Libby 
Libby
Libby banned the students from going up to the house next day and they saw nothing of Laila, or Alice. Instead, that evening a shuttle of cars got everyone to the pub and, by agreement with the landlord, phones and laptops were recharged there while pints were pulled. Libby took hers to the corner of the room where the locals made space for the students, smiling her thanks as she wove her way through the tables. It was good to be away from the camp where the presence of Laila in Sturrock House seemed to hang like a menacing cloud. As far as Libby knew, no taxi had come to collect her, and so by now she would have missed her flight. Who knew what would happen next, but Libby sensed that things were coming rapidly to a head.
A commotion at the bar drew her attention, and the intensity of student noise suddenly increased. And then she saw why.
Declan.
He had emerged from the door leading to the stairs up to the bedrooms and was now being greeted enthusiastically by the students, for whom he was soon buying a round. She watched him scan the room until he found her, nod briefly, and then turn back to the students. She’d have to go over and talk to him, of course, and keep up the appearance of common purpose. But Declan, on top of everything else! She gave him a minute or two to come to her, and then wove her way back through the tables to the bar. He turned as she approached. “Going well, I hear,” he said, but coldly.
“As well as can be expected, but the mound has been pretty well destroyed.”
“But it’s still a useful—”
“You’ve not started at the headland, I understand,” he interrupted. “Why not?”
His tone was aggressive, but she answered calmly. “We needed to finish other things first. But I thought we’d start there tomorrow.”
“Dead right we will. I’ll be down first thing and set things up there while you tie up the other loose ends. It’s potentially the most interesting part of the site—besides the church.” He hesitated, then gave her a calculating look. “I hear that Lady Sturrock is in residence, and Rodri Sturrock isn’t.”
“That’s right.”
“Good.” She knew what he was thinking, of course, but he’d soon learn that Laila had other things on her mind. “I’ll be down straight after breakfast,” he said, and turned back to join in the students’ banter.
It was almost dark by the time everyone had been shuttled back to camp. The western sky was drained of colour, leaving the horizon a smudged line of pale shades fading into a dark sea. She parked her car, depressed by the thought of Declan, and was getting the laptop from the boot when she caught a glint of metal in the darkness. The Land Rover. It was parked up close to the old manse, half-hidden in the shadows. He was back! But parked here and not at the house— She scanned the camp, then went over to the caravan and looked inside. Empty.
But she knew where he would be.
Stopping only to collect a torch from her tent, she left the students on their way to the food tent for a last drink, and picked her way carefully along the causeway. Light still lingered in the sky, but darkness was creeping over the sea as the world became monochrome. She scrambled up to the plateau, the torch in her hand, and saw him, seated with his back against the walls of Odrhan’s tumbled cell, his elbows resting on bent knees, staring out to the horizon.
He turned his head as the beam from her torch found him. “Libby? Good. I hoped you’d come.” And in the dying light she saw how drawn his face was, how tired. He gestured to the space beside him and she sat. “Is everything alright here? I’ve not been up to the house yet.”
“Everything’s fine. Though Laila’s in a fury over her passport and money.”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “She would be, but I couldn’t risk her following me.”
They sat in silence. Was he going to explain? “You went to Dubai?” she prompted. But could he have been there and back so quickly?
“Oslo. Hector’s in Norway. He’s never been in Dubai.”
“Oh.”
There was a longer silence. “Hector’s dying,” he said, and his voice sounded thin and strained. “Three months, the doctors said, six if he’s lucky. He’s in a private hospital. Been in and out over the last year attempting to dry out. Hopeless case. As soon as he gets out, they told me, he backslides. Every sodding time.”
He turned his head away from her and a light breeze ruffled the hair on his forehead, covering the frown which now seemed permanently etched there. “I’m sorry,” she said, and put a hand on his arm. Without turning back, he closed his own over it, and kept it there.
“Not as sorry as I am,” he said, and then, after a moment, “I’ve been so blind.” He fell silent again and she said nothing. He would tell this story his own way, or not at all.
“I’ve known Laila was a bad lot for a long time,” he said, “but not that she was wicked. Every damn e-mail I’ve had over the last few months has been from her, masquerading as Hector or Hector’s secretary, deliberately driving the wedge between us.” He let out his breath in a juddering sigh. “Every demand for money has been instigated by her, made to look as if it came from him. He’s been in this hospital more or less continuously since March, just about the time she came here to cash in the Nasmyth, a virtual prisoner, from what I can gather. The doctors kept trying to send him home, but she’d told them he was violent and begged them to keep him. She has his credit cards, passport, e-mail passwords, everything—and she’s been smuggling drink in to him there. He’s so bloody stupid he thought she did it from kindness.” He dropped his head and stared down at the grass between his knees.
“And the pregnancy?” she asked.
His shoulder shook slightly before he replied. “I asked him about it, and just for a moment I saw such a blaze of joy on his face— Then his eyes went dead and he said it wasn’t his, and that it was unlikely to be true anyway, and told me why.” He stopped again, for longer this time. “And then he started to put other things together in his head,” he continued in a flat tone, “and so I’ve spent the last two days destroying the one thing he had to cling to, his love for that worthless woman.”
He raised his head and gazed out over the dark ocean, and then bit by bit the story came out. He’d caught a flight to Oslo and gone straight to Hector’s house to find it locked and empty. A neighbour had come out, and when he told her who he was the woman assumed that Laila had sent him to collect things to take, imagining her to be at the hospital. “Such a lovely lady, the neighbour said.” He’d gone along with the story and she’d let him in using the key she held for them.
Once inside he had rifled through their papers until he’d found bills from a private hospital, located in the mountainous area between Oslo and Bergen, and he’d set off to go there.
“But how did you know to go to Oslo, and not Dubai?” she asked.
“A hunch,” he said. “That night—when was it?—two nights ago, it suddenly occurred to me what was happening. For weeks now, every time I tried to contact Hector I got a text or e-mail back, never a call. And they were brusque and brief, cold and impersonal; either he was busy or off somewhere with some trade delegation and didn’t want to be bothered by estate matters. He’d tell me to just deal with it, and then demand more money be sent through to him. I’d taken offence, as I was meant to do, seeing myself exploited and deliberately distanced, so I contacted him less and less. All part of Laila’s little plan, and Hector, away up in the mountains, didn’t have a clue.” He paused. “And then that night, after what you said, it hit me what might be happening, so I put it to the test. You saw me ring him and leave a voicemail message and then text him?”
“Yes.”
“And a little later she left the room, and, hey presto, I got a text message back from Hector. A surprisingly genial one. I replied to it, letting her see that I’d done so, and when she could, she slipped away again. Same thing happened, I got a reply. So when you and she were sorting coffee in the library, I went up and looked in her handbag. Two phones. His and hers. And my message flagged up on the screen of his.”
“Oh God.”
“Half of me thought he was dead already.” He paused for a long moment, his jaw set hard, as if reliving the moment. “But I needed to find out, so I took her passport and cards, gambling on getting away before she found they were gone. I had to know she was out of the game for a while.” He stopped again. “And I couldn’t tell anyone, you see, in case I was wrong.”
Libby sat in silence, staggered by Laila’s calculated cruelty. “And so the fictional baby is her insurance in case Hector dies?”
“Not in case, when. I can’t begin to tell you the mess he’s in. Liver’s shot to hell, the doctors said, kidneys starting to fail and other stuff. It’s just a matter of time— And when he died, who was going to challenge his grieving widow over the paternity of her child?” He stopped again, staring back down at the ground. “So once Laila had established to the world, and to me in particular, that she’s pregnant with a son, the sooner Hector died the better, as that bump of hers has got to grow. These next weeks were going to be the hardest part of the charade. Once he was dead, she could simply flee somewhere, distraught with grief, for the requisite number of months, and then emerge triumphant with the next baronet who even now some surrogate mother is presumably cooking up for her. Laila is not to be underestimated.”
Libby sat, stunned, while she absorbed this. “But why didn’t she get pregnant herself? Surely that would have been easier.”
There was another long silence. “She couldn’t. And besides, she had to be not pregnant when she visited Hector and the doctors, and pregnant for me and, after he died, for the rest of the world. A tricky act to keep up, but she was playing for high stakes, and Hector, hanging on to life as he is doing, must have been a worry to her. They’re broke, I gather, all washed up, and I dread to think what her next move would have been. He has hefty life insurance cover, he told me.”
She felt a sudden chill as a zephyr blew across the surface of the sea, and she watched a night bird flying over the waves, low and fast.
“So then I had to get back here to tell her the game is up, and watch out for the boys. And David.”
His sudden fear was tangible, and she touched his arm again. “The boys are fine,” she said, “and they have Angus and Maddy and Alice looking out for them.” What could Laila possibly do to them? “They haven’t been here at all. Alice has, though, and she’s borne the brunt of Laila’s temper.”
He gave a short laugh. “Alice is a trooper, bless her.”
“So what happens now?” Somewhere out at sea a gull’s wild cry was snatched away by the wind.
“I’ll go to the house and confront her.” She caught a glint in his eye, sharp as a blade. “And then she can strip off whatever it is she has strapped to her belly and give an account of herself. But not tonight, I don’t trust myself tonight.” He paused, and she sensed him struggling to restrain a passion so strong— “I’ll sleep in the Land Rover and tackle her in the morning.”
That, she was certain, was a good idea, for the look in his eye was murderous. “She said that if you weren’t back by today, she’d report the theft to the police.”
“Good. I’d like Fergus to hear all this, the sooner the better.” He rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye, and she saw exhaustion replace menace as he turned back to her. “And I’ve got you embroiled in this ghastly mess, Libby. It’s not where I want to be with you. I’m sorry.”
She looked away. The words and the tone reached beyond the moment. But it was not for now, and would not spoil for waiting.
“Don’t be,” was all she said. Then: “And there’s no need to sleep in the Land Rover. I can shift a few boxes and you can stretch out in the caravan. There’s a spare sleeping bag in there.”
He got up and reached a hand down to her. “Right. I’ll do that.” He pulled her to her feet and together they walked back along the causeway. The camp was in darkness now, the last of the revellers having retired to their tents, and they went silently across the chilly dunes, through the campsite to the caravan. Libby shifted the finds trays and boxes from the couch and retrieved the sleeping bag.
“Will you be alright?”
He smiled at her. “Of course.” And then he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her, and held her. “I’m very glad you’re here, Liberty Snow,” he murmured, and he tightened his hold before releasing her.