Finding Hope at the Loch (Loch Lannick Book 7)

by Hannah Ellis

  “He looked a bit rough, though,” Christine remarked. “I think a few people are a little worse for wear today.”

  “Aye.” Elspeth didn’t like to mention it was her who’d made Rory look like that and not excessive alcohol.

  “You don’t look too bright either.” Christine scrutinised Elspeth. “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m just tired. I need an early night.”

  “You’ve been working too hard.” Christine stepped outside with Elspeth. “Good thing you get a break tomorrow. You should have a lie in too. Get Rory to get Arran up and off to nursery.”

  “Yeah,” Elspeth said vaguely. Monday was her day off, though she wasn’t sure a day with her thoughts was really what she needed. If the weather was decent she’d be tempted to open the cafe just to keep herself distracted. “Goodnight,” she called to her mum as she wandered towards the cottage.

  At home, she moved between the living room and kitchen, tidying things that didn’t really need tidying as she nervously waited for Rory to return. If she stayed still she was sure she’d start crying, and that wasn’t going to help the situation. She also didn’t want to be a wreck when Arran came home.

  Almost an hour passed before Rory walked in with Arran on his arm. He paused in the hallway and gave Elspeth a sad smile. “I swapped a dog for a child.”

  “I can see that.” She was amazed at their ability to act normal. “Good swap,” she said, going over and running a hand over Arran’s back. His head was nestled against Rory’s chest and he looked as though he was about to fall asleep. “Did you have a nice day?” she asked him gently.

  He nodded and it was clear she wasn’t going to get much out of him in the way of details.

  “Bedtime,” she said. “Shall I take you up?”

  He shook his head. “Daddy.”

  “I’ll take him,” Rory said, then switched his attention to Arran, chatting softly to him as he carried him upstairs.

  Elspeth went to the living room and sat quietly on the couch, listening to the sound of Rory getting Arran ready for bed. Their gentle laughter floated down to her, making her eyes fill with tears.

  At the sound of Rory’s footsteps on the stairs a while later, Elspeth sat up and took a deep breath. Rory perched on the arm of the chair, his features tense.

  “Is there someone else?” he asked, picking at the arm of the chair and not looking at her.

  “No. Definitely not.”

  He nodded slowly. “And does anyone else know?”

  She squinted as she tried to decipher the question. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you were just stressed about work.” He paused and shifted his weight. “I knew you were worried about the wedding cake and about Isla. But I never really thought it was to do with us. I feel like an idiot for not seeing it. You’ve kept me at arm’s length for ages. I should’ve realised our relationship was falling apart. So I guess I wonder who else knows? Do your family know? Am I the last one to figure it out?”

  Elspeth shook her head, hating the pain in his eyes. “No one knows. I was trying to ignore it myself. I thought if I pretended everything was fine, eventually things would be fine again.”

  “I don’t understand what happened,” Rory said. “Things were great. Did I do something?”

  “No. You didn’t do anything.” She hated that she couldn’t even give him a proper explanation. All she could do was apologise, but that wasn’t particularly helpful.

  They descended into a short silence before Rory spoke.

  “Do you want me to move out?” he asked quietly.

  Elspeth bit down on her lip. “It would break Arran’s heart.”

  “But not yours?” He waited for an answer that Elspeth refused to give him.

  “You can’t move out,” she said instead. “Where would you go? Would you move back to Edinburgh?”

  “No,” he said as tears fell down his cheeks. “I couldn’t be that far from you. From Arran.” He swallowed hard. “I could find my own place up here I suppose. We could take it in turns to have Arran.”

  Elspeth’s chest felt so tight it was painful. “I don’t want that,” she said, forcing the words through the lump in her throat. “I don’t want that for Arran.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Rory said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. And it’s Isla’s wedding next week. I feel like it’ll ruin everything if they find out.”

  “Should I even go to the wedding?” he asked. “They’re not my family. If you don’t want to be with me, I’m not sure I should even be there …”

  “They are your family,” she said. “You’re Arran’s father so they’ll always be your family.”

  “Not really,” he said, wiping his hands over his face. He looked at her for a moment and seemed suddenly calmer. “Let’s not mention anything for now. We can wait until after the wedding. You need to focus on the cake, and we don’t want to overshadow their day.” He stood and took a breath. “That gives us time to think.”

  Elspeth saw the pain in his eyes and felt a wave of self-loathing. Rory had uprooted his whole life for Elspeth and Arran. He’d got a new job and moved to the other end of the country, leaving his friends and family behind. And never once had he complained about it.

  She almost wished he’d shout at her. She was breaking their family apart and she didn’t even have a good explanation for why. Except that she was miserable and she couldn’t carry on being so unhappy.

  “I’ll move into the spare room for now,” Rory said from the doorway.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Isla woke up alone on her wedding day. In keeping with tradition, Logan had insisted they shouldn’t see each other until the ceremony on the day of the wedding, so he’d stayed at Alasdair and Leana’s place. Having the wedding in the afternoon made the day fairly relaxed. She just wasn’t quite sure how she was going to kill the time until the ceremony. Part of her wished it was earlier in the day, so she didn’t have so much time to worry about it. The more she thought about standing up in front of a room full of people, the more nervous she got.

  She was eating toast for breakfast when Jasper barked at the front door. He’d already been out once but she went to open the door for him, then was startled by the sight of Arran.

  “I brought you a present,” he said, holding out a tissue.

  Isla crouched down, unfurling the tissue to reveal a collection of sea glass. “That’s really pretty,” she said of the beautiful bright pieces. She grimaced as she touched a piece. It was all sticky. The tissue was stuck to it in places. “What have you been eating?” Isla asked, noticing Arran’s hands were equally as sticky.

  “Cake,” he said with a grin. “There was cake on the glass so I licked it clean.”

  “That’s gross.” Hesitantly, she took the gift from him when he thrust the crumpled tissue at her. “Thanks, I guess! You know you shouldn’t really lick sea glass. Or any glass, for that matter.”

  “Okay.” He beamed at her. “We can eat more cake at the party.”

  “Yes. I’m excited about wedding cake too. Will you dance with me at the wedding?”

  “Yes.” He turned and set off home again. “Bye bye!”

  “Bye.” Isla stood looking down at the sticky pieces of sea glass, wondering if she could even be bothered to wash them. “Thanks again for the present,” she called, then closed the door and headed to the dustbin.

  Elspeth was coming down the stairs when Arran walked back into the house. He’d spent ages drawing a picture for Isla that morning. It was rare for him to stick quietly at a task for so long. Elspeth had taken advantage of it and gone upstairs to put the washing away and lay out their wedding outfits. Rory was in the shower and would take Arran over to Alasdair’s place to get ready there with the rest of the men.

  They’d spent the week ignoring the elephant in the room and being oddly polite to each other, but Elspeth was aware there were some uncomfortable conversa
tions to come. Having her bedroom to herself should have been a relief, but the absence of Rory in her bed mostly made her feel sad. She still wasn’t sleeping well.

  All week, her focus had been getting through the wedding. Her life could fall apart after that.

  She’d expected the morning of the wedding to be stressful, but so far everything was going surprisingly smoothly. The cake was completely finished so she didn’t actually have much to do, though she kept thinking she’d forgotten something. Logan had asked her and Leana to go over to the castle early to decorate the hall and grounds with the sea glass jars. Elspeth would take the cake over at the same time, but given that the ceremony was so late in the day, there was no rush. They’d be able to help Isla get ready first.

  “Did Isla like the picture?” Elspeth asked Arran when she reached the foot of the stairs.

  “It’s not finished.”

  Elspeth frowned in confusion. While she’d been putting the clothes away he’d shouted up to her that he was taking Isla a present and she’d assumed he’d meant the picture he was working on.

  “I thought you took Isla a present?” she said.

  “Yes. Sea glass.”

  “Where did you get sea glass from?”

  “The kitchen,” he said as he sat on the floor to pull his shoes off.

  “You weren’t supposed to go in the kitchen.” A vague unsettled feeling descended in her stomach. The wedding cake was in the kitchen and she’d been adamant Arran shouldn’t be anywhere near it. At least not unsupervised.

  “I just got the sea glass,” he said.

  “Okay.” Elspeth walked along the hall, telling herself she was panicking about nothing. There were always pieces of sea glass around the place. Whenever Arran saw any he collected it for Isla.

  “I eat the cake from it,” Arran said.

  Elspeth stopped dead. “You did what?”

  “There was cake on the sea glass so I licked it clean.”

  As Elspeth flung the kitchen door open her heart was beating furiously. Her eyes filled with tears as soon as she saw the chair that Arran had obviously dragged over to the counter so he could reach the cake. All the edible sea glass from the bottom tier of the cake was missing, and there were chunks of royal icing missing that had been torn away with the sea glass.

  “Why are you crying, Mummy?” Arran asked, tugging on her hand.

  “It was sweeties,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “The sea glass was special sweeties for the cake. It was part of the cake.”

  Arran blinked up at her, his little face so full of innocence that she couldn’t even get angry with him. It was her own stupid fault for leaving him alone.

  “Sorry, Mummy,” Arran said when she went to sit at the table.

  He stood staring at her until Rory came into the room a moment later.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I took the sea glass to Auntie Isla,” Arran told him. “Now Mummy’s sad.”

  Rory looked to Elspeth for further explanation and all she could manage was to nod in the direction of the cake.

  “Oh, no!” Rory went to the cake for a closer look, then turned back to Arran. “What did you do?”

  “He thought it was normal sea glass,” Elspeth answered with tears running silently down her cheeks.

  “Sorry,” Arran said again.

  “It’s okay,” Elspeth sniffled. “Just go and put the TV on for a while.”

  After watching Arran leave, Rory went and crouched beside Elspeth. “Can you fix it?”

  Elspeth looked at the cake with the patches of missing icing. “This is why Isla didn’t want me to make the cake,” she said. “She knew I’d mess it up. Everything I touch falls apart.”

  “That’s not true,” Rory said, resting his hand on her arm. “The cake was perfect. It was Arran who messed it up.”

  “I can’t really blame Arran. I should have taken the cake over to Mum’s when it was finished.”

  “You can fix it,” Rory said. “Only the bottom tier’s damaged and there’s loads of time before the wedding. Arran took the pieces to Isla, right? So I can get them back and you can patch the cake up and stick them on again.”

  “I can’t put them back on the cake when they’ve been in Arran’s hands. He could’ve dropped them on the way over there. I’ve no idea what state they’re in.”

  “Then we just use them as decoration. Take them off before the cake is served so no one eats them.”

  Elspeth barely even registered what he was saying. The cake was ruined and everything felt hopeless. “Isla’s going to be furious,” she said.

  “Stop panicking,” Rory said. “I’ll get the decorations back and you’ll fix the cake. Everything will be fine.”

  Before Elspeth could argue, he set off out of the door. Elspeth dropped her head to the table and stayed that way until Rory returned a few minutes later.

  “I have good news and bad,” he said, pulling a chair out to sit beside her. He grimaced before continuing. “Isla put the pieces in the bin. But … they were so realistic that she had no idea it wasn’t real sea glass. That’s quite impressive.”

  “I should’ve made the cake Isla wanted. Then this would never have happened. Does she know I’ve messed up the cake?”

  “No. I just asked if Arran had left his jacket when he went over there. And I made small talk while I scanned the kitchen for the sea glass. Then she was complaining that Arran needs a bath and told me she’d had to put his gift in the bin because it was so sticky. She has no idea there’s anything wrong with the cake. And I called Leana. She’s going to come over and help you fix the cake. Isla will never know there was a problem.”

  Elspeth put her elbows on the table and propped her chin on her hands. “What about us?” she said flatly.

  He winced, but didn’t say anything.

  “I told you I didn’t want to be with you any more,” Elspeth said. “And now we’re living like overly polite housemates. I don’t know what you’re thinking and I have no idea why you’re being so nice to me.”

  Rory had just opened his mouth to speak when the front door burst open.

  “I was already on the way over when you called,” Leana shouted as she strode down the hallway. “How bad is it?” She stopped dead in the kitchen and put her hands on her hips while she surveyed the damage. “Okay. I think we can fix that. We just need more edible sea glass decorations. And to cover up those holes in the icing somehow…”

  “I’ll need to try and take the icing off the bottom layer and redo it,” Elspeth said.

  “Right. That doesn’t sound so bad.” Leana leaned towards the cake. “It’s so amazing. The figures really look like Isla and Logan. And the tiny blue flowers for the water are stunning.” Turning, she smiled widely at Elspeth. “We’re going to fix it. Don’t worry. Mum and I will help.”

  “Isla’s not going to be very happy if we spend her wedding day ignoring her because we’re busy repairing the cake. Especially considering I’m fairly certain she predicted this would happen.”

  Leana waved a hand in front of her face. “We’ll send Dad over to distract her for a while. He can tell her he wants some quality father/daughter time. Then we can take it in turns to go and hang out with her. We’ll tell her we’re getting our hair done and getting ready in shifts.”

  “The trouble is we do actually have to get ready! And I really don’t know if I can fix it. The sea glass decorations took ages.”

  “We better get on with it then.”

  “What can I do?” Rory asked, looking to Leana.

  “Probably best you take the tiny cake destroyer out of the way,” Leana said.

  Rory stood up. “I can do that. I’ll take him over to your place.”

  “Good idea,” Leana said.

  “I’ll see you later.” Rory rubbed Elspeth’s back and leaned to kiss her cheek.

  “See you,” Elspeth said wearily.

  “I promise it will be fine,” Leana said to Elspeth whe
n they were alone. “You look like the world is about to end, but in a few hours the cake will look as good as new and you’ll be all chilled out with a glass of champagne in your hand.”

  Elspeth forced a smile, wishing the ruined cake was all she had to worry about.

  Chapter Forty

  Isla hated the waiting around and she still had most of the day to go. She was about to head over to her parents’ house when her Dad arrived.

  “I was about to come over,” Isla said. “I’m bored. I don’t know why we decided to get married so late in the day. It seems like a waste.”

  “I think it’s nice and chilled out,” Keith said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.

  Isla stayed where she was. “I wanted to go and see Mum.”

  “I thought we could have a cuppa and a chat before I go over to Alasdair’s.”

  Isla frowned. “If you’re checking I want to go through with the wedding you probably shouldn’t have left it until the last minute.”

  He chuckled as he filled the kettle. “It’s the last time I get to hang out with you before you’re married. I thought I should make the most of it.”

  “I’m still going to be living next door to you, you know. I’m not sure anything’s going to change. Plus, we never hang out anyway. You spend more time with Logan than me.”

  “That’s why I thought this time together is so important.”

  Isla looked at him suspiciously. “You’re a decoy, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a what?”

  “Did they send you to distract me? There’s a problem with the cake, isn’t there? I knew this would happen.”

  “I think they need to add the finishing touches. I don’t think there’s any problem.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Isla said.

  “Everything is under control. Just a minor hiccup. And the plus side is you get your dad to keep you entertained for a while.” He handed Isla a cup of tea. “How are you feeling? A bit nervous probably?”