Alone in her remote Scottish hideaway, Emma is driven to desperation after a shocking discovery about the man she was about to marry is suddenly made even worse...
The final part of a new story by Kate Glanville
‘Emma, is that you?’
the voice on her phone asked, but Emma couldn’t speak. She had turned to stone, as cold and immobile as the ancient jetty she was standing on. Only her Burberry trench coat moved, flapping urgently around her in the wind as though trying to fly away. When Emma had found the telephone number on the back of the notepad she had never expected it would belong to her sister.
‘Em?’ She could hear panic in her sister’s voice. ‘Wait a minute, will you?’
In the remote village on the Scottish coast Emma imagined her sister tip-toeing down the oak staircase in her beautiful home hundreds of miles south. She thought of her sister’s husband Dan, asleep in their king-sized bed, and their two girls in their perfect-princess bedrooms.
As waves crashed at Emma’s feet she heard her sister close a door, then the slide of what she knew were the French windows that led into the garden. Her sister obviously didn’t want anyone to hear their call.
In front of Emma the women were still bobbing around in the sea. All of them were laughing. One of them dived under a wave, and the others cheered.
‘Where did you get this number?’ Her sister’s voice was breathless. Emma knew she had run down to the summer house at the end of the long lawn. Dan had built it for her as a studio when she had been going through her ‘artistic phase’, but it was more used for smoking secret cigarettes than painting pictures or making sculptures.
‘I found it.’ Emma’s tone was flat.
‘Where?’
‘Andrew wrote it down before he died.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh yes, I remember now. I gave Andrew the number in case of an emergency. This is a spare mobile I keep in case I lose my iPhone.’
Emma always knew when her sister was lying.
‘You didn’t think to give the number to me?’
Another pause. Emma heard the strike of a match, followed by a deep inhale.
‘I thought I had.’ A nervous laugh. ‘Maybe I asked Andrew to pass it on to you. Maybe that was why he wrote it down?’
‘It was written beside the name of a motel. Lake View, that really crumby place beside the bypass.’
Another laugh.
‘I can’t think why Andrew would have written my number next to the name of that awful dump. Anyway, tell me, how are you doing
