Josh blew out derisively. “Oh, what the hell! Listen, Dad, I’m in a rut here. You said it in so many words the other day in my bedroom. I’m going noplace. I’m sick of my dead-end job and I’m sick of life in London. Even Horace’s Inferno has been taken over by West End posers.” He shrugged the haversack higher onto his back and adjusted the shoulder straps. “I’ve been trying to think of something else to do for the past few months, but I just came up blank every time. I know this is impulsive, but what the hell, you’re doing something pretty impulsive as well. So come on, man, I’m quite willing to do something adventurous if you are.”

Dan felt the unaccustomed prickle of emotion in his eyes. “All right, Josh. Come on, we’ll do something impulsive together.” He put an arm around his son’s shoulder and held him tight. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?”

Josh grinned at his father. “Let’s hit the road, then.”

15

It was only a short distance, barely a mile, between the Trenchards’ house and the cottage. Dan drove hard on the heels of the red Golf as it sped along the narrow road that followed the south shore of Loch Eil. He was almost taken unawares when Katie’s brake lights suddenly shone red. She swung the car to the right through a rusting gate that hung askew from one hinge, and drove up a short, rutted track, the grass in its centre brushing heavily on the underside of her car.

“Oh, gawd,” Josh muttered as they followed the Golf up the track. “I saw this place from back there, and I was going to make some stupid joke about it being our new home in the Highlands.”

The low, corrugated iron–roofed cottage was situated thirty yards back from the road on a small hillock, its three front windows giving out to a view across the loch. That was its only plus point. Sections of the wooden fence that surrounded its small, overgrown garden had fallen victim to the wind and those that still stood were covered with greeny-black lichen. A nondescript climbing plant, devoid of much of its foliage despite it being only September, grew in a tangled heap up the rough stone wall and hung like an unkempt fringe over the drab brown front door. At the back of the cottage, there was a flat-roofed harled extension with a small metal window that was, in architectural terms, utterly discordant with the rest of the building.

“Still pleased you came?” Dan laughed, as he creaked open the Saab door.

Josh leaped enthusiastically from the car. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”