The Low Road
Page 31
“It was my secret escape. And as this is my very first payment for my very first story, I’m taking you out to lunch.”
Don looked at them, saw what he saw, and left them alone. They didn’t notice.
“Mrs. McAllister,” McAllister began, “I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of you.”
“Tell me over lunch,” she replied. “I’m starving.”
• • •
Over the rest of the year and into the next, McAllister would wonder occasionally where Mary was. That she would be a successful career woman he had no doubts.
Sandy Marshall, when he recovered from his initial anger at Mary’s walking out with only one week’s notice, was also curious but, he later told McAllister, no one had heard from her. “Perhaps she’s locked herself away to write a novel.”
They laughed, knowing that that was the fantasy of many a journalist, and knowing the crossover from reporter to novelist was seldom successful.
Rumors reached them that she was at the Manchester Guardian, but that proved to be untrue. Someone said she’d been seen in Paris. One woman insisted Mary was in London. But no one spoke to her, or read her work, and life moved on.
She became a person McAllister remembered fondly but did not want to think of much as it reminded him of Jimmy McPhee. And he needed to forget he had come close to losing his reason over Mary Ballantyne.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Cat Wheeler, author, raconteur, environmentalist, and a key founder of Growing Old Disgracefully (Ubud, Bali chapter). Thank you for showing me another side of Ubud and Bali.
To John and Barbara Orme, thank you for your many kindnesses, and thank you Barbara for allowing me to stay in your lovely home whilst I wrote.
As ever to Tran Duc and Ly Le for the wonderful food and the love without which I doubt I could ever write.
To Pete, for the L.O.V.E.
I thank my agents Sheila Drummond and Peter McGuigan. I know, I know, it’s your job. But the effort and enthusiasm and dedication you both put into representing your authors is truly appreciated.
To all at Atria Books, a publishing team that makes authors feel part of a family, thank you for your continuing faith in the folk at the Highland Gazette.
Thank you once again to a woman whom I have never met, Anne Cherry, the copy editor on my books. Her eagle eye, her comments and suggestions, her patience, are truly appreciated.
No book of mine would ever be complete without the encouragement, the wisdom, and the intelligence of Sarah Durand. Thank you.
The rest of the novel's in A.D. Scott's "ingenious" (Booklist) mystery series are just one click away!
See where it all started in the very first mystery of the riveting Highland Gazette series . . .
A Small Death in the Great Glen
* * *
A stunning and suspenseful story of families, betrayal, and a community divided.
A Double Death on the Black Isle
* * *
When a shocking murder of one of their own throws the Highland Gazette office into chaos, Joanne Ross must step up to investigate and keep the small town's divisions from tearing the office, and her own life, apart.
Beneath the Abbey Wall
* * *
The fourth gripping, fast-paced installment of A.D. Scott's series, offering another gorgeously written window into the intrigue and quiet beauty of the 1950s Scottish Highlands.
North Sea Requiem
* * *
Return to the grandeur of the Highlands in the next evocative, suspenseful mystery following beloved Highland Gazette heroine Joanne Ross.
A Kind of Grief
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ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!
© ETIENNE BOSSOT
A. D. SCOTT was born in the Highlands of Scotland and educated at Inverness Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She has worked in theater, in magazines, and as a knitwear designer, and currently lives in Vietnam.
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Also by A. D. Scott
North Sea Requiem
Beneath the Abbey Wall
A Double Death on the Black Isle
A Small Death in the Great Glen
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by A. D. Scott
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First Atria Paperback edition September 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scott, A. D.
The low road / by A. D. Scott. — First Atria paperback edition.
pages cm
1. Journalists—Scotland—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9619.4.S35L69 2014
823’.92—dc23
2014005047
ISBN 978-1-4767-5616-5
ISBN 978-1-4767-5617-2 (ebook)