There are events that change the course of your life, and the trial of Kailash Coutts was one. Not only did I find my grandfather but my birth mother. Kailash was charged with the murder of Lord Arbuthnot, Scotland’s top-ranking judge–and my father. She walked free at the end of the trial and they walked into my life. If I wasn’t already screwed up by then, this put the tin lid on it. Kailash had been notorious throughout Scotland, and further afield, for a long time. What was in the public eye was that she was a dominatrix who pretty much ran the sex scene in Edinburgh–she’d probably tell me to emphasize that she ran the classy side, one of the many things she and I disagreed on. Kailash had been involved in a cause célèbre that had almost ruined the firm I worked for, given that one of the senior partners had found himself and his ‘preferences’ splashed across the front page of all the tabloids, thanks to his dominatrix of choice, Kailash again. When she was accused of killing one of Scotland’s top law figures, I was staggered to find myself defending her at her request–however, that paled into insignificance as events unfolded and I discovered she was my birth mother…and that the man she was thought to have killed was my child-abusing, rapist father.

The mirror showed me that I had inherited his looks and her brains. It wasn’t as disastrous a combination as it sounds at first–Kailash was one smart cookie. Long dark auburn hair hung in curls–or rats’ tails, depending on the weather–around my shoulders. I didn’t have the usual redhead’s complexion because Kailash is mixed race and I had taken some of her skin tone. None of her dress sense, though, as she constantly informed me. In her words, I looked a bloody mess. A wave of self-consciousness flooded over me as I peered at the espresso stains on my blouse. I was a messy eater; it’s why leathers were so right for me.

The buzzer sounded.