CHAPTER ONE

SPRING ALWAYS SEEMED to sneak up on the little Highland village of
Applemore. The sun rose over the distant pine-covered hills and
stole through the windows of the cottages that looked over the bay,
illuminating rooms which had lurked in gloom for the winter months,
showing up long-hidden dust. You could mark the end of winter,
Beth Fraser thought, by the sudden bustle of activity as windows
were washed clean and rugs hung out to air over washing lines.
Even though it was only nine in the morning, the village was a hive
of activity.
For Beth, however, spring started with seed catalogues and bulb
planting and plans – so many plans – back in the early autumn of
the year before. She glanced over her shoulder, looking at the back
seat of her car. Between twin car seats lay the usual detritus of
parenthood – battered plastic beakers, tired picture books, discarded
raisin boxes. But there was also a box of pale, unbleached tissue
paper, and behind that the boot was stuffed with bunches of narcissi
and hyacinths she’d grown in the greenhouse, which were headed
for the Applemore Farm Shop. In an ideal world, she’d have
delivered them in her little white van, which was kitted out with
racks and shelving. In an ideal world, her ex-husband Simon
wouldn’t have come down with a stomach bug meaning he couldn’t
do his share of the childcare at the beginning of a week which was
shaping up to be the busiest she’d had in a while.
It had been eighteen months since they’d split up, and they’d
reached a reasonably amicable sort of truce. He lived with Morag,
his bank manager girlfriend, in a new-build house in a town eight
miles away. Beth pulled the car into a passing place to allow a
tractor to come the opposite way, waving to Jimmy, the elderly
farmer who she’d known since childhood. He touched his forehead
with a finger in greeting, and the tractor rumbled past.
She headed up the winding road that followed the line of the
coast towards the grounds of Applemore House, the crumbling
stately home where she’d grown up. Ploughed fields were warming
in the sunshine, hazed with green where the shoots of early barley
were beginning to show through. It had been a particularly cold
winter, and everything was taking longer to come to life as a result.
The hedgerows, too, were showing the faintest hint of the pale, acid
green that would soon paint the whole landscape. But it was enough
to fill her with hope for days when she’d be working outside in a
jumper and jeans, her fingers bending freely and not frozen solid as
she got everything organised on the acre of walled garden where
she ran her flower farming business. Soon Applemore would be full
of tourists making their way down the coast, stopping off to take
photographs of the pretty little village and spend lots of money – she
hoped – in her sister Polly’s farm shop.
She turned off the road at the newly-painted sign. In neat
lettering, it announced Applemore House Wild Camping and Farm
Shop. In the eighteen months that had passed since she and Simon
had split, a lot had changed – not only becoming a single parent to
toddler twins, but her family pulling together for the first time in
what felt like forever. Her brother Lachlan had moved back from
Edinburgh and set up home in the big house with his girlfriend, Rilla,
and together they’d set about diversifying in order to make the place
pay. Where the driveway had been potholed and overhung with
shaggy rhododendron bushes, the two of them had worked tirelessly
to clear and tidy it up so now the grass was neatly trimmed and
visitors could make their way up to the campsite without being
savaged by overgrown foliage. Soon the campers would return.
Last summer had been Lachlan and Rilla’s first season and they’d
been surprised by how successful it had been. Rather than making it
into a traditional campsite, they’d used clearings in the woodland
that surrounded the house, which provided campers with a place
where they could escape and be embraced by nature, albeit with the
luxury of several compost loos (Beth smiled at this as she passed
one of the little wooden sheds which held one, thinking that by no
stretch of the imagination would she consider a compost loo a
luxury, but she was very definitely not a camping fan). There was
even a wooden shed they’d built, which held two gas-powered
showers. And that was only one of the ways they’d diversified, along
with many of the residents in this part of the world. Getting together
with Rilla, who’d been a childhood friend, had been the making of
her brother. It was lovely to see them together – still clearly as
besotted with each other after a year and a half or so as they’d been
when they first reconnected.
‘Morning.’ Polly, her younger sister, was standing outside the farm
shop when she pulled up into the yard.
‘Flower delivery for you. I might come to life after eighteen
gallons of coffee, if there’s any going?’
‘Do you need to ask?’ Polly opened the boot and lifted out the
black plastic buckets, each one stuffed with closely-tied bunches of
narcissus, buttery yellow petals just peeking through the papery
buds. ‘Oh I love these. They’re like sunshine in a vase, aren’t they?’
Inside the old outbuilding, which Polly had converted into the
farm shop, the air was – as always – scented with the delicious smell
of freshly brewed coffee, as well as the warm and welcoming scent
of the newly baked bread delivered by a local artisan bakery. When
Polly had first opened the shop, it had been one room with a hastily
knocked-together wall of rough wooden shelves. As the months had
passed, she’d brought in a joiner who’d created a far more
aesthetically pleasing set of fittings; the wall into the adjoining
outbuilding had been knocked through, and a little kitchen and
coffee shop had been created. A broad slab of wood edged with
bark acted as a table, where metal chairs were already populated
with people from the village. Beth smiled hello to Jenny, one of the
mums she recognised from the nursery run, and her mother Dolina,
who was holding court about something.
‘…and when I heard,’ she was saying, her mouth pursed in
disapproval, ‘I said to Helen that it’s not the sort of thing we want in
our little village. I mean it’s bad enough we’ve got all these tourists
coming in all over the place every summer and it’s getting worse.’
‘Flat white?’ Tom, who ran the little coffee shop, lifted an
eyebrow in Beth’s direction. He’d started preparing it even before
she’d nodded acknowledgement. He flicked her a brief glance, which
spoke volumes.
‘If we didn’t have all these tourists,’ he said lightly, tamping down
the coffee and flicking the machine handles as he did so, ‘This place
wouldn’t be making any money and I wouldn’t have a job.’
‘Aye,’ said Dolina, her mouth still downturned, ‘Fair enough, but
you know as well as I do you can’t get parked on the main street
from April to September, and it’s getting worse. We don’t have the
infrastructure for tourism. There’s one public toilet, for one thing.’
‘Kirsty at the book shop says if it wasn’t for the summer trade
she’d have closed down. She sells countless guidebooks and maps
and all the rest of it every day.’ Tom swirled the milk, pouring it into
the cup and making a pretty design before sliding it across the
counter to Beth.
‘And I sell loads of flowers,’ Beth said, tearing open a packet of
sugar and tipping it into her cup, feeling guilty for desecrating Tom’s
design.
‘Really? I’m surprised at that,’ said Jenny, sounding like her
mother. ‘I mean what are people on a holiday going to do with
flowers?’
Beth laughed. ‘I haven’t a clue. Decorate their camper vans?
Take them home the next day? Put them in their granny’s caravan in
Ullapool? Whatever it is, I’m glad they are.’
‘Well maybe it’s just those of us who are inconvenienced by it
and aren’t making a profit who don’t appreciate it,‘ said Dolina, her
mouth looking ever more like a cat’s bum.
Beth took a very slow breath in, not rising to it. ‘Perhaps.’
‘What’s up?’ Polly, who’d been arranging the flowers on the little
wooden stand by the door, came up to join them, wiping her hands
on her jeans. ‘Am I missing hot village gossip?’
She tucked her long blonde hair behind her ears, and reached
across, helping herself to one of the chocolate brownies that lay on
a plate on the counter. ‘I’ll owe you for this,’ she said to Tom, her
mouth already full.
‘Have you not heard?’ Dolina sat up slightly in her chair, bristling
with self-importance at being the one to convey the news. ‘All those
comings and goings at the old Mackay place?’
Beth exchanged a glance of complicity with her sister. She wasn’t
about to admit to Dolina, the gossip queen of Applemore village,
that yes, they’d been talking about it on the phone the other night.
She didn’t let on that they’d had a good look at the plans on the
council website, either. ‘It’s an outdoor adventures place. White
water rafting, orienteering, that sort of thing.’
‘Not just adventure holidays,’ said Dolina, looking at them over
the top of her cup, lips pursed. ‘It’s some sort of holiday centre for
delinquents.’
‘Delinquents?’ Tom gave a snort of amusement. ‘What kind of
delinquent?’
‘I don’t think they call them that nowadays, mother,’ said Jenny.
She fiddled with a sugar packet, looking down at the table.
‘Well, I’m sure there’s some modern word for it that’s more
politically correct but the truth is they’re going to be shipping up a
load of teenagers from goodness knows where, who’ll be stealing
our cars and going joy-riding and all the rest.’ Dolina folded her arms
over an ample bolster of bust.
Tom shook his head. ‘I think it’s more likely they’ll be here
learning stuff that’ll make their lives better.’ He lifted up a pristine
tea-towel, using it to polish the front of his coffee machine, which
was his pride and joy. ‘And to be honest, Dolina, as someone who’s
spent the whole of his life dealing with other people’s disapproval, I
can tell you that I’ll be welcoming whoever it is with open arms.’
Dolina had the decency to look a little bit shame-faced. Tom had
grown up in Applemore, and moved away to college in Glasgow as a
teenager. When he’d returned with his partner Gavin, he’d confessed
to Beth – with whom he’d gone to primary school – that he’d half
expected the village to be horrified that a gay couple were going to
run the coffee shop. He’d been surprised, he admitted, but
pleasantly so, that on the whole the little village had been fairly
accepting. Even now, he’d explained, homophobia was something
they experienced every day. Beth had told him the story of her dad,
who’d been in a secret relationship with Rilla’s father for years, and
he’d nodded sagely. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? People think that the world’s
moved on, but it really hasn’t. Not in lots of ways.’
Dolina was still chuntering away. Polly had noticed a couple of
customers looking for something and disappeared off to deal with
them. Jenny was breaking a wooden sugar-stirrer into tiny pieces,
half-listening to her mother who was grumbling about the sort of
terrible miscreant teenagers who’d be roaming all over the place
doing goodness knows what else, running amok over people’s
gardens.
Beth felt a tiny wave of shame at her own thoughts. She cast her
eyes down, looking at the contents of her mug, wondering what sort
of person she was that the first thing she’d thought was that she
hoped her flower farm wasn’t going to be invaded by rampaging
teenagers who’d set her greenhouse on fire or behead all her dahlias
in some sort of spree of destruction. But really – she’d worked so
hard on the place, taking it from completely overgrown jungle and
turning it into a – finally – profitable business.
‘I’m sure whoever it is will have all the right safety stuff in place,’
she said, finally. ‘You’ve got to have all sorts of safeguarding things,
don’t you?’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Dolina, darkly. ‘Time will tell. At the end of
the day, they’re going to be your neighbours, so you’re the one
who’ll feel the brunt of it, Beth. I’d string some barbed wire along
the top of your wall if I was you.’
Beth laughed at this. ‘I think that might be a bit extreme.’
She finished her coffee, and said a quick goodbye to Polly,
glancing at her watch as she did so. She had so much to do, and
nursery pick-up time would come around before she knew it.
Whatever was going on with this new adventure holiday place, she
had more than enough on her plate to deal with. Running the flower
farm wasn’t merely a job, it was a way of life. It took up every hour
she had and several others, besides. If it hadn’t been for Simon
having the children half of the time, she really would struggle. Thank
God that they’d agreed right at the beginning that while they hadn’t
worked out, he was determined to make sure that the children were
still part of his life. After the initial humiliation of his affair had
passed, Beth had admitted to herself that their relationship had
dwindled away over years, becoming more of a friendship than
anything else for a long time before they’d split, which made it
easier.
Beth drove past Applemore House, for once taking a moment to
look up as she did so. The soft sandstone glowed warmly in the
spring light. The house had been built in the Scottish Baronial style
all crenellations and tall, pointed turrets. Lachlan and Rilla’s camping
guests were inevitably taken with it, and their Instagram accounts
were filled with images of the beautiful building. Over the last year
and a half – helped by a windfall when Lachlan’s brewery had been
sold – they’d invested money in the repairs which had been decades
overdue, and now the house stood tall and proud, as if it could feel
the love and dedication that had been poured into it to safeguard it
for the Fraser family for years to come. Lachlan had made a decision
that – as he’d been the one to inherit, as eldest son – he’d plough
the majority of the money he’d made into a trust, which would
ensure that Applemore would be passed on, and would never again
be left to crumble away.
She glanced in the rear mirror briefly as she passed, seeing the
tall trees that surrounded the house she’d grown up in. Even now,
with the place renovated and re-decorated, there was no part of her
that hankered to live there. Growing up in a place like that had
seemed exotic and exciting to her friends at school, but the reality
she shivered, remembering – was that they’d been property-rich but
cash-poor. The house had always been freezing, apart from the
kitchen, which had been warmed by a huge Aga that was on all year
round. Jack Frost decorated the inside of her bedroom turret windo