A Risk Worth Taking by Robin Pilcher

Author:Robin Pilcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

15

It was only a short distance, barely a mile, between the Trenchards’ house and the cottage. Dan drove hard on the heels of the red Golf as it sped along the narrow road that followed the south shore of Loch Eil. He was almost taken unawares when Katie’s brake lights suddenly shone red. She swung the car to the right through a rusting gate that hung askew from one hinge, and drove up a short, rutted track, the grass in its centre brushing heavily on the underside of her car.

“Oh, gawd,” Josh muttered as they followed the Golf up the track. “I saw this place from back there, and I was going to make some stupid joke about it being our new home in the Highlands.”

The low, corrugated iron–roofed cottage was situated thirty yards back from the road on a small hillock, its three front windows giving out to a view across the loch. That was its only plus point. Sections of the wooden fence that surrounded its small, overgrown garden had fallen victim to the wind and those that still stood were covered with greeny-black lichen. A nondescript climbing plant, devoid of much of its foliage despite it being only September, grew in a tangled heap up the rough stone wall and hung like an unkempt fringe over the drab brown front door. At the back of the cottage, there was a flat-roofed harled extension with a small metal window that was, in architectural terms, utterly discordant with the rest of the building.

“Still pleased you came?” Dan laughed, as he creaked open the Saab door.

Josh leaped enthusiastically from the car. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

They had arrived late the previous night after a drive that had included numerous stops for the dogs and at least three completely unnecessary excursions, thanks to Josh’s appalling map-reading skills. Due to his fraught exchange of words with Jackie and the subsequent speedy departure from London, it had completely slipped Dan’s mind to telephone Patrick and Katie to say that he was on the way north, so they were amazed at his quick response to their cry for assistance, and even more so when they saw his extraordinary entourage. It was decided over a beef sandwich and a couple of restoring glasses of Glendurnich malt whisky that Dan and Josh should stay the night in the small downstairs spare bedroom, but Katie had told Dan out of earshot of Patrick that the room had to be kept free for him, as there were times when he couldn’t make it up the stairs to their own bedroom. It was at that point that the Trenchards’ former home, about which Dan had already read Katie’s gruelling account of damp discomfort, was mentioned.

“We had a holiday let in July,” Katie said, as she ducked under the sparsely leaved vine and put an enormous key in the door lock, “but that was the last time it was used, so please don’t expect too much.” She shouldered open the door and Dan and Josh followed her in.

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