Sitting cramped in the passenger seat during the six-hour journey up to Jack’s parents’ house in Scotland was no picnic, but I waved away his suggestion that we stop overnight at the halfway point. I was far too excited, bouncing like a kid on their way to the seaside. I’d dreamed of travel my whole life, and yes, maybe Scotland wasn’t so very exotic, but it was still another country. I couldn’t wait to see the lochs, the mountains: all those wonders I’d fantasised about in my old job editing travel guides but never got the chance to see.
Torturous it may have been, but it was still an incredible drive. The further north we got, the more the landscape bubbled with heather-dressed mountains and hills, Jack’s little van and its matching caravan dipping then climbing then dipping again as every corner we turned brought something new. My old home in the Dales wasn’t exactly flat, but the Highlands were something else.
‘It reminds me of a guide we did to the Canadian Rockies,’ I told Jack in a hushed tone. Something about the cathedral-like giants hemming us in on both sides left me feeling I needed to lower my voice.
He smiled at the sparkle in my eyes. ‘There’s beauty enough this side of the ocean if you seek it out. This country can match any wonder in the world.’
An awesome crag loomed into view ahead, bleak and beautiful, dwarfing our tiny camper. I’d seen hundreds of photos of the Scottish Highlands from the guides, but seeing them in real life, in 3D and glorious Technicolor, just took my breath away.
‘I think you might be right,’ I murmured.
Finally our van and its motherload of dogs meandered through a big iron gate and up a dirt track before pulling up outside Jack’s parents’ place.
My eyes saucered. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. This isn’t where they live?’
‘Yep.’
‘I thought you said they were farmers.’
‘They were. They’re retired now.’
‘On what, a diamond farm?’
He smiled. ‘What’s a diamond farm, Kit?’
‘One where they breed diamonds, obviously. You know, when a mummy diamond and a daddy diamond love each other very much and make lots of little baby diamonds doing special diamond cuddles.’
‘What, you mean the diamond stork doesn’t bring them?’ He shook his head. ‘There’s my innocence shattered.’
‘Seriously though. This place is huge.’
‘Come on, it’s not that fancy.’
It bloody was. I wasn’t sure where the definition of house ended and castle begun, but this thing was definitely borderline. I mean, it had turrets. Turrets! Round our way, we thought the neighbours were going it a bit if they had a dormer window installed.
I fixed on a nervous smile as Jack knocked on the huge oak door. A few seconds later it swung open and a pleasant, open-faced lady in her sixties, eyes dark and soulful like Jack’s and with long, pure white hair, appeared in the doorway.
‘Arghh!’ she said as soon as she caught sight of him, throwing up her hands.
‘Arghh you!’ he said with a grin. He picked her up, swinging her round while he hugged her. ‘Hiya, Mam.’
She grinned back. Then she caught sight of me, lurking bashfully just behind him, and her eyes shot wide open.
‘Arghh!’ she said again, and she threw herself at me for a bear-like hug. I patted her back in bewilderment.
‘Oh, sweetheart, you don’t know how glad we are to see you,’ she said to me, her tone glowing with sincerity.
I blinked. I mean, Jack talked about the Irish tradition of hospitality, but this seemed to be really above and beyond.
‘Michael!’ she called out. ‘Come quick! Our Jack has brought a girl home!’
‘Arghh!’ I heard from somewhere behind her. A crinkle-eyed man with Jack’s jawline and a kind mouth came dashing out from one of the rooms, then slowed into a casually sedate walk when he spotted me.
‘Ah, are we pleased to see you,’ he said, pumping my hand exuberantly behind his wife’s back while she continued to embrace me. ‘Come in, girl, come in. We’ve wine waiting to get to know you, and a couple of old folk too.’
‘Um, thank you,’ I said breathlessly as his wife released me. ‘It’s lovely to meet you both.’
‘Come on, fellers, you’re scaring her,’ Jack said, smiling.
‘Didn’t tell us you had a new girlfriend, did you, sly boots?’ his mum said, nudging him. ‘New pets we expected. Girls, no.’
‘I’m not a girlfriend,’ I said, feeling a little windswept from all the screeching and hugging. ‘Just a friend.’
‘And employee,’ Jack said. ‘Kitty’s my new PA.’
‘Ah. I see.’ His mum looked disappointed.
‘Oh, well, for now she’s a PA,’ Michael said, apparently undaunted by this new information. ‘And you’re living in the van, are you, dear?’ he asked me.
‘Er, yeah,’ I said. ‘At the moment.’
Michael patted his wife triumphantly on the back. ‘You see, Chrissy? Lives with Jack.’
Jack shot me a sideways smile. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed.
‘Well, come in, come in,’ Chrissy said, ushering us through the door. ‘I’ve done lamb chops and mash for dinner.’
‘Pudding?’ Jack asked. Over the last six weeks, I’d learned he was a big fan of pudding.
‘Jam roll and custard. Good solid food.’
‘She always seems to think I can’t possibly be eating properly in the camper,’ Jack whispered to me as we followed his parents through a long wood-panelled hall, heavy on the stags’ heads and paintings, to the dining room. ‘It’s stodge all the way when I come to visit.’
I noticed his accent had got broader the instant his parents had answered the door. Did mine do that, I wondered? I flinched as I reflected I’d probably never get the chance to find out, now.
It was a very cool dining room, a lot more rock and roll than I would’ve anticipated from the antlers-and-oak theme in the hallway. The walls were decorated with old LP sleeves, and a 1950s-style jukebox gave the place an Arnold’s Diner in Happy Days look.
‘Nice,’ I said with an approving nod at the jukebox.
Michael grinned. ‘Thanks. Chrissy calls it The Mid-life Crisis Machine.’
‘Chrissy calls it the waste of bloody money,’ Jack’s mum muttered. But her lips were twitching with a smile.
Michael strolled over to it and fired up a bit of classic rock – Bruce Springsteen, I think it was – before dancing his way to the dining table. The jukebox’s multi-coloured lights flashed merrily in time.
‘Ignore that daft fecker and his dad dancing,’ Chrissy said, flicking a dismissive hand towards her husband. ‘Come sit down, tell me all the news.’ She indicated one of the chairs around the dining table. ‘Kitty, you sit here, next to me.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Duffy,’ I said, sitting down.
‘Chrissy, please.’ She raised her eyebrows at her husband. ‘Drinks, Michael.’
‘She’s so bossy,’ Michael said to me in an audible whisper. ‘What would you like, Kitty? Wine, beer? Or we’ve got spirits in the liquor cabinet. You’re welcome to some of my Bushmills if it takes your fancy.’
‘We’ve got a liquor cabinet,’ Jack told me with comic smugness.
‘Oooh. Get you.’
Chrissy shot her husband a significant look that I didn’t have to work too hard to interpret. There seemed to be some serious matchmaking going on and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
‘Just a white wine, please,’ I said to Michael.
‘I’ll drink your Bushmills, Dad,’ Jack said.
‘Yes, I thought you might.’ He flicked Jack’s ear as he left the room to sort out our drinks.
‘I’d better get the awnings up and bring the dogs in before we start drinking,’ Jack said, standing up.
I frowned. ‘Awnings? We’re not sleeping in the van, are we?’
‘You’re not,’ Chrissy said. ‘I’ll make up one of the rooms for you. Take some time off roughing it in that old tin of his.’
‘I’m sleeping out,’ Jack said.
‘But why?’ I glanced at Chrissy. ‘There’s plenty of space, isn’t there?’
‘There is.’ She smiled encouragingly at her son. ‘Come on, Jack. Just try it this once, eh?’
‘You know I can’t,’ he said quietly, turning away.
I blinked after him as he left the room.
‘What was that all about?’ I asked his mum.
‘Oh, I knew it was no good asking really,’ she said, staring down at her splayed fingers on the table. ‘He never sleeps in the house.’
‘Why?’
She smiled sadly. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, sweetheart. Something that went wrong in his brain, I think, when he—’ She stopped herself. ‘Sorry. I’m speaking out of turn.’
‘It’s okay, I know what you mean. When Sophie died.’
‘Ah, so he told you, did he?’ That seemed to cheer her up a little. ‘That’s a good sign. He tends to keep his cards close with most people.’
Her husband came back in and handed me a generous glass of wine – seriously, it looked like half a bottle’s worth – before taking a seat on the other side of his wife.
‘He’s sleeping in the van again,’ Chrissy told him.
Michael looked sober. ‘Hmm. I did wonder, this time…’ He glanced at me. ‘I mean, now he’s got his friend here.’
‘How long have you known him, Kitty?’ Chrissy asked.
‘About six weeks,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘Jack?’ I thought of the bio I’d read the day I’d started work for him. ‘I know he studied architecture. That he’s won a few awards—’
‘Not his job. About him.’
‘Well, he’s… kind. Funny. Laid-back, most of the time.’ I paused to think. ‘Sort of a fatalist. Doesn’t like to be trapped. And he’s got this whole philosophy – living one day at a time, doing what feels natural. Wringing life dry, he once described it to me.’
‘And yet he never used to be any of those things,’ Michael said, topping up his whisky from the bottle he’d brought in with him.
I frowned. ‘Didn’t he?’
‘Well, no, he’s always been kind,’ Chrissy said, shooting a look at her husband. ‘But this philosophy, or whatever you call it. That came about after Sophie died.’
‘How did you meet?’ Michael asked.
‘I sort of fell in his way really, at a time in my life when I was in a desperate situation. I’d just left a bad relationship, and I had no money, no home. Jack looked after me when I was ill. I think he decided he liked having me around.’
‘He gets lonely,’ Chrissy said, absently scooping some foam off her beer with her little finger and sucking the end.
‘I know. And I needed a job, somewhere to live, so… here we are.’
Michael shot a look at his wife. ‘We thought it might be something like that.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Oh, every time he comes home there’s something,’ Chrissy said. ‘Puppies this time. Last time it was an injured bird. Before that there was an orphaned hedgehog. And Sandy, of course. The boy’s a compulsive rescuer. I don’t know if it’s some form of post-traumatic stress disorder or what it is, but ever since he lost Sophie he’s lived a different life.’
‘We think he saves things because he couldn’t save her,’ Michael said, sipping at his second double whisky morosely. ‘He blames himself.’
‘Why though?’ I asked. ‘He couldn’t have prevented it.’
‘Mmm. But it haunts him, all the same.’
I looked up to meet his eyes.
‘You’re worried about him.’
‘Of course we are.’ He jerked his head at Chrissy. ‘His mother’s quite attached to him, you know.’
She elbowed him affectionately in the belly.
‘We just want him to have a normal life, one with a proper future.’ She fixed her gaze on me. ‘Meet a nice girl, perhaps.’
I flushed. ‘Oh.’
‘He hasn’t brought anyone to see us since Sophie—’ Michael began, but our conversation was cut short by Jack coming back in, Sandy at his ankles and the dog bed full of babies in his arms.
‘Oh no, Jack. Not in my dining room, not while we’re eating. I can’t do with all those little eyes staring at me.’ His mum gestured to the door. ‘Put them in the front room, they’ll be happy by the fire. I’ll start serving up.’
When he’d settled the dogs in the room next door, Jack came back in and threw himself back in his chair.
‘They’re getting to the naughty age, Kit,’ he told me. ‘Honeybadger’s started territory-marking the bed. Time to start housetraining soon, I think.’
On my second day as his PA and general marketing bod, I’d taken over Jack’s rarely updated social media accounts. My first innovation had been to run a Facebook poll asking his fans to suggest names for the other puppies. Hence in addition to Muttley, we had, in order of age, Princess Sparkle, Honeybadger, Puppy McPuppyface, Dr Geoffrey Bracegirdle and Puptimus Prime. Luckily for them it was only temporary: they’d be getting renamed when they got to their new home, hopefully with something more suited to working farm dogs.
‘Rolled-up newspaper to the nose,’ Jack’s dad said with a knowledgeable nod. ‘Tough love. It’s the only way.’
‘Me and Kit decided we’d try the non-violent approach,’ Jack said. ‘Mind you, can’t say the naughty step’s making much of an impact. Honeybadger pissed on it.’
‘Political correctness gone mad, all this softly-softly parenting nonsense,’ Michael said, shaking his head. ‘Your gran beat me regularly as a child, and as I often tell my dominatrix during our Saturday appointments, it never did me any harm.’
‘Matter of opinion.’ Jack helped himself to a generous measure of his dad’s whisky. ‘Still, I’m sort of fond of you.’
‘If you’re really fond of me, you can go a bit easier on that whisky,’ Michael said, rescuing the bottle so he could top himself up.
The Duffys certainly knew how to look after us. They were lovely, open-hearted people, warm and welcoming to me and affectionate to their son. Chrissy and Michael were just as keen to influence Jack’s life as my mum had always been to influence mine, but it was all done so gently, with such obvious love and concern for his wellbeing, it couldn’t help but make me think with bitterness about my own parent.
Every time Jack and I exchanged a smile or a joke, every time we touched, there were the significant looks between them. It was easy to see where they felt Jack’s best hope of getting over Sophie lay.
‘Right, that’s me done,’ Michael said after a few hours of food, drink and conversation, pushing himself up unsteadily. ‘I’m an old man. Can’t handle my spirits like I could as a lad.’
‘I’ll turn in too I think, once I’ve checked on Sandy and the kids,’ Jack said. He stood and planted a kiss on his mum’s head. ‘Night, Mam.’ He hesitated a second before dropping another on top of my dark hair. ‘Night, Kit. See you in the morning.’
Michael beamed at his wife, giving her arm a squeeze as he passed us to leave the room.
‘Another glass of wine?’ Chrissy asked when the menfolk had left us alone. ‘Then you and me can have a chat, just the girls. I want to hear all about you.’
‘I probably shouldn’t, but… go on, a small one. Thank you.’
‘So where do your family live?’ she asked when she’d refilled our glasses.
‘North Yorkshire. I was born there.’
‘And what do they make of this new job? I don’t know what Jack’s told you but a live-in PA isn’t exactly the usual thing. I can’t say I wouldn’t be worried, if I was your mother.’
I flushed. ‘They don’t exactly know.’
‘Really?’ she said, frowning. ‘Why not?’
I looked at her, wondering how much I wanted to share. Her brown-black eyes, so like Jack’s, were full of interest.
‘Sounds ridiculously dramatic but I’m kind of on the run,’ I confessed at last. ‘That’s how I met Jack. He picked me up hitch-hiking when I was running away from home.’
‘On the run!’
‘Yes. It was my wedding day. Caught my husband with someone else, and… I just had to get away.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘I know.’ I smiled. ‘Probably thinking twice about whether you want your son employing an assistant who’s managed to screw her own life up so royally, right?’
‘I am not. I’m thinking the bastard deserves a good kick in the you-know-wheres.’ She shook her head. ‘Your wedding day, Jesus! Do your parents know where you are?’
‘There’s just Mum. My dad died last year. And no. I’ve worked hard to keep it secret, if I’m honest.’
‘Why, sweetheart? She must be worried to death about you.’
‘She’s… she’s not like you.’ I met the glass-eyed gaze of a stuffed raven peeping down at me from one of the Duffys’ huge bookshelves. It felt like it was judging me, somehow. ‘See, if I told her where I was, she’d come get me.’
‘But she can’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go, can she?’
I snorted. ‘That’s the problem. She’d convince me I did want to go.’
‘I don’t understand, Kitty.’
‘No. I don’t either, really.’
She stared at me for a moment in silence.
‘Sounds like it’s not just our Jack who’s got his demons,’ she said at last.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You know, when he first asked me to stay with him I thought he was just being kind. But in the end I think it was that we were two lost, broken people. He needed me as much as I needed him.’ I pulled my gaze away from the creepy raven to look at her. ‘Still want us to get together?’
She smiled. ‘Picked up on that, did you?’
I smiled back. ‘Just a bit. No offence, but you and Michael are the least subtle matchmakers ever.’
‘So are we barking up the wrong tree then?’ she asked, fixing me with a keen gaze that was even worse than the raven’s. ‘Isn’t there anything like that between you?’
‘Not right now. No.’
‘But you’d like there to be?’
‘I… don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I mean, yes. If the situation was different. But I just left my husband, under pretty traumatic circumstances. And Sophie…’ I swilled my wine absently. ‘What was she like, Chrissy?’
‘Oh, she was a lovely girl,’ Chrissy said. ‘Good for him. Organised. Good-natured. Same sense of humour as him, they were always laughing together.’ She still had her keen gaze fixed on me. ‘A bit like the two of you.’
‘Do you think he’ll ever get over her?’
‘No. You never get over a lost love. Especially when it’s so sudden like that.’
I blinked. ‘Oh.’
Hearing her come right out with it like that, so stark… it hurt a lot more than I’d anticipated.
She reached out to squeeze my hand. ‘But just because she’s got a little piece of his heart doesn’t mean there isn’t room in there for someone new. And in that sense, I think he’s been over her a good while.’
‘Do you?’
‘It’s that awful, violent way she died that he can’t deal with, that makes him the way he is now. But emotionally… yes. I’d say he’s ready to let someone else in.’
‘And you think it should be me?’
‘If you can make him happy. That’s all we ever wanted for him.’ She pressed my hand again. ‘And from what I’ve seen tonight, I think you can. Come on, sweetheart, let’s go find your room. It’s after midnight.’