a play, the trees stop and in the clearing I get my first view of Castle Lochland.
“Oh. My. God.” They are the only words I can say, and I plaster my face to the window.
The castle sits at the top of a high, rocky island in the middle of a vast lake, connected to the mainland by a single, long bridge. The water is covered by a thick layer of mist, making the castle look like it’s floating on clouds. All round the lake is the extension of the thick forest we’ve been driving through, bright bursts of orange and red streaking across the autumn foliage as the leaves turn.
It’s perfect and magical and everything that I imagined it would be.
We drive down towards the castle, but at the last minute Dad takes a turn that leads away from it. “Aren’t we going to the castle now?” I ask, unable to hide the disappointment in my voice.
“We can’t drive across the bridge,” says Dad.
“Argh, yet another logistical nightmare I’m going to have to deal with!” says Mum.
“So we’re going to go to our home for the week first,” continues Dad, “to drop off our things.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I say with a sigh.
When we pull up in front of a little stone cottage with a thatched roof, however, I immediately forget all my disappointment at the delay in seeing the castle. The cottage is absolutely adorable, and I can’t wait to get inside and see my room.
There’s already another car in the yard, which means Elliot and Alex must already be there. They’d come up a day early because Alex had wanted to do a tour of Loch Ness—he has a thing about mythological creatures.
They’ve obviously heard our car arriving, because soon the door opens and “Greetings, lads and lassies!” says Elliot—already wearing a tartan beret. He looks mildly ridiculous. I think you have to actually be Scottish to pull that look off. “We’ve got some bannocks warming on the Aga and a cuppa waiting for you inside.”
“Oh, Elliot, you are a star,” says Mum.
“What’s a bannock?” I ask.
“A kind of flatbread . . . a bit like a scone, but Scottish,” says Elliot with a wink.
“Ooh, I love scones.” And I give him a big hug. “But since when did you know how to use an Aga?”
He winks again. “That’s not me—that’s all Alex. Turns out his family used to have one when he was growing up. A person of many talents, my boyfriend . . .”
“Well, I can’t wait to try these bannocks!”
“Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
Inside, Elliot has to keep ducking his head to avoid bumping it on the low wooden beams criss-crossing the ceiling. It’s exactly as humble and romantic as I imagined: there’s a fire burning in the living room, which, along with the Aga, keeps the place toasty warm, and there’s a deep window seat in the stone wall below the window, covered in embroidered cushions that I can imagine curling up among with a good book.
“This used to be the gamekeeper’s cottage,” Elliot says, as he climbs up the stairs. “Built in the early 1500s!”
“Wow, that’s awesome! But not for tall—or even medium-sized—people,” I say, as I nearly crack my head on a beam jutting from the roof.
“I don’t think it originally had an upstairs. Your parents’ bedroom is downstairs and is much roomier. C’mon, this way.”
My room is in the loft, and the ceiling is so low it doesn’t even have a proper bed, more like a mattress nearly on the floor that I’ll have to crawl onto. But I don’t mind and squeal with delight when I see it. The room’s been decorated in such a sweet way, with a white sheet canopy hung from the ceiling so that it drapes down round the bed as if it belongs to a princess. Pale triangles of pink and green bunting trim the edge of the sheet. And the best part? When I lie down on the bed, I have a perfect view through the dormer window of the castle on the lake.
“Happy?” Elliot asks with a grin.
I smile back. “I couldn’t have imagined anything more lovely, even if I tried.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The smell of freshly baked bread makes my mouth water. It drifts up through the rooms of the castle and crosses even the thickest stone walls to reach us in one of the higher towers, where Bella and I are playing with an old set of marbles. Sadie Lee and Bella are staying in two rooms in an extension adjoining our cottage, but we’ve all come down to the castle itself to get on with the wedding preparations.
I’m taking my responsibility of keeping Bella out of Sadie Lee’s hair very seriously, and together we’ve explored much of the castle, but I have to keep Bella’s hand in mine just in case we come across any spooky suits of armour. The first one she saw almost made her jump out of her skin—probably because he was wielding a huge axe bigger than my head.
For me, it wasn’t the suits of armour that were creepy, but all the animal heads on the wall, relics of the castle’s hunting past. But everything else is just so cool, I quickly get over my fear. Enormous portraits hang on the walls, but they’re not like the “boring” ones I’ve seen in some other castles nearer home. These are of muscular men in brightly coloured tartan and big feather caps, surrounded by the animals of the Highlands—great stags and eagles. There’s even plenty of bare leg on show, thanks to their kilts! I almost expect them to come to life. Being inside this castle makes me feel like I’ve received my invitation to Hogwarts and at any moment I’ll run into Harry, Ron, or Hermione.
“Shall we go see what your grandma is cooking up?” I ask Bella.
“OK!” she says. She scoops up the marbles, which have rolled all over the stone floor and under the carpet. I put them back into their little bag and place it on top of the armoire we found them in.
As we walk downstairs towards the kitchen, we pass an army of Mum’s helpers busy dressing every inch of the castle. Mum calls this a “wedding of two halves”—the bride has requested that the first part of the day be white and bright and fresh everywhere, with bundles of white roses that have to be shipped in at eye-watering expense because they’re out of season. Then, once the sun sets, she wants a gothic “Halloween—but classy” vibe for the masquerade. It’s going to be a challenge to pull it off in time, but there’s nothing Mum loves more than a challenge.
Meanwhile, Sadie Lee is hard at work on the cake of a lifetime. It’s also a cake of two ha
lves—one side complementing the white theme (dozens of white sugar flowers cascading down five huge tiers), the other side iced in black (with red roses dripping blood). If you look at it straight on, you can only see one side or the other, so they’ll rotate it throughout the night. If you look where the sides join, the white side seems to peel away to reveal the dark. When it’s finished it will be absolutely stunning.
“How are my girls?” Sadie Lee asks as we walk in.
“All good! Although I think Bella is exhausted,” I reply. Almost on cue, Bella releases a big yawn.
“I think you’re right, little lady.”
“I’ll take her back, Mrs. Flynn,” says one of Sadie Lee’s assistants. Bella has managed to enchant everyone she meets, and they all vie for her attention.
“That’s lovely, thank you, Gemma. Now, Penny, can you pass me that piping bag?”
I look down at the array of piping instruments on the stainless steel table in front of me. Sometimes, when Sadie Lee’s working, she resembles a surgeon more than a baker. “Uh . . . which one?” I say.
“The one with the star-shaped nozzle on the end.”
I spot it and pass it over.
“Great,” she says. “Now why don’t you pick one up and you can make some decorations for me too?”
“Really?” I ask. “What if I mess up?”
“Practice makes perfect! And, OK, we’re making some little cupcakes for the young ones too . . .”
“Oh good, that’s less pressure than doing decorations for the actual cake!” I say with a laugh.
My mum’s voice echoes round the draughty room, louder than normal.
“Everyone look sharp,” says Sadie Lee. “The bride’s coming.” She lowers her voice and winks at me. “Your mum and I have a system—if the bride’s on her way, we try to speak louder than normal to give the other some warning! No one wants to have an angry bride sprung on them.”
Sure enough, a few moments later, Mum appears in the kitchen followed by the bride, Jane.
“Something smells good in here!” Jane says. I’m surprised—even though she’s Callum’s cousin, she doesn’t have his accent. She has the same tall, willowy figure, though—and the hint of a thorn tattoo peeking out by her collarbone. Now the reason why it’s a “wedding of two halves” starts to become clearer.